Paul Gordon Brown
I think, you know, tech is getting better at helping in the right ways with staff over time. That’s certainly promising. Otherwise, I would not be in the job that I’m in if I didn’t believe in it. But it’s also concerning that A some folks, even with technology adoption, are willing to invest the time to make it useful for them. So great example, we’re doing intentional conversations. This is to get students to know about each other. And we want to understand what’s going on with our students. And so you can use software tools to take in that information. But if you’re not then using the assessment data that pops out of it, it’s really not serving any purpose. And so now it becomes a burden in time. Now, the benefits item, right? And so I think Tech has promise. But it’s also concerning to me of like, how can we make sure that we can use this in the best way possible?

Keith Edwards
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW, I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today we’re discussing rethinking the RA role COVID changing nature of needs of both residents and students, staff members and so much more as leading many folks to rethink the RA role on campus. Today, I’m joined by three folks who have been doing a lot of thinking outside the box about some possibilities. I’m so glad that each of you is here. 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 at studentaffairsnow.com. Today’s episode is sponsored by Roompact. Roompact is a software and educational services company focused on helping residents life and education departments simplify their workflows and improve student learning and engagement outcomes for residents. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him his. I’m a speaker, consultant and coach, and you can find out more about me at Keith edwards.com. I’m broadcasting from Minneapolis, Minnesota at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of both the Dakota in the Ojibwe peoples. Let’s get to our conversation. Paul, Heather, Glenn so grateful to have you here. Let’s have you each introduce yourself and share a little bit more. Paul, it start off with you.

Paul Gordon Brown
Great, thanks, Keith. Happy to be here. So my name is Paul Brown, I use he him his pronouns. I work at Roompact, as the director of the campus experience, so I’m the one that helps schools get the most out of our software. I’m the one that goes and does training, as well as kind of manage our social media and blogging and content and podcast all of the above presents. But I’m really excited to be here because you know, I love spicy topics. And this is a spicy topic, you know, something that that looks at things we kind of take for granted and questions them and thinks about them in new ways. So I’m ready to dig in, especially with this crew.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. Heather, tell us a little bit more about you.

Heather Kropf
Yeah, Thanks Keith. My name is Heather. I use she her pronouns and I served as the Director of Residence Life housing and student conduct at Willamette University, which is a private liberal arts college in Salem, Oregon. We also have a Arts College up in the Portland area called the Pacific Northwest College of Arts which has a small residential campus. I just celebrated my year work anniversary and before Willamette I was at the University of Oregon for nearly 11 years, and Willamette University resides on the land of the Calapooia Ilahi, which today, the representative by the Confederated Tribes of the grand run and the federated tribes of Indians. I’m really excited to be here as well. Thank you.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. And Glenn. For anyone who doesn’t know you from podcast tell us a little bit more about you.

Glenn DeGuzman
Goodness gracious, it’s kind of weird being on the other side, guys trade two chairs. Everyone, Glenn De Guzman, I use he him pronouns. I’m the Associate Dean of Students, and director of life at UC Berkeley. I’m coming to you all from Livermore, California, which is the ancestral home, and still present day home of the Aloni, ma, ma, the Chinese speaking people and a little about myself. Aside from just running residential, I’ve been in the field for about 30 years closing in on that. So I feel don’t let this boyish young looking. I am an old dude. So happy to be here.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. Well, I’m so glad to ideate and innovate and brainstorm and throw out some some strange ideas. But maybe we’ll we’ll begin with how this kind of came together. And I’ll just say, we were thinking about this as a podcast host team and seeing some of the blog posts that room packed was doing with different folks chiming in around this. And I said, Oh, yeah, I’m thinking about doing this. And Glenn was like, I want to be on I’ve got things to say. And I’d be a part of this. I was like, Okay, sure. That’s great. reached out to Paul, who is doing some work with Heather on this. And so, so glad to have all of you here. But Paul, maybe you can tell us maybe how that came to be what sort of room packed in the blog and some other things and kind of frame things a little bit for us?

