ACUHO-I News Blog

Editor’s Note: Stacy Oliver has turned over her blog to the interns again. This week’s post is from Dillon Wyatt, a graduate student at Western Carolina University, who is interning at Indiana University South Bend for the summer.

Stacy’s Note: Supervisors, stop reading here. This post is for other ACUHO-I interns. Or you can keep reading to learn more about what your interns are going through (like I did), but make sure you share this.

When I got to my intern site two weeks ago, I thought I was ready to for the experience to start. By the next evening I felt that it wasn’t the place for me. Then I started to remember a few things.

1. Things should feel foreign. I conducted my search partially with the goal of ending up at an institution that was in a different part of the country than my own grad school. I did this because I wanted to experience a different region and to try something new. I go to grad school in the same state that I grew up in, so that was very important to me. Then I got here and felt that it was strange and alien, unlike home, and didn’t like it. That was when I remembered I wanted this, to test myself, to see how I would do somewhere new, and to experience new things.
2. I should feel uncomfortable. I wanted an internship that was different than my graduate assistant position. This meant I wanted something different than a mid-sized public institution with traditional students and a decent-sized, well established residential living department. I am at a brand (almost) new, tiny department at a mid-sized public institution with a lot of non-traditional students. I got an internship with a lot of different traits than my grad school; it should feel weird and uncomfortable. It should take me awhile to fit in. I have started to learn how the department and institution work. I have started to find my niche. I am learning my role. It’s, a different one than my graduate assistantship, but it’s my role.
3. I need to learn the area. My grad school is in a rural area, I am interning at an urban institution, once again by design. The first couple of days I felt that I didn’t fit into the area, I didn’t like it, it was dirty and strange (Stacy’s note: My poor interns moved in during the rainiest week of the year. Now that the sun is shining, they both promise they’re happier). Then I found a couple of grocery stores, learned a couple of streets, and found a couple of places to eat. Now I am much more comfortable there. You shouldn’t know the area, which is one of the great things about the internship exchange; you get to discover a new place. (more…)

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.

International Hall Staff Appreciation Day does not, for reasons unbeknown to me, come pre-printed on the blotter calendars that are delivered to my office each year by the local furniture vendor representatives. Each year it sneaks up on me in the midst of staff selection and room lottery seasons, a seemingly innocuous Wednesday in mid-February.

There are traditions for this day in my world. They involve rallying the Community Council, oversize signs on staff member’s doors, a Dairy Queen ice cream cake at staff meeting just when the staff has reached their threshold with my full agenda. They are small things, to be certain, but they are things that highlight my appreciation of these undergraduate students who step up and demonstrate leadership in their community. We know from our own experiences that it can be a thankless job, and while we do our best to demonstrate continued appreciation to student staff, it falls off the to do list amidst all of the other responsibilities we have.

I am reminded of celebrating the same day a decade ago when I was a resident assistant. Having the dining hall’s premiere and rarely served dessert at a staff meeting seemed indulgent for a Wednesday night; the decorations on my door reminded all of my residents that even if they were mad at me that week for enforcing policies, I was appreciated by someone on campus for doing my job.

(more…)

In every phone interview that I conducted for ACUHO-I interns this year, I openly discussed what makes the experience at our institution different than other internships candidates may have been considering. Aside from the administrative nature of the position and the opportunity to work in a department that is only two years old, I also pointed out the not-so-obvious: When I hire two summer interns, I double the size of our office staff.

Because of this, the intern process means something different for our department than it may for larger departments. Departments that hire six or eight interns as conferences staff potentially also double the size of their staff, but without the two additional bodies [and brains!] brought in each summer, our operation would fail to thrive. We rely on those two additional people to move our operation forward. I am continuously amazed by what these young soon-to-be professionals are able to accomplish in the eight weeks they are with us. In fact, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t use something created or enhanced by a previous intern. (more…)

Seven months ago I welcomed a cute and cuddly little bundle of joy into my life. Her dad and I call her Charlotte. She’s our first child and has proved to provide more joy, but also more work, than I ever could have imagined. Some of you reading this know exactly what I’m talking about and many of you may be able to relate only partially, or not at all, but I’m guessing that each and every one of you know what it’s like to have to balance work with personal commitments. (If you don’t, please share your secret with me!)

