ACUHO-I News Blog

The Ontario Association of College & University Housing Officers (that’s OACUHO, for the acronym-happy) asked me to do a presentation about trends in housing. They’re starting a series of monthly webinars  for OACUHO members on topics of general interest. This was my first webinar presentation, ever. I’m grateful to OACUHO’s members, particularly organizer Sean Kinsella, Residence Life Coordinator at Sir Sandford Fleming College, for being patient with me.

I decided to discuss the housing trends from the perspective of the sources I use when finding answers for our members’ most frequently-asked questions. These questions usually involve construction, policies, salaries and job duties and other management aspects of housing.

The government resources referred to in the presentation have their United States equivalents in the United States Census, the National Center for Education Statistics, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I’m happy to offer advice and tips to anyone wanting to use the resources mentioned in the presentation (or others) for research!

The presentation: Trends in Housing

A lot of my time is spent searching academic databases for articles on student housing or college students in general. I’m happy to run searches for ACUHO-I members, but if you’d like to find the cites for yourself, here’s some tips.

I rely on four databases to find most of the citations I distribute through ACUHO-I. Since ACUHO-I’s Central Office benefits from a relationship with Ohio State University, we use OSU’s library system too. Your selection of databases may vary, but the ones I use most are: Education Full Text from H.W. Wilson; Education Research Complete from EBSCO Host; ERIC from EBSCO Host and PsycINFO from Ovid.

The best way to get what you want out of a database is to use search terms that are recognized by the database. While doing a full-text search on your own term (if possible) may net useful results, it may also result in lots of stuff that’s of no interest to you, with the items you want buried in the results somewhere. How do you figure out which terms the database prefers? Look in the database’s thesaurus. Unlike Roget’s, this thesaurus has little to do with synonyms; it is a listing of terms recognized by the database. Often the thesaurus is a little hard to find, since it’s an insider sort of thing to know about. Looking at the advanced search options might help; also look at the small menus above and below the big Google-like search box.  If you can browse the subject list, that’s it.

After using a database regularly, you’ll become familiar with its nomenclature. For example, in all the databases I just mentioned, the term residence halls isn’t used; the preferred term is dormitories. Another way to find useful terms is to find an article you want (either one you already know of, or one you find through an otherwise less-satisfying search) and look at the subject terms. Then search on those. You can also combine searches to get more targeted results. Let’s say you searched on “dormitories” and then you searched “autism” and you want to see how many records have both of those subjects attached. There will usually be a link or button called “search history” or similar. Click it, and you’ll see the searches you’ve already done and how many hits each got. Select the searches you wish to combine, choose to combine them with AND (not OR, which will give you one omnibus result!) and there’s autism + dormitories. Databases are not perfectly consistent however, so be sure you’ve covered all your bases. The broader term “College-students–Housing” is often used as a subject for articles in which “dormitory” would be equally appropriate. So run your search with that term as well. If you want to look like a librarian, and save some time by conducting only one search, you could do this too: “(Dormitories OR College-students–Housing) AND Autism”. See? Now all the pretty infogeeks are checkin’ you out!

Folks who contact the Central Office often have pretty basic requests; they want to register for a conference, change their directory information or find ACUHO-I’s founding documents. When it’s the third request, their call or e-mail is sent to me.

On the top of the homepage of the ACUHO-I library, there’s a gray bar. This bar has links to our most-requested documents. Among them are the ACUHO-I Constitution and By-Laws, and the other is our Standards and Ethical Principles. The Standards and Ethical Principles has been shortened to Code of Ethics so everything will fit. We don’t get requests for copies of the Statement of Residents’ Rights and Responsibilities as often, so it’s not on the homepage, but it is in the library. Here’s its record. If you get a log-in screen when you click these links, enter as a guest (see the link to the lower left of the log-in box), no username or password needed.) The catalog usually works better with Explorer than Firefox. We’re going to try to wean it of its prejudices later in 2010, though.

One way to benchmark a housing operation is to compare what percentage of your institution’s students (usually undergraduates) live in university-operated housing. First, here’s some general numbers for this:

The College Housing 2005 Special Report, a survey of our membership by Paul Abramsen, which was reported in the 21st Century Project Reading Compendium, Edited by Norbert W. Dunkel and James Baumann, published in 2006 found:

·  Public institutions had an average of 232 beds per residence hall and accommodated 41.1% of their students in residence halls. The median was 194 beds per hall, and 29.6% accommodated.

·  Private institutions had an average of 138 beds per residence hall, and accommodated an average of 73% of their students. The median was 112 beds per hall, and 72.1% accommodated.

·  This averages out to 54.8% average and 42.6% median accommodated, and 208 average and 151 median beds per hall, for all students.

