ResEdChat Ep 94: Exploring the Impact of RELI with Nate Gordon

Dustin Ramsdell:
Welcome back everyone to Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast. If you’re new to the show, every episode we feature a variety of topics of interest to hired professionals who work in and with university housing, residence life, residential education, whatever you might call it. All or welcome here.
So this episode, as we’ve done several times in the past, we’re really wanting to highlight all the cool, interesting ways that folks who work in residence life in particular, can get more involved, build their learning, accelerate their careers in the directions that they might want to pursue. And today we’re talking about RELI. So we have someone here closely acquainted with that organization as part of MACUHO and NEACUHO. So I’m sure many folks are maybe just aware of it, but we’ll go in a little bit more in depth into this organization.
So Nate, if you want to introduce yourself, give a brief overview of your professional background and then we’ll talk more about what RELI is all about.

Nate Gordon:
Yeah, absolutely. No, thanks for having me here today. So I’m Nate Gordon and I serve as our Associate Director for Recruitment Selection and Training at the University of Connecticut. So real quick, what I do in that role is I do all of our recruitment selection and training for our professional staff, and then I supervise the staff that does that for our student staff. So all of our training and selection flows through me for the Department of Residential Life at UConn.
And a little bit about more of my professional background. Before that, I started here at UConn as an assistant director, so that traditional supervising hall directors and the day in, day out of what’s happening in the residence halls, and then was promoted to the role I’m in now. Before that I was at Keene State College in New Hampshire where I had served as a hall director for five years, and then I was promoted there to our coordinator of the first year residential experience. So I was supervising hall directors in first year halls, but also really getting to run a first year experience program, which was cool.
And so on top of work and what you do on a regular day, I was also heavily involved with NEACUHO, so the Northeast Association of College University Housing Officers. I had held several roles within that, one of them being in the presidential cycle. So in 2018, I was the sitting president at the time of NEACUHO, which is where I got my start into RELI. So I had the opportunity to serve as a faculty member back in the day and then really saw the benefit of the program.
So RELI serves our Regional Entry Level Institute, and we do that jointly with the MACUHO region. So we’re friends in the mid-Atlantic. So I serve currently as our co-director for the NEACUHO region, and I have a colleague who does it from MACUHO, Ryan Young, who works at Temple University.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Beautiful. Yeah, and I guess just from you talking more about your background, I feel like it is one of those beautiful things where I think you can reflect on your own experience being entry level, but then also you’ve managed those people and worked with those people from different vantage points and everything. And even I guess that idea of if you have that exposure to first year student experience, or orientational idea, of trying to really empathize with being wherever it might be at any time and space where you feel like you need a little extra to better understand the context, how things work, how best to navigate different things and everything.
So I know RELI, the Regional Entry Level Institute, it’s just a unique offering and that idea that it’s a collaborative between those two different regions within ACUHO-I, is the broader umbrella overarching across them. But just before we get too far, if you want to just explain what RELI is and I guess more in depth of, I know you said you’re a faculty member to everything, but just your work with it.

