Erin Simpson
I had taught myself and everyone around me that our job was to consistently light ourselves on fire to keep everyone else warm. I can’t do that. That is not a sustainable practice. For me, it wasn’t a sustainable practice for literally anyone in our field. It taught our students from really bad habits. They didn’t know what to do. You know, we have this entire institution. And we have them in their first most formative time, in the first six weeks that we were the only people that they could rely on. And that wasn’t our intention, but it was certainly the impact of what we did.

Keith Edwards
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW, I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today we’re talking about talking about reimagining the work of Residence Life. Specifically, how can we merge the proactive or learning focus work with reactive or crisis and student issue, response work, and ways that these aspects are integrated and aligned and not in competition with each other for our time, energy and effort? And how do we do so in ways that are viable and sustainable for the staff and serve students. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays find details about this episode, or browse our archives as studentaffairsnow.com. This episode is sponsored by LeaderShape. Go to leadershape.org to learn how they can work with you to create a just caring, and thriving world. And this episode is brought to you by Stylus, visit styluspub.com and use promo code SANow for 30% off and free shipping. Today we’re sharing the first of three conversations in a series I hosted for the University of Massachusetts Amherst Residential Life team. The series focused on reimagining Residence Life Work, crisis response and on call and social justice from a proactive perspective. I invited some of the most innovative thinkers and practitioners I know to share their thoughts, ideas, and approaches to generate possibilities for all of us to consider. Each conversation we share with you in this series was followed by a question and answer session specific to the UMass residential life context. Thanks to UMass Amherst Residential Life for making these conversations possible, and allowing us to share them with you more broadly here.

Keith Edwards
I want to invite our guests in, we have three folks who I really respect and admire and who are leaders I continuously learn from and gain insight and admire their approach to leading and so we’re gonna have them introduce themselves. And we’ve got some some questions and some prompts for them. And then we’ll kind of flow from there. So Dana, I think you’re gonna kick us off.

Dana Olivo
Sorry, I have a little tickle in my throat. But I am Dana Olivo, I, she her pronouns, and I am across the river from you at Smith College. I am this is my eighth academic year at Smith and I’ve been working in Residence Life for about, I don’t know, 15 years is just what I’ve been saying probably for the last couple of years. And I’m currently the assistant director for residential education. And so I work with our intentional living communities as well as our curriculum. And another one of our prompts were our curriculum we launched about three years ago, at the beginning of pandemic, and I truly believe that it kind of it gave us direction in a way that we would not have had, if we’d had not had our curriculum when the pandemic started, especially as we only had about 100 students on campus. And being able to then launch it virtually, I think really was helpful for our department as well as students who are learning from afar, to help them feel more connected with the institution while they were away. And as far as I think, crisis response, we have been really working hard at interweaving the curriculum into how we meet with students and how we do conduct and how we respond to emergencies on campus. See, and we’ve recently kind of revamped the way that we do our care team here. I’m not sure what you’d call it at UMass. But we’ve been, we have a couple of facilitation guides. And it’s like something that we’re we’re constantly tweaking to make it feel right, because so much has kind of changed over the past couple of years of how we do our work, that I am trying really hard to make sure it makes sense. And we’re not adding additional work to our plate that doesn’t need to be added, but it’s just the work. So thank you. I’m honored to be here with you.

Keith Edwards
Yeah. Thanks. Thanks so much for being here. Dana. I want to hear a little bit later a little bit more about how you do that innerweaving. I think that’s what we’re looking for. And how we do that is really great. And you mentioned not being an addition to the plate, which brings us to Aaron Simpson. I think that’s one of your great lines that I’ve been quoting now there’s been quoting back. So Erin, tell us a little bit about you. And also your plate analogy.

Erin Simpson
Absolutely. Hi, y’all. My name is Erin Simpson. I use she her pronouns. I serve as the Assistant Dean of Students and director for the gender and equality Center at the University of Oklahoma, which is located on the ancestral homelands of the Wichita and affiliated tribes, the Osage and the Caddo additionally has served as a hunting ground and gathering place for Kiowa, Apache and Comanche tribes. Additionally, Oklahoma is home to 39 federally recognized tribes who have made their way here after centuries of forced removal and broken treaties. I have a ton of experience in residence life, but I left residence in 2018. But I served for about 15 years and Residence Life at the University of Oklahoma, including building our residential curriculum in 2013. In 2018, I transitioned over into our gender and equality Center, which is also the home of our gender based violence, prevention and response. So my Crisis Response hat has just grown since leaving Residence Life actually didn’t know that was possible for being honest, but has just sort of grown and expanded. The work that we do now at the University of Oklahoma is divisional curriculum. And so we’ve done we did a residential, and then we moved into some departmental spaces. And now we’re working on building a divisional curriculum, a framework for our entire division. And Keith talks about my plate analogy, the thing that I consistently sort of hyping is that curriculum is an addition is not an addition to our plate, it becomes our plate and it holds everything else. And it holds crisis response for us as well. And that has, I think, really been important to us in how we think about doing our best work and our worst moments, it means that we’ve prepared for it. And so that’s, that’s a little bit about about how we have managed to tackle those things together.

