ACUHO-I News Blog

Survival in the college and university housing field requires being connected with others beyond our own institutions. It was a basic lesson in graduate school, but has become central in my life working in a department of only two professional staff members. I rely on my colleagues and friends at other institutions for shared resources; I also rely on them for support as I navigate unfamiliar waters of being a mid-level professional.

With The Placement Exchange and NASPA conference being only two hours from my campus this month, I had an easy excuse to drive to Chicago and visit with those who came to town. I carved time away from campus to have coffee with my grad school mentor. I spent hours with the student affairs community from Twitter, with whom I’ve only recently connected, but can’t imagine not having in my life. I crossed paths with a beloved faculty member from my graduate program. I visited with friends from GLACUHO. I met James, the voice behind the ACUHO-I Twitter account, who has provided me with a new tool for professional development via this blog.

In coincidental timing, a colleague from my first professional position is coming to visit this weekend. My enthusiasm, which is generally above average, is skyrocketing at this opportunity to reunite with the person I consider my best friend in the field.

I once asked a supervisor how she stays connected with her professional colleagues from her career path. Her answer was simple: She doesn’t. I was shocked. I can’t imagine not having this network for challenging discussion, for providing feedback, for providing raw enthusiasm that keeps me motivated on days when I feel isolated.

For a field that places people and connections at its center, we often neglect to maintain these relationships ourselves. How do you stay connected with colleagues personally and professionally outside of conferences?

Watch these videos. Then we’ll talk. (I’ll wait.)

Okay, were those effective drinking deterrents for you? What about for your students?

I have to admit, when I saw the female version, I thought: “Wowee. That was one helluva night out.” Some YouTube commenters apparently agree; one says: “she is cute in a debauched way…. i think this will probably doesn’t work as the advert intends….” and another noted: “If she came home like that she must have had a f****** EPIC night out!!” Others asked why the advertisement was “promoting” binge drinking. (Facetiously, I assume.) Some seem to get the point of the advertisement; many more are debating the origins of the song in it.

It’s alarming when I find my thoughts aligning with YouTube comments, but I’ll worry about my issues later. Society’s issue, it seems, is that ads like these seem to encourage binge drinking, not deter it, as if a morning spent guzzling water, munching aspirin and locating one’s brain cells is a weird, sticky, stinky badge of honor.

A study conducted at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management  found that PSAs like this don’t discourage binge drinking, and may actually lead to more of it. Ad Age reports on the study, and more results will be published in the Journal of Marketing Research later this year. The ads rely on guilt and shame to move viewers, but if the target audience is already feeling guilt (about anything), they’re likely to shy away from things that play on those emotions, and resist the messages in the ads.

Campus: California Polytechnic State University (San Luis Obispo, California)
Name: Poly Canyon Village
Opened: September 2009
Cost: $239 million
Architect: Clark Construction and Niles Bolton Associates Design-Build Team

The students living in Cal Poly’s newest housing facility enjoy more than just the modest comforts of a traditional residence hall; they truly have a whole village. The nine four- and five-story buildings of the Poly Canyon Village complex fill up more than 1.4 million square feet and span 30 acres, housing 2,670 students in one of the largest student housing developments in America.

The 618 apartment-style units house four to six residents in mostly private bedrooms. The apartments surround a retail plaza that includes well-known dining facilities and vendors for bagels, coffee and smoothies. Other services include a post office, a copy center, and a dry cleaner. There is also a community center within the village that offers a swimming pool, study rooms, a knowledge center, a conference room, a music practice room, a sand volleyball court, basketball courts, and a billiards lounge.

The complex is the largest LEED certified student housing community nationwide, achieving the Gold level through a wide range of green features. The use of drought tolerant, native plants reduces irrigation use and bioswale landscape elements mitigate surface water runoff. The building includes low flow, high efficiency plumbing fixtures and low VOC products. Over 90 percent of construction waste was recycled and over 40 percent of the building materials were sourced regionally.  Also, in addition to two parking garages, Cal Poly officials also opted to include covered bike storage and accessible pedestrian pathways to encourage alternate transportation.

Editor’s Note: Spotlight is a recurring feature in this blog as well as Talking Stick magazine that focuses on newly-opened residence halls. Whether it is through design, construction, programs, or features, we look to put the spotlight on those deserving halls. To submit a hall from your campus, e-mail talkingstick@acuho-i.org.

