Cultivating the “Home Away from Home” Vibe: Building Community in Apartment-Style Campus Living [Webinar Recording]

Abstract

In this engaging webinar, discover how Central Washington University fosters a strong sense of belonging for students living in on-campus, non-traditional, apartment-style housing. Learn how to intentionally cultivate a community-driven atmosphere that transforms a living space into a true “home away from home.” We’ll share practical strategies, creative programming ideas, and student-centered approaches that you can adapt to your own campus environment—regardless of size or structure. Walk away with tangible tools to add to your professional toolbox and leave feeling empowered, inspired, and ready to elevate the residential experience at your institution.

Presenters

• Elise May, Apartment Complex Coordinator at Central Washington University

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Watch the Recording:

Date Of Recording: August 19, 2025

Links and References:

• None

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Transcript:

Speaker 1:
All right, so welcome everyone to this Northwest ACUHO webinar. Today’s webinar is co-sponsored by Roompact in addition to being posted on our Northwest ACUHO YouTube channel later on, it will also be featured on Roompact’s website as part of their webinar series that they do in conjunction with institutions and organizations. I’m going to send in the chat the link to that website now, just in case you’re interested. My name is Meghan Lockwood. I am the Northwest ACUHO Communications Director, but in my day job I am an Executive Assistant and Project Manager for University Housing and Dining Services at Oregon State University, so in case you need to know who I am during this to ask a question.
Today we will be hearing from Elise May who is the apartment complex coordinator at Central Washington University, as well as some of Elise’s staff. Elise’s program is titled Cultivating the Home Away From Home Vibe: Building Community and Apartment Style Campus Living. I’m very excited for this one. I will let Elise introduce themselves and the program a little bit more as well as anyone else involved in presenting. But otherwise, Elise, I’m going to hand it over to you.

Elise May:
Okay, welcome. We’re glad you’re here and I am going to share my screen. Can everybody see that? Okay, excellent. I’m going to go ahead and go to our next slide and we do want to welcome you to the webinar and want to do some introductions. Again, my name is Elise May and I am the apartment complex coordinator here at Central Washington University and my pronouns are she/they. And I’d like to turn it over to Julian and let him introduce himself please.

Speaker 3:
Hello, everyone. My name is Julian Bobadilla. I’m the apartment manager for Carmody-Munro. I go by he/him pronouns.

Elise May:
And Carlos.

Speaker 4:
Hi everybody, my name is Carlos Rosales. I am the apartment manager for Anderson and my pronouns are he/him.

Elise May:
Excellent, excellent. Now it’s your turn. If you could please tell us your name, your pronouns, the institution that you’re representing today and why the interest. And if you were asked to be here and you have no interest, that’s okay too. So go ahead and we can start with, let’s see, how about Tatum? Why don’t we start with Tatum?

Speaker 5:
Hello everyone. I’m Tatum Flores-Lerch. I use she/her pronouns. I’m from Central Washington University and I’m interested because I don’t directly work with a lot of apartment students, but I want to know how better to interact with them, especially thinking about them moving from residence halls to apartments and how I can help make that transition a little easier for them if they’re thinking going in that route.

Elise May:
Okay. Ian, would you like to go?

Speaker 6:
Hi everyone, my name is Ian. Pronouns are he/him. Work at Central Washington University. I’m interested in this to understand how curriculum’s used in apartment complexes.

Elise May:
Okay. And Meghan, I can’t see everybody so if you want to call folks out you can.

Speaker 1:
Sure, I can do that. How about Brittany?

Speaker 7:
Hi, I’m Brittany Thayer. I also represent Central Washington University and I’m interested just to see a little bit more about what the apartment managers do and how they can work better with the RA.

Speaker 1:
Awesome. How about Austin?

Speaker 8:
… Zoom while trying to turn my camera on. Howdy. My name is Austin Wetherbee, he/him pronouns. I’m also at Central Washington University and yeah, I’m just interested to see the cool things happening in the apartments.

Speaker 1:
All right. Brendan?

Speaker 9:
Yes, hello everyone. My name is Brendan. I am also from Central Washington University and I’m interested in learning strategies to build community and apartments that differ from residence halls.

Speaker 1:
All right. I’m going to go down my list here. Calvin?

Speaker 10:
Hey everyone, my name is Calvin, this is-

Speaker 11:
Eliana.

