ResEdChat Ep 92: Creating a Modern Housing Operations Unit with Dr. Zach Blackmon

Dustin Ramsdell:
Welcome back, everyone, to Roompact’s Res Ed Chat Podcast. If you’re new to the show, every episode we feature a variety of topics of interest to higher professionals who work in and with university housing, residence life, residential education, whatever you might call it. All are welcome here. Obviously, residential life operations, and just the entire unit. There’s a lot of facets, a lot of nuance. A lot of folks working in that functional area and with it. We’re obviously just trying, throughout all of our episodes, to really highlight the diverse work of folks that are working in residence life, housing, operations, all of the above.
We are focusing today’s episode on housing operations. We have our guest here, Zach, talking about building a modern housing unit at an institution. Focusing really into that operational piece, because I think we’ll even break down some of the vernacular here of how we’re differentiating all of that nuanced work that happens. It’s not just in the halls, doing the programming, doing the student support, what goes into creating the structures for making that magic happening.
Zach, if you want to introduce yourself, give a brief introduction of your background, and your current role at Wake Forest University.

Zach Blackmon:
Sure. Thanks, Justin. Thanks for having me. Again, my name is Dr. Zach Blackmon. I have the pleasure of currently serving as the associate director of operations here at Wake Forest University, down in North Carolina. I’ve been at Wake Forest since 2013. For those who might be unfamiliar, Wake is a private liberal arts institution in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. We are a six semester residential requirement school, so the majority of our students do live on campus with us. We continue to partner very intentionally with our students who move off campus on how to be good community members and neighbors to our permanent residents that surround our campus.
My career, like many, began in Residence Life. But then, quickly realized that the operational work was where I thrived and what I enjoyed most. So I had the chance to create, and then grow an operations function in our department. Focused on process coordination, and folding some other things into that, which we’ll talk about. Currently, my unit includes our assignments team, which manages housing assignments, meal plan administration, and off campus student services. As well as our operations team, which focuses on customer service, marketing and communications, and that process coordination.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Awesome. Yeah. Again, there’s obviously a lot that goes into it. It can all vary by the institution, of what umbrella they put things like meal plans, or something else like that. I feel like that stuck out to me, and I was like, “Oh, interesting.”
At the beginning here, at the outset, defining the terms here. What do you feel like is emblematic of a modern housing unit? Obviously, I think part of that breaks down assignments, and operations, and some of the other administrative stuff that happens within Housing and Residence Life. How would you define a modern housing unit?