Keith Edwards
Great, thank you Erin. And we were just there at ICA where you share that and I had three people yesterday, share that back with me. So I’m glad you’re getting to share that here today. And then we have what feels to me that newly minted Dr. Hibbler, but it’s been some time. So Dr. Hibbler go ahead and introduce her herself to the to these folks.

David Hibbler Jr.
Yes. Hello, everyone. My name is David Jr. I use he him pronouns. And I’m the son, brother, partner, dog and plant dad and interior designer on Sundays. I think you know, that we do here. I think James Manning, the OG campus psychologist will be proud. That but yeah, like I’m an educator who is fortunate enough to curate, you know, spaces and residents in residential life to make campus home for folks. Right. So I serve as the Director of Residential Education at the University of South Florida on the Tampa campus. I have been here for 10 years. So this is now my 11th academic year and our curriculum. This year just celebrated its 10th anniversary, I was initially brought here to USF as a part of the creation of our curriculum, right like the chicken and egg. Do we have the right people? Or do we build the curriculum, they decided to get the right folks on the bus, you know, really reenvisioning job descriptions, roles, alignment with our housing and assignments folks and versus our resent folks and just really created the appropriate alignment to really launch what we did here, but um, so I’ve been able to grow in a variety of different roles here from ROC Senior Assistant Director, then the inaugural associate director, and now to be leading the unit that I was brought here, as a part of a cohort to help create has just been phenomenal. And I think now as we’re in this current moment of really seeing how our field is going to evolve now that I’ve literally been in every single position in this department and knowing what are some of our, our biggest issues now, really trying to help co create what this looks like for our unit moving forward. And when I think of crisis and all the other things, right, like I love Aaron’s analogy, it’s just a part of what we do, right. And here at USF our curriculum, and just how we do our work is all about getting to know our residents, by name, and by story, right. And if we’re able to do that, hopefully we build a trusting relationship with these folks with our residents. So when they are in those moments of crisis, right, like they know who to turn to right, or some of those pieces of like, Can I trust this person? Or can I trust the system or this piece? And how am I not going to find support? So I think that’s how it has truly helped us, right. And even when I think about where we were, as we were navigating some of the early moments of the pandemic, to any instance that had been now our curriculum has always been our beacon, our guiding light, to kind of help steer us on track, right, you know, like, everything else is kind of happening around us. But we know essentially, what’s happening for our students and what we still need to be doing and providing for folks at any point in the year of their semester, and we’re able to kind of, you know, allow that to guide us. So that’s a little bit about who I am and how and where we’re at to this point. So I’m excited to engage in this conversation with with you all so

Keith Edwards
yeah. Well, thank you, let’s, I really appreciate you all sharing your ResLife experience and how you’ve navigated crisis and COVID, and student issues and sexual violence and emergency response. And also navigating your curriculum and using that, together the interweaving the beacon and guiding light, providing clarity, I love it. Let’s step back, though, we’ll come back to sort of the learning and the proactive and the crisis response and reactive and how we connect those. Let’s just step back and think broadly about residence life work. As you know, so much has changed in recent years, about higher education, the world beyond higher education, our students and student affairs, I think we often assign a lot of that to COVID. But it’s not just COVID. It’s democracy, it’s racial inequities harm and murder and violence. It is all the things happening in our world. And then, then there’s my life and your life and the things happening there. So much is changing. And I think we all recognize that going back to normal, might be tempting, but normal wasn’t working for so many folks. And that would be a step backwards, particularly in terms of equity and effectiveness. So I’d love to hear as you all have been doing this work and leading this work. But also, what do you see ahead? And again, this is not a place to show off what you all are doing, but what maybe what are some of the things you wish you could do? Or what do you imagine you could do? Or what do you think we’ll be doing? In three to five years that we’ll just look back now and be like, why weren’t we way ahead of the game on this? Isn’t this so obvious? So Dana, I think we’re going to start with you again, what do you kind of see as possible for residential life work when you look ahead?

Dana Olivo
That’s a hard one for me, Keith. I think that when we get to the point where we realize Less is more, and I feel like we’ll be able to do more, when we’re not trying to do everything, hope that makes sense. But I think that we try to do everything and fill fulfill the needs for all the people all the time. And like sometimes I think about like our professional staff that kind of get lost in the mix of us trying to do everything for students, and how would that impact has like, I truly feel like if we could do more for our professional staff, our professional staff will be equipped to do more for our students. And also embracing other ways of doing of doing the work, I think that we have, we can get we can get stuck in this like, but we’ve always done it this way or that’s easy, or it takes time to it’s does take time to think about new ways of doing and that’s really difficult when you’re student facing and constantly faced with crisis and COVID and all of the things that can happen on a college residential campus, that will happen. And so when you’re constantly spinning that wheel, don’t have a lot of time to think strategically about how we can do this different and I think If we were able to take a step back, and really take the time to think it through and embrace new truly embrace new ways of doing and being, then I think we can really do better and more for our 18 year olds who are showing up on our doorstep with their suitcase, like, show me teach me. Have me.

