ResEdChat Ep 62: Strategies to Foster Resident Assistant Belonging with Ashtyn Davis

Dustin Ramsdell:
Welcome back to Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast. I’m your host, Dustin Ramsdell. If you’re new to this show, this podcast series features a variety of topics of interest to higher ed professionals who work in and with college and university housing. We have a very interesting topic for today, one that came to us through the founder and sometimes host of the show, Paul Gordon Brown, just from his interactions out with just folks in the field just doing the work and doing some cool new interesting stuff.
So I’ll leave it. We’ll get to exploring our resident assistant belonging self-assessment is the topic, what all that entails and the utility of it once we get into the body of our conversation here today. But Ashtyn, if you want to introduce yourself briefly, your professional background, and then we’ll get to it.

Ashtyn Davis:
Yeah. Thank you, Dustin. Thank you for having me. My name’s Ashtyn Davis. I use both he/him and she/her pronouns. I’m currently a graduate assistant similar to that of a graduate resident director at the office of Residence Life at the University of Oklahoma. I spent four years in student housing and leadership at the University of Central Missouri. I also did some camps and conferences during the summer where I helped our institution win the Nacurh OTM Traveling Award for the first time in our school’s history, which was pretty fun, and the first time in the last several years at a Midwest school in Nacurh had won the award.
I spent some time in student government. I was an RHA president and an RHA representative. I went to a lot of conferences presented. During that time it was all virtual conferences, but I still had a blast. I went on after graduation and worked at Georgetown University in Washington DC before coming to OU, my current institution in between my first and second year. So this past summer I spent some time at the University of Colorado Boulder doing a Kauai internship as a community center coordinator intern, working with Residence Life, camps and conferences, as well as housing.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, you’ve done all the things. I feel you could have had all the terminology of residence education, everything there, which is great. Yeah, I mean variety of roles, variety of institutions, and I’m sure that that all sort of fed into your professional perspective when you created this tool. The Resident Assistant Belonging Self Assessment or RABSA, however we’ll refer to it here. But I think it’s just a really interesting thing that I can certainly just on its face by the name of it, see the benefit and the utility of it. But we’ll start out just if you want to explain what it is and how it came about.