Paul Gordon Brown
Yeah, sure. So COVID, right. I think this is really due to COVID. I mean, when we think about the IRA role and rethinking it, it’s needed to happen for a long time. But COVID was really that inflection point that made people go, Whoa, this isn’t this isn’t working. And it’s, you know, most famously, it was George Washington University back in 2001. That said, Okay, we’re gonna append this whole model, shift around roles really kind of break apart the RA role quite a bit. And I think that’s what really kind of kick started it off for a lot of folks. So there are other institutions that have kind of experimented with this Arkansas Tech. There’s a On room exome podcast resin chat, we chatted with Luke and Delton. They’re at Arkansas Tech, they did something very similar to George Washington, in terms of breaking up their role. And it’s just continued to get a lot of energy. If you go to conferences, you know, I went to the first in person ACUHO-I, I post started the pandemic, and packed house rooms, like overflowing into the hallway that there is just so much energy around this. That, you know, I’ve been like, let’s, let’s go with this. Let’s see where it goes. And so we did a blog series on the Roompact blog, where different voices from across the field talked about, here’s what I think or here’s my take on the future of the IRA role. And then kind of, as you mentioned, you know, Heather, myself and a few others are presenting it ACUHO-I this upcoming this summer, where we’re doing from the RAS themselves. So we interviewed RAs, what do you think the future the role, what’s working, what’s not? And there’s just a lot of energy. Not as many people doing the the work in the experiment with it yet. But I think exploring the topic and being what’s going on here. So I think that’s kind of where we we kind of enter into the conversation.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, I think that’s a really great caveat. Because I think, you know, we had some folks who we invited who said, you know, I think about this a lot, I’ve got a lot of ideas, but we’re not ready to do that. And I don’t want to get ahead of where my campus is. And so, so, but Glenn, couldn’t wait to get in. Yeah. And talk about this. Well, why tell us Glenn? Where’s Glenn?

Glenn DeGuzman
No, I think that’s, that’s an interesting thing. Because I think that, you know, I went to an AICPA conference, it’s my last ACPA conference, believe it or not, was in 2016. So that one, but when I went to that conference, we I went to a workshop on just mental health, and just looking at trends, and they were already identifying trends. And, and I think that there was a when I, when I think about where I worked at UC Berkeley, I was already starting to see a little bit of that as early as like 2017. But I wasn’t sure how to put, you know, it was still kind of like emerging until it’s really difficult to just to name at the time, we had conduct data, which was pretty consistent. But what we were seeing at Berkeley was a starting to see an increase in students of concern, meaning students are coming in. And we’re starting to identify some mental health concerns and issues. I had an interesting conversation with our we were fortunate to have a psychologist at UC Berkeley, who works very closely with a res life, and they primarily work with our residential students. But he pulled me aside because we, you know, we meet regularly, and he’s like, Glenn, I’m starting to see more and more of your RA staff, and more and more resident director, staff. And that was sort of like the beginning of trying to piece together, what’s going on here. And so we began, I began investigating, I was able to connect with Washington State University, they’re doing this stress anxiety survey. We are fortunately because Dr. Jason Lynch, who does a lot of research on staff wellness, worked at UC Berkeley. And so he did a study and using some of his scales and evaluations confirmed that, you know, a lot of the work that our RAs was starting to shift, and there, they were dealing with a lot of secondary trauma. And so it just began this investigation. And I think the pandemic, to Paul’s point really was that big, because I think that’s when I started able to have more conversation with my peers and colleagues about what is happening. And it’d be it began this kind of journey to like, start to deconstruct the RA role. Where is all that work coming in? For us at Berkeley, it was tied to addressing mental health concerns within our residential students.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, I think that’s a big factor that I hear driving is that folks aren’t saying their student of concerns. They’re not going up. They’re going up exponentially. And how do we navigate that? And I think that’s a mix of what people are experiencing in the world and bringing into campus. I think it’s part of, we’re better at it. And so we’re identifying more issues and more things, and we’re connecting with students, students are better at it, they’re better at identifying their parents are better at everything. They’re connected, and so that the needs are just going up. Heather, what is sort of brought you to this?