Keith Edwards
Help me, rescue me, right? Yeah, yeah, I’m hearing the essentialism. Right? How can you do less? So you can be more? Not an easy question to answer. But a powerful one. I’m also hearing in use something that I’ve heard for many others is just craving and yearning for time to think. Like, if I could just get 30 minutes to think I could clean up a lot of mess. But I don’t feel like I have that. So I’m just in the mess. Sort of moving forward there.

Dana Olivo
Yeah, we’re always in the reactive space. And I don’t think we have a lot of time to be proactive.

Keith Edwards
Right? And how do we recognize that reality? And then also, where’s our agency to shift that and adjust that and not just have that be something that’s happening to us? But also, you know, we talked previously about critical hope, which is this, you know, really, critically understanding what is going on? Not being pretending or being or or ignoring the realities that we face? But also how do we see possibilities, which is really our focus? And then also, what responsibilities do I have in navigating that? That sort of critical hope, being an antidote to toxic positivity? I think being really important. Erin, always Yeah, yeah. Good, good. Good. I think it’s easy to fall into, it’s easy to be tempted by it’s also easy to sort of, it’s also easy to hear when we’ve heard that a lot.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, say more about that. And also talk about, you said something ICA during your institute showcase about the keeping students warm. Could you say something about that?

Erin Simpson
Yeah, yeah. I think toxic positivity, it’s really, really harmful. Right? It just is this weird, like Stepford response to actual real pain and trauma. And then when we’re like, it’s gonna be okay. Do you want to go to the ice cream bar? But if not, doesn’t really fix it, or that for any of us, right. And so I think the idea of critical hope is so much more helpful for us. Yeah, I think residents like has got to really resist this idea that we are a one stop shop, I did not resist that very well, maybe really clear. That’s not how I was trained up in our profession. I was trained up to understand that we are where they live. And so we wrap the services around them. And it is our job, right? To do all of these things all of the time.

Keith Edwards
For everyone,

Erin Simpson
for literally everyone. And then, and then you stop and think about, we have a career center on campus. We have a gender center on campus, we have a campus activities, office, we we have all of these other places, and my colleagues in those in those spaces and places are experts in their in their field. They know way more about resume building than I do. Why am I doing this? I don’t know that it really hit home for me until I left residence life. And I entered a space that was far less funded and far less resourced. And there was simply no way that I could create these wraparound services without my colleagues. And it occurred to me that I had just sort of allowed the thing that I really thought I had been pushing against. I hadn’t maybe been doing that, that great of a job. I had taught myself and everyone around me that our job was to consistently light ourselves on fire to keep everyone else warm. I can’t do that. That is not a sustainable practice. For me, it wasn’t a sustainable practice for literally anyone in our field. It taught our students from really bad habits. They didn’t know what to do. You know, we have this entire institution. And we have them in their first most formative time, in the first six weeks that we were the only people that they could rely on. And that wasn’t our intention, but it was certainly the impact of what we did. And I think that that is something that I see happen a lot across institutions is that residence life sometimes has some more capacity. I know that that doesn’t feel real on like any given Tuesday, but residence life sometimes sometimes has more capacity or sees a need and so they because they’re the need is literally right in front of us all the time. And so we just moved to fill it. When if we were a little bit more thoughtful about it, then we could dissipate beneath, we see the need every year, we could think a little bit more thoroughly about who on our campus is best suited to fill it, what kind of collaborative relationships that we can be building that will support students for all four years if you’re in a four year residential space. Amazing. This is a four year partnership. I worked at a big state school with a one year let live on requirements, and we literally don’t ever increase that. So how, what are we teaching them to do their sophomore, junior senior? Maybe that victory lap this year? Right? What are we teaching them to do, is the only place that they know to go is inside of residence life. And so I think that was a really transformative thing for me to understand that something that our I think our teams are consistently working against. It’s also not good for us as colleagues right now, like knocking down these like walls and silos that are artificial. And that we built, I think it’s been really important for developing a holistic understanding of what resources our students have access to where our gaps are as an institution, and what we what moves we need to make to fill those, rather than what are our gaps in housing, which doesn’t really have very many for being honest.

Keith Edwards
Great, thank you, Erin. David, what do you see as possibilities for residence life work going forward?