Ashtyn Davis:
Absolutely. So it’s kind of a long story. I’ll keep it somewhat short while providing some details in it. So I was in one of my master’s classes, introduction to research in spring of 2023, and I was the only Residence Life graduate in that program or in that class. And I was really struggling to come up with, we were doing a quantitative assessment or research perspectives, and I was really struggling. I was like, “Hey, I don’t know what to do or how to tie this into my program to make it useful for someone who’s going into this full time starting the summer.” So I met with a colleague at the University of Texas Dallas after I did some research and I was like, “Hey, I found this really interesting article from…” I don’t know where the article was from, but it was from 2015. It was a student had lost their life due to some negligence in that whole situation. And after spending some time reflecting, I was like, “Hey, I really want to focus on community and belonging.” After really reading this article, seeing some research and reflecting over my own experiences.
So I titled my perspectives, Rebuilding the bridge between community and belonging. So you’ll hear that, and in my article in Roompact, I utilize the term, rebuilding the bridge between community and belonging. So it’s something I say a lot. I have it on my door at work, so I utilize it a lot. I made a presentation for my class and I was like, “Hey, I want to do this at the Sokool Annual Conference this month.” So I spent the last year creating this presentation, and then I met with one of our assistant directors at the time, now our director of our Residence Life program at OU. I said, “Hey, I’d like to get some feedback on this.” And one thing that came out of that meeting was, to have something physically tangible that the RAs can take out of spring 2024 RA training.
So about two months ago, I did some research into RA belonging self-assessments. I was trying to find some sort of true colors, cool assessment that wouldn’t take a lot of time, maybe 10 minutes, 12 minutes at max and help the RAs do a self-assessment of did I learn something about myself? Is there something new that I can take away from this presentation? So I created this. Couldn’t find one, so I made one. So the last couple months I’ve been working on refining this. And for those who are our video watchers or listeners, this is what it looks like. To me it’s flipped upside down, but it’s a one page and then on the back it has, if your highest score is in this section, this section, this section, here’s what it means. And there’s what I call composite scores. So you do some math at the end, there’s some instructions in there, and composite score is the greatest thing.
That’s the bread and butter of this assessment. So the assessment is broken up into three parts, community impact, recognition support and personal fulfillment. Each section has six statements that are mainly all but one is mainly an I feel, I believe, I perceive type of statement. The RAs will rank on a scale one to five, one being strongly disagree, five being strongly agree, and three being that neutral, each of those six statements. They’ll add it up for each section and then they’ll have a score to reflect on. The composite score has a range into three ranges. So anything that’s 1 to 14 is considered a low range. Anything that is 15 to 24, very large scale of experiences in there is a mid-range. Anything between 25 and 30, sometimes more than 30, is considered the high range. Now to recognize that the mid-range has some kind of middle experiences, those who score 15 experiences are going to look way different than a 22, 23, 24, or 25.
So what I did in this algorithm on the spreadsheet, which is so cool, I created sub ranges to categorize them. So in the spreadsheet that I have, I put all the data in there and then it highlights them all in red, green and yellow, green for high, yellow for mid-range and red for low. And then it has ranges colors. And then what departments could do is select a VLOOKUP system where they click, oh, I got to score that is low in personal fulfillment. What can we do about that?
I have another tab that goes into targeted interventions and that pulls that data. So then you get some ideas of, hey, I have a couple RAs who are low on recognition and support. How can I help them feel like they belong more at the specific moment so that way their scores go up? In a large term broad sense, we could utilize this in departments of seeing, okay, this is a quick snapshot at what our department is like and is there themes that we’re going to look for? Is there a way we could tie it to curriculum? That sort of thing is what can be super useful for it.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah. And I appreciate the thorough explanation and clearly I think just the deep amount of work that went into it, because I think it is that idea that this is a very, I guess simple on-its-face concept or idea, but then gets very complex as you get into it of just, what does it truly mean for someone to have a sense of belonging? Because like you said, it’s like you can be a part of a community of your fellow RAs, but then are you maybe just assimilating, just doing what you need to get by or can you truly have that authentic self show up and belong and all that?
And there’s a lot that goes into that recognition, some of those examples that you gave and all that. And I think what I was going to say too is, I imagine that if any department is doing something right now, I certainly hope it is as thorough as this, but it might be relying on once the term surveys that are just saying, rate your level of agreement. I feel like I belong. And it’s like, cool, they gave a three or four or five or whatever and maybe they left to comment or something.
But it’s like you’d want to have this, get that composite, get the parts and the sum of its parts. Like you get to know, okay, you got this score and why did you get this score? Not just a, okay, this person wrote four out of five of I feel like I belong on a staff or something. So that’s certainly where my mind was going is it honors I think the earnest desire of any departmental leader to make sure that all of their RAs have that sense of belonging and doubles down on it to say, well, let’s give that complex concept. It’s due diligence in the focus it deserves. So with all that to be said, I mean you certainly gave a powerful example. I mean, a lack of a sense of belonging can have certainly some dire consequences. So on the positive side, what do you hope is the impact that a department would see of using an assessment like this?

Ashtyn Davis:
Absolutely. And I did this presentation in Spring 2024 RA training about four-ish weeks ago. And I had 14 RAs, so I collected some sample data out of them. And I have the data I’m going to present at this conference, so I’m not going to split too much for our ACUHO listeners. But I had some cool data that came out. Again, 14 folks who took this, so it’s not a thousand or several thousand. But what we really learned, and I had some RAs who said, “Wow, Ashtyn, I really learned something about myself in this.” So one from the RA perspective, we want them to learn something about themselves just like taking an endogram or True Colors or a 5 Voices or a CliftonStrengths, we want them to take something and learn something about themselves or their perception of their belonging.
At a departmental level, we want to hopefully utilize this. My goal is to utilize this as a full-time staff as I go into my role as a hall director is coming up academic year and collect some more data so I can say, okay, I have enough data to say this is meaningful and impactful, and then utilize that at the department level and say, okay, is there a difference between let’s say a campus has a west side and the east side or north and south, or they have different areas of their resident side program? So is there differences, is there trends?
I would love to do it post, this is nerd me, would love to do it post RA training 4 weeks into the semester, 8 weeks into the semester and 16 weeks into the semester, and then track everyone’s data and see are there common themes? Is it specific to my practice as in first year and is it going to change next year? And then let’s do it again in the spring post RA training, 4 weeks, 8 weeks, 16 weeks. And then for those who are curriculum-based schools like OU, we can start to take that and then start to graph it and see, okay, are there moments we’re already seeing more support in the semester or more recognition and how can we tie that into our curriculum eventually into creating this better residential experience for folks?