This week on Inside HigherEd, students want to go to Haiti to help…but sometimes the best help is to stay out of the way. Professors, Facebook, and students…what happens when the three collide? (See our post on that topic here.) Community colleges take an economic opportunity to acquire more space. (Is anyone here doing this?) Also, are high school guidance counselors helping their charges?

SPRING BREAK IN A DISASTER ZONE: Despite warnings urging them to stay home, college students plan trips to earthquake-damaged Haiti.

NOT SO PRIVATE PROFESSORS: Faculty try to shield their personal lives from students, but the suspension of a Pennsylvania professor over Facebook postings shows there’s no such sanctuary online.

MARCH ON EVERYWHERE! Protesters from all sectors of eduction rally across the nation, and the Bay Area increasingly resembles the center
of a movement.

BUYER’S MARKET: With enrollments booming and dollars in short supply, community colleges look to vacant commercial properties and land swaps to acquire more space.

BAD ADVICE, NO ADVICE: The high school counselors who guide students through college admissions receive poor grades in a new national
survey.

In a touching and thoughtful essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Elizabeth Stone recounts what happened when a student of hers, Casey Feldman, died unexpectedly during summer break. Feldman’s roommate thoughtfully called Stone and others close to her in an effort to prevent them from hearing the news on Facebook first. Then Stone watched as Feldman’s friends grieved on Facebook, posting messages on her wall and consoling each other. As time went on, some friends would check in on Feldman’s page, telling her their news or recalling good times they shared.

The grieving process lasts long after the funeral, and Facebook was a way for Feldman’s friends to recognize that, and share their sadness together.

Facebook being used as a place to mourn and remember a life is hardly unheard of, but it’s still relatively new. What are your campus’ experiences with Facebook and grief?

The Washington Post story on Virginia Tech’s new alcohol policy really has, um, legs. The New York Times‘ Motherlode blog addressed the subject too, inspiring variety of comments from different viewpoints.

To recap, parents of any Virginia Tech student under 21 involved in an alcohol violation will be contacted. Previously, only parents whose students were involved in serious situations (alcohol poisoning, drunken driving, et cetera) were notified. Now, the parents of students who are caught in their rooms with a beer will also be told about the incident.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) restricts institutions from telling parents some sorts of information, but allows some latitude when it comes to health and safety issues.

Most institutions only inform parents of alcohol incidents when they are of a more serious nature, but a handful, such as Virginia Tech, are deciding to let parents know when anything alcohol-related happens to their student. One of Virginia Tech’s reasons for the change was the dismay they encountered when parents, who didn’t know of an initial violation, were surprised when their student was booted from school after the second.

The Motherlode blog’s respondents have a variety of viewpoints. Some don’t seem to be familiar with FERPA and its restrictions; they think institutions should alert parents of students’ grades as well. Some, thinking of their theoretical or real-life children, think they would want to know about any alcohol incidents; others say they would want to hear about only the most serious situations. Some comments get into the 21-up drinking age; is adulthood at 18 and alcohol consumption at 21 the best way to do things? If you have the time to skim, the comments section is a great cross-section of ideas and viewpoints on the issue.

What is your policy on informing parents about underage students’ alcohol-related incidents? Do you encounter parents who want to know more–or less–information than your policy reveals? How do you educate parents and students on FERPA and its restrictions?

…that is, the wrong person viewing your Facebook profile (or your profile on another social network).

Faculty, administrators and staff usually try to keep their private and professional lives separate, though that’s very hard when you are, say, a live-in area coordinator.

A faculty member at East Stroudsberg University recently got into hot water for her Facebook postings about her students and class frustrations. The commentary on Inside HigherEd largely derides her comments and the fact that she has a Facebook profile at all. A few pointed out that Facebook sometimes suddenly and quietly changes users’ privacy settings, so users must re-set their limits on who can see their profiles and status. Several commenters on Inside HigherEd display disgust towards social media; one declares Facebook is only for the friendless and exhibitionist. However, for younger faculty and staff, giving up social media entirely might seem somewhere between burdensome and completely unrealistic.

How do you strike a balance? Abandon Facebook? Self-edit your postings? Double-check your privacy settings weekly?

National Public Radio is running a series this week, Seeking Justice for Campus Rapes, about the difficulty of reporting, investigating, and prosecuting campus rapes. The NPR series was reported with cooperation from the Center for Public Integrity which has released a series of reports on the subject.