Heather Kropf
Yeah, I mean, in addition to the changing current student culture, I just, I keep thinking about opportunities to align for a curricular approach to drive the structure of what the resident advisor role could be. And so part of I worked with a brilliant person, a wonderful human named Miles Marrow, who was at the University of Oregon, so post pandemic COVID. With underneath his leadership, he created a structure to really drive home our learning goals that were related to Resident Advisor position, so really elevating our returning student leader position, and aligning those within our learning goals, and tying their work to a positional person that would help drive the structure. So they would be they would have like a cohort of just consistency with some of the initiatives that they were doing. So I just keep thinking about how does the curricular approach drive the structure, as well as Conversation learning with peers, I’ve realized that as you know, every institution has their own different student culture. So what I experienced at my last institution I couldn’t ever replicate here at Willamette, because our students are very, very different. And so in addition to everything that’s been said, there’s also a recent article that came out from Akufo. It’s called Changing traditions, the RA role is undergoing major changes as as members shape it to the needs of their campuses. So it highlights a lot of the work that has happened with George Washington, Arkansas Tech and some other institutions. And something just to highlight one of them Texas Christian University, talks about really revamping their RA role to have residents feel like their RAs are friends. And so that was kind of like their goal of wanting to, for their RAs for the residents to see their their RAs as friends. So they use this concept of knowing, connecting and empowering and how they train resident advisors. And so I get excited when I think about different institutions being able to hone in on what’s special about their institution? And how do you create these positions that are more helpful to obtaining what you would want people to do? So a lot of connections, conversations with peers, and it’s how I enter this conversation?

Keith Edwards
Well, that’s kind of how we all got instigated into this. Let’s dive in a little bit more about some of the details, and then some of the possibilities. Glenn, what are you what are you seeing out there? And what are you starting to really what’s really driving this?

Glenn DeGuzman
What’s driving it for me is? You know, I think that as a student, first professional, you know, we I like to believe that as professionals, we really pay attention to the well being of our staff of the people that we worked with. And it was easy. Well, it wasn’t easy, but it was but it was noticeable that that staff were just having more difficulty in, in bringing the full selves to work, that I was, you know, we’re seeing a lot of tired staff a lot of a lot of response to type of issues that was occurring. And in 2000, I think it was 16 or 17. Berkeley, we decided to just do a simple time audit, we initially wanted to look at the resident director step. But we also just on a whim decided let’s just also measure the RAS that we were, we were basically tracking where our where our residential life staff spending our time. And I and to the point that was made earlier about like, we were just starting to see mental health increase, it was it was crazy to see how much time was now being spent on on addressing crises of that nature. And when we look at what the traditional RA role is, the math wasn’t adding up anymore, in terms of the number of hours that we have allocated to RAS to do the work, it just didn’t add up. If you think about the time it takes to do programming, building trust building community, they got duty, they got conduct all that, you know, we have a good idea of how many hours it takes to do that work. But what we didn’t anticipate was the time it takes to address mental health crises, roommate conflicts, people coming in with with just different types of challenges. And then to top it off, we’re asking resident assistants or asking students to then recover from stuff like this is not their primary job their students first. So the recovery that’s needed. You know, it was something like how do we address helping students recover when they’ve had a long night, when they’ve had to deal with certain types of issues I’ve never had to deal before. And then you might want to have the resin director staff who also tried to support that. So we were starting to see like, we need to really look at what type of training with a training was starting to, we felt like the solution was add more training, all that did was just means that they became better were how to identify stuff that was happening. And then we started to realize, wow, we really have a chat. We have an issue here because it’s not the students that we are supporting and are having issues and we’re picking up these the concerns they’re having, but we didn’t have the bandwidth anymore. And so it really started thinking like, are we doing this right? Should we be relying on our resin systems to be addressing a lot of this stuff? Now because it didn’t feel like it didn’t feel right anymore?