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah. I definitely wanted to ask some ways that you envisioned this being used, and I’m glad you gave some of those examples because I think that’s really smart. And just also just general kudos to you for connecting these dots of just again, your background, your experience and your classes and everything, because I think this is a very great way to connect the theories and that idea of everybody acknowledging in student affairs or higher ed or Residence Life, that idea of community being important since belong being important.
It’s like, okay, what’s a very tangible active way that we can do this? And especially for RAs who are under a lot of stress and have to be expected to foster this for others. It’s like you said, it’s like they’re going to be learning and growing as much from this endeavor and utilizing a tool like this as it might help them to have some better tools for supporting their students. But even the idea that it being fodder for just the way that you run your team, the way that you run that department, the way that you approach training and ongoing professional development and all those sort of things. It just gives you that continuous feedback loop. And it doesn’t just rely on once a term, all staff training or something to just have things have too much of a time lag, and you can see that change over time.
And I guess, this could be just one clarifying question because I guess that idea of doing it repeatedly throughout a term to get those benchmarks throughout that period of time, how involved I guess is taking the assessment itself because I think that’s always the balance? You might be like, “I want to get all these data points, I want to get all these questions answered.” But it’s like, well, we probably should also do it more frequently. The frequency is better than the depth or something. So what was that balance, I guess, so that it’s not this exhaustive exercise to go through so that you could do it more frequently over time?

Ashtyn Davis:
Right. And I did this in our presentation and I took maybe 10 to 12 minutes to complete, and it’s a physical assessment. So it’s a sheet of paper. I have folks sit down, write the scores, add them all up, and I had them calculate the composite scores so they could see for themselves. But I have the algorithm that calculates composite scores automatically. So all I need is their three scores and I can calculate their composite scores in a spreadsheet and then point them on a graph and then take the graph and utilize that at a conference. But like you mentioned, we don’t want them to take this long super a hundred question assessment where it takes them a couple, maybe it takes them 30 minutes or an hour, but this assessment’s only, it’s 30 statements and it takes about maybe 12 minutes at max to take the assessment and then calculating all up the scores.
And then I had a Qualtrics form, and then I just had, completely anonymous, submit all their data in there so then I could pull that data and graph it for my staff and for the future of we’re utilizing this in a department or if I’m utilizing this as a hall director, I would love to have everyone’s names and potentially their communities if it’s more than one community, and then be able to keep all that data in an Excel or in a SharePoint and then be able to look at that as we go on.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, that’s great. And it’s one of those things too, like you said, it’s like, yeah, it should take you maybe 10, 15 minutes or whatever. And the idea that it’s 30 questions and it’s like, yeah, you shouldn’t be overthinking this. With any of these kind self-reported things it’s like, what’s just the initial reaction that you have to the statement or whatever? Let’s not make this more complicated than it needs to be. And I think, yeah, even just to reinforce the point, that idea that you could have a tool like this that for a community of residents, I don’t know, and this is just for me as the lay person from the outside looking in, it is one of those tough things of, how do you try in a very clear, concise way, capture a sense of belonging and all that?
You might say, “Oh, people are coming out to events or whatever.” There could be some proxy measures I feel like. And this feels like, I guess it’s more emotional that you could weave into these more quantitative measures of how many events do people attend, how many people come out to each event or something. And it being like, “Oh well, resident X just never comes out to events. I guess they don’t feel a sense of community or belonging, whatever”. It’s like maybe they do, maybe they’re play video games with their floor mates all the time and they just don’t want to come out to event, whatever. So that idea that you can ask pointed questions that get to the core of what it means to have that sense of belonging and community and everything and that that could, I think, be flexible to a variety of people and everything I think is just really great.
And I’m glad that you have a history of getting out there and talk and shop and presenting about things. You’ll continue to do that with this tool. It’s really great and I’m glad that we can help single boost what you’re doing there as well. And yeah, this is I think just the amazing part of folks like yourself when you’re going through an academic program, getting that research lens or the very analytical and theoretical base to the work.
You could just get that shot in the arm and really be empowered to just elevate the work. So we’re going to pivot here a little bit because I always try to do a little bit of research on our guests, find a little interesting thread to pull and see how it all blends together or feeds on itself here. But you’re currently, in addition to the things that you do right now, interning with the United States Department of State. What has that been like? I guess, and maybe even how did you find it or how did you seek it out or whatever? I guess you mentioned that you interned at an institution in DC before. But how do you see it all intersecting and interweaving together in both your master’s program and your work as an RD?