Residence life at OSU has a history of being a family-friendly environment, which is something that I take for granted since that’s always been my experience. When I came back to work after eight weeks home with my baby, she came with me the entire summer. Even now I still pack her up and wheel her in twice a week. (In January her “come with mommy to work” days will be over) When people outside of our office, either friends, family or other professionals I work with, ask where she stays while I’m at work, I’m both delighted and embarrassed to share with them that she comes with me. I get so many people who say, “that’s great” or “I wish I could bring insert-their-child’s-name-here to work with me.” Personally, I love it and I hate it and I kind of can’t wait for it to be over. Judge me, as you will for being antsy for these days to end.

What do I enjoy about having Charlotte at work with me?

1. I think she’s pretty cute and I love to show her off. I’d be lying if I claimed otherwise. (ed. note — keep reading for photographic proof)
2. It’s a lot easier to pack stuff all together and drag her along with me. I have less to pack and get home earlier since I don’t have to pick up/drop her off anywhere.
3. I don’t have to worry about food for her for that day. I could be more specific, but I’ll spare you the details here.
4. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on her new “tricks.” Just before I started writing this, she was crawling to my feet screaming “ma-ma-meh-meh-MEH” to be picked up. I love that I don’t have to hear about things like that second-hand. I was there for it.
5. She gets to interact with other people and they get to enjoy her. I love the combo of her developing social skills and others just getting to smile when they see her.
6. She makes me smile. It’s nice to have that kind of motivation in your day.
7. It was way easier to get back into the swing of things when I first came back with her. She helped me ease into things and I probably came back earlier than I would have if I wasn’t bringing her along with me. I was still able to be quite productive even with her here when she was younger. Things are a little different now that she’s crawling.

Why having my daughter here isn’t all sunshine and rainbows…

1. I know that by choosing to have her here, I’m being judged by the people that I work with. The truth is, because of the precedent set ahead of me, I might even be judged MORE if I chose not to bring her with me. Either way, I know that someone out there is assuming I’m less competent, less committed to my work, or less considerate of others. (Or any combination of the above)
2. I can’t always get things done as fast as I used to. She’s a joy, but also a distraction.
3. Life is less predictable. Wardrobe malfunctions, illness, general crankiness (the kid, not me) and feeding habits make scheduling a bit harder and sometimes interrupt previously scheduled plans.
4. Our campus, as a whole, is not always ADA friendly. I didn’t look at that too carefully until I was rolling around a stroller, but some buildings are great and others need a lot of work to really be accessible.
5. I am hypersensitive about every whine, cry and peep that comes out of my daughter in an attempt to be considerate of others around me. I can’t tell you how many times I leave the room with Charlotte because she’s making noise and someone says to me “I couldn’t even hear her” or “she’s fine”.
6. My office is a pig sty. My desk has always been cluttered, but the assorted children’s toys add a different level of mess and it’s hard to get your work done, take care of your child AND clean all at once. (more…)

I feel like lately I’ve been internally sensing and expressing confusion about what my job is and what my next tasks should be. It’s not that I’ve been sitting by idly or that I haven’t had work on my plate, but I don’t feel this overwhelming pressure. While it’s kind of a nice change, I think it sometimes makes me feel like I have less of a purpose than I should. I’ve been thinking about that A LOT and processing in meetings with my supervisor quite a bit and even listening as others express similar sentiments. Although I don’t yet have “the answer,” I feel that I’ve recently had a break-through that will help me move past this. Here it goes.

As I think back to my time starting here at OSU (as a full-time staff member), I remember how excited I was to return to my undergraduate institution. At the same time, my previous supervisors from my time as an RA were still here and I really felt I had a lot to live up to and felt really pressured to impress.