Keith Edwards
Well, when we add trading, we often add it to the August training or whenever you’re a pre arrival is and then now you’re at 10 days or two weeks or more, which then means there’s fewer students who can be on the roll because they have summer jobs or other commitments or other things you start to. I’ve seen lots of schools when they add to training, the diversity of their staff

Glenn DeGuzman
as well. Let me give you an example. First Aid to mental health. Right. That’s a newer type of training that we introduced and just providing that knowledge to staff. They are starting to identify stuff that like maybe historically we it’s just them Mix now it’s like, okay, now you just have more and more and more volume. And it’s reflecting the data we’re collecting. Right? We’re just seeing numbers go up.

Keith Edwards
What are some of the possibilities that you’re seeing?

Heather Kropf
Yeah, I mean, to echo what Glenn has shared, I mean, the student culture, it’s, it’s changing. And so I think often about student leaders to employees, how are they? How are we equipping them to do appropriate tasks as students and so, as I’m learning more at Willamette, it’s a, it’s a fun time to be at Willamette to start here. We have this brand new strategic plan, we have the divisional of curricular approach that is launching, and we’re working on that for this upcoming fall. So I think a lot about how these, the strategic plan the curricular approach, how that is going to tie into the resident advisor role. And it’s one reason why I haven’t even touched the RA role, a little bit modifications I’ll share about that. But why I haven’t like really revamped it for the most part of this first year, because there were other priorities that we really wanted to spend time on that were essential to our residence hall program that we were we were initiating, but, you know, I think about equipping RAS to do work that is appropriate for their roles. We did a timeout at this past year, where we just asked RAs three times during the semester, how are you spending your time and from that, we’ve been able to understand a little bit more about how they’re engaging with residents to understand a little bit more about what our residents are needing from a resident advisor role from that position. So it’s been interesting to try to think a little bit more about how our student leaders are engaging with residents. I do think that the at the end goal at Willamette, we will most likely have some specialized positions for Resident Assistants and resident advisors. And that could attend to initially be a cost saving initiatives. So I also think that when budgets are strained at some institutions like being able to revamp and do that could be a cost saving initiatives, which has been what other what other people have shared, that has been a byproduct, not necessarily that saving money was something that they wanted to do. But it was a byproduct of after the structure that they built, they saved money. And so I think I think about those things, too.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, that’s one of the things I’m hearing folks talk about is used to be build, build community on the floor, and then do programming, and now do duty. And we need you to do some desk hours. And now we want you to also do student learning and attentional economy. And we just keep adding to this role. And it’s a lot which you both pointed to, but also people aren’t good at all of those things. And so people who would be good at some things are saying, well, I don’t want to do the role, because I don’t want to do that part of it. And be by being able to break apart the role. Some people really want to do like the customer service desk and checking things, and others are really interested in duty and being of service and after hours and conduct and really engaging that. And others are really so by breaking it apart. It’s a bit more manageable. And you can find people like what really connected, energize have skills around this without having to be you have to do these 13 different roles. Well, it’s hard to find people who are good at that and hard to find people who want to do that. What’s what’s driving this for you, Paul?