Speaker 10:
Eliana. We’re from St. Clair College. I’m currently working as a resident advisor and Eliana is working as our resident experience manager. We’re both kind of doing this training just to get a bit of insight to learn more about the different structures of how apartments are managed across the different colleges in the area. We’re actually in the middle of our…

Speaker 1:
Calvin freeze for other folks? Calvin, you froze on us. I apologize if you’re still talking, but we’re going to move on. I’m going to come back to you to Chelsea.

Speaker 12:
Hi everybody. I am Chelsea Brown. I use she/her pronouns. I work at Central Washington University. I just am here… Oh, sorry. Looking forward to learn anything more I can about working with apartment managers, how to support apartment complexes more in investment side.

Speaker 1:
Thanks, Chelsea. Christine?

Speaker 13:
Hi, I am Christine Thaler and I am from the University of Victoria. I use she/her pronouns and I am here because we are looking to expand and our proposed new build is going to have three times the amount of apartments as we do currently on campus total at the moment. So just in preparation of a new building in 2029 perhaps.

Speaker 1:
Well, that’s exciting. Congrats. Next up, Eric.

Speaker 14:
Hi, my name is Eric Galvan. I am from Central Washington University. Pronouns are he and him and the reason I’m here is because I would like to learn more about curriculums. I am familiar with the ones in residence halls, but I would like to learn more about in the setting in the apartments.

Speaker 1:
Awesome, thank you. Jeremy?

Speaker 15:
Morning everybody. My name is Jeremy Rear and I’m with Mahlum Architects in Portland, Oregon. Long-standing supporter of Northwest ACUHO and everything that Northwest ACUHO does for residents’ life and my pronouns are he/him. I am here today to learn more similar to Brandon’s interests, learn more about how to build more or better community and apartment style living as compared to traditional dormitory style living. So yeah, thank you and thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:
Thanks Jeremy for joining. Okay, Caitlin, did you go already?

Speaker 16:
I did not, but I’ll introduce myself. I’m Kaitlin, I use she/her pronouns. I’m also representing Central Washington University and similar to what Brendan and Jeremy just said, I’m very interested in learning how to build and kind of what the process is about community building in the apartments, especially since I work with the residence hall. So seeing the transition from residence halls to apartments is very interesting.

Speaker 1:
Thank you. Katherine?

Speaker 17:
Hi everyone. My name is Katherine Higgins. I use she/her pronouns. I am coming to you from the University of Washington Bothell and I’m interested in this webinar because I recently started overseeing an apartment style building and building, been doing some research on apartment style community building and trying to build out my toolbox.

Speaker 1:
Thank you. Marin?

Speaker 18:
Hi, I’m Marin. I use she/her pronouns. I’m at Skagit Valley College. We only have apartments and that definitely has unique challenges, especially for harder to build communities, so interested in that.

Speaker 1:
Thank you. Michael?

Speaker 19:
Good morning. Another Wildcat, but Meghan, not your alum type Wildcats. Gave a couple ideas for this presentation but I chickened out on doing it. I’ve got a face not good for webinars and a voice for I don’t know what, but excited to see what my colleagues have been able to come up with for it.

Speaker 1:
Thanks, Michael. Let’s see, Scot?

Speaker 20:
Scot Cuachon from Camosun College in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. My pronouns are he/him. We’re just about to start construction on our first ever student housing building. One of the areas will be apartment style and we’re building a building, we’re building a whole new unit. Right now, the only one in housing and obviously we have to think about how we’re building essential spaces and central communities as well. So I’m very grateful for Northwest ACUHO for connecting a number of our members regularly to get ideas and thoughts. So I’m just very happy to be here and to gain some knowledge through your experiences.

Speaker 1:
Thanks, Scot. Tomitha?

Speaker 21:
Hi everyone. Good morning. My name is Tomitha. My pronouns are she and her. I work at the University of Washington Seattle and I supervise our undergraduate apartments. So just interested as a new employee of the university and just bringing back some great information at some of our next meetings.

Speaker 1:
Okay. Did I miss anyone that may have joined after I started? Feel free to speak up. Okay, Elise, I think that was all the intros.