Ashtyn Davis:
Absolutely. So this is a funny story. I was on LinkedIn a year ago, and I found this and I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. My students would love this. And I have a lot of international students at the time, and I had a lot of political science people and I said, “Hey, they might love this. So I’ll repost this and I’ll drop the link in the chat for people who are interested.” And then I realized, wow, I’m also a student and I also am interested in this. So at the time, it was called apply in July. That was the theme. Now it’s apply in February, so applications are currently open. But I was like, wow, this is kind of cool. So I applied to a bunch of places. I was rejected by all of them except one. I had interviewed with the US Department of Agriculture, the USDA, and with their training and development in HR.
And then I ended up switching over to the US Department of State in the spring. So just about a month ago, I switched over. I’m now working with the program coordinator, so I do public relations and project management, and I air more on the project management side of the internship program. So I’m working a lot with our Handshake account. I just check the data. We’re on Handshake posted to 1,353 institutions that have Handshake accounts, and we sent it about 1600 institutions all that have Handshake accounts. And that equates to about 12 million students and alumni. So I looked up the largest NFL stadium, which is MetLife in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and their population capacity is 82,500. And how many stadiums would it take to fit 12 million in there? It’s 145 stadiums. 145 times we could fill with all the people who have access to this.
That’s only on Handshake. So it’s quite interesting the amount of people that we have access to. And we started at 195 institutions. So when I locked in and started working on as a project management intern, I was able to get it all the way up to 1300 and I think 25 institutions that have it posted. So that’s been pretty cool. Currently working on some assessment data. So I do work on assessment in my internship with federal employees. I collect for our speed networking. We just had two events this morning where I was doing some stuff with speed networking, getting interns to get to network with public diplomacy, careers in government, working on economics or political affairs. So a lot of collaboration with reaching to external partners. So as an RD, I have to collaborate or have to, but I get to collaborate with other departments on campus.
So being able to have those skills of reaching out to someone in the White House and reaching out to different folks through email and minding my communication skills to that, I think it’s super important. I reached out to some folks that I used to work with who are now in career advising, and we’re putting together federal and standard resume workshops. So getting to reach out to folks at the University of Arkansas, the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and the University of Central Missouri where I did my undergrad at, and getting them all together to create a panel to answer some Q&A for staff, working on our virtual award ceremony, and doing that awards process for our two awards.
So that’s similar to things we do in Residence Life on awards and recognition committees and soliciting nominations for end-of-the-year banquets. So when we come up with things like rubrics, all stuff we use in Residence Life to great awards and to vote on them. So something at face value, we see Ashtyn’s a department of State intern that’s kind of interesting, but you would think there’s not much correlation, but there is a lot of correlation and over overlap of communication, project management and collaboration that comes from the state department and can directly translate into my work as a resident director.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah. I was going to say that it’s like, well, yeah, that’s why it stood out is I felt like, I’m curious how this all connects, and you have made that very clear, so I appreciate that. And that’s amazing. I guess to clarify, because you stumbled upon it in a sense, and then you definitely worked to expand the scope, I guess, because were they utilizing a tool like Handshake before or maybe not fully utilizing it or something? What was that sort of, I guess just as somebody who I have known of Handshake and just it being a great ed tech tool out there. What was that like I guess from when you had applied and then originally it seems like you’re on the other side?