Zach Blackmon:
You hit the nail on the head, that everywhere looks at this a little bit differently. I would say within housing and residence life for a residential education department, you’re generally going to have your residence life, residence education, residence success, whatever you call it. Staff that work in the halls, directly with students, doing programming, doing conduct. The people people. You’re going to perhaps have a housing facilities team who are the sticks-and-bricks people taking care of the buildings, keeping the lights on, overseeing custodial or maintenance, depending on your set-up. And then you have operations, which I always lovingly joke is the other duties that’s assigned of a department. Housing assignments, marketing and communications, those are things that you might typically see there. But then, depending on your campus, you may see meal plans, you may see your ID card service. You may see any other thing plugged in under a housing operations unit.
For me, it’s important as we think about what a modern unit looks like is the ability to be adaptive to today’s students and today’s leadership. What are students wanting from the university? As well as, what are your senior leaders on campus expecting from the residential experience, from the business aspect of a housing unit? In my side of the shop, I’m making sure that we keep our beds full, so that we can pay our bills, and keep the lights on, and fun programming, and so forth.
Realizing that, for me, it’s important, and I talk with my team a lot about that it is fair for our students and families to have expectations. They should have expectations of their residential experience. You, I, any of us, have expectations for where we live. Whether that’s what you’re paying in rent or what your mortgage payment is, that comes with expectations. It’s hard sometimes for our students to tease out … Here at Wake, the cost of attendance is just over $91,000 a year this year. That’s going to come with a level of expectations. Our students and families don’t tease out how much of that is actually going to housing versus tuition, et cetera. They know they’re paying Wake Forest $91,000 a year. Those things are important to me.
I think, also, thinking about we know today’s generation is all about instant gratification. Amazon has made everything so streamlined and easy, and you can click through and it’ll be there next day, or two days, or whatever. I always think about, from a housing operations perspective, we’re the folks who sometimes can help bring that level of service to a campus, because if we can design streamlined processes that make housing-related things easy for our students, we can increase their satisfaction there.
Then, just being open to change. One of the things you’ll hear me talk about as we go on through this episode is the ways in which our team and unit have morphed over time. You’ve got to be open to that change to see those opportunities and then seize on them.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Really great to hear that, because I think that idea of, like you said, all these other duties that’s assigned. Well, they get a bad rap, but at a certain point, it’s like those are things that need to happen, that need to be done. It’s starting to build the expertise, or the ability and time to focus on those things that you require, deserve earnest focus. Then that idea of increasingly, I think it’s become much more exposed I guess, of that business side of higher ed, And certainly, residence life and housing, and all that, is a revenue generator. Just being mindful of occupancy, and how all the budget side of everything is working because that’s obviously programming money. That’s money for retaining and supporting staff members, and things like that. There’s so many ramifications of making sure those things are aligned.
The way that you maintain a high level occupancy is satisfaction, and really being honest with yourselves, like you were saying. Okay, these students are making this investment, and they have expectations. Let’s be making every stride that we can to be living up to those expectations. And that idea that you are building a unit where, if students are having demands about one thing or another, it’s like, “Okay, my job is to do this.” It’s not like some other duty that’s assigned to somebody else. I can be, hopefully, pretty responsive, and to give good service, and everything to that.
Could you just elaborate a little bit? On that aspect of, okay, I’m the one that’s monitoring the occupancy and everything, and the way that we obviously achieve that is the satisfaction, that service component that you strive towards for your unit.

Zach Blackmon:
Yeah. I think this is something that can vary campus-to-campus. Again, like I mentioned, Wake Forest has a six semester residency requirement. While a lot of our students have to live with us, we want them to want to live with us. We want it to be that they want to be here, not that they feel forced to be here. I have peers at institutions that have no residency requirement, so they really are relying on that desire and that sell to keep their beds full.
For us, you mentioned it, Dustin, but we are the backbone to a department. And in some cases, other offices as well. At a smaller institution like Wake, we’re not a true auxiliary, so our money is funding the general university fund, and then we’re getting an operating budget back. If we don’t meet revenue expectations, it has implications for the broader university, not just our office. If you’re a true auxiliary and you don’t meet revenue expectations, and you can’t pay all the bills, then what are you cutting?
It really is both the service and keeping people happy, as well as the very intentional and data-driven planning that our occupancy management professionals do to make sure that we can keep our beds as full as possible in healthy ways. I can talk a little bit later on about how do you find that blend of … Again, at an institution that charges what Wake does, I can’t run at 102% occupancy. That’s not a realistic reality for me. But I can run at 98 and still keep people happy.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah. That’s a good acknowledgement. Because I’ve been in institutions where that almost seems like that’s a requirement. It’s like, “Oh, no, we need to over-drive, and that’s the way we’re going to be able to sustain ourselves.” You’re sacrificing. That’s what’s ringing in my head, that idea of what is going to serve us, and making sure that that is not counter-weighting too much on that service component, the residence experience, and everything. Because I’d be that idea, “Oh, man, wouldn’t it be great if we were at 110 occupancy?” 110% occupancy. Okay, you are clearly going to be making a pretty major sacrifice to that resident experience, where you’re being served great, everything’s amazing from your perspective, in a very logical way. But on that emotional satisfaction piece and everything, right.
It’s that burning very hot but very quick kind of thing. Yeah, you could do that, but eventually people are going to be eyeing the door a bit. Like, “Well this isn’t worth it. I’m not going to endure this in my living experience.” Like you were saying, any of us can very much empathize with having expectations around our living accommodations and everything.
I guess what’s coming up to my mind, as we’re seguing to the next question, is that idea of most institutions are probably going to have a person or many people who are the assignments people, and then the residence life coordinators, and everything. Sometimes it feels like there may be somewhat of a gap between them, because it’s functionally very different, and maybe transactional or something. With you building this modern housing operations unit, what I’m guessing from what you’re saying, is really bringing all that maybe more in line with each other. Can you speak to the strides that have been happening at Wake Forest to accomplish that? Building that truly modern housing operation units. I’m curious if you can also sprinkle in any of the technology tools maybe, if there’s anything that has helped to facilitate some of those things. Generally, if it’s just structural, organizational pieces, whatever comes to mind.