The hall director position had been advertised to me as one with a great level of autonomy. I actually found a lot of what I did to be pretty prescribed and the CYA mentality to be pretty pervasive almost from the moment I got here. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t be creative about some things or that I couldn’t go above and beyond in other areas and put my mark on my buildings and projects. It just meant that if I wanted to do something that had a larger implication, I had to ask my supervisor who asked her supervisor who, in turn, had to ask her supervisor. I loved my work, my students, my staff and my job and became really comfortable doing what I knew I was “supposed to do.”

Whether people buy it or not, things are different now. You don’t have to have 20 people’s permission before you make a decision.  You have the freedom to make a lot of different things happen. Sounds great, right? As a J, I can say it’s great in principle, but kind of tough to figure out how to make it happen. (more…)

My parents just flew home to California after a two-week stay with my family. Having them here gave me a little extra time to let the mental dust settle and just think a bit. It also reminded me that my parents’ influence has snuck into arenas I do not often consider.

I was recently telling my supervisor that I was raised in a house that practiced a religion based on a blend of Eastern and Western philosophies. I was taught at an early age to meditate, as well as to use visualization. If you are sick, visualize your body well. Essentially, I was taught that you are what you think.

This concept of visualization was reinforced by coaches in gymnastics as well. If you want to perform a good routine, you must first see it being executed perfectly in your head. Really feel it mentally. This practice has served me well over the years. I am someone whose boots shake when they have to speak in public. Doing the mental run-through first helps.

But lately, the desire to visualize has been a bit of a roadblock for me at work as I try to plan for the year ahead. I feel that this is partly due to my place in the organization. Let me jump back in time for a moment. (more…)

Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings, has the ability to see the past and the future simultaneously. We mortals have a similar ability – vision, hope as well as fear are all residents of the future, while perspective, pride, and regret dwell in the past. As we look forward and as we look back the good and the bad weave together inseparably.

This series, Housing 360, is focused on documenting multiple perspective of a housing department in transition.  At Ohio State, the university as a whole is amid a cultural transformation so our transition within housing exists in a broader context of university transition.  We see the future: Our president sees an Ohio State that functions far less based on the bureaucratic ethic of fairness and operating with far more focus on common sense and the individual experience of the student. Our department is transitioning from a two-year period of being governed by numbers (i.e. counting the number of student programs) to a model of student engagement more akin to student affairs than accounting.

While we see the future, we also see the past:  The “CYA” behavior of assigning blame and distancing ourselves from our mistakes, have hindered us from learning from our errors – dooming us to repeat them.  If a shift in the culture has indeed taken place, the difficulty is in convincing people who have been formed by the culture of the past, that it is now safe to take chances and make mistakes.  While the future direction of the organization is largely a function of the vision of leadership, the cultural change brought about on the ground is largely a function of individual choice.  To commit to look forward and let go of past perceived transgressions of colleagues, who were operating in the context of a different organization.

My “default” settings, like most people, are set to avoid pain, but yielding to the fear of future pain is a prescription of paralysis.  The question for myself is to what degree am I willing to blindfold myself to the past and re-invest in fractured relationships and understand that individual behavior is largely a function of the organizational culture?  A shift in the direction of an organization’s culture is an opportunity to begin again, focus on the students we serve and our role in assisting them in defining and reaching their personal, academic and career goals.

As you think about your work setting, what cultural aspects of the past must be left behind in order to move forward?  What responsibilities does university leadership have to set the create and implement cultural change and where do our responsibilities lie?

Greetings world! My name is Phil and I’m a hall director at Ohio State.  I’m excited to be a part of this blog and to “keep it real” from the hall director perspective, which is something that I’m known to do (for better or worse).

Back in May, I made the brilliantly crazy decision to move from my traditional first-year residence hall to become the first hall director for the Lane Avenue Residence Hall, a converted Holiday Inn hotel across the street from our main campus.  There’s much more to come on the challenges of the building, but what I didn’t realize when I accepted this new opportunity was that my office would provide me with just as much new knowledge as my new building.

Just like other departments in transition we are preaching the idea of transparency in our roles and processes in an effort to make them as efficient as possible.  For me, transparency became quite literal when I moved into my temporary summer office.