David Hibbler Jr.
All the things, all the things, I think, I think, first, we need to possibly embrace some of the ideas that previously happened sitting well with us, right? I think for so long, there was just this notion of like, corporate this over that we need to like, resist everything that’s kind of in those spaces. And I think there are some elements that I’m trying to adapt now or that we’re going to need to right, we’ve already started to figure out what does hybrid remote work look like for people for our teams? Right? Right now I’m really trying to figure out what the shift work look like for my team, right? I, we just now got back to a place as of October 1, of being fully staffed in our hall director position, right. And we haven’t been there since the fall of 2019. Right? So from before the pandemic, right, so we’ve been doing more with less we have a centralized, so much where we were just doing what we needed to do, right? Because we couldn’t like, spread out the work any further, right. But I think now as I’m trying to like vision for it for what is the next recruitment cycle look like? Or where we were, we really have to embrace this concept of like shift work or area management, right, where maybe we’re, and I think some staff are a little frustrated with this at first, but we have to like depersonalized, the RLC, or the hall director role a little bit because there was just so much oversight or responsibility that we felt like I have to be all things for all these people, right? And I think we we’ve created some of these things, right? But hey, how can I like spread these roommate conflicts? Or how can I spread this conduct around? Or how can I spread? You know, some of these students of concern issues around for like the other people and with other people in my area, right. So I’m not just inundated with all the things that are happening in my one specific Hall, right? Even with RA or, or Hall Council supervision, we have to look at that as well. Right? Knowing that other people can be really good for them as well, right. And I don’t just have to be once again, this one for for everyone. So I think we, we need to kind of figure out how that looks, right? Because I think we can talk about centralizing and paring down the roles and different things that we’re doing. But I still feel like, I need to be this person for the, for the students that I supervise for the students that I have in my home. Right. Like, I was further contributing to some of the burnout pieces and different things that we have. And I think as leaders, we need to continue to read the room, right? Like, what is just going to be that one final straw. Right? And how are we just doing things differently over the for us, right? We have just been in like a whirlwind the past few weeks, it’s already October, we know what October is and ResLife. Right?

Keith Edwards
Just it’s almost November actually just

David Hibbler Jr.
right, literally, but we still we have a suicide on campus, we had the hurricane, and then we went right in the homecoming. So like, by last Friday, like my staff, we will just like spin, right? But then for me to come into homecoming we can expect for us to still deliver the same experience that we needed, which is it was unrealistic, right? But we still need to do this, right? Because we still have an experience for our students and our parents and families right coming to campus. Right? This is we still have to create some of these moments, right? So in that moment, instead of being frustrated with potentially how that was going to look right, like I called a party planner, right? And me and my ad teams we literally had someone come and decorate 16 lobbies, right with balloon arches, and welcome home signs right. And we had somebody come and just facilitate that one thing for us, but that was just the one thing that was my staff responsible for doing it? Yes. Could they have done it? Possibly, but I don’t think I’d have been happy this past Monday, right? So just like what are the things that we just need to do? And just like re envision or like, literally have somebody else do, right? who maybe is outside of the institution who has the capacity? We’re paying for this? Good. Right. So that’s, that’s, that’s kind of where we’ve been. Because, unfortunately, I think we had to go out. And I think this is also just kind of where some institutions are, right, like, we may be understaffed, but also our peers and other units may be understaffed, right, you know, we may have a career center that has two career advisors for a lot of people, right, you know, and I’m not saying that’s where I’m at right now, possibly. But these are all things that, you know, I think for so long, we’ve there, we’ve had great collaborations with our partners. And while maybe we’ve been able to fill our coffers up with people, everybody else hasn’t. So like the whole division is still trying to re envision what this looks like, right? But knowing that we’re still a brick and mortar institution, and we’re trying to figure figure this out, right? Because our students are still here. So we still have to like, figuring out how we do what we do. But doing it differently, and looking outside of our field to figure out how we still provide an experience that is meaningful and intentional, and all these things.

Keith Edwards
I love that you’re modeling for us, centering the purpose of the students and the students experience, but really cracking the things wide open about how we do that. Like, let’s just hire an external party planner to do balloon arches, like okay, like how do we really think differently about that and shift work, which is something I’ve been thinking about, we might come back to, with these folks a little bit later on when we talk about crisis response? And how do we think about some of those things differently and openness? I heard from all three of you, those centering staff well being being so important. Burnout, setting ourselves on fire to keep students warm is not you know, sustainable strategy. How do we center the staff wellbeing, so that they can be there for students? So how do we do that structurally and systemically, then how do I navigate that myself? Because I need different things to be grounded and centered than than David does. So where is the organizational institutional responsibility? And then where’s our own agency within that? And how do we navigate some of that? And I love your saying your excuse me, using the language of depersonalizing? How do we let go of our ego? This is not my building. These are not my students. It’s not my set of roommate conflicts. These are not my right, but they’re ours. How do we be of service to the students were who are here. And I as you’re pointing to that depersonalization can seem scary, it can seem like letting go, it can seem like we can, we can get a lot of needs spared by students needing us or our RAS needing us or RLCS needing us. But ultimately, that does, as you pointed out, lead to burnout. And so how do we see things more collectively? And what’s the best way for us as a group to meet these needs? And maybe that doesn’t involve me at this moment, but maybe it involves some other things, or involves me in different ways down the road? Well, let’s come back to sort of where we started about this proactive and reactive the learning work and the crisis response work, the student issues, versus the student growth and development, you will all have spoken to how integrating these has strengthened that. And I think about how, if we’re proactive on student learning and growth and development, then they’ll be better equipped to handle some of these challenges on their own. Not all of them, but some of them, which is great. And if we’re doing a good job addressing some of these issues, they can also be learning and growth opportunities for the students, in some cases, in some ways. So how do we, how do we see them feeding and informing and interweaving with each other rather than being competition? I don’t have time to do learning, because I’ve got so many incident reports, so many crisis are so much time on call. That’s a really challenging thing. I think, David, we want to come back to you. So how do we how do we merge this together? What has been sort of the best of what you’ve done, or what you see you might be doing ahead in the future? Again, we’re here to think about what could be in interconnecting these things.