Paul Gordon Brown
Yeah, well, in comments and what you just said, as a case study of one who was an RA, I can mention many things I was not good at and that are top of top of my list. So I’m gonna throw a little bit of a different one in here. I think there’s seeds of it. And kind of what what Glenn was saying, but um, you know, one thing that’s been really great for my kind of career trajectories, I work adjacent to higher ed right now, right. So I had I had enculturated, I had gone straight through did my masters did that very traditional path worked in higher ed my whole life, and then plopped into a very young company that was only two years, two years old, when I started with people that were 10 years, my junior. And the the work was different. Meaning in in higher ed, everything is email. Everything is centered, usually around Microsoft Office, or less. So now. And there’s certain work norms that are just expected in higher ed. And then I come into this young company, where the way of working is different, I would say more modern, which is probably more likely what our students will find when they go and work in the workforce, it’s not going to look like higher ed, in terms of the way that we do jobs do our job. And it gave me appreciation for how the world of work has changed. And what our students are going to expect and what they’re going to do is different. And there’s different ways of doing it remote work, you know, can we think differently about the way things are structured? And one of the things that I’ve seen with a lot of schools that have gone down this path is that they realized, oh, we need to make these positions more flexible. Like you kind of said, Keith with, you know, making students come back for two solid weeks of training in August is going to cut out a whole bunch of folk. Yeah. So should we be rethinking that should jobs be able to be moved between that was one of the cool things that Arkansas Tech talked about is, you know, traditionally, if you’re an RA, and you need to student teach, you can’t be an RA anymore when you student teach, they said, but one of the benefits of changing the role was, oh, you’re currently in a more ra like capacity right now? Well, you could shift over to this other position in our department, which will be much more flexible with the way that you go about things. And you could do both. And I think for me kind of thinking through like, you know, what’s driving this is, we need to rethink what is work look like? And how is it structured. And it’s usually from a group of higher ed folk that and a little bit of bubble of, here’s how we’re structured, it’s very traditional, and we can keep going down that path that haven’t been challenged in that way. And I know, for me, when I stepped outside of the institutions and started working for a company, I was like, whoa, okay, I have a better appreciation for it now than I did. And I think I appreciate looking at the RA role of like, it doesn’t have to look in that traditional mold. There might be ways that we could do I mean, heck, at this rate, we’re going to have chat GPT could just counsel our students

Keith Edwards
to do anything, right. What could go wrong there?

Paul Gordon Brown
What could go wrong? what possibly could go wrong?

Keith Edwards
One of the things I and I, you know, Paul, you and I work with lots of different schools, right, rather than having a key institution. So we hear lots of different stories, one of the things that I talked about with their curricular approach is you have to rethink everything. You don’t have to change everything. But you have to be willing to just consider it for a little bit. And I think that’s what I’m hearing from all of you like, how do we, how can we what what are we unwilling to consider shifting? And why is that? And what if we considered it and if you can consider it, and you go, actually, what’s what we’ve been doing is really the best thing, then you’re even more committed to it. But I think that willingness to rethink everything, without feeling like we have to change everything, because then that gets overwhelming. And you feel like, why is what we’ve been doing that and be willing to open that up? I want to move us into

Glenn DeGuzman
some possible Can I can I add to my Yeah. Can I chime in on that really quickly? I liked what you just said, Keith, like, I think that there is this thought process of a trend to rethink, like trying to rethink, like, just the whole, the big picture things I oftentimes struggle with, as you know, as a director, the bandwidth to even change just a few items, right? As the workload continues to increase, you know, and to I want adults to chime in on what Heather had said earlier about looking at, you know, Ra roles and trying to create work that’s more appropriate for the role, instead of like, I think over the years, I think we’ve just sort of like expanded the role of the RA to try to encompass things because maybe there just wasn’t enough professional staff to deal with that. Right? And in what would happen if you were to just really get the the RAS to, to cut out some of that stuff. And really just focus on centering on what, maybe the co curricular approach, right, like just focusing on one aspect of that, so they can so they can be a student first, and then also be a support mechanism for the students in a balanced way. So I think that there’s some interesting talking about, like, I’m sure if I’m given the questions we’re going to be exploring. I’m sure I can talk more about that as well. But I just wanted to comment on those two things. I agree with.

Keith Edwards
Paul let’s come back to you. When we think about possibilities. What are some of the things that you feel can might be out there? If we rethink what how to coin kind of open the door here a little bit?