Colleges and universities are in a difficult position. While there are campus police forces, their latitude is often limited; colleges and universities are institutions of education, after all, not law enforcement. Public police forces are sometimes reluctant to get involved. Evidence collection and investigations are difficult, especially if the attack isn’t reported immediately. Many victims, understandably, are reluctant to report the incident immediately, if at all.

The NPR series is grim, but it’s worth a listen, to see if there are ways to improve the situation.

The March+April 2010 issue of the Talking Stick magazine is landing on desks and now is available online. The news you can use includes feature stories on better understanding the purchasing process (What’s the difference between a RFP and an IFB? Read the story and find out.) as well as discovering the benefits of having — or being — a professional mentor.

Other stories deliver advice on how to keep your momentum going all the way through the move-out process as well as examining ways to deliver amenities to students that are valued as well as a good value. And, just in time for The Placement Exchange, this issue’s “Conversations” feature has four professionals discussing how important creating an accurate job description is to finding the right person for the job.

Check out the latest issue. And also remember that you can browse past issues of the Talking Stick online by clicking the “Archives” tab that is at the bottom of the browser window.

This week on Inside HigherEd, reaching out to gay applicants and drop-out insurance for parents of little faith, among other stories.

PROTESTERS RECEIVE COY EMBRACE: March 4 demonstrations across California and nation will call for greater higher ed support, but college leaders give tepid public endorsement to volatile grass roots movement.

HIGHLIGHTING E-READERS: Colleges release analyses of major experiments with Kindles — and find students use less paper with the devices, but want better note-taking ability.

OUTREACH TO GAY APPLICANTS: Like many colleges, Penn has undergrads help woo admitted students with similar interests or ethnic backgrounds. Now the university is recruiting based on sexual orientation too.

FAMILY VALUES AND THE NCAA: Amid criticism from gay rights advocates, athletic association pulls advertisements from pro-family group that sparked Super Bowl controversy.

DROP-OUT INSURANCE: Is the market to assure parents of tuition refunds about to take off?

We all love those numbers we get from the United States Census.

There are 2.8 million students living on-campus.

There are 2,252 institutions offering housing in the United States.

The U.S. Census also counts:

Students in college or university housing by state
Total number of higher education students overall
Numbers of students in specific sorts of majors
The number of non-traditional-age students.

These stats are a great resource for us; I have some of them posted in front of my desk because I refer to them so often. ACUHO-I members are thrilled these statistics exist. And they’re free for public use.

So help the Census out, won’t you? The decennial census is this year. This is the big one, where baseline numbers for things such as students in residence halls per state are counted. It’s to our benefit to do this. Refer to this letter from the Department of Education and this Chronicle of Higher Education article for details.

The student affairs and higher education Twitter community was buzzing on Wednesday with people sharing the link to the Pew Research Center’s “How Millennial Are You?” quiz.  The fourteen question quiz provides a generational result ranging from Millennial [1981+] to Silent [1928-1945]. While results of the quiz were being Tweeted throughout the day, conspicuously absent from the conversation was dialog about what the quiz was actually trying to accomplish.

It is obvious from the questions on the quiz that this is a glorified Internet meme. The results, truly, are meaningless. Many of the traits being assigned to Millennial or Generation X are as much a function of personality as they are generational. Or, more flawed, they are things out of the control of the participant [e.g. the quiz asks about parents’ marital status].

While the site doesn’t portend to be an accurate evaluation, the ensuing conversation was fascinating about how student affairs professional perceive Millennial students. In fact, some seemed insulted to be considered a Millennial, flaunting their Generation X result.

Has it become a status symbol to be identified as a member of one generation rather than another? When did Millennial become a four-letter word, even for those who work in student affairs and higher ed? And, more importantly, have we lost sight that generational identities are indicators of trends in thought patterns, behaviors, and motivation?

Check out the quiz yourself and share your thoughts below.

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart is The Awesome. You all know that. Now he can be The Basis of Your Money Management Instruction for Students!

This Daily Show clip, brought to us via Gawker TV (their motto is “Your work can wait,” so be forewarned) can also be a way you can educate your students on how credit cards work, and how credit card issuers likely do not have their best interests at heart. And it will make them (and you) laugh as well. That’s always a good way to learn things.

What are your techniques for teaching students about unpleasant, “boring,” or otherwise un-enticing topics? Let us, and your colleagues, know!