David Hibbler Jr.
Yeah. And to be honest, I hate that I’m going first on this when I saw this, and I was like, what I had to like read it a few, you know, a lot. But I think when I think about this question, and you know, I go back to the purpose of our curriculum was to get to know our residents by name, right? USF was a school of 47,000 people and even though I don’t have 47,000 folks in housing, right, like how are we making it human scale for folks and how are we giving folks the insight and confidence to navigate this place? is, and I think for us in some ways we also had to extend beyond is not just our residents, right. But it’s the our residents and their parents and friends and families and their support systems. Right. So how are we now educating or providing services for that holistic group? And I think one example that’s kind of helped us kind of blend the two is around like weather related incidents, right? This is a crisis that is going to happen in the southeast region. Just it right. But how sweet now infusing some lesson plans and some language into our Housing Agreement around what are your weather related incident plans? How are you connecting? Or how are you talking to your friends, family and loved ones about what you’re possibly going to do during this piece? Right? How are we talking about our communication skills with not only communicating with us but with them? Right, so all of these pieces, because we’re trying to essentially help their mental readiness for the inevitable, right. So I think that was huge in a way that we were able to kind of blend some of those curriculum pieces into, you know, into that space, right, because we don’t know what a storm is going to do, right. But if we can equip our residents and their support systems with all the things that can happen, is now making our jobs easier, right? Because on the back end of that, I also need to prepare my staff in terms of their mental readiness for how they’re going to be navigating, you know, some of these pieces. So I think that’s that one space that we’ve needed to kind of lean into. Because we know what our policies and procedures are, we know what’s in the crisis manual. But how am I now flushing out all of those pieces and, and those mental models, so I can work through that and not work through it when our hurricane barreling to Tampa.

Keith Edwards
But I think it’s just a really concrete example about that is done to help you and your staff have more capacity when the crisis does happen. And those are life skills, right? Whether it’s a hurricane, or tornado or cancer diagnosis, a sort of knowing that things aren’t going to go well. And being prepared and having some ideas and some thoughts about that. That’s, that is the learning we want students to have when they leave University of Southern Florida, South Florida, to be able to look back and say, Oh, I have this capacity, because I learned that there. So it’s a great merging. And you’re reminding me, I think one of the things that higher ed and student affairs in particular has really done terribly is we wait for students to be underwater before we try and rescue them. We wait until they’re on academic probation before we connect them with a tutor. Before we talk about that. advising or intrusive advising. We wait for students to have their mental health break down before we talk to them, connect them with the counseling center or medication and things like that. And how could we get ahead for all students on things that we know helps people be successful sleep, exercise, study skills, connection and relationship? Well being finding your strengths and not having your path be everyone else’s? But what are the things? How do we teach students how to be successful, proactive, rather than waiting for them to be failing and struggling and on the cusp of dropping out, being kicked out? Suicide, other issues, addiction, substance abuse, alcohol transports, we sit, we will never eliminate that responsive. But how can we maybe address some of that a little bit before hand? Erin what would you add to this about integrating the proactive and reactive?

Erin Simpson
Yeah, so we have a saying on our campus, you cannot do your best thinking and your worst moment. We can’t, we cannot do our best thinking in our worst moment. And unfortunately, our worst moments is usually when our students need our best thinking. Right? And so we have spent a significant amount of time creating proactive lesson plans that don’t feel like our crisis manual. I mean, we have a crisis manual that certainly risk management has weighed in on we know exactly what to do in times of a tornado, right? We know, we know what to do. A tornado is coming. We know how to handle that. But I’m also thinking about racist incidents that make international news. It’s not like the University of Oklahoma doesn’t have any level of experience with that, or I definitely the residence halls or climate crises that impact not just our campus, but you know, our students come from all over the world, like right, how are we? How are we doing thinking around those things before they happen? Because it’s really naive of us to think that it won’t. It’s really it’s really naive of us to think that we’re not going to have someone say something deeply harmful, right? Just an offensive in in a community setting. We know that’s going to happen. What’s our plan? And I don’t need to us to think about what our plan is when it’s actually happening. And we’re all just sort of casting around looking for the like adult here adult in the room to figure it out. That’s us. And so we have spent a lot of time thinking about what that looks like, what their facilitation guides look like, who can take those up, right, because the other piece that I think is really important, is it kind of harkens back I think, to things that David said earlier about like shiftwork and depersonalizing, I can’t ask a hall director whose identities are directly being impacted by the harm that’s happened to also be the one leading the response. Right, I can’t ask in my office, I can ask my LGBTQ program coordinator to always leave the response to like a transphobic and homophobic incident on campus. This has to be communal. And that means those plans have to be understood widely. I think that we have for too long been like, well, it’s your building, it’s your spot, or it’s your it impacts your job. So it’s your thing. And that has led us to harming our colleagues as well, like our students weren’t served probably in ways that were like, deeply student centered. And we heard our colleagues both both outcomes are not looking for. So we think I say this all the time that we cannot do our best thinking in our worst moments. So when can we do our best thinking? Let’s identify that. And then let’s imagine that we know that this is going to happen, what are the basics we know we’re going to need to call counseling, we know we’re going to need to do these things we know are we going to need to have a dialogue groups like we know we’re gonna have to do these things. We, we can think about them in advance and create some planning around them that can just get deployed when needed. That’s really changed our ability to be reactive in thoughtfully, intentionally and collaboratively in very little time, with very little like, the timing is is very different. Now.