No you are not confused; I am in an open seating area without walls. My office was located in Neilwood Gables, the location of our central housing office and the director of Residence Life, Cheryl Lyons (who is also blogging with us).  In addition to moving and opening a new building I was also chairing the Housing Training Committee, which meant that I already spent a lot of time talking to Cheryl, so along with my excitement of being in the central office, I also had reservations about being within shouting distance of Cheryl for two and a half months. (more…)

Many of us have had challenging supervisees.  Indeed, if everyone were at the top of their game and required no supervision, we’d need far fewer supervisors!  Lately, I’ve had some interesting dialogue with my leadership team about having the difficult conversations with people about the realities of how they are perceived.  Yes, I do mean with supervisees in the room with them!

I’m not talking about the feedback and evaluation cycle here.  You may know the saying about “no surprises” at evaluation time.  It really is a good practice not to blind-side someone in their evaluation with feedback they’ve never been given before.

What I’m talking about here is the non-evaluation type of feedback.  The kind of conversation where you actually find a way to tell someone, who is doing a pretty good job, that there is some poor practice, fatal flaw, or disastrous habit standing in the way of their success; the kind of things that people joke about behind their backs, but never address the foible owner about directly.

I have been working in an organizational culture in which not discussing someones Achilles heel with them has been the norm.  There are many reasons for this:  they do a good job “in spite of” their foible; we’ll have to face them in meetings for the next several years and that makes us squeamish; we think it’s their (unchangeable) personality; or we don’t want to hurt their feelings.

What I’ve seen in my experience is that people end up losing out on the opportunity to know the truth about their reputations. They don’t know that they are being talked about, worked around, or overlooked for more responsibilities and opportunities because of the “unsaid” factors.

I see this as a very delicate matter, indeed. I am not talking here about the “Tell it like it is! If they don’t like it, they can leave!” kind of mentality.  I’m talking about investing in our colleagues and supervisees in a caring way.  It is the idea that you’d care enough about someone’s career and personal development enough to sit them down and say, “You know, Ginger, I care about your success. I know that you are working hard and doing great things for students, but I’m wondering if you are aware of how your colleagues see you showing up in the workplace.”

I can tell you that when I have had this type of conversation with some folks who have worked in an organization for years and they look at you in a shocked way and tell you that they “had no idea.” It’s a real bummer.  People feel even more off-balance when they find out their previous supervisors or trusted colleagues in the same organization never talked with them about it either.  It is a very difficult thing to do, but I am challenging myself, and my staff, to not let folks go blindly forward in their careers without having the brave and honest conversations that need to be had.

The best part about having the guts to have these caring conversations is that then you can then be an ally in helping the person to process the new information.  You can help them find new perspectives about their performance or personality.  You can encourage them to ask others for some honest feedback and you can help them to figure out if the issue is changeable. Or, maybe they just aren’t meshing with the place after much effort and you can help them come to terms with the fact that sticking around for several more years waiting for a promotion isn’t the best idea.

Many of us do this well with our students.  We can critique their résumé, give them advice on their confrontation skills, and tell them that something they said was “inappropriate.” What prevents us from investing in the growth and development of our colleagues as well?

“Assistant Director for Academic Initiatives” or ADAI. This is my title and the position that I stepped into here at Ohio State last summer. I often get a lot of questions about what it is that I actually do, and until recently, I felt pretty well equipped to respond.However, amidst all of the changes at the university and in our department, including changes to my actual responsibilities, I find myself sometimes stumbling to give a coherent answer.

So, what would I have told people before? I would have told them about how I work with the Learning Communities in our buildings and am a part of the planning team to facilitate those programs and events. I would have mentioned that I went to one-on-one meetings to build relationships with our hall directors and find out how I can support their LCs and their staffs as well as discover what kinds of academic resources I could provide to them. I would also talk about a number of ways that I helped out with the fiscal side of LC spending. But now hall directors have been empowered to take control of their own LCs and their supervisors, the “other” assistant directors, have been charged with helping their staff be successful, including their work with LCs. (Please note I’m only using “other” to indicate that I have a very different job than the ADs who supervise our hall staff, not that I have any animosity there.)