Nate Gordon:
Yeah, so my work with it, so RELI, Regional Entry Level Institute, is designed for professional staff and residential life who are within their first to third year in the field. So these are our, I would say probably this true entry level position folks who are in hall director roles who are thinking, “Hey, Res Life is really cool. I want to do my full career. I’m a Res Lifer for life. This is what I’m going to do forever. I’m moving up to director, executive director, or maybe an assistant vice president position because Res Life is awesome.”
Or it’s for those folks who are like, “Yeah, I want to move up to a mid-level role. I want to know what it’s supervising professional staff and I want to be an assistant director.”
Or it’s meant for people who are like, “Eh, I don’t know if Res Life is for me. Maybe my hall director role is cool, I’ll do that for a couple years, then I’m going to move on to something else outside of Res Life.”
So really the big intent of it is to see what skills you need to learn, or master, to be a mid-level professional. Along the way learning, I don’t know if I want to be that mid-level professional, so I’m going to go to RELI to see if I truly want to move up. Or yeah, I’m moving up. I’m doing it. I’m going to go in and learn. And so part of why you’re at RELI for those professionals, we have eight faculty members that we do a selection for. And so we select faculty members to come in and they present on a topic. So they’re assigned a topic, which is one of the ACUHO-I core competencies.
So we’re looking at human resources and supervision, we’re looking at fiscal control, we’re looking at housing occupancy, facilities. We also look at campus politics, which isn’t part of the ACUHO-I core competencies, but it’s an important skill that we feel as though entry-level staff need to learn and be able to navigate politics as a mid-level professional.
So we have our faculty and our faculty are members who are at the mid-level are higher. So typically that assistant associate director, executive director level person, coming in to RELI. They’re assigned a topic and they present a ninety-minute presentation really going nitty-gritty deep into their topic.
On top of that, they’re assigned a cohort. So our participants is small, so we only have 24 participants between both MACUHO and NEACUHO region. So we take about 12 from each region and they’re assigned a mentor, and a mentor is one of the faculty members. And so really you’re three mentees to a mentor and you’re sitting together, we’re living in a residence hall at our host institution, so it’s like four days. We’re living on campus at the school, and it is all day long. So we go in the morning into the evening, so you’re truly living together, you’re learning together. You get one-on-one time with your mentor mentee. We do typically a night out on the town, and so we go out on the town or we’ll go out to dinner one night, but you’re truly living that experience and learning about those core competencies.
At the end, we have a faculty panel, so we just ask our panel to come together and we ask questions, any questions that the mentees may have, and then we do a graduation ceremony at the end to wrap things up and conclude the day with the institute.

Dustin Ramsdell:
And I guess what I think is unique about it, the smaller size of it, so that is sort of a cohort, you’re part of a graduating class of people for that year’s institute and everything. And I think it’s super unique because it also exists in stands alone versus sometimes there’s those pre-conference workshops or different things that maybe feel like a similar vibe, but this whether chicken or the egg or whatever, how it originated maybe, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that.
But I guess that idea that it warrants and deserves that smaller exclusive experience where it doesn’t feel like maybe an extra tag on or whatever else. It’s like, no, we want you to be here. We want you to be focused on this and really engage deeply with it. And that there’s that benefit of learning from your peers as much as the faculty members and those sort of things. There’s just that kind of learning environment being like, yeah, we want to cultivate this sort of experience and everything. Yeah, I think it’s just really awesome, I guess, because it just feels super unique.
So I guess it’s maybe just a brief follow up to capture some of that essence and that magic. The most recent one was back in May of this year. We’re recording this in October of 2024. Any reflections or anecdotes that maybe captures what you feel like is the magic of RELI?