Thanks to the excellent time-waster site Gizmodo, we now know about i-Ramen, the website documenting one man’s eating and evaluation of thousands of varieties and brands of instant noodles.  The site is in Japanese (the link above heads to the Google-translated site, which is comprehensible if a bit uneven), so while the author’s name is likely listed in the Japanese text that also serves as an image, I couldn’t find it in the translated text. If anyone out there can read Japanese, let me know who he (or she) is. The reviews evaluate Ramen the way wine is often considered: “moderate sweetness, strong stimulation of pepper,” reads one entry.

Editor’s Note: In an effort to see and hear firsthand what some campuses are doing to implement sustainable strategies on campus and specifically in their residence halls, members of the ACUHO-I Sustainability Committee are issuing reports from the field. The first comes from ACUHO-I Sustainability Director Lynne Deninger, principal with Cannon Design.

Amherst College is a small, private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, and is the third oldest college in the state. It is member of the historic Little Three colleges, which includes Wesleyan University and Williams College. With nearly 99 percent of the current student population living on campus, Amherst is committed to the development of living learning communities and as such has committed to developing more energy efficient and financially responsible renovations and new construction on campus without a lot of pomp and circumstance.

Now, Amherst has not signed the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment, nor do they have a full time sustainability director, a taskforce, or even a sustainable living/learning community. They do however know they want to provide appropriate role modeling while improving their energy efficiency and their bottom-line. I think they are moving in the right direction, one small project at a time.

Tom Davies, AIA, the director of design and construction and assistant director of facilities showed off some of the campus’ recent sustainability accomplishments that reflect the “pragmatic New England Puritan tradition” that built the Amherst campus. Following eight years of residential hall renovation projects, many of these successes were combined during the renovation of Hitchcock Hall. The following eight approaches are not necessarily glamorous or full of hype, but have met with great success.

Efficient Planning: Distinctly low tech with a high sustainability factor is the expansion of a building, even if it’s from 35 to 73 beds. Keeping existing structures and maximizing the number of students that use the existing amenities, social spaces and bathrooms, improves efficiencies.

Building Envelope: Amherst used the latest and best technology for insulating their historic masonry structures, open cell foam just to the right thickness to allow it to breathe in both directions. This took some research as if it’s too thick, the brick will disintegrate from the inside out over time. But with help from a strong design team, Amherst was able to significantly reduce heating consumption. Looking at every detail including all the insulation joints in the system at windows, doors, etc. created a new type of quality control system maximize outcomes. The prototype arrangement will be the norm on future projects.

Solar Hot Water: Hot water accounts for about a quarter of all energy consumed in a residence hall, and the solar system will cut that by more than half. The solar system is complex and expensive, but the key to making it effective is something extremely simple and cheap:  high-quality low-flow shower heads that cut the demand for hot water. Amherst tested a number of the best and settled on a model that was developed for high-end hotels in Las Vegas. They are now in every shower on campus. They’re terrific and even at $60 per they pay for themselves in about a year.

Boilers: Another high-tech hidden item is the use of high-efficiency boilers for building heating and hot water. As Davies said, “it’s not bleeding edge stuff, but is now a practical proven technology”.

Sensors: The use of occupancy sensors for lights to shut off when no one is around. This is a no-brainer. However, the use of humidity sensors to throttle back the bathroom exhaust when no one is taking a shower is a novel approach dreamt up by the design and construction office. They are monitoring the installation now to determine success.

Window Points: As many have experienced, students often leave windows open even when it’s five degrees outside. At Amherst, it is the norm for facilities staff to actually go around to every dorm room the day after winter break starts to close the windows. To address this problem, they began testing a system that senses when a window is opened and automatically lowers the thermostat setting to 60. The idea is that when the student gets cold, they’ll close the window again. Tom notes that with clever students, comes many opportunities to circumvent the system, but he believes it’s “worth a try” and perhaps the best outcome will be a general student awareness of the waste resulting from leaving a window open through the winter months.

LED Lighting: Davies notes, “an interesting story on this one is that our engineers wouldn’t believe the manufacturer’s claims about how much light LED lights generate per watt. When we started to light them up it was clear that they were more efficient than the design assumed, so we actually had to remove some to lower lighting levels.”

Vestibules: Designed appropriately, Davies notes, they actually work as air-locks. So often, vestibules are minuscule spaces between two doors, and even with one person entering or exiting both doors end up open at the same time, throwing away energy. At Amherst, all main entries have been redesigned to actually function as an air lock. It’s not going to get a LEED point. It’s not flashy “green” technology. But it’s high-value. Pragmatic New England design indeed.