Zach Blackmon:
There are a variety of ways that we can be structured. I think how you structure things communicates things, in terms of what’s valued, how is partnership expected, et cetera.
When I started in 2013, our office didn’t have an operations unit. As an entry level professional, I was also helping coordinate move-in, doing project relocations within my communities when they were going under renovation, and running a third of our campus. That was the scope of my work. As we continued to grow, we had the opportunity to say, “Hey, some of these things need to be centralized so that we can help all of the units within our office work together.” We are a centralized facilities and campus services model on our campus, so they service the entire campus. We have a very close partnership with them, but they are not in our office. How do we work with them? How do we work in camps and conferences, which is a different office on our campus? Those kind of things.
For me, it was thinking about … You have to find that balance. While there was some intentionality and alignment of having assignments as a part of our Residence Life team, it also wasn’t serving necessarily the business side in the ways it needed to sometimes. As we grew staff, as we grew our campus community, as we shifted from graduate level staff in our halls to some professional Master’s level entry level professionals, there was an opportunity to think about where did assignments make sense, and what does that look like in partnership?
For me, one of the reasons that we wanted to create an operations area, and in particularly fold assignments into that, was to focus on logistics, streamline communications, have smooth processes that frequently we are having to partner with our colleagues in Residence Life to carry out. But we’re taking some of that administrative burden off of them to let them focus on student care, and wellbeing, and support, rather than administrivia.
Room changes are a great example. We have a far too robust Google spreadsheet that we track of all our room changes, and departures, and such on. But that is something that my team uses. Our housing team uses, in terms of the physical aspects of is the room ready to be reused, do we have the key, et cetera. And our Residence Life team are the ones saying, “Yeah, we’ve confirmed that the room is actually empty. Or the student actually moved out. Well, they moved out but there’s a hole in the wall, those kind of things.” That requires all three units of our office to collaborate around that process of making sure a student did vacate, and then is that room ready for use again.
I think for me, when we think about the technology piece, I know you asked about that, I think it’s continuing to think about … We are a StarRez campus. Most of our campuses at this point are. But how do you use whatever housing software you have, but also recognizing that they are not the end-all-be-all. If there was one software that could do everything for all of us, they would just run the market. How do you pair things together to best serve your campus? For us, there are some things that could we build a process in StarRez for room changes, and departures, and so forth? Yes. We would find it more cumbersome than just using an efficient Google Sheet on our campus. It’s thinking about what best serves the need for each task.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Well, here’s a quick follow-up, just from what you’re saying. One, it’s refreshing that idea, because there’s maybe the spectrum. It’s the idea of we could try to shoehorn, and do all this labor to figure out how to use this one tool, or to try to make it be that golden goose that is perfect, whatever, it does all the things all the time. Whatever, it’s just one place. There’s certainly some value in that. But then, I think the other end of the spectrum would be there is no process at all, in the sense of residence hall coordinator for each of their halls is doing their own thing to track their changes, whatever.
Was that the case? That you felt like, “Well, we need to do something better.” So the middle ground is creating a very robust spreadsheet and form, that obviously with Google Drives, is able to be collaboratively accessed and everything. Did you at least graduate from ad hoc, everybody doing it independently, and all that? Was that the way before? Yeah.