Nate Gordon:
And there is magic of RELI. Both Ryan and I say expect to feel kind of that magic. And I think looking back, how do you describe it if you haven’t been through it? So there’s lots of learning that takes place. Lots of aha moments, and I think from our participants, I had no idea my supervisor has to deal with this or had been trained on this, or I might have to do this in my next position, or there’s lots of, oh, there’s excitement. I’m going to bring this back to my institution. I’m going to include this in part of my training. I’m going to have this here. You see the close bonds that are made between really the participants.
I think even when I was a faculty member and even as one of the co-directors now, I’m learning new things. So not only do you have the participants learning new things, you have the faculty and the co-directors. I’m taking notes, I’m having aha moments myself, and I’ve been in the field for just about 20 years now where I’m like, “Oh, I never thought about this way.” And I’ve often brought things back from RELI to training at my institution here at UConn. So I think those have been some of those aha magic moments.
I think when you leave RELI, too, so for example, we just had our regional conference two weeks ago for NEACUHO, and there were some participants there that were in the 24 Institute as well as the 23 and 22 one. And then seeing people come back together and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, do you remember at RELI when so-and-so taught us about this?” Or, “I’ve used that in my field.” Now that I’ve done it for a few years, I’ve had participants who’ve gotten that mid-level role. And so seeing people move into, now I’m an assistant director and I get it. And so you’re like, right. So you learned that at RELI, which helped prepare you for that next step.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, and I guess we got to just build on what you’re saying there because I just wanted a blunt or obvious question, like what makes an event like this so important from your point of view? But it is that idea of obviously even that idea of, oh, you’re learning from your peers, you’re learning from the faculty. It’s like, well, the faculty really like learning from the students, I missed that one.
But the idea of that level of, because I guess that tells me a level of empathy, of respect or whatever, that everybody knows that there’s different lived experiences, or perspectives, or different things and that opportunity for the mid or more senior level people to be faculty and to really remind themselves, it’s like, okay, everybody doesn’t know all the things that I know after working for however long or whatever. You have to get back to basics. And that idea of the people who are entering in their first couple of years not realizing like, oh my gosh, that’s a thing that I’m going to have to do maybe just in my next job. You’re saying that’s, I think such a powerful kind of feeling and anecdote because I think, unfortunately, a lot of people have to just get on the job training or crash courses when it’s like, okay, you got promoted. Here’s all this financial budget stuff that you never understood or never were told about or whatever.
So I guess if there’s things like that, some of those learning outcomes, some of those concepts and those things, or just however you want to take this question, but an event like this, again, it’s super unique. What makes it so important from your point of view?

Nate Gordon:
I think it gives you a step up from other candidates when you’re job-searching for that next level. You get a boost. Well, you may not have the experience yet of being a mid-level professional, you have the training. So you’ve been training from someone who may not, and for the NEACUHO and MACUHO, because we have such a small number of participants that we select in each year, we know it’s a small select few that have gone through that intensive, really two-and-half-day institute. So I think that magic, that sets you above other candidates. And so I think that that’s something, that key takeaway that you can bring with you, that is important.
And I think as someone who does hiring for mid-level roles on my campus, I’m looking for that. I’m looking for people to, okay, so maybe you didn’t supervise a grad student, but what have you, oh, you participated in RELI. I know what that is like. And we’re competitive. So we’re competitive from our participant point of view and participant from the faculty point of view. We had about 48 people apply to be participants last year, and we could only have half of them. So we’re in a good place where people want this experience and they want to further explore what that’s going to mean for their career.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, it’s a good point. It’s like you have that unique vantage point where you can add maybe a further emphasis on a lot of these things where it’s like, “Hey, I’m a person who hires these things. Don’t just take my word for it. I’m literally one that’s seeing the difference that something like this can make firsthand.” Because I think Res Life in contrast to many other functional areas at institution, there’s just a lot of people that come through it. And for better or worse, it’s like, well, if you’re an RD at one place, it’s probably going to look fairly similar to an RD at a different place. So it can be hard to maybe differentiate yourself, especially on paper. Certainly as you’re engaging with people, you can get add in a lot more color to things.
But yeah, just that idea, that stamp of approval, like you said, you were evaluated to say, “Okay, you’re going to get a lot from this,” or, “You’d be a good fit for it.” Or whatever. So you got in, you did it, you completed it, you now have this certification as it were that you’re showing that interest that like you said, maybe just part of the experience that you were able to at least get the better self-awareness of what it is exactly that you want to do. So presumably it’s like, well, if you’re applying for this job, that must align with what you are looking to do. So that better compass that you’re getting from something like this, but also just having that stamp and that certification, that credential, it’s just going to say, yeah, you are going to be in a much better position and everything.
So yeah, I think it is just really important because I think there’s obviously a lot of nuts and bolts of just doing the work, that do you have finance or budgeting or whatever else. But even just on a broader level, having people feel like they’re part of that broader community, whether it’s their cohort or all the graduates that have come before them and the mentors and the faculty. It’s all these things that you would like and harken it back again to students. It’s something that you would hope for any of our students to have, just the social capital, the self-awareness, whatever else. So it’s all great stuff.
And I guess with looking ahead, obviously, we got a brief look in the rearview mirror, as we’re looking ahead into the future with RELI, are there things that you are just excited for in general, specific changes or anything that you can maybe tease for next year or the years to come? What are you excited about when it comes to RELI as you’re looking ahead to the future?