Elise May:
Okay, great, great. We’re really glad to have you all here. Hopefully if your questions aren’t answered or you need more information, you can certainly reach out at the end. Our email will be on the screen so you’ll have that. So I’m going to go ahead and go to the next slide and it’s basically going to talk about our agenda and our goals. We’re going to start off with the definition of non-traditional apartment style living at Central and perhaps you might have something different, but Julian’s going to give an overview about what that is for us and then we’re going to talk about why it’s important to build and cultivate community. And I know that you all have mentioned that over and over and over again today. So that gives us positive reinforcement there that we’re doing something hopefully that’ll be meaningful to you. We’re going to give some strategies to help foster a home away from home atmosphere.
I know that that was something that you all mentioned and then we’re going to talk about and we’re going to try to help us understand students’ needs and their preferences better. And then we’re going to give you some tools and some resources and then we are going to have a question and answer period if there are any. I’m going to tell you, we may not have the answer. But I can tell you that if you ask me the question, I will find out the answer for you and get you the information if we don’t have it today. And then it’s just a recap or takeaways that we took away from it. And then there is a deep thought quote that I want you to think about before we leave and then there’s going to be kudos. I have several people that I want to thank at the end. So our next thing is definition of non-traditional style housing at CWU and I am going to let Julian go ahead and take away that.

Speaker 3:
Awesome, thank you so much. All right, everyone. I see when we kind of talk about non-traditional style housing, we’re kind referring to apartment style living that differs from the traditional resident hall model. These things are often more independent, they cook for themselves, manage their own space, are sometimes older and can be transfer students, even at times international. This creates a unique opportunity and challenge which can create a more diverse building community in a space that can often feel more private or disconnected. So today we’re going to be diving into how we can better understand and serve these residents.

Elise May:
Okay. And I’d like to let you all know that here at Central with all of those definitions that Julian gave us, we have two of our buildings could be residence halls. So one of them has a pod style living and then we have one which is our micro studio apartments that actually Julian manages and they have your traditional hallway. They just have to come down to the kitchen and then they have community bathrooms and that’s considered a micro studio. And we opened those last year at full capacity with waitlists all year.
Same goes for this year. The rate is really, really good for our students. Then we have Brooklane and we have Getz Short, we have Wahle and let’s see, Student Village and they’re all apartment style living situations to where it could be singles, it could be doubles, it could be triples, just depending on what they sign up for. Rates are different because some are furnished, some are unfurnished, some are semi furnished. We have one complex with air conditioning. So it just really depends on what the student wants. But we do offer a huge variety in terms of non-traditional style housing. So they do have choices. Okay, go ahead, Julian.

Speaker 3:
Yeah, for the next piece, are going to be strategies to foster home away from home. Creating a home away from home starts with intentional community building, meaning we don’t leave it to chance. We personalize their space where possible and engage in residents directly. It’s all about making people feel like they matter. We encourage staff to have conversations, show up consistently, and make residents feel seen. That might mean remembering their names, delivering mails, or even checking in before finals. Every small interaction really counts.