Paul Gordon Brown
Yeah, yeah. To me, you know, I’ve been a faculty member on the Institute on the curricular approach, formerly the residential curriculum Institute for a double A double digit year number. And I can’t in my head, divorce the two topics, because to me, they’re completely related. The curricular approach says, well, let’s rethink how we’re going to develop this kind of program educational model into something else. And part of that is always well, then we’ll need to relook at our staff as well. Right. And to me, they’re just so intertwined, because you can’t change the role without really knowing it. What are your goals? And what do you want to do? And what outcomes do you want for students? And so to me, they’re very much related. One thing that Arkansas Tech when I when I spoke with them, that kind of resonated with me that I didn’t think about before we talked about it was when they kind of moved around their positions. They took the programming out of the RA position entirely, and they centralized IT, and so they have a program team and he said, Well, we’ve got our curricular goals and outcomes and there are certain things that we want to use through programming method, you know, as a strategy for engaging our students. So our programming team will do it. And they’ll go into each hall and do it in each hall. So it’s more consistent, they can get better at it over time, you know, year over year, that program can continue to improve. And they removed it from the RA position and gave it to this new position of people that really liked to program in a really jazzed and engaged by that. And I said, Oh, well, that’s hitting multiple outcomes, right? Like, you’re engaging your best student programmers at the things that they’re passionate about. But now you’re making your student experience more consistent. And you can more consistently assess your learning outcomes, because you have that you’re gaining exposure to things and I think it’s rethinking things like that. That really, that’s, that’s exciting to me, that’s I think, Okay, I see where this could go. And if we extend that further, Well, where else does that that go into? I think that’s kind of the thing that hard me to think Oh, yeah.

Keith Edwards
Glen, what are some possibilities that you’re hearing about thinking about? Or maybe you’re just beginning to kick around?

Glenn DeGuzman
I think we’ve, we’ve been kicking it around. And I think we’ve we’re moving in a direction where we are kind of to Heather’s comment earlier, I’m stuck on that comment, Heather, that you shared earlier, because we are starting to look at what would happen if the roles were sort of parceled out. Oh, that, right. So I know that we recently re inherited the what used to be called the security monitor program, but it’s really a safety ambassador program, like having non RAS staff, the front desk in the area. So giving them alleviating, start relieving some of the burden that RAS have identified students who might need some support or help. Were working closely with other departments like a we have a health worker program to help with some of the you know, you know, panthenol, education, sexual health education, like those type of things, and, you know, not having all the pressure on the RAS. So really looking at how we can partner with the campus to kind of alleviate some of the, the burden on the resident assistants. In crisis responses, the big one, you know, I think that we’re one of the, we’re starting to move in the direction of a mobile crisis unit overnight. So it also again, alleviates the pressure from RAS. That is that has started at UC Berkeley. So we’re getting we’re in the process of measuring and assessing to see its effectiveness. I think the strategy that I wanted to just kind of focusing on is we have the data to show that, that our residence systems are impacted. And we’ve done we just, you know, my Vice Chancellor, or Dean of Students, our assessment person that I we did an article just specifically looking at our haul, stab, post, the impacts of the pandemic and, and looking at their wellness. And so we have an idea of how, how, what, what, what the issues are, what are some of the challenges that they face, and then this next generation of upset me and what we have put in place, and we’re trying to come up with more, as we try to institutionalize some strategies is really giving the supervisors the RDS the system directors and Reza July, the flexibility to make decisions on their staff wellness and a greater great, we want consistency, definitely throughout the department. So we do a lot of calibration conversations. But if we feel that we need to pivot shift, change things within the control of our policies that we have in place in regards to what it is to manage a holster, we give the supervisor the ability to make those shifts and changes. And what we’re finding is that a lot of the decisions are making this tied to giving more breaks, flexibility, recovery time for the whole staff jesting to get through the whole year because it can be daunting. And then at the same time, we’re also thinking about venturing that amongst the pros that because the pro staff who had to do all this work to supervise all the RA, they’re burning out. So how do we as the director, the directors, how do we give them the ability to take time to the center and focus on work life balance, so where it’s not just like what’s happening at the ground level, but if the right above the ground level, you keep going up the kind of like the hierarchy, for lack of better term. We have to start really looking at the wellness of staff so people aren’t just burning out. And it’s not easy. It’s really not easy.