Zach Blackmon:
Yeah. I would say definitely, there was more pre-2016. When I transitioned over into operations was also when we transitioned from graduate students in hall and an area coordinator model, to community directors. We went from three to seven entry-level staff members in Residence Life.
With that was also, yeah, I think a time when, “Okay, we can’t let seven of you all do it the way you want, and us get seven different responses, and formats, and things back.” We ran a couple processes. I think housing inspections is a good example of this, too. There was probably a year or two where we let some different areas run it different, and it was hard on my team getting seven different looking spreadsheets back, and then having to make sense of them to do billing, and so forth.
Yes, I think there’s a delicate balance. This is something that I spent a lot of time in partnership with the leadership in our Residence Life unit on. What are the things that really matter for us to give entry-level staff, whether that’s on my side or their side, autonomy about? What are those things that we need to just be a little more directive about for consistency’s sake?

Dustin Ramsdell:
Well, yeah. Folks are taking notes, I feel like that’s a good one to note down. Pause, replay, whatever. The idea of an upgrade, or the idea of improving processes can … I’m sure this will hopefully be affirming to a lot of folks. I’m sure this has been the route that a lot of folks have taken. The idea of creating a Google Sheet that is comprehensive, and user-friendly, and uniform, and everybody’s using the same process and everything, that elevates what you’re doing to become a bit more of a modern housing operations unit, and everything. I think even just that idea of looking at how you become more modern, how you innovate and improve can be the iterative, marginal, the game of inches. Where it is just the idea of we know that we want to be more efficient with the way that we’re tracking room changes, and all of that. It doesn’t have to be getting to that perfect, ideal state because that could probably take us, who knows, maybe a couple years to get to that point.
Especially in this moment and in this climate, find those efficiencies, find those benefits and everything as quickly as possible. I think just trying to at least really encourage folks that it’s start now with something. That comes up in my mind in a lot of these conversations I’m having in so many different areas. It can feel overwhelming. It’s toxic perfectionism and all that, where it’s just, “Well, it’s got to be just so. It’s got to be just right. We got to test it and test it.” Or keep searching for the best, perfect tool out there that’s going to do all the things we want all-in-one. Yeah, that’s just for me, something that’s resonating.
To segue to my next question, the idea of the challenges that you’ve faced. What I’m thinking of is that a common challenge that maybe you have face, or I’m sure a lot of others have, is obviously just the lack of resources. Where it would be like, “Well, yeah, I would love to be able to build a custom platform, and have it be super sophisticated.” But it’s like, “You know what, we need something, we’re going to make this Google Sheet.” Sometimes, especially if you set them up very well, a Google Sheet can do some pretty amazing things. I think that idea of if you’ve had to be scrappy with a lean budget, but still try to build a more modern housing operations unit.
Can you reflect on some of the challenges and how you’ve dealt with them? Or how you’ve maybe learned from mistakes as you’ve built a team there, over the past several years?

