Housing and Residence Life: Community & Engagement | Competencies & Learning | Care & Case Management | Assessment
As someone who has multiple non-apparent disabilities, living and working in Residence Halls and on a college campus has many challenges. The students and staff that we work with often may have a non-apparent disability (or disabilities) that affects them every day that we don’t know about. Here is some of my advice as someone... Continue Reading →
As a (proud) millennial, I’m old enough to remember times before computers were everywhere and young enough to still feel like I grew up with them. I’m also at that time in my career where I’ve been involved in too many technology-driven changes in organizations to count. From digitizing information to automating processes to moving... Continue Reading →
For those of us who have been “in the game” for a while now, we have likely both facilitated an intentional conversation and also been a part of the conversation with student staff for the “why” and the “how” of intentional conversations on our home campuses. Of course, this strategy connects to one of the... Continue Reading →
How many times in student affairs have we heard departments, universities, leadership, claim that they are student-centered? But are we? For a field that prides itself on putting students at the forefront of our work, it does not always feel like we are accomplishing this goal. Why is that? First, what do we mean by... Continue Reading →
You arrive with a plan. You have emails to answer, a staff meeting to prepare for, a conduct follow-up you've been putting off. Then over lunch you get an email, maybe a phone call. A student is locked out. An RA needs help with a roommate conflict. Facilities reports a flood, a fire, or maybe... Continue Reading →
Housing departments are not short on data. We have retention trends, survey results, conduct patterns, and thousands of logged RA conversations. They fill our reports, our dashboards, and the occasional 20-page document that took months to build. Yet the question that matters most often goes unanswered: did any of it change what a staff member... Continue Reading →
October is a month that often feels like a turning point. The excitement and urgency of the start of the semester have settled, routines are becoming established, and many of us find ourselves looking ahead. What comes next? What skills do I want to develop? Where do I see myself in five years? For student... Continue Reading →
Maybe it’s a whole room. Maybe it’s a few cabinets tucked into the back of an office, or maybe it’s an entire basement in an older residence hall that hasn’t seen the light of day in decades. It’s the place where supplies go to live out their days: paper scraps saved in the name of... Continue Reading →
Happy spooky season, readers! Today’s post is exploring the slightly spooky side of leadership, using your strategic leadership skills. For some of you, “strategic” may not be a strength or leadership skill you immediately identify with, but I’m willing to bet you are using it more often than you think. In our Res Life roles,... Continue Reading →
Small Assessment Moves that Reveal Big Insights about Student Learning It’s 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, and you’re walking through your residence hall after hanging out with some other Hall Directors. The study lounge is packed, but nobody seems to be studying. Two residents are arguing about dishes in the common kitchen sink. An RA stops you... Continue Reading →
One of the most interesting lessons I have learned in seven years of residence life work is that helping someone does not always mean solving their problem. That can be a difficult idea to reconcile with student affairs work. We are deeply committed to serving students. We want them to feel heard, supported, and cared... Continue Reading →
The academic year is in full swing. You’re supervising student staff, building community, answering emails, navigating yet another roommate conflict, and putting out a million little fires. Then your duty phone rings at 2 a.m. You probably got into this work because you wanted to make a difference. Maybe you had an incredible Res Life experience yourself. Maybe... Continue Reading →
There’s an interesting paradox with loneliness that always fascinates me. One can be alone but not feel lonely, just as someone can be lonely, but not be alone. The two ideas are often conflated and interchanged, but there is such a clear delineation between the two. It’s unfortunate that idea gets lost because stripping the... Continue Reading →
We all have moments in our careers where we cringe. I remember a regular departmental staff meeting my second year of graduate school, where our director shared with us that we were doing something new today. Depending on your demeanor, the words, “something new” can either be very exciting or terrifying. I wasn’t quite sure... Continue Reading →
Roompact's door dec competition is now closed and we're ready to announce the winners. We received 110+ entries (!), so picking ten was incredibly difficult. We tried to select a diverse group of winners that reflected the diversity of the submissions themselves. Thank you to all who entered! Your ideas are now a resource for... Continue Reading →
Recently, a colleague, Paige Harris, and I were working on a presentation about incorporating joy at work. We were brainstorming about what joy looks like for each person and that each supervisor doesn’t have to create joy in the same way for it to be meaningful for a team. We ended up coming up with... Continue Reading →
A quick and essential disclaimer to start: I have never been one to believe in perfect work/life balance. Or at least not what many folx see as that perfect balance - complete segmentation and no crossing of boundaries between apportioned “work time” and “life time.” Maybe it’s because I am the child of secondary school... Continue Reading →
For housing professionals, move-in day often feels like the finish line. Months of planning culminate in a few hectic days of key distribution, check-in lines, and helping students carry far more belongings than they will ever actually use. Once the halls are full, it can be tempting to shift our attention to the next operational... Continue Reading →