Elise May:
Okay, next I’m going to talk about how we do it at CWU, but I did want to say that whether you ever see a single small building or multiple apartment style complexes, these strategies are pretty flexible, they’re scalable and they’re ready to use. You’ll leave with the ideas that you can help your students feel welcome, supported, and part of a thriving residential community because of a strong sense of belonging just doesn’t happen, it’s intentionally cultivated. Okay. So how we do it here at Central is we use something called Roompact, and I’ll go over a little bit about that. They’re one of our co-sponsors, so want to give them a plug as well. We do social events and activities with creative advertising. I think that that’s something that’s a challenge because you just don’t walk down the hall and see the poster. We’ve got to be intentional on how we’re getting that stuff out.
Take To Events, and that’s something that our student union or student government or other RAs across campus have created that program. And we may take students to those events. So we don’t always have to create the event ourselves, we can actually take a group of students to them. And that’s kind of hard because there’s lots of things going on. But there’s a book that it’s called the Hype Book and it has all of our large programs throughout the year and sometimes we circle things and we’re like, “Oh, that’d be really cool.” Like Cheech and Chong, one of them came last year. Well, that was a big thing is we circled that and folks took folks to that. And then in the residence halls, I did want to talk about some CLAWS Events and I’ll tell you exactly what that means. And then we want to talk about providing inclusivity and diversity across our communities.
We want to talk about safe and supportive environments. And then we want to talk about understanding students’ needs and preferences. So the first one, this is pretty cool, you can see Roompact on the computer. This is probably an apartment manager or an RA’s room. They’ve got Roompact on their computer, because they’re going to enter some Cat Connections. And what do I mean by that? If you all don’t know, we’re the central Washington University Wildcats. So we came up with Cat Connections for our, it’s what we call our connections with our students. And I did want to say a little bit about Roompact. Roompact is a software that designs and creates solutions for Res Life, an educational program. It’s a software that’s used by administrators, it’s used by residence assistants, apartment managers, resident directors, residence hall coordinators. It can be used by pretty much anyone and students alike can use it as well.
And we collaborate, accomplish task more efficiently using this program. It just kind of helps us stay focused by using this program and it can be leveraged to enhance the student’s learning and the student experience. It was built with Res Life in mind in particular. And if you’re interested in Roompact, I know Meghan said that she was going to put Roompact’s email address or website on there, and I know that Dr. Paul Gordon Brown does some training with new folks that if they’re interested in looking at that and purchasing that. Also, there’s free previews on their website. So if you’re at all interested in what we’re doing or you have more questions, they’re wonderful. Because if I know that my supervisor, Ian, who’s on today, if all of us are saying, “Well, we need more of this information, how can we gather statistics?” Sometimes he can call them and say, “Hey, how can we get this?” And they create something.
So it’s very flexible in that point, so I wanted to bring that up. But back to Cat Connections. Cat Connections are intentional one-on-one conversations a staff member will have with a resident checking in about their living experience and offering support and resources. We have a multiple of six questions that we ask throughout the year and they’re all geared toward, our first set of questions are, “How are you doing? How are you settling in?” That sort of thing. And at the end we’re talking about, “Tell us about this past academic year for you, about where you lived, et cetera, et cetera.” And the question here, an example is, “How’s this resident grown as a student in this academic year?” And something that we try to have our student staff know that yes, it’s a question, but you just don’t go up to someone like say I’m knocking on Meghan’s door and I say, “Hi Meghan, can you tell me how you have grown as a student this year?”
No, it’s not robotic in any way. It’s organic. And you can kind of form those questions organically. We give you the base and you start having a conversation with them. You don’t really have a clipboard and you’re going down doing the checklist. You’re talking to the person, want to make that connection. And once you make that connection, then you know the next time that perhaps Meghan is interested in what’s happening at her undergrad and where the undergrad is and you kind of keep up with that sort of stuff and then you’re able to talk, “Hey, I hear they won volleyball against the University of Washington. How exciting was that?” And then you create those connections and you continue to build on them. So also, Roompact gives us a way to track and log that information. As you can see on the slide before there was a computer that said Roompact. They log in and when they’ve had their Cat Connection, they’ll go in, they’ll say how it went, who it was with and give any helpful insight on the student experience.
And what’s really cool about that is it’s logged in and if we have folks that are on the BIT team or some of those teams, they can go in and they can say, “Oh yeah, Julian had an interaction with John last week and that went really well. So maybe that student, we have a little bit less worry that that student and is having some behavioral kinds of issues or whatever because we know that no, they’re not missing, Julian had that interaction last week.” So it’s a way to log it and it’s pretty cool when you get in there because you have different ways of actually doing that. And then advertising, what’s really cool about that is you as a person that has a login with Roompact can send messages to the community and updates and it’s just that quick that we can connect with the student.
For example, with my staff, if we’re having a program in a couple of weeks that’s kind of a big event, maybe we send out something one time that first week and then maybe we send it out a couple of times the next week and maybe same day we send it out three times maybe about 30 minutes before the program actually happens. And people have had interest, they’re like, “Yeah, I really want to go to that. Yeah, I want to go to that.” And then they’re like, “Oh, Carlos sent me this message, I forgot, but I have time. I’m going to go.” So that’s a really cool thing about Roompact is that we can use it in various ways. And so Carlos is going to talk to us about events and programs at this point. Carlos.