Zach Blackmon:
Yeah, certainly. I want to back up real quick and say that, yes, absolutely. I think higher education overall struggles with this idea of perfectionism, and when is the right time to do something, and so forth. I always stress for my team we should always be in a growth mindset. So like you said, do something, and then evaluate how that worked, and what you might want to tweak or improve. But if we never change, we’re never improving. The one thing we know is our students are always changing. So if we’re not changing with them, then we’re falling behind.
I think process-wise, another example I’ll give is occupancy verification or resident verification. Dustin, you probably remember the days, and they weren’t too long here, that RAs had papers, and every student had to sign a paper that they were here, and they were living where they were supposed to be, and so forth. I guess this was probably, this might have been 2017, 2018, I don’t remember exactly. It was before COVID, so it becomes a blur. We had a conversation in our office about, “What is this process actually achieving for us? What is the goal of it?” Then, what were some of the challenges that were coming up? People either weren’t doing it, or RAs were taping rosters to their doors which presented information and privacy concerns, et cetera.
We did away with paper and we came up with a process through StarRez on our housing portal that was self-driven by the student to say, “Yes, I’ve moved into the right room.” We put the onus on them to say, “This is your one chance to report that you all did something funky and changed rooms, and we’ll just fix it in our system.” I think there are ways to say what is outdated and not serving us, and then what is the solution?
I think in all of this, you’re going to navigate challenge and you’re going to make mistakes. For me, one of the reflections that I frequently give when I’m talking about my unit is our current structure came out of challenge. Coming out of COVID, I was a new associate director/assistant director with an interim assistant director title. Managing five to six front-line staff, but yet still also being asked to do high level strategy work around occupancy planning, and forecasting, and processes, and so forth. I just was not working. I wasn’t able to do both well. Our front-line staff weren’t getting the support they needed, so they weren’t serving our students well.
When we had a couple staff members leave around the same time, I took that opportunity, rather than rush and throw a position description up, to look at the team holistically and say, “What do we need?” Because I think one of the things that sometimes we get so wrapped up, “Oh, I need more money. I’m going to have to ask for more money. That’s going to have to go into a budget cycle, it’ll be 18 months before I can get it,” et cetera. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you just need to organize your roles differently. Whether that’s changing levels, or simply reorganizing work, there’s time to do that. That was how we approached things was took that moment when we had several vacancies on our team, reorganized, put some roles together. Then moved forward from there, with what positions did we need to fill.
Again, similar to a process. It is okay to not get your team right right away. We have one role in particular on my team that I think we’re on the third or fourth version of now because we continue to tweak it. It’s not about the role being wrong. The other thing for me, as a leader in my office, is that sense of stewardship around if I have an FTE devoted to something, am I getting an FTE worth of work out of that person? We continue to work through that with some of our roles.
For me, it’s that piece of always being open to take that moment, and look at the landscape, and know how you might want to rearrange things. Then I think being aware that, for so many of us, you’re going to get promoted based on solid performance as an individual contributor, and then you’re suddenly leading people on a team. Knowing how to delegate is critical for yourself. If that is not something that is a natural skill of yours, I would challenge folks to get comfortable with it. Lean into is not yours. I frequently have to think about this for myself. Now, how do I support the mid-managers that report to me? I’m like, “Why are you holding XYZ? That should really be your front-line staff.”

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah. That’s a really interesting perspective. What I was getting at or where my mind was going was that idea of limited budgets, or yeah, those budgeting cycles. And that sometimes, it’s just squashing people, ideation or brainstorm. Where its like, “Oh my gosh,” like you said, “this is going to take so long to get through.” Or we know that there’s just not the resources there. But flipping the script and being like, “Well, people are part of our budget and our resources, and the superpowers that we have,” and stuff. How can you try to reorient those, in terms of, okay, let’s look for somebody that has a different skillset when we’re recruiting for an opening. Or, could we try to tap the folks that we have?
That would inform, okay, if we utilize this person’s skillsets or interests in a certain way, that means that opening, we recruit for something different than what we had anticipated where we’re simply backfilling the prior opening. Yeah, challenging those paradigms being really healthy.

Zach Blackmon:
Like you mentioned … I’m going to caveat here, my team, you’re great, love you, you all do great work. Humans are one of our resources. For every human I have, I have roughly 37-and-a-half hours of work. If I’m not using those effectively, then what else could get done if we were?
We have one role on our team. When we bought an apartment complex, we put an administrator over there because initially we were doing all the packages through a clubhouse, and checking folks in and out there, et cetera. Then COVID comes along and squashes all of that, and we decided not to bring some of that back after COVID. At that point, it was like, “Okay, I have this person who has a job, and we want to keep them a job, but what is their job now?” Again, thinking creatively about the way we looked at that was how do we provide some increased support to our off campus students, knowing that had been an area that we were continuing to get negative feedback from our neighbors and partners on. We were able to say, “Hey, look, we’re actually putting more human resources towards this area that you’re concerned about.”

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah. Obviously, the shoe fits if calling people human resources. There’s got to be a better term. I was thinking, I don’t know, people power, or something. Certain megawatts of power. It’s like, “Yeah, we’re not using the full power. We can plug more in here.” I don’t know. Please send us your ideas for better terminology there.
Yeah. I think that is an important way to look at it. I think if you have the right team, obviously you just have to approach that in the right way. But that idea that people want the opportunity to leverage their strengths, the challenges that feel within their skillsets, and to be contributing, and all that. I think as a leader of a modern housing unit, you do just have to be really thinking critically about all of the resources that you have, people and otherwise.
Speaking of resources, I thought it would be good to, as we’re wrapping up, give you the opportunity, if you have any closing final thoughts, bits of advice, and/or resources that you’d want to share with folks on this topic that we can put in the show notes?