Keith Edwards
I want to highlight two things because I think you talked about partnerships and I think one of the things that I’ll say we housing resins life folks, I did that for a long time. We think we have to do it all right. Students are experiencing whatever there’s this need. There’s whatever we have to do it all we have to do it all and I I think you’re talking about partnerships. And who can we bring in? Who can we connect? So we don’t have to do it all, but the student’s needs can be better served. I think that’s a great reminder for all of us. And I think the other thing, I’ll compliment you, so let me talk about is and Glenn I think I hear this again and again, from you. I think you and your team at Berkeley do such a great job of really thinking about policy development, to better serve students and to create more flexibility. And I think oftentimes policies feel like they move away from that. But I hear you again and again, looking at policies, what do we need to do with policies to create more openness, more humaneness, more serving this more flexibilities? We can better serve students. So I think that’s a that’s a great thing that you pointed others to.

Paul Gordon Brown
Well, and Can I ask on a question here? Yeah, I’ll jump in, and so many hosts right now. That’s right. I’m taking over the transfer the hosting responsibilities over here. So you mentioned the mobile crisis team, or I’m not exactly sure how you termed it there. I think when I talk with people about this, the hardest thing they can’t wrap their brains around and I struggle with it, too, is how do we handle the crisis? How do we handle the after hours, things that are, you know, burning all levels of our staff, not just the student staff, but our usually our frontline professional staff to? This is the hardest one that I think I really feel like, I don’t understand how this works. I don’t know how we can do this in a manageable way. Do you? What’s your magic answer to that? Or what’s your problem?

Glenn DeGuzman
Yeah, no, you know it. Well, one, money, you know, the cost, mobile question, the here’s an interesting story, probably that this actually occurred, I want to say pre pandemic and starting to blur together but pre pandemic, I was approached by my colleague and health services, and they were talking about the utilization of social workers to assist with crisis response to help, you know, the residence assistants, because we would be bringing this different level of response, you know, that these are folks at the university, they’re being trained at the university, this is their, this is what they do. And I’m like, wow, let’s explore this conversation. And I started talking about what the, if it felt really good until I said, and we need them after hours, and they’re like, oh, no, no, we were hoping an eight to five type of room. I’m like, that doesn’t work that way. So that kind of killed that conversation, because they’re students to that they want to do it within that workday. So how did the university solution for you know, for years now has been like, let’s use our hall staff. Because a half staff are the folks who are there 24 hours they but but the preparation, the train that’s needed, isn’t there. So this mobile crisis unit that emerged it’s really interesting, because it is dedicated after our staff. And they and I think what we’re learning right now is how did that dedicate after our staff work with our hall staff, we’re still going to be president who understand the vibe, the energy, the culture of the community, that the this group is coming in? And yeah, there are things that we’re still trying to address, because they, you know, they are learning what it means to come into a student environment or residential community. And I think that’s still, you know, I think that’s one of the things that we’re paying attention to some of the things that kind of already has been elevated. And it’s not like, like, Oh, my God, it’s a complete failure. But what it means is, we have to go back and do that whole research cycles of what did we learn? What are the things that we can do to re Educate to get everyone on the same page? How do we work better together, and it’s not just the mobile crisis unit and the hall stuff, you have UCPD we have, our campus police department, we have a fire department we have, you know, depending on who responds, the level of support will vary, because sometimes it’s a new array, and that array may not be as comfortable versus a more senior RA or a Resurrector. So, it there’s a lot of variables that plays in and these are the things that we’re trying to measure and track, but it is a lot. And so we gotta have to pick one or two things and focus in on for the next iteration when we get around to it. So this really year for us.

Keith Edwards
I think that iteration is so important. I think so many times people feel like we have to figure out the perfect solution and then implement it. Whereas you’re saying, let’s try something. Let’s figure it out. What worked, what didn’t work. Okay, we got to adjust here it is here, and sort of build something over time. Heather, what are some of the possibilities that you’re seeing?