Obviously, these numbers are general, and can’t be applied to all institutions. Demographics, location, and other factors affect the on-campus to off-campus ratio. When a member asks for help comparing their institution’s ratio to others, I, or my intern Lily Birkhimer, will create a list of 10-15 institutions similar to the member’s, then research those schools’ ratios for a useful comparison.

Turnabout is fair play, right?

I’ve been asked to present a webinar program on major trends in housing. I’ve compiled a list of potential topics below. Can you think of anything I’m missing? Thank you for your help in advance! I’ll post my presentation here after the webinar in mid-May.

1. Construction, design and amenities
2. Luxury & entitlement vs. community and learning to live with others
3. Gender-neutral housing, and other GLBT issues
4. Alcohol and drugs. The “drinking culture”
5. Mental health
6. Legislation and the government
7. Special requests and needs: service animals, attendants, access, etc.
8. Hiring and staffing:
   – Drawing new people to the profession
   – Determining qualifications and job descriptions
   – RA selection and training
9. Proving the worth of residence life and residence professionals
   – Limited research in some areas
   – Increasingly diverse higher education population
   – More reliance on distance learning
10. Costs, budgeting, contracts

Happy Thursday, folks!

I’ve been getting a flurry of questions about RA hiring, evaluation and supervision lately. It’s RA-recruitment season, after all. Unfortunately, there’s no single resource that covers this topic thoroughly. (Hint, hint, if you’re in the mood to research and write a book or paper.) If you’re not up for that, post your tips and resources here!

One member asked about RA qualifications.  I looked at what others are doing. I searched for institutions who specified RA qualifications on their websites beyond the usual good-GPA-and-good-disciplinary-record stipulation.

Here are a few of them:

Brigham Young
Carnegie Mellon
Kent State University
Carleton College
University of Oregon
University of Montevallo
University of Central Florida
Towson University

I also found some scholarly articles on the topic. Here’s a a sample list of citations:

• Wu, M.B. & Stemler, S.E. (2008) Resident Advisor General Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence, Personality Dimensions, and Internal Belief Characteristics as Predictors of Rated Performance; NASPA Journal (Online). 45 (4); 528-59.

• Servaty-Seib, H. L. & Taub, D. J. (2008) Training Faculty Members and Resident Assistants to Respond to Bereaved Students; New Directions for Student Services 121; 51-62.

• Healea, C.D. (2005) Character Education with Resident Assistants: A model for developing character on college campuses. Journal of Education, 186(1); 65-77.

• Elleven, R. K.; Allen, J. & Wircenski, M. (2001) Resident Assistant Training: A southwestern perspective. College Student Journal, 35 (4); 609-15.

The Central Office regularly fields calls from folks who would like to use ACUHO-I’s membership database for research purposes. Usually, they would like to send our members surveys. This is how we handle research requests:

We have a Research Committee, chaired by Dr. Jeff Doyle of Appalachian State University. The committee’s board liaison is the Executive Board’s Knowledge Enhancement Director. Dr. Tony Cawthon, from Clemson University, is our current Knowledge Enhancement Director.  This committee reviews all research requests. Basically, they’re looking to see what’s in it for ACUHO-I and the rest of our membership. The researcher’s openness to sharing his or her results with us and the membership makes it more likely his or her request will be approved. The completed research being of significant use to our membership is helpful too.

As far as what can be pulled from our membership database, we can select for state, region, size and type of institution, among some other factors. We can select for professional area, within certain parameters. We cannot select based on length of professional employment, precise professional duties, or institutional structure. Laura Pietrykowski, the membership coordinator at the Central Office, knows our database inside and out, and will craft the best query for the researcher’s request.

…well, actually you weren’t asking. No one’s asked about this. But I think it’s interesting anyway. During the 1970s and in 1980, the ACUHO-I president would write letters to the membership called Prez-O-Grams. These seem to have been produced once or twice a year.

The Prez-O-Grams were two to six pages long and type-written. In their earlier days, the Prez-O-Grams were compilations of members’ experiences and practices with their jobs. By the last letter, produced in 1980, the Prez-O-Gram was filled with association information, about the annual conference, legislative issues and other initiatives.

The name reminds me of a Cold War-era patriotic snack for children. That aside, these papers are an interesting way to get a feel for that president’s “voice,” and the issues of the time.

The 1971 Prez-O-Gram has anecdotes on student attitudes: “From the Northeastern region comes some indication that, while no group disturbances have occurred, there are signs of tension and anxiety among individual students, with one threatening another and ensuing fights…Personnel in the upper Midwest region note a possible increase in students’ concern with themselves as opposed to social issues, asking ‘Who am I,” and ‘Where do I want to go?’ A new interest in growth group participation is reported.”