Zach Blackmon:
Like what you just said, as you move into leadership roles, particularly when you get to the point of having to start to think about an entire team or unit, I say and it’s my belief that you should always be thinking about what is your team’s next iteration. What could it look like next?
Whether that’s … Hypothetically, this is not a Wake Forest statement. Hypothetically, if your campus is going to be building in the next two years and growing its bed count, do you need another human to support that? If you know that you’re getting a new vice president, what opportunities are presented there to present different staffing structures, et cetera. Always be thinking about what could be next, whether that is reorganizing responsibilities to best use your current staff’s skillset. Thinking about if you have a vacancy, again, I think far too frequently in higher ed we’re just like, “Oh, I found the job description, post the job description, rehire the person.” Take a minute and think about is that job what it needs to be. Are there pieces of that job that are actually better served by someone else on your team, and something that maybe isn’t their strength that could go into that role? And also, starting to think about what is that next thing?
The reason I say I think this is so important as a leader is this allows you to be ready and quick when those opportunities arise. When you’re director, executive director, senior director, or whatever title you have, comes to you and says, “Hey, our budget requests are due in two weeks. We need to know what’s on our wish list.” You can say, “Well, here’s what I would love to do. Actually, here’s a position description I have drafted for it.” And be ready to go. Whereas your colleague might also like another human, but it’ll take them a month to put a position description together. Yours is probably going to make it into the budget, theirs may not. Always be thinking ahead.
Keep things centered on taking care of your students and your staff. For me, I always make the case for my staffing around how am I making sure that my front-line staff are supported so that they can best support our students and families. Because folks who don’t feel supported themselves are not going to be able to give the best customer service. That’s just a reasonable understanding, I think. That’s the way I try to keep things centered for me.
There is value in benchmarking. But I think one of the things Dustin said at the beginning of this is really important, particularly within operations work. Understanding that our units are very unique from campus-to-campus, so make sure that you’re looking at things that are actually peer-to-peer. But know your institutional context. Know where you can contribute, know where you can bring value, and help solve problems.
A great example I’ll share in closing is we have been working through a student information system transition on our campus that has created lots of opportunities, as my friend Aubrey Adams loves to call them. I saw a gap that was emerging, and told my AVP, “Hey, I think we might need a different committee. We have this high level group looking at enrollment projection and making sure we’re meeting enrollment goals for the institution, but we really need an enrollment services group for all the offices that have to touch a student between admission and enrollment.” Think about those things where you can bring value to the institution, because that’s also then when you’re going to get value returned to you when you need it.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Lots of great advice there. Dude, especially love that one about just being prepared for that moment of being, “Hey, what’s on your wish list?” You’re able to pounce on that. I think that is such great advice, because I think that is emblematic of being very well plugged in to your team, what’s going on, and all that. You’re anticipating needs and all that, versus being in that position where it’s like, “Let me scratch my head, and ponder, and wonder, and ask some people.” It’s like, “Oh, no, I’ve been engaging and asking.” That can be tough because it’s like, “I think that is a great idea for us to do. I don’t know when that might happen. Trust me when I say when that opportunity arises, we are going to be in a really strong position to pitch that.” I think that’s such a great, practical piece of advice for folks, for sure.
Even just that acknowledgement too, of as much as we might say about, you sharing anecdotes from your experience, it is imperative for you to be plugged in to your institution, to your politics and dynamics, and goings-on. Obviously, there’s so many great communities out there for you to do that peer collaboration and talking shop. Always time well spent, to be engaging with those colleagues.
Yeah, I think we’ll wrap it up there. Again, such great advice, great perspectives. I just appreciate you so much for giving time here and reflecting on your experience. Ways to connect with you in the show notes. Yeah. It was a great time, such a valuable topic. I’m very glad that we were able to make this episode happen. I appreciate you making the time.

Zach Blackmon:
Yeah. Thanks for having me.