Nate Gordon:
Yeah. So I think a couple of things is really working with, I think we’re infusing more diversity education into our competencies. And so looking at how do you do diversity education when you’re talking about finances? That doesn’t sound fun to me. So how do you incorporate that? How do you incorporate diversity when you’re doing housing assignments, campus politics, what does that look like? And so really having more of a focus on DEI inclusion and belonging. So really making that part of our staple.
We’ve also started, we have some sponsors of RELI and cultivating and building upon those relationships. And so we’ve had two furniture companies and dorm room movers, so like Brill Furniture, Folio Furniture, and Dorm Room Movers have all had some level of sponsorship within RELI and starting to get to the point where we’ve had some of our sponsors do presentations at RELI. So not one of the competencies, but adding time for them to come in and talk about whether it be furniture, whether it be, what do you need for a moving in storage company? And so I think that’s been cool, and that’s a thing that I’ve seen evolve over time.
I think a new thing that was added recently, oh, not recently, but over the past couple of years was the co-director time at RELI. So myself and my colleague, Ryan Young, we have a good 45 minutes with the participants where we get to share our own stories, where we’re talking about how we’ve navigated residential life and our career path. So because we’re not doing any of the presentations per se, we are organizing the whole event, this allows us to have some time with the participants, which also is really rewarding, as well.
And the fact that with RELI, we bounce between the regions. So last year we were in MACUHO, so we were at George Washington University in DC. This year we’re going to be at Binghamton University in New York. So it’s cool that we get to bounce between regions.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, I guess it is just a inherent excitement is the idea of going to new institutions and being able to maybe give a little kudos and uplifting the cool stuff that might be happening at that particular host institution.
But yeah, I want to pull on that thread of with the sponsors they’re presenting, they’re engaging with the participants because I think that’s something through my master’s program was one of my biggest takeaways, because now a lot of my career has been in adjacent roles that are supportive of institutions and that idea of learning how to manage those partnerships, or evaluate them.
Or it’s such a unique thing and knowing maybe that’s even a potential career avenue, is that idea of, well, if you feel like as you’re doing that sort of self-awareness piece of self-discovery, knowing that your skills are valuable, they can be useful in a lot of different areas and understand what those options look like versus feeling like you have to try to squish yourself into this one very certain hole of like, “Well, it’s Res Life or nothing.” Or something. I put put my stock into this. I got to stick with it. It’s like, no, you could be like, well, no, I want to stay somewhat close to students. I like being in that mix where I want go to more executive director, or much more senior level, or maybe I’d want to be working across institutions at these adjacent companies and stuff.
So yeah, it’s great to hear that, yeah, you can be at different host institutions, bring them to the forefront, that you all get to interact. I feel like it’d be a shame if you’re organizing everything and you’re like, “I didn’t even get to meet everybody that’s here.” And then the organizations that are supportive that make all this happen anymore, and increasingly, and I think that’s a sign of the times. I think that there’s been that bias or antagonistic, I guess, time relationship with external vendors and all these things.
It’s just a recognition that as long as institutional leaders are navigating into these partnerships in a very thoughtful and intentional way, and these external organizations understand how to best work with higher ed, which I think they’ve just continually gotten better and better at it. They could be a very healthy, productive relationship that really adds something to the student experience. So that’s really great to hear.
And just the idea of really trying to just maximize the potential and the value of just that exposure, the idea that, okay, you’re in a cohort of a bunch of different people. You’re going to be maybe in an institution that you’ve never been to before. You’re obviously interacting. You’ve had this broader longitudinal view of the institute itself and the people have come through it and whatever else. I’m obviously just gushing, I guess just hearing about this where it’s just like, this is such a great opportunity for people. So I appreciate that you’ve invested it into it.
But I guess any reflections on that, the idea of that there is so much value in the just exposure, the awareness? I feel like that’s what I’m hearkening back to a lot, is the idea of the self-awareness piece. The idea of understanding about yourself, the opportunities that are out there and how to interact with all the different stakeholders and things. I guess any reflections on that?