Speaker 4:
Alrighty. It’s my turn to shine. So events and programs, fellas. You read here, non-traditional/apartment communities have different interests and needs. So one of our jobs is definitely to be able to cater to those needs. Creating engaging events and programs, it takes a lot of out-of-the-box thinking and having a central location is very key. And there’s a variation, of course, per apartment complex. But some of examples that we can have for events and programs that have worked in the past, karaoke nights. People seem to love those a lot. I like those a lot. Barbecues and s’mores night, Speedfriending Mixer, those can work really well at the beginning of the year to try to get residents to know their neighbors and create new friendships as well. Scary story, movie nights as well. And like we previously mentioned, Take To Events. We don’t always have to come up with events, there is events happening on campus so if we have the ability to take our residents to those events, we go ahead and do so.
Now with those events in mind, also comes creative advertising. Advertising for our events could be difficult when it comes to reaching out a large and spread out community as apartments could be. It’s not a traditional residential living, it’s more separate, of course. But coupled with that, many posters from other departments and other organizations, they can call what we call a poster blindness. Everybody’s making the most attractive poster they can come up with and there’s just so many in one area, you may not notice the poster that you have put up there yourself, so your event may fall through the cracks. And our tried and true methods include a central place to put our creative advertisements.
So what are those places? Some examples could be putting posters in community spaces. This could be in the lounges of our apartment buildings. The laundry rooms seems to work pretty well, as well the kitchens, high traffic areas where residents are going to be constantly walking in and out. Also sending personal invitations to residents. This could be handwritten or like Elise previously mentioned, through our Roompact system. You can send them an email, send it to the whole community like, “Hey guys, karaoke night is happening in the lounge. I want to see you there and square.” And lastly, one of our biggest factors when it comes to having residents come to our events, it’s also the way we present this invitation and present ourselves. The more excited and passionate we are about that event, the more others will enjoy it. I am not just going to go and be, “Hey, karaoke.”
No, definitely. I wouldn’t like to go. So yeah, the more passionate we are and the more effort we put in those events, residents will definitely be attending those. And coupled up with that, it comes inclusivity and diversity. Inclusive and diversity, hosting cultural nights where residents share traditions, food, and music. So it doesn’t always have to be a karaoke, a barbecue, a s’mores event. It could be traditional. Try to explore some of the roots and try to get to know our residents as well. We have residents of many backgrounds that also comes with celebrating heritage months and holidays that reflect those students’ backgrounds as well. And encouraging student-led events that highlight different perspectives. You don’t always have to be the one coming up with those events. You can talk to your residents, “Hey guys, what would you like to do?” And if they have some ideas, work with them. At the end of the day, these events are for them and if you’re able to work with them, you’re going to have a successful event.

Elise May:
And going along those same lines, speedfriending, we’ve probably all done it. Julian did it with his residents initially last year, probably in the first couple of weeks of school, he learned from that speedfriending event that they felt like they didn’t have friends here. A lot of them were transfer students, upper-class students, and they didn’t feel like they had found the group for them, so they wanted friends. So he would make introductions of people that lived in the building. He also formed a group that went to RHA and that’s a Residence Hall Association. He took students to that.
And what’s special about that is we’ve not had apartment students go to that. In my time here and I’ve been here 15 years, and I don’t know that we’ve ever gone. And so that was good. They kind of got involved in some committee, they got involved that way. So that was excellent for him to be very observant, to know that they had friends, that they needed friends and that was another large place that they could go and meet students who live on campus, they just didn’t live in the apartments. So they lived on campus, so they made some strides about that and that was excellent as well. So Julian, go ahead.

Speaker 3:
All right, moving on over. A true home away from home isn’t just about comfort, it’s about feeling safe and seen and supported. That’s why at Central Washington University, we make students’ well-being a top priority. As a big advocate for mental health and wellness, it’s a great thing here in Central that we offer a wide range of mental health and wellness programs. From stress reliever workshops to mindful and grounding sessions. These aren’t just buzzwords, we actually do commit to these things and these are intentional spaces where students can pause, breathe, and take care of their mental and emotional health. Beyond programming, we focus on creating safe spaces, both physical and emotional, where residents feel comfortable opening up, whether it’s through casual conversation, peer support, or staff just being present. We want students to know you’re not alone. There’s always someone ready to listen, support, and stand beside you. That’s what transforms housing into a home, the presence of trust, care, and connection.

Elise May:
Okay, and Julian’s going to talk a little bit about our students’ needs and preferences.

Speaker 3:
Here at Central, we believe that the best way to serve our students is by listening to them genuinely and consistently. That’s why we use multiple methods to gather input and better understand what they want and need and care about. First, we use surveys and polls to capture quick snapshots of students’ interests. These are great for immediate feedback and trending topics, whether it’s what kind of event they’d like to see next or which wellness programs they’re engaging with. Second, we can conduct focus groups. These allow us to dig deeper into the live experiences of our residents, especially those in non-traditional apartment styles such as here or over at Wahle, Brooklane, et cetera.
It’s where we kind of uncover the nuances and the details and the real stories behind their feedback, getting a more of a better understanding and bigger picture of what they see. And finally, some of our most honest and valuable insights come from informal conversations, sorry. chats in the lounges, casual visits during office hours or even passing comments in the hallways, or when we’re walking to class, these moments often reveal things a survey never could and they help us understand and stay connected in a real human way.