The letter goes on to discuss co-ed halls (and their acceptance or otherwise) and visitation hours, among other items.

I’ve scanned them all for your enjoyment: PrezOGrams.

A member recently asked this question. I thought it was interesting, and that the answer is too. Hopefully you feel the same.

Does anyone know of any articles or studies as to when/why the lingo changed from dorm to res hall (to living center, etc)?

As far as I know, there aren’t any articles specifically on this (please post in the comments if you know otherwise). However, this is the answer I sent.

Below I  pasted the definitions from the online etymology dictionary, to which I’m referring here.  (I love the Online Etymology Dictionary, by the way. It is fabulous.)

Basically, “dormitory” comes from the word dormir which means to sleep or to become dormant. I’ve included some related definitions as well; cubicle (derived from a word that meant “to lie down, to bend oneself”), was the space in which someone slept in the dormitory. The word “cemetery” was derived from words related to dormitory, as it is a “sleeping place.”

The references to folding oneself into cubicles and death are likely the reason “dormitory” fell out of favor.

Further below, there’s the historical meanings for the words “residence” and “hall” which have much grander and more home-like pedigrees than that of “dormitory.” These connotations are what universities and colleges refer to when explaining why those buildings are residence halls, not dormitories. (A number of examples can be found at the link.)

I think the terms “living-learning” and similar, to specifically denote the educational aspects of residence halls, were used more commonly following the publishing of the Residential Nexus, which argued for a strong educational presence in the residence halls. As this is also a way to show the benefits of housing to students, parents and the administration, housing pros emphasize the home-like and educational aspects of housing, rather than the sleeping, dormant aspect.

EDIT: Kevin Guidry’s comment about an article in the Talking Stick sent me on a hunt through late-80s copies of the magazine. After flipping through many pages of–it must be said–ill-advised editorial, advertisement and fashion decisions, I found the article to which he was likely referring. Here it is: TalkingStick87 ResHallsDorms

(more…)

We’re not going to even talk about how belated this edition of You Were Asking is. We’ll just get on with it.

I regularly get requests for an ACUHO-I sanctioned square footage for a residence hall room or suite, or a recommended square footage for each student.

We don’t offer such advice; residential spaces and the institutions that offer them are so diverse, it would be a mammoth task to do so. However, there are some resources that can help you make informed decisions.

The MGT/ACUHO-I Construction Survey is a biennial study on members’ construction projects and plans. It can be found on the ACUHO-I library homepage, in the black bar across the top. (If you are requested for a time zone to enter the catalog, supply one, then enter as a guest, no login required.)

While you’re in the catalog, search “construction” to find member presentations on the subject.

Also, American School & University magazine conducts an annual residence hall construction report. It includes the average square footage per student (including common areas).

If you have any questions, feel free to write me: emily@acuho-i.org.

  Today, I’d like to tell you about a little 40-page booklet that could prove quite indispensable to you. It is the ISSA 540 Cleaning Times, available from ISSA, an association for cleaning and custodial contractors and vendors. (Originally, the ISSA stood for International Sanitary Supply Association, but in 2005, it was changed to ISSA: The Worldwide Cleaning Association, to better reflect their membership.)

The cleaning times booklet has estimations of the times it takes to do certain custodial tasks, such as: The time it takes one person to vacuum a carpeted hallway of a certain square footage; the time it takes to clean a certain number of restroom sinks; the minutes expended vacuuming a couch. They also include the tools typically used for a job. This can help you allocate custodial staff and supplies.

 Residence halls have been around, in one form or another, for about 700 years. In 1300s Bologna, students were organized in soccii. Not to be outdone, students at the University of Paris were soon organized into paedagogies, and Oxford students were grouped into halls and colleges. This was done because of town-gown tensions: Students usually wanted lower rents than local landlords would offer. The students were also vulnerable to crime, as many were far away from home. Only the “residence” part of “residence life” was in play at this time, however. After installing them in their houses, the universities had no part in what the students did or how they lived. The students were  entirely self-governing.

In 1453, the first system of requiring live-on came into place. The chancellor of the university of Paris (split into thirteen institutions in 1970) began requiring students to live in paedagogies. These houses were still governed largely by student-elected leaders, however, called regents at the University of Paris, and principals at Oxford. These paedagogies were  the beginning of the colleges that would later split off to form the thirteen separate institutions that exist today. (The word college comes from Latin, colligere, to assemble.) The requirement to live in the paedagogies was issued for similar reasons that we have live-on requirements today: It was considered beneficial for students’ studies and their scholarship to have an established place to live with other students. Students were housed with others according to their field of study or homeland.

