Housing and Residence Life: Community & Engagement | Competencies & Learning | Care & Case Management | Assessment
There is a strange transition that happens when you move from entry-level housing work into mid-level leadership. For years, many of us watch Assistant Directors, Associate Directors, and Directors from a distance and create assumptions about what their jobs - and lives - must look like. We hear things like, “You’ll lose money if you... Continue Reading →
Whimsy has become an internet phenomenon in the year of 2026 - and for good reason! The concept of whimsy has helped bring joy and fun into small moments during day-to-day life. From adding sprinkles to a coffee to getting lost on purpose, whimsy is how a lot of people are intentionally slowing down and... Continue Reading →
For many of us in on-campus housing, we plan for it the entire year - Move-In. It’s become the main event, and that’s understandable: it’s our first impression, involves overlapping processes, and provides a rather intimate view of what we do and how we do it to every stakeholder imaginable. And because of all this,... Continue Reading →
Belonging is a continued focus of Student Affairs research, often looking at how students feel belonging to institutions. Housing is often looked at on college campuses as a supercharger for belonging, when I did a quick online search I noticed that belonging or connection came up in every single Resident Advisor posting I looked at.... Continue Reading →
There is something about a long drive that refuses to let your mind stay in one place. The pavement seems to stretch on forever in front of you. You don’t see anything familiar behind you. Mile after mile, stop after stop, conversations replay, memories and feelings resurface, a busy mind becomes quite yet filled with... Continue Reading →
Belonging is a continued focus of Student Affairs research, often looking at how students feel belonging to institutions. Resident Advisors are often looked to on college campuses as a supercharger for belonging, when I did a quick online search I noticed that belonging or connection came up in every single Resident Advisor posting I looked... Continue Reading →
Throughout the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, there is a great deal of a spike in the reliance on AI in today’s college students. One of the more concerning areas that AI is appealing to students is using user data to inform responses, catering to an audience in a way that tells an individual what they... Continue Reading →
If you’re anything like me, there’s nothing like summer reality TV to help us unwind and switch off after hectic summer workdays filled with learning, training, and project planning. As an avid lover of all things reality TV, I had a moment of introspection while watching Love Island USA this summer and reflecting on many... Continue Reading →
When conversations about student loneliness and isolation come up, we often reach for the same culprit: phones. Students seem disconnected? Phones. Nobody is talking in the elevator? Phones. Attendance is down? Phones. Relationships feel shallower? You guessed it: It’s the phones. The appeal of this explanation is that it's simple, but the problem is that... Continue Reading →
What comes to mind when you hear the word “supervisor”? That was a question posed to several other incoming graduate assistants and me during our onboarding. Many of the initial reactions were less than positive, ranging from the person who conducts your evaluation to the person who can terminate you from your job. What a... Continue Reading →
One thing we know for sure is that no Residence Life job is forever, unless you made it all the way to the top that is. If you’re at the top and reading this article right now, hello and welcome. I’m happy to have you here. For the rest of us, this article’s intended audience... Continue Reading →
As I hope this post’s title indicates, I love The Lord of the Rings universe. I also love duty and on-call work. While I always hope that students never experience crises, it’s important that we are able to be there and facilitate the community’s navigation through these impactful moments. I find on-call work an engaging... Continue Reading →
With the release of Toy Story 5, and topics floating around on student loneliness, I couldn’t help but notice a connection. I remember seeing the fourth Toy Story in a drive-in and thinking “that’s it, this is the last of these amazing movies.” But the creators saw a market years later that I had never... Continue Reading →
Creating a sense of belonging and an atmosphere that we often describe as a student’s new “home away from home” is central to the work that we do as Housing and Residence Life practitioners. But, there isn’t a singular “right” way to do it– if there was, wouldn’t we all be doing so uniformly? And... Continue Reading →
As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary this Fourth of July, colleges and universities across the country will likely join in the celebration. There will be patriotic social media posts, historical reflections, and conversations about progress, democracy, and the opportunity education affords us. And to be clear, there has been progress. More students from... Continue Reading →
Send a Supervision Questionnaire Include the cutesy get-to-know-you things like favorite color and favorite snack, but also ask about how a supervisee likes to receive feedback or praise! Add birthdays to your calendar (and maybe write birthday cards!) Check first with a supervisee if they like to celebrate their birthday (insert it into that supervision... Continue Reading →
Summer training for student staff members is usually jam-packed with learning policies, absorbing information, and acting out real-life crisis scenarios. Although all of this is incredibly important for being a trained student staff member, we often forget that there are many ways student staff members can and should learn to incorporate fun into their roles.... Continue Reading →
One of the many facets of our work in Residence Life is incident and crisis response. And unless you’re at a school where most, if not all, of this work is dedicated to a specialized incident response team, you may struggle to find an effective approach to training the on-call staff on this part of... Continue Reading →