Elise May:
Okay. So here we are, resources and tools. At Central, we do provide practical resources that staff can and students can look into action immediately. They can put these into action and here are some of them is a community building checklist, giving conversation starters to apartment managers and resident assistants. We just don’t go, “Oh hey, you need to go get a Cat Connection from them. Here’s the question.” We give them some pointers and some starting points to start the conversation because not everyone is a conversationalist. So those things are trainable, so we give them some of that in training. We also train folks on how to complete move-ins. We give folks notes about how to welcome our students and what that looks like. Guides and templates, we give ready to use flyers, feedback forms, door sign templates that save time and create consistency. We have what is a small pennant and it is a place to put their name.
It looks just like a pennant that you would buy at the bookstore and we write their name on that and that’s on their door when they get here. And so that’s kind of cool and folks really appreciate that. That’s consistent. So it allows our staff not to have to recreate the wheel and spend all that creativity making door tags. They can totally do that if they want to, but we give them something that’s there that’s easy to use and then they can spend the majority of their time figuring out how to build rapport with our students. What are the programs we want folks to go to? And then we do have platforms which uses the simple software to manage RSVPs.
There are many apps available that communicate event updates and that’s Roompact. And keep residents informed. Tools like GroupMe, Engage, or even Microsoft Teams can help make it easier to reach our students. Most of you would say that they like to watch Reels or the bigger thing today is TikToks. We’ve had students create TikToks to invite folks to an event and so that becomes very popular. Folks love to see that and more than that, they get to see me, who’s someone in the administration or they get to see their apartment manager or their RA doing something fun. It’s not all about work. So you kind of get that in there as well. Then some more resources and tools and engaging our campus partners. I think sometimes we live in our own world and we forget that we have other folks that we can engage that bring them into the residence halls or apartments, and we also can take our students to go to some of these places and some is dining services.
They have special food nights and they are even willing to, if folks have meal plans, to do the shared meal events and that’s always fun. And our dining services here are always willing to help us plan events or they always let us know when they’re going to have an event. Is there something that we could do perhaps in the dining hall if it were, I don’t know, maybe a Hawaiian culture night and we had some folks from Hawaii that we’re really into some cultural dancing. Is that something that we could have our residents go and perform while this event was happening? So they are willing to do that sort of stuff with us. Also, another tool and resource is collaborating with our counseling and our wellness center because Julian said, these are not just things that we think about. These are actual things. These aren’t [inaudible 00:39:07] words, these are things we actually do and sometimes we refer them to counseling.
If it’s too big and we can’t necessarily handle it, sometimes we let them know that counseling is available and they also have peer support groups and they do a variety of things. Say, smoking cessation programs. Our wellness may have a group that talks about that for students. So using those things I think is important. Another way to engage our campus partner is collaborate with our student organizations, co-host events with them and they either bring it to the Res Hall or apartment or we take it to them and we all determine where we’d like to have it. That helps them with the community on campus as well as our wider community, meaning Ellensburg, our small town here, there’s many things that they can get involved in the town as well. So perhaps some organizations are your Chamber of Commerce, your downtown associations, those kind of things.
And being in a fairly small town, those kind of connections can be made because usually a coordinator or a professional staff member knows someone in the community that they can hook up and say, “Hey, Julian and Carlos, you’re really interested in your staff working maybe the fair so that they could get in free.” Then we work with that and see what happens. It may work and it may not, but those are some tools and some resources that we have. I’d like to now open it up for question and answers. It’s like I said, we might not know the answer, but we’ll get the answer for you. Or if you have any questions for Julian, Carlos, or myself, please feel free to ask.

Speaker 6:
Elise, I have one. Can you maybe talk about CLAWS? I think I missed what CLAWS stood for and what those were.

Elise May:
No, CLAWS is something that we use, like I said at Central. We’re the Wildcats and they have claws. So CLAWS stands for community-led active welcome sessions, and so that’s CLAWS and they’re done in the residence halls every night at a specific time, whatever time they’ve determined, and I believe it’s 8:00 to 10:00 every night in a lounge or a lobby, that sort of thing within the residence hall, there is some sort of event going on. Is it, I don’t know, a singer and it’s packed all the time? Not necessarily.
There are craft sessions, there are making posters because perhaps they want to go and be supportive of campus organizations, so they’re making posters for that. They do movie nights that sometimes I think they take and do discussions afterwards. Lots of people are into making friendship bracelets. They do that a lot. They do some paint. I think they’ve done root beer sip and paint, which is kind of cool. And so that’s based off some things that you see out in the community as well. Any of my colleagues that are on have any other spectacular CLAWS events that you’ve put on in your Res Halls that’s well attended? Anybody?