In about 1400, German universities established bursen. These were very large, institutional halls for students. The halls usually featured one sleeping room for 200 or more students. Monks organized, operated and lived in each hall, and taught at the university. After the Protestant Reformation, the bursen were replaced with boarding houses.

At around the same time, Oxford University established domus pauperums, endowed hostels, for their poorer students. Initially, these were governed similarly to other student residences; the university left the students to their own devices. However, the institution gradually began increasing its control over the hostels, selecting student leaders, and then faculty members, to govern the residence halls. By the 1550s, Oxford had complete governance over their residence halls.

However, when the University of Paris was reorganized in 1808, the residence halls were abandoned.  When the University of Berlin was constructed in 1809, residence halls were not included in the plans. The Reformation, which greatly reduced the influence of the Catholic church in Europe, and an emphasis on spending money on academics to the exclusion of anything else, both had a lot to do with this.

Only at Oxford and Cambridge did residence halls persist as an integral part of the higher education experience. Thus, the United States’ residence hall system is heavily influenced by England, as most of those who established the first colleges and universities in the United States were graduates of Cambridge or Oxford. Similarly, other places that have been colonized by England tend to have stronger residence hall cultures.

Source: The Resident Assistant, Gregory S. Blimling and Lawrence Miltenberger, 1981.

The first residence hall in the United States is easier to pin down than the first residence hall ever. The first residence halls ever were  in Bologna, in the 1300s. We’ll talk more about those next week.

The first residence hall in the United States was at the country’s oldest institution, Harvard University. Old College, also known as Harvard College, was not only the first residence hall, but also the university’s first new academic building and the first higher education building in the English colonies. Construction started in 1638 and was completed in 1644. It was located on the southern end of Harvard Yard. The building was three stories, with a lecture room, a library, a kitchen (including a corn room), and chambers and tiny studies (4 1/3 x 5 feet) for students. The corn room was for storing the quantities of grain necessary to feed young scholars. Grain was also how some students paid their tuition. The chambers were large rectangular rooms in which about three students lived. The studies were small rooms within these, one for each student. The study was a place a student could read alone, likely an attractive option given their communal lives. The studies were arranged on the outside walls, so each had a tiny window. There were fireplaces in the rooms, but not in the studies, so these spaces must have been quite cold. They also had no independent source of light other than the windows, as most college students could not afford lamp-oil.

The building was notoriously drafty and cold, due in part to Bostonians’ inexperience with building structures appropriate to New England weather. This wasn’t limited to Old College; many of Cambridge’s first buildings proved unsound.  After numerous repairs, it became apparent that Old College wasn’t worth saving, and construction on Harvard Hall II began in 1671. When the new building was ready, the library was evacuated from Old College, then the students (a year later!). Most of Old College had fallen down by the time the structure was demolished in 1679. No images of it remain.

The ACUHO-I Central Office regularly gets calls about legislation, particularly whether we represent the interests of housing professionals in Washington, D.C. We do! A lobbyist in Washington works on behalf of ACUHO-I and a consortium of other student affairs organizations. Our lobbyist keeps us updated on potential legislation and the rule-making process that follows passage of a bill. ACUHO-I’s Public Policy Advisory committee, chaired by Bill Fox, gathers opinions and thoughts on legislation and rules and forwards these to our lobbyist. I am the committee’s liaison, and assist them with anything they need from the Central Office or ACUHO-I at large.

If there is legislation in which you are particularly interested or in which you have expertise, the committee would love to hear from you. Especially when legislation is being debated in Congress or during the rule-making period (when the parameters of a law are set and its enforcement determined) it is important for professionals in the field to contribute their thoughts on proposed laws or rules.

As you likely know, there’s been a lot of action on Capitol Hill concerning higher education and particularly the student affairs and safety sides of things, and our committee has been working hard on ACUHO-I’s response to these issues. In the rule-making process right now is legislation on fire safety reporting; crime statistics and institutional security policy reporting (including missing persons reporting); emergency procedures; readmission requirements for service members; and file-sharing education. Obviously, housing is very closely connected to  many of these issues and we’re particularly interested in some of these, particularly the fire safety reporting. Check out this letter: Letter to Dept of Ed for HEOA Draft. It was written by ACUHO-I and our partner associations, regarding our thoughts on the rule-making process. If you can contribute your professional thoughts, we would greatly appreciate it.

We get this question all the time, from everyone in the profession, at all levels and all sorts of employ: public, private and companies. Jon and I maintain a list of citations on this topic, updating it several times a year with new articles.

Note: I’ve updated the document, now without the dupes. Thanks to Kevin for pointing them out!

Benefits of OnCampus Housing