Keith Edwards
I don’t know if this is something you’ve actually done, but I’ve given you and your Oklahoma colleagues credit for this, or maybe we just imagined it, but having I imagine a facilitation guide for racist bias incidents of all time looks like we’ve got a plan. Now the details change. And so we’re going to solve them, but we got to plan a plan for news, right, the things that happen, whether it’s elections, or hate incidents, or violence, or, or crises, and then we have, here’s if the weather gets so overwhelmed, and having these plans, it’s never gonna go as planned. But at least having a plan now you have something to adapt and modify and say, Okay, this isn’t happening the way we thought, but we’re going to do this. And I just remember so many times where something would happen, and we would have a meeting about it. And because we’re all over meeting and over scheduled, it would take two weeks before we meet about it. And then we were going to have a forum but the chap was not available to have the forum. And by the time we got our stuff together, was over for the students. It’s been five, six weeks, there have been three other things that have happened since that were on their radar. So how do we be planful? To help us be nimble?

Erin Simpson
Yeah, we, we have banks of them now. Right. And it’s, it’s, I think, been really important for our staff to also be able to pass them off. I don’t know, I don’t know that that that was something that earlier in my career, I thought well enough about through my own, like, privileged lenses and things. But now I think about that deeply. Like how who was handling point on this? Is that okay? Are they okay? Is this a reasonable ask of them? Right. And I think that has also because the planning piece is already been done. Now we have the room to ask that in before we just would have been like, no, it’s your building? No, go do the thing. And I think that that has also just been really impactful for the way that we handle harm, crisis, all kinds of things.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, the collaboration, the depersonalization. David mentioned the collaboration really seems to be a necessity of the work helping us do it better and better serve students and some of the ways we also have to get out of our own way to be able to do that. Dana, what would you add to this about the the inner weaving as you said earlier.

Dana Olivo
The first thing that came to mind for me was thinking about how we need everyone to be reading the same book. And I think sometimes it feels like we’re just in like a completely different volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Like it’s just like you’re in a different letter. And, like I there’s work being done around creating a divisional curriculum curriculum here. And I think once we’re able to get that, I think it will feel a lot better like this idea of collaboration. And we have, like our care team students of concern meeting, we have that every week with different offices. And we’re not always on the same page. And I think it’s really important that we, we have a common, I think we have a, we have a common idea of like, we’re all here to support students and want to do that and want to do it well. And I think sometimes we have different ideas about what that looks like. And I almost feel like until we get to the point where we all have a very similar or same idea of what that looks like, we won’t be able to do our best work. Because you have this person saying I think this needs to be like an you know, like, there’s a spectrum, right? It ranges from, we’re holding a hand. I’m being I’m being dramatic, but we are, we’re holding a hand and wiping tears to or leaving them completely alone. And what’s the what’s the space in the middle, that our students get the best of us. And we don’t feel like we’re completely overburdened and over worked and taxed and all of the things because we’re trying to do all the things for other people.

Keith Edwards
And solving their problems for them is not how education works. Right? But how do we help them learn to solve their own problems? And some students need a lot more help doing that than others do? And that’s our, that’s the magic, right? What is it for this person or this situation? How much help do they need? But I think rescuing and saving them just teaches them finding the next thing, they’re just gonna hard. Dana’s great, right? And so how do we get them to do that themselves. I love this. Reading from the same book, Yumi Choi, who is a colleague of ours from UC Irvine talks about, we got to be playing the same music, some of us write the music, some of us conduct the music, some of us play horn, some of us play drums. But we’re not playing the same song. It’s just noise. And I think how do we be clear about what is the song that we’re playing? We all have many different roles. And sometimes, sometimes you’re playing the horns. And then next week, you’re playing the drums. And that gets complicated and hard. And how do we make all that work together? But what what is it that our shared purpose and direction I want to move us towards towards the wrapping up and sort of a final question, inviting some of the EMS folks here in a little bit. But as this work moves forward, what structural or organizational possibilities? Do you see that could better serve staff? And students? Maybe it’s things you’ve experienced, or things that you’ve imagined, or things you hear from other innovative colleagues? What are some of these? I’m thinking about or charts, thinking about structures? I’m thinking about policies. Erin, what are you seeing that might be possible to help advance things?