Speaker 19:
Elise gave a pretty good description of what the CLAWS are and a lot of them are designed that you can walk through, interact really quick and keep walking. A pretty popular one in my area has been swapping dad jokes where an RA is posted up there, he’s got a bowl of candy, he’ll give you a dad joke and then if you give him one back, then you’ll get a piece of candy and then you keep going about your way or you hang out and keep hearing the other jokes and it just turns into a bit of a cool little black hole where it can suck people in a pretty positive way.

Elise May:
And I’m glad my colleague Kimo answered that question because this was his brainchild. A couple of years ago he’s like, “We’ve got to do something, we’ve got to keep them engaged, we’ve got to do all these things.” So it kind of blew up from there. We were doing it a few nights and then we went to every night except Saturday. This year it’s every day. And so we find that it’s kind of cool because students are not always ready to go to your big campus programs. So they go down and they meet some folks and then they may go to bigger campus programs, but they know that this is a safe supportive environment that they can hang out, they can make a friendship bracelet, they never say a word, but they’re listening to who all’s talking about music or whatever.
A lot of people talk about Taylor Swift and friendship bracelets because that was kind of maybe where it all started. Again, it started a long time ago, but she made it popular. So they’d start talking about music and then they realize, “Oh, I play an instrument.” And maybe they start a band later on. So I mean, there’s just kinds of things that come with these CLAWS events that I don’t know that we can measure the greatness that comes from these events.

Speaker 10:
Sorry, quick question about the CLAWS. Really interesting to hear about the engagement of the residents who are going to these events. Could you quantify how many are coming to these daily events and then how do you support your RAs or your area, sorry, your RAs, to making sure that they’re not burning out through hosting these events on a daily basis?

Elise May:
Kimo, would you like to take that question? I mean, you’re an RHC and I know that you always worry about burnout and those kinds of things, but you’ve kind of implemented something that won’t happen basically.

Speaker 19:
Sure. Actual numbers like quantifying them. We do our best to record everybody that comes in and I mean, the bigger your community is, less likely that you’ll know everybody’s name when they’re coming in the door. However, that’s one of the goals. And when you’ve got dedicated staff and you can do a little bit of homework, you can study up and you can learn a big portion of your hall pretty quickly. And I think a lot of it is want to, but if you get staff that are really into it, you can learn just about everybody’s name that’ll be coming through. And that’s one of the ways with Roompact that we can record it and it’s much easier to record the person if you know their name already instead of asking for it, asking for the name. No problem with that either, ask and repeat and eventually you’ll learn the people’s names. So you can record it.
And I know what our actual numbers are. I could probably look it up, but from the previous programming model going to CLAWS, our interactions probably tripled if not quadrupled. Per the burnout, it’s a funky thing where we got a really good interaction response from it while the RAs are actually doing less work. Previously, the RAs were doing a once a week event. We called it a ritual where standing appointment, Tuesday nights at seven o’clock, you’re going to come read stories with me or Wednesdays at six o’clock we’re going to talk about music theory. If you were in one of the music [inaudible 00:48:20] communities, but you had a standing appointment. After we switched to CLAWS, well, I guess for the standing appointments we found that post-pandemic and even kind of mid, pre-pandemic a little bit, not as many people were turning out for them and post-pandemic when we tried it, the numbers just were not very good at all. The amount of engagement that we thought people were going to be wanting after coming out of COVID was not what we were seeing. Switched up to CLAWS, you’ve only got to do one CLAW.
Well, our duty structure, we have two RAs on and the secondary RA will be leading the CLAW. So they’ve only got to do it pretty much every other week, twice a month or so instead of doing the weekly event. By switching to a nightly event, we’re actually doing less RA wise, but getting a pretty good response from it because the residents, it’s in your living room, you walk in, you can participate as long as you want or not, then move about your way. So while we’re doing kind of more events, the RAs are actually doing less work.

Speaker 10:
Great. Thanks for providing the insight, Michael. I appreciate it.

Elise May:
Any other questions about anything?

Speaker 1:
Ian has a hand up again.

Elise May:
Okay. Sorry, Ian.

Speaker 6:
And Calvin, just to follow up on Michael’s response. So Central I would say maybe is somewhat unique in our structure is we operate 16 different residence halls varying in sizes from 50 residents to 400. On average, I would say that per night per CLAW is about 10 to 15 students generally speaking. And what we see is that there’s a percentage of students that tend to come down pretty regularly. We kind of see the same probably 10% of students come to almost every event in their building. And then we see a large percentage of students that will attend one or two here and there. So while they may not be engaging every single night, they have that opportunity like Michael had talked about. And what we see is that that really provides an introduction for them to then figure out what it is that they’re interested in and helping them get connected to other clubs and orgs on campus or other students. And so we found that success on our campus in the last couple of years.

