All Aboard ResLife! Keys to Successful Staff Onboarding From The Perspective of a Higher Ed Grad

Many professionals in residence life begin their professional staff journey with time as a paraprofessional under their belt. Some served as an RA at their undergraduate institutions. Others took on a different residence life role, perhaps navigating front desk operations or in-hall mentorship relationships. However, many professionals enter the residential world with little to no... Continue Reading →

October 17, 2023

ResEdChat Ep 48: Rethinking Residence Life Staff Structures

ResEdChat Episode 48 - Stewart Robinette

In this episode of Roompact's ResEdChat, we chat with Stewart Robinette, who was most recently at The George Washington University and was instrumental in some of the staffing structure changes they made to their residence life program. This episode will get you thinking about alternative ways to organize our work and how we construct the roles that serve our residents.

September 28, 2023

ResLife Student Staff Training: Is It Working? (Part 3)

Across the country a week or two before all students return to campus, we see housing student leaders come back early to prepare and train for the upcoming year. This often involves team building, crisis management, facetime with campus resource leaders, and hopefully some time carved out for hall preparations. After the whirlwind of the... Continue Reading →

July 11, 2023

ResLife Pro-D in a Bag: Invisible Work in College Student Housing (15 mins)

ResLife Pro Staff Pro-D in a Bag - Invisible Work in College Student Housing

The "Pro-D in a Bag" series provides all the details you'll need to create a professional development opportunity for your staff around a given topic. Each facilitation guide outlines free and open source videos to watch, articles to read, quizzes and inventories to complete, and suggested questions for discussion and activities. You can facilitate this... Continue Reading →

May 22, 2023

ResLife Pro-D in a Bag: How Might We Re-Imagine the “RA” role? (30 Minutes)

ResLife Pro Staff Pro-D in a Bag - How might we re-image the RA position and role

May 8, 2023

ResEdChat Ep 27: Delton Gordon and Luke Hams on Re-Imagining RA and Student Staff Positions

ResEdChat - Reimagining RA and Student Staff Positions with Delton Gordon and Luke Hams

In this episode of Roompact's ResEdChat, Paul returns to the hosting chair and chats with Delton Gordon and Luke Hams of Arkansas Tech University about changes they made this year to re-imagine their student staff positions. This included rethinking RA and student staff roles, how they compensated the student employees, and how to make the positions more flexible to meet the needs of a modern student lifestyle.

April 27, 2023

Supporting Staff Through the ResLife Job Search Season

It's job search season! For those of us with graduate assistants, and perhaps those with undergrads interested in the field (see my previous blog post!) these staff are beginning to plan out their job searches. The professional job search and the graduate school search have some significant differences and individuals going through these processes need... Continue Reading →

January 5, 2023

ResEdChat Ep 15: Kate Gannon-Cullinan on Residence Life Staff Retention

ResEdChat Episode 15 - Kate Gannon-Cullinan on Residence Life Staff Retention

In this episode of Roompact's ResEdChat, we talk with Kate about her dissertation research that examines the causes and impacts of Residence Life staff attrition. She also shares strategies to help better retain staff members on your team. If you have a topic idea or want to engage in the community discussion, use the hashtag #ResEdChat.

November 22, 2022

Quiet Quitting, Acting Your Wage, and the Missing Piece That Keeps Many Women in Housing from Being Able To Do Either

You can’t scroll through LinkedIn or even TikTok nowadays without seeing articles or discussions about "quiet quitting" and "acting your wage." By now, most people know what these terms mean and how they differ slightly, but ultimately both mean: “Do the job you were hired for and only during the hours, you’re being paid to... Continue Reading →

November 1, 2022

4 Ideas for Onboarding New ResLife Staff Members…

As the new academic year begins for almost all of us in housing and residence life, we are wrapping up the training and onboarding of new staff members. It seems that summers continue to feel shorter, leaving our batteries half charged as we embark on a new academic year. Our residents are arriving not knowing the... Continue Reading →

August 26, 2022

Don’t Just Recruit New Res Ed Staff, Re-Recruit Current Staff Members

We’ve heard the attributions of another year covered in the cloak of COVID-19’s shadow–arresting the development of our residents, limiting academic engagement and success, and continuing to exhaust the efforts of our residential life staff members. Though there have been many types of efforts at recognizing these vital staff within a university, I offer an... Continue Reading →

May 24, 2022

Onboarding New Professional Staff to a Student Affairs or Residential Curriculum

Student Affairs offices, particularly those within residence life and education, typically see a steady turn over of professionals year-to-year. When building and maintaining a curriculum, it can sometimes be a challenge to onboard new staff members who (1) may not be familiar with the model at all or (2) are not familiar with your institution's... Continue Reading →

October 2, 2018

Implications for Staff Member Duties, Selection, Training, and Development When Transitioning to a Curricular Approach

Transitioning to a residential curriculum is as much about educational plan development as it is about organizational change. The reason for this is that curricular approaches are often paradigmatic change--change predicated on an entirely new set of premises. In other words, rather than just rearranging the furniture in the room, you're changing the entire room... Continue Reading →

June 13, 2018

Tag: Topic Human Resources