Erin Simpson
Yeah, so one of the things that I think about is that I think we’re pretty held hostage by tradition, in our field about this is what it is, like, this is just what this is. And I’m really interested in the idea about each campus getting to define that for themselves. Like, I don’t, I don’t work on a campus like UMass Amherst, right. So I don’t, when I think about what possibilities could be, I’m thinking about what possibilities could look like at the University of Oklahoma, which is a large state school in a suburban, like, semi rural space, right? There’s not the same thing. And so I’m, I’m really interested, we spend so much time talking about our curriculums being contextualized, to our own institutions, I’m really interested in what we would do. If we could contextualize our staffing patterns to our institutions. Instead of being sort of like, well, you have to let people have to live in and our duty structure has to look like this. Because that’s the way we all got trained up. That’s the way that it’s been done, or that’s the way that you know, when we look across the country at those peer evaluations that everyone’s always asking for, this is how this aspirational school does it. Well, that doesn’t, that doesn’t mean does not mean that it works. So what would it look like if we sat down with a completely blank slate and only thought about our institution? And what would best serve our students with our staff capacity? That meant that our staff could also sustainably continue to do that work? And I think that if we did that we might find some things that we that we have that are they do work, right maybe they’re their trends or their their their staples for a reason. But I also think we can probably find and toss out some stuff that we’ve just been doing because we got held hostage by tradition. And I that is where I want where I want us as a field to get to be brave, and I haven’t seen is Do it vary widely, but I’m really, really interested in how brave we could get about. I don’t think we need this. And, and I think it’s okay if we are a housing or a Residence Life unit that doesn’t have this. And even if people look at us, like with big eyes at conferences and be like, what? We don’t have this because it doesn’t work on our campus, and it doesn’t serve our students is an answer that I would love for us to get to say and do and like, like, boldly live out. While I don’t think I have a specific answer, that’s what I’ve been thinking. What would it be like if we contextualize it specifically to who we are and where we are?

Keith Edwards
Well, you’re getting at this reimagining, right, what could we reimagine and really grounding it? And I also want to free us up not from just what has been, but I think sometimes we get stuck in what would be the solution that will work forevermore, when it doesn’t have to what could work for us for the next six years, maybe and then We’ll reevaluate in six years is probably even too long. So I love that permission slip, you’re offering us, David, what do you see structurally and organizationally as some possibilities to consider?

David Hibbler Jr.
I think about the possum, when I think about the word possibility, I’m like, I don’t know if it’s like, I don’t know if we’re still really trying to figure it out, or just what we were forced to now do, if that makes sense. So I feel like we have been forced to look at other types of candidates, we have been forced to, you know, think about who are the types of folks who can now fill these roles, right, because during the height of USF, and dealing with all these things, we were the scholars, right, and we still aren’t right. But like, we were looking for a very specific type of person who was tapped on the shoulder and undergrad, who had that special moment who went into a graduate program, who had all these phenomenal, transformational, you know, experiences and moments of learning and insight during their graduate program, and they were ready, and they were at TPE. And they were gonna come to USF and create and do all these things. Right. And we don’t have as many folks our graduate programs anymore, and all these things right. And, and folks are looking at other opportunities, right? So we literally had to rethink our recruitment processes and the areas that we’re kind of recruiting in and all those things. I think that’s a possibility that if folks aren’t doing that, how are you not doing it? How we look at that? Or how are we? And indeed, or how are we now looking towards our local teachers unions and folks who are really in the space and looking for new opportunities, right? You know, right now, like, I’ve now interviewed and have hired folks who have transitioned from the K through 12 space, or looking to kind of leave those spaces and, and so we’re literally in the process of re envisioning how they’re now kind of merging over right, or kind of using those transferable skills. Spaces, right. So even as our field and NASPA and all these organizations are thinking about, what does the student affairs certification look like? All these things, right? Like, I don’t know where I’m at. But like, we’ve now needed to provide some of our staff with some of the and other opportunities to give them a crash course and student development theory or some of these pieces just to have the contextual knowledge of what is higher ed. Right. So that has now had to be at some of our onboarding processes. So that’s a that’s somewhere where we’ve had to kind of re envision, and I think the other piece is just as we continue to see more heightened levels of mental health and alcohol consumption, at least in some of our halls. And I know, that is a national thing. Recently, in our bid team, you know, I think the specific language was the intensity of the concerns that we’re now facing, our we haven’t seen, right, so what our RAS our students are dealing with in the halls and our staff are having to engage with we’re trying to figure out how do we, you know, how do we support them differently? Or how do we now look for other types of, you know, positions to be on call, they’re similar to Erin into what she mentioned. So that’s, that’s where we’re at. And it’s, I think, now we’re just in a place of not just like trying to re envision it, but we’re literally being forced, right, because I can’t now have another Ra, see, experience their fifth, you know, Baker Act of mental health transport, you know, this week, if I’m now seeing this, how am I like pulling them off and having somebody else step in, but also not wanting them to possibly engage in the level of trauma that we’re now seeing. So that’s where I’m at, and that’s all over the place, but I’m gonna have to, we’re gonna have to figure something out because I don’t want us to be in a place of where we no longer have people to do the work right. And I don’t think we’re there and I’m gonna think we’re gonna be there but folks have to really think about the the level of impact that is really happening on our phones.