Ashtyn Davis:
So yeah. When I had applied, I went and applied directly to the site. So those who are at institutions currently who it’s not on their Handshake account, which is 101 institutions, and I can name most of them, but not going to do that. It is an unpaid internship. So I do work 10 hours a week on top of my graduate studies, on top of having a dog and as a grad. So I am very busy, but I thrive in this environment. But yeah, we were using Handshake, but it was not a primary component to our recruitment. So I have a lot of extra time as a grad student, so I utilize that and I sit here all day and try to, or when I have time, try to post it to as many schools as I can, and I check every day to make sure that there’s not more institutions that have gotten Handshake and continuously to post them.
So that way more students have access to this program. And I would encourage grad assistants, and I wish I did this in undergrad. I think it would be so amazing to have five years or six years of experience with the state department. But there’s like DOD, the Department of Defense, the national forest service, there’s people in PR, there’s people who are data analytics, there’s biomedical engineering internships. So it’s a really awesome program for folks to get involved with. So I’m super excited to always talk about it. But that’s how I saw it was on LinkedIn, then went into the site, applied, got rejected by almost all of them, but then ended up finding a really great internship and then transitioned over to being in the state department.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah. Well, that’s great that you’re singing its praises and you’re helping to amplify its reach and impact and everything. And yeah, it’d be a really amazing opportunity for students. And then I’m glad that our government is benefiting also from all these amazing up-and-coming students and stuff who are able to give their skills and passion and everything to all those variety of different types of things that you mentioned.
And it’s that idea of the time and place you are in your life and filling your schedule and all that where it’s just like, yeah, it will never really be another time where you could do this, or it’s just one of those unique privileges and benefits of being a student where there’s opportunities like this that are afforded to you.
And yeah, I’m glad that you are just helping to expand that reach because I think it’s just a testament to, you found your opportunity through LinkedIn and then now through Handshake. Their JM is doing that same sort of thing, more oriented towards higher ed and everything. So yeah, that’s great. And I think, yeah, just so many great connections. And I think that’s the idea too of no matter what someone like an RA does or like an RD, there’s so much transferability and you’ve recognized that and really empowers you to go wherever you are going next. Which leads me to my final question. We’re recording this February, 2024. I believe you are approaching graduation very soon. We’ll end on just an optimistic forward-looking note. What are you looking forward to as you approach graduation?

Ashtyn Davis:
Yeah, I’m first of all looking forward to not having to take classes anymore. But with that comes the negative side of I have to become an actual adult and paying off student loans, car payment, not having to pay rent, but having to transition from this graduate assistant part-time work, and then transitioning into full-time work. And I’ll be heading to Texas State University as a residence director. So I made the announcements on LinkedIn, so it is official. I’m going to Texas State University and being a residence director. So I’m super excited to be staying in SWACUHO, staying in the southwest region and getting to experience some new changes and working at Texas State going to expand my impact and positive impact in the community. So one, getting done with classes, two, transitioning into adult life and being able to, I guess make more, but also be able to have more time in the residence halls and create a larger impact as a full-time staff member.
And then advising I think is always something I look forward to. Like I mentioned in the beginning, I spent some time in RHA, RHH, Hall Council, Nacurh. I used to be on the annual conference team back in 2021. And I really look forward to being the advisor now in those spaces. So I had the opportunity to co-advise when I was doing my internship in Colorado, and I absolutely loved it. I was like, this is my butter, this is my jam. I get to now be the advisor for students and be that person who I had. I had great advisors in undergrad, and now I get to hopefully be that great advisor for my student staff and for hall council, community Council, RHA and RHH, whatever it may be, and getting to create that impact on students over the next couple of decades to come.

Dustin Ramsdell:
There you go. Yeah, that’s great. You got a bright future ahead of you. I’m glad you got everything lined up and you can take your victory laps over the next couple of months and enjoy graduation and all that good stuff. And I think that is where you’re at, where it’s the graduate program version of senioritis where it’s like, oh, a couple of months away. I’m good to be done with classwork and everything.
I know for me, I get the itch occasionally to like, oh, let me take a little course here or there and keep that energy going. But just the idea of being so immersed in that program, clearly you have gotten a lot of great inspiration around the research and assessment valuation and all that kind of stuff that’s empowering your work. And just going to hustle over the finish line and best of luck as you get everything wrapped up and make the travel down to Texas and everything. And yeah, just thank you so much for creating this amazing tool, sharing it out, not hogging it all for yourself, being so generous and jumping on the show here to talk all about it. It’s been great.

Ashtyn Davis:
Absolutely. Thank you for having me, and I’m happy to share the assessment to other institutions that they would like to reach out. I have the assessment and the algorithm, and hopefully there’s more to come.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, absolutely. I have ways to connect with you and your work for Roompact and everything down on the show notes. So yeah, just thanks so much for your time.

Ashtyn Davis:
Of course. Thank you for having me Dustin.