Heather Kropf
Yeah, I mean, I don’t want to share all my secrets, but I’m so appreciative inquiry is a it’s a process that helps facilitating change. And when I was at you, oh, Laurie lander, who is the director of red life and academic initiatives, did this and as a participant, I always loved the process because it helps participants think about what is like what what are the possibilities, so it takes people through this Discovery dream design Destiny phase. And so I actually replicated some of that and adapted that to my organization in the fall semester. And from that we created our new mission vision values. But then also, we came up with for projects that we wanted to work on. And so I think Appreciative Inquiry side note is a tool that can be utilized for people who are looking to revamp the RA role in some ways to help create buy in at all levels of an organization. But from these from this process, along with mission vision values revamp, we aligned four initiatives that we wanted to do, and one of them was a resident advisor role. And it was really important for me to get that right as right as one could. So we started for twith, Living Learning Communities, theme communities, as well as sophomore experience transfer students, and I had us all the spring semester do research and benchmarking projects. So I invited everyone from the division to come alongside and do research and benchmark. What are other institutions doing what does research say is a best practice and create some different strategies for our ResLife housing department. So we presented that anyone from the Division was allowed to come get feedback. And we incorporated that feedback for our final kind of process. So this upcoming year, we’re doing some of our initiatives within that. And so now that we have the structure kind of set for these research and benchmarking projects, I also worked with the library and they created a website for us to easy easily have a landing page to teach people how to do research if they weren’t necessarily doing that on a regular basis. So I get excited, because the second year that I’m here, we’re going to be doing this with the resident advisor role. So I keep thinking about creating buy in and doing that as a new employee. And then in addition, you know, I, I brought in the dean of admissions this last fall, and I said, What are students saying, like, what are our incoming students saying, and part of the review that admissions do is a holistic review of our students. And they said they are seeking connection, but they don’t know how to get it. They are seeking connection, they don’t know how to get it. And so that has been like the motto this whole year for our resident advisors. And our team is like, how are we building connections. And so we’ve created it’s not innovative, but how counselors, it wasn’t something it stopped during pandemic, but I really want the social programs to not happen with resident advisors and really be a peer to peer thing. So really seeking information from our our Dean’s and admission staff of what are students coming in with and what and what do they aspire to be? So it’s been really exciting, the small tweaks that Aaron Yukari, who’s the associate director, and I have been doing this year, so it’s been really awesome for this upcoming year. Anyway, so those are some of the things that I’ve been contemplating and considering and thinking about.

Keith Edwards
I think that’s great. We, it makes me think we should do a whole episode just on Appreciative Inquiry, because I think that this is really fabulous and widely applicable. And I love that you’re getting admissions to inform what you’re doing, I would encourage us to talk to admissions about what housing respite folks are doing, because often the stories they’re telling are really outdated. And to be present. Here’s what’s going on, here’s what the resident experiences so that when you’re talking with folks, you can do that. Well, we’re trying to quickly get to more questions in rapid fire ish, Heather, what’s most promising? What’s most concerning?

Heather Kropf
I mean, we’ve set it here staff are strapped for time. So I think about what is essential for the team that I work with to be doing at small colleges, we were wearing multiple hats are really been essential with that work. It’s important for me, and then buy in and teaching other people about what ResLife housing staff do. Keith, you just talked about that. But I think there’s potential misconceptions about the opportunity that our team has within a residential campus like Willamette of what we’re doing, we are not, there’s a lot of misconceptions. So I think speaking that language and talking about how we are educators, enhancing the student experience is something that I consistently do on a regular basis. And I’m really excited about continuing collaborations and working in residential campus, when we have a two year live on a requirement. The possibilities are endless, but time is not endless. And so really being able to think about those initiatives are important to me.

Keith Edwards
I’m in money isn’t the crunch, right? Yeah, well, what about you? What’s What do you find really promising? And are there things that you’re here people rethinking? That’s concerning?

Paul Gordon Brown
Yeah. So I mean, my day job is working at a software company, right? So my, a lot of my days are spent looking at our software thinking, what’s going to help people get be more efficient in their work, what’s going to help them surface information for them to make informed decisions about things? And one thing I’ve learned in doing this for a while that’s both promising and concerning is I think, you know, tech is getting better at helping