Speaker 10:
Thank you. I’m just now learning about your institution, so it was great to have those numbers. And just a follow-up question, maybe for Meghan or Elise, I know you guys mentioned with Roompact you have these Cat Connections, so these intentional interactions. How many times a year are you guys encouraging your RAs to reach out to these students on individual basis? Is it like three times a year? Is it just like once a year? Could you provide some insight into how you guys have those interactions?

Elise May:
Yeah, absolutely, Calvin. Excellent question. We have it structured where resident assistants do two questions per quarter and then in the apartments we do, because we have so many more of our students, we do one of those per quarter. We’re doing three per year in the apartments and they’re doing six per year for in the Res Halls. So that’s kind of how that works. In terms of that. Julian, did you have your hand up? Nope, okay. Yeah, so that’s the way that works, Calvin. And the questions are already, the professional staff residence hall coordinators and myself and Ian, we get together and we’ve developed these questions because we feel like at this point that these are the questions we should be asking.
And they start out kind of low-key. They’re all low-key, but in the fall you’re asking some particular questions. In the winter, you can dive a little deeper into, “Have you given thoughts on how you did in fall quarter and how are you going to change that for winter quarter?” Also, about where you’re living next year and you kind of get that information and then you kind of wrap it up at the end with putting a close to your floor, putting a close to the apartment living for that particular year. There’s questions all along the way and they get a little deeper and you can dive into building really strong rapport with our students. Was that helpful, Calvin?

Speaker 10:
Yeah, that was super insightful. Thanks for sharing. It sounds like you have a really great system at CW, so thanks for sharing.

Elise May:
Oh yeah, absolutely. And anytime that you ever want to call or email or anything, we’re happy to work with you on a one-on-one basis and show you our system by any means. Any other questions? Okay, seeing none, some key takeaways from the presentation as we define on-campus apartment style living here at CWU. We determined why it was important to cultivate community. We gave you some actionable strategies. We discussed students’ needs and preferences and how we get those. We gave you tools and resources to better help you cultivate students’ home away from home. And hopefully we answered all your questions or maybe we created more questions that you want to get answers to.
And I appreciate all of you that ask those questions. And if you ever have any more, please feel free to let us know. So here’s a deep thought. “You can have more than one home. You can carry your roots with you and decide where they grow.” So just take just a second, think about that. You can have more than one home. People bring their roots with them. Hopefully we help them cultivate, because they have the roots and build a strong foundation and want to continue to live with us and build that rapport and make themselves better. So that was the key. And I always like deep thought kinds of things and I’m a quote kind of gal.
You can see it’s not pretty by any means. But I did want to say a big thanks to all my colleagues at Central, especially Kaitlin Le, who you all introduced herself. She created the slides on Canva. I gave her the information and she’s like, “Oh, cultivate.” And so she did the flower and watering it and growing it and that sort of thing. Roompact for co-sponsoring the webinar and for Northwest ACUHO for the opportunity and for my student staff, apartment managers, Carlos Rosales and Julian Bobadilla and thank you. And go Cats. And last one, you can see how pretty it is that was created by Kaitlin, okay. So you can see the difference there. We do hope you enjoyed the session and there are our email addresses, so if you have particular questions once you get off and you’re like, “Ooh crap, I should have asked that.” Send us an email. We’re more than happy to answer any of that. And Meghan, I’ll turn it back over to you.

Speaker 1:
All right, well, thank you so much, Elise, Julian, and Carlos. That was great. I learned a lot. Like I said, I think apartment living is not always a focus of some of our programming and so it’s really nice to hear a little bit more. Thank you everyone for joining us. I know we’re just about at time and we know this is a crazy time of year, so thank you for coming during everything that’s probably going on at your institutions and organizations. The recording of this session will be up on the Northwest ACUHO YouTube channel hopefully by end of day, if not sometime this week.
And then also thank you to Roompact for co-sponsoring this webinar. Once again, I’m going to put a link in the chat to their other webinars that they do with others. Northwest ACUHO members, make sure to keep an eye on your emails for newsletters and other announcements of upcoming webinars. We’re trying to get a whole bunch of them up and going this fall. And make sure to follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Northwest ACUHO. Thank you everyone so much and have a great rest of your day.

Elise May:
Thank you.