Keith Edwards
But it’s gonna take leadership like yours to make sure that that isn’t the reality as we go forward. So I’m glad you’re thinking about that. Dana, what would you add here about some organizational structure possibilities?

Dana Olivo
I’m thinking more on resources and what resources are available and what’s being provided? Both time money, not both, but time money, structural resources. As I think that the, the work is, for me, personally speaking, I statements. For me, I think the work has gotten a lot harder, I think our students are coming in with a significant amount of more mental health stuff, firsthand trauma, secondhand trauma, and like what they see in front of them all day, every single day on social media and the news and all of the things the access to things that are quite traumatizing, and they’re coming in with that, and I don’t know, if I don’t think I don’t feel like our resources are keeping up with the need. And at some point, we’re gonna, we’re gonna have to do that otherwise, this isn’t, this isn’t a sustainable space to be in if we’re unable to meet the needs of our students, because they’re saying they need more, they do need more, they’re showing us that they need more, they need more, as well as I think compensation is a huge one, for folks working in student affairs and Residence Life, and how do we make this a sustainable field to continue to work in? Right, like the cost of living is increasing. But pay often times is not increasing in that in that same way?

Keith Edwards
Yeah. Well, thanks to all of you, we’re running out of time, I want to invite some other folks in here but as you know, with a podcast called Student Affairs NOW we always end with what are you pondering now? So real quick for each of you with just what’s something? Maybe it’s related to the conversation? Maybe it’s other things? What is really with you? Now? What are you thinking troubling or pondering now? Go ahead, Dana.

Dana Olivo
Soon, so since I just talked about sustainability, that’s gonna that’s still on my mind. It’s gonna stay with me, I’ll probably sleep about it. Sleep about it, I’ll probably do about it when I’m sleeping this evening.

Keith Edwards
That’s right. That’s right. David, what are you troubling now?

David Hibbler Jr.
So I’m gonna pick up the baton from Dan, because he just mentioned sleep. But folks aren’t sleeping folks aren’t resting. And I really feel like we there needs to be some, like a shock to the system to really create spaces that promote that, right. A few years ago, I joked with some of my facilities, folks, I was like, How can we just dim the lights? Like we were on a plane in the evening? Or like, how can we slow the Wi Fi down? At 2am? Just so folks, like, you know, just so they catch the hint, and they go, and they go to sleep? Or they just rest and they just recover? Right? And they you know, and they’re not causing issues for us to respond to right. But so we’re promoting that this nature of rest and recovery. So that’s what I’m pondering.

Keith Edwards
I love it. I remember I’m great at sleeping on planes. And I learned that it’s because they dim the lights and they lower the level of oxygen, which makes people thermic and sleep. And mostly, that’s just so people don’t get rowdy. It’s a way of sort of crowd control is not far from what you’re suggesting. Yeah. And Erin Simpson, you want to take us in a different direction, or you just want to say a double standard.

Erin Simpson
I like gain. I’m thinking a lot about sustainability. Margaret Salee’s work. I choose on podcasts about creating sustainable careers and student affairs and ideal worker norms is really on my mind a lot right now. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how he does this, this sort of like, way that we got tired, right? Just how do we resist this? And I’ve been pondering that a lot lately.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. Well, wonderful. Thanks to all three of you for being awesome guests and for giving us some things to think about some possibilities, some reimagining some looking back and looking forward.

Keith Edwards
Thanks to the University of Massachusetts Amherst Residential Life for hosting today’s conversation, and to our sponsors for today’s episode Leadershape, and Stylus. Leadershape partners with colleges and universities to create transformational leadership experiences both virtual and in person for students and professionals with a focus on creating a more just caring and thriving world. Leadership offers engaging learning experiences on courageous dialogue, integrity, equity, resilience, and community building. To find out more, please visit leadershape.org/virtual programs or connect with them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. And Stylus is proud to be a sponsor of the podcast browse their student affairs, diversity and professional development titles at styluspub.com. Use promo code SANow for 30% off all books plus free shipping. You can also find stylists on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter @styluspub. Huge shout out to our producer Nat Ambrosey who does all the behind the scenes work to make us look and sound good. If you’re not if you’re listening today and not already receiving our weekly newsletter, please visit our website at student version i.com. Scroll to the bottom of the homepage to add your email to our MailChimp list. While you’re there, check out the archives. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to the fabulous guests today and everyone who’s watching and listening. Make it a great week.

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