Don’t get me wrong. I still keep myself busy and find my free time isn’t as wide open as it might sound. I work with some auxiliary assignments including our tutoring and community service initiatives. I still have a role in Learning Communities in an overarching way, and am still a part of a number of big picture conversations. I just don’t know how to encapsulate that when someone asks what I do.

Everyone else can talk about who they supervise and tangible things that they actually produce. Their place in a hierarchy is clear and mine is a bit muddled. I take comfort in knowing I’m not alone (there are two others who have the same title and just work with different buildings and communities), but I also recognize that my peers and I are constantly looking at each other and thinking: “Is that the way I’m supposed to be doing this?”

This doesn’t occur because we’re self-conscious, just because we really don’t know the answer. Our individual personalities, the people we work with, and programs that we support all shape how we are currently working and I can’t say we’re always on the same page, but we often don’t know which page we’re supposed to be on anyway.

Hierarchy is not everything and I have no issues doing things that aren’t in my job description or letting someone do something that is when they might be better equipped to do so. I am just struggling with how I can do my job and help support our mission without stepping on others’ toes. Because my role has changed so much (and after only being in it one year, I really hadn’t fully understood the complexities of it to begin with), I often find myself asking who else should be around the table. When academic partners contact me, I find myself wondering if it’s my job, the hall director’s job, the assistant director’s job, or everyone’s to respond. I know deep down the answer is that everyone has a responsibility, but that’s not really clear-cut. It’s not that I want to be the first one in line to say “Nope, not my job,” but I also find myself confused about where to draw the line and am still wading through to find the answer. I don’t want to leave anyone out of the conversations who should be there or shift the ownership in the wrong direction, but I also want to make sure we work smart, don’t duplicate efforts and at the same time all have the ability to meaningfully contribute.

As a professional, I find that I usually deal well with ambiguity, but every time someone asks me what my job is or what it actually means, I struggle to communicate it in a succinct and meaningful way and remember that I don’t actually know the whole answer. (Which probably leaves some people thinking that all I do is sit in my office and play sporcle games all day long.)  Amid all of the uncertainty, I know I’m not alone, that we’re all working to make our own meaning and should spend more time focusing on our shared goals instead of our individual roles. After all, with the changes that have already happened and the assumption that more changes are afoot, I’m trying to mentally prepare myself for the fact that my role and responsibilities might shift again before the dust has settled.

Since we just finished training our staff, opening our halls, and welcoming our students back to Ohio State, I thought I would take a minute to reflect on how training and opening have changed this year. Yes, folks, we just opened! We will only open in late September for two more years.  In the fall of 2012, we will be opening on the semester timeline.  The “semester conversion” process could be a different blog altogether so I won’t go there.  Let me focus on training and opening for now.

Although much of our training was very similar to years past, there was one very distinct difference.  We, as presenters and organizers, were challenged to do it differently. Like most institutions we approached training in the, “Okay, here we go again!” kind of way, rolling out our old schedules, calling up the previous presenters, and maybe doing a new icebreaker or renaming an activity. Since we are always training new people and for the most part our processes, policies, and campus services to students doesn’t change, it was easy to just keep doing the same old thing.

This year, though, with new leadership, came a new perspective on what we do. We asked new questions about why we do it that way and discussed new challenges to show current research that grounds our practice and did a little bit of groaning about having to sit and listen to the same thing for the nth year in a row (from our current staff, not our new leadership). Now, this is my 12th training at OSU and I can honestly say that I have learned something new every year or have had training spark something new, but I can also honestly say that there were times, when my thought was, “been there, done that.”  And, if I am being truly honest, I was a little annoyed that I actually had to think about what I was presenting  This is the true issue about change. It’s annoying and time-consuming to have to think and use your brain sometimes.

So, each of us presenting took time to think about what we had said in year’s past. Was it true anymore?  Why do we do it that way?  Is there a better way? Was it relevant to this group of students anymore? And, after having spent this energy reworking things, I have to say that I saw more energetic faces, received more compliments from returning staff, and in general felt that the staff seemed to get it!  Whodathunk?  I guess taking an old antique and refinishing and upholstering and making it modern, really does spice up a room. Good to know.