Nate Gordon:
Yeah. And I think that’s why we felt as though we needed to have a campus politics session associated with RELI. So not only how do you do that with your people at your institution, or your department depending upon the size of it, but also these outside stakeholders. So I think, I don’t don’t know if you’ve ever been to an ACUHO-I campus home live event, or one of the regional conferences, but we have an exhibitor fair at regional conferences.
And so walking down that typically at a hall director level, you don’t have the buying power at your institution. So you’re like, “Why am I going through this with my bingo sheet to be like sign here?” But that’s where it starts. That’s where it starts with building your relationship. When you do get to that level where you are buying furniture, you’re buying software programs, you’re buying giveaways, whatever it is, be like, “Right, I know I need a roommate software, right, Roompact, I met them.” Or, “I know I need furniture, I need X, Y, & Z.” Whatever it happens to be, you already have that built because someday you could be in a position where you have that.
And so I think it’s teaching them how to manage those relationships now, not only when you’re at conferences or making connections with exhibitors, but also on your home campus institution. So bringing that back to what can you do now in your department? Whereas yeah, you might be a hall director and you are overseeing the day-to-day operations of your residence hall, but how do you take that experience and expand that? How do you take that and expand that out to not only benefit your students, because that’s what we’re here for is making sure students having a good living environment overall, but how do you do that? And it’s a skill.
And I know sometimes when dealing with politics, often it’s crashing and burning to learn from that. And that’s like a motto I’ve done. I’ve done several presentations on politics, and so how do we avoid you from crashing and burning? So let’s take some lessons learned along the way so that way you can be successful in that and navigating those.

Nate Gordon:
Right. Avoid crashing and burning. People have come before you and have learned, let’s give back. And I also see RELI as a way for me, who’s progressed and moved up in their field, how do you give back to the field of student affairs residential life? For me, this is a great way. When I served as faculty a few years ago, that was awesome. And then doing this, this has been a great way for me to stay involved regionally, but also giving back to the field and allowing opportunities for folks to explore their career paths and residential life and what that will look like.

Dustin Ramsdell:
So we will end here encouraging folks to link out to the website to learn more, but obviously just having folks that listen from all across the spectrum, whether they might be somebody who could be a participant, be a faculty member, or supervise somebody who they might nudge them to attend as a attendee, but how can listeners get involved?

Nate Gordon:
So listen and get involved, exactly what you said. So we are actually getting really close. In November, we’re going to be launching our faculty application. So if you are at the mid-level, so if you’re really assistant director, or above, and you are interested in participating in RELI, our faculty application is going to be launching in November, and that typically closes right beginning of January.
And then once that is done, we’ll have our faculty selected. So those participants, those who are like, “Ooh, I really want to go to RELI.” Or, “I want to experience what this institute’s all about.” That application is going to open probably right after the residence halls open from winter break, so mid-January, and that will close beginning of March-ish, where we will have our participant apps. That will all be on our website. And both of those, the website itself is linked to both the MACUHO and NEACUHO websites.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Perfect. And I think the timing will be well for this when this episode releases initially, and then hopefully just long-term people find it as they’re thinking about potentially getting involved either as an attendee or faculty member and everything, or maybe even a sponsor. Yeah, we appreciate you just helping to add more context and history and perspective and reflections on RELI and the value that it has, and just really appreciate you and helping to facilitate these experiences for folks and for jumping on the podcast.

Nate Gordon:
Absolutely. No, thank you for having me. This was awesome.