We also had one other change in this busy time: opening!  At OSU, we have assisted move-in, which you have probably already heard about, but just in case, here’s a synopsis.  Basically, students check-in and get their keys at a central location and are then guided through campus to their residence hall, where volunteer students unload their car, truck, rental van, and — in some cases — U-Haul trailer for them.  It’s a great way to welcome approximately 10,000 students back to campus. Normally, this event is organized and staffed by colleagues in student life, allowing all the residence life staff (in-hall and central staff) to be available to meet and greet students and parents and resolve problems.

This year, the central staff partnered with our student life colleagues to actually run a particular area of campus in their assisted move-in. At first, I was a bit bummed that I wasn’t going to be able to check-in on my staff, feel the pulse of campus, and in general be free to roam campus. But, I have to tell you that it was a great experience. I now understand how much work and energy goes into organizing this process and the best part is that I now have a much better working relationship with colleagues I have never met before. To me, this is critical. I can get a lot more done across our large, bureaucratic campus to benefit students when I know the other person on the phone or I understand the demands and priorities of their office.

Don’t get me wrong, amidst training, central responsibilities, H1N1/ILI planning, and getting prepped for the fall quarter, it sometimes felt like a lot more energy and work got added to our plate. But now that it’s over, I can see what we might do differently next year and I can see that there is more good to this than bad. And it’s great to be a member of the team instead of just watching the team.

Hi all you fabulous readers out there!  My name is Susannah Turner and I am one of the associate directors of Residence Life here at Ohio State and I will be blogging this year about what it’s like to go through a time of transition in our department.

First of all, let me say that I NEVER thought that I would ever be blogging about anything, much less about things related to work. Let me give you some context. I didn’t use e-mail in grad school, much less undergrad.  When I arrived at Ohio State, as a hall director, in 1998, we still had e-mail that had green type and a black screen. I didn’t own a computer until my husband and I got married (in my mind they are still, technically, “his computers”). I am not what you would call technologically savvy, so needless to say, this blogging thing, makes me nervous.

Why nervous?  Well, I wonder if I have anything interesting to say. Other blogs I have read (which amounts to two) are written by people who are on adventures abroad, namely Semester at Sea.  They are interesting to me because it brings back memories from my own adventures. I also wonder what people will say about what I have to say. Yes, although a blog is my own experience about my work in transition, there will be people who will read this and judge me for better or for worse.  That makes me nervous.

I am a relatively private person in my everyday life, so putting myself out there on the World Wide Web, brings on a small case of the hives. But all my nerves aside, I am hoping that as I write and I read what others write about our same experiences, I will learn from their experiences. I also hope I will learn from what you, out there in what I consider outer space, have to say to me in response to this online journaling experiment. Yes, this is an experiment that we hope will bring our housing worlds together and help us find community in shared experiences.  So, I encourage you to continue reading, commenting, and being a part of this community.

So enough about my fears. Today, I really wanted to talk about feelings. As we have gained new leadership and begun what is an inevitable change when anything new comes around, one of the messages  we are beginning to implement is to leave how we “feel” about things out of business decisions. The phrase that we have thrown around is, “It’s just business.”

Now, I think that some folks have misapplied this phrase. To me, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have a feeling about some decision or work-related thing, it just means that we aren’t going to shy away from doing the right thing or making the right decision, just because I don’t like it. And it means that I shouldn’t be afraid to talk to someone who isn’t doing okay or is affecting me negatively because of a fear of how it might make them feel. It holds us to a higher standard of professionalism, I think.

Now, for some folks that know me, they will wonder what alien came and invaded my body when they read this.  I am someone who can’t help but care about what other people are feeling, that’s how I show up in the world — Care first!  But, I also understand that it’s my responsibility to do what’s right and if I am upset or don’t like it, then it isn’t my department’s job to make it better for me.

But, I digress. When I say I want to talk about feeling, what I mean is the atmosphere, vibe, or energy in a room. Before we began planning for this academic year, as a department, there were times, when I thought that there was a large rain cloud hanging over us. People walked into the room and barely spoke to other colleagues. When someone presented a new idea, he or she was greeted by silence and blank stares. The feeling in the room was dark, dank, bored, lethargic, and even apathetic. It made me sad to be in that place. Now, with some new thoughts, new freedom, a new perspective on our work, the energy in the room is light, bright, energetic, and even enthusiastic.

When the people in the room want to be there, want to get to know each other, want to have a good time, everything changes. The feeling around me makes me smile. It makes me happy. I feel more willing to be risky and try new things. When a new idea is presented, instead of wondering what the point is, I wonder how it can be put into practice. I enjoy coming to work and thinking creatively.  As  paraprofessional training begins, it’s exciting to see the energy the hall staff have, which means that the RAs will be enthusiastic, which means that the students will be excited, and in the end it means that we will have begun in the best place possible, with possibility for the future (instead of fear of the unknown).

So, despite the fact that, yes, it’s a business, I hope that we continue to feel like a place where fun is good, where creativity and enthusiasm is the norm, and where we enjoy the work that we do because we know it makes a difference.

I’m curious… What do you think about how your department “feels?”  Should how a place “feels” even matter? Share with me in the comments section below. I promise you won’t hurt my feelings.

I regularly get queries from folks who are assessing the benefits and perks for their Hall Directors and similar live-in/live-on positions. Usually these folks are wondering about the ancillary benefits: Do other institutions allow pets? Which ones? Is a meal plan included? Fortunately, there’s a great answer for this: Rich Horowitz’s Live-in/Live-on Report, an annual compilation of this data. But don’t just use the report, contribute to it too, and help keep this resource vital! Horowitz is an associate director of residential life at Vassar College.

Hello, and welcome to a new installment on ACUHO-I’s blog, “You Were Asking,” a weekly post that will explore some of the frequently-asked, or the most interesting, reference and research questions received by the ACUHO-I librarian, Emily Glenn (emily at acuho-i.org), and the excellent library intern, Jon Zuhosky (libraryintern1 at acuho-i.org). Please write us if you have a question, whether for this blog or for a direct reply through e-mail.

Note, there are two links to the ACUHO-I library on this page. You don’t need a username and password to use the library; just select a time zone and head on in!

This week, we’ll start with the FAQ of the FAQs, and one that, unfortunately, Jon and I cannot answer as completely as we (or the member asking) would like. I’ll also explain what we’re planning to do to rectify this situation.

Do you have information on staffing structures?
Do you have statistics on which division or department to which most housing departments report?

Unfortunately, our answer to the first question is a make-do sort of reply. We usually try two things:

• We do an online search for housing departments’ organizational charts. Usually we can find a few posted.
• We provide names and contact information for a selection of institutions (say, 10-15) who have similar characteristics (size, geography, etc.) as the institution of the member who asked the question. The member can contact the institutions on the list for an organizational chart.

However, we now have the capacity to create a models library within ACUHO-I’s library catalog. Jon gathered documents for our initial models collection, assignments documents. We plan to collect staffing models soon. Please send these to us if you would like to contribute; we haven’t composed an official “ask” yet, but we’re always happy to accept these things. That way, ACUHO-I members can learn directly from each other, as they do at conferences and other in-person events.

For the second question, we do have an answer, and it comes from an unusual place. In the 2008 Assignments: What are We Doing? survey by Mannix Clark, D. Cole Spencer and myself, this question was asked. Here’s the results:

• Student Affairs: 86.7%
• Business Affairs/Auxiliary Services: 10.5%
• Finance & Operations: 5%
• Other: 4%

The “Other” items include: Enrollment Management, Student and Academic Services, Facilities & Operations, a Public-Private partnership, with facilities under a foundation.

From: Best Practices in Housing Assignments, 2008 by D. Cole Spencer, Mannix Clark and Emily Glenn. Presented at the 2008 ACUHO-I Annual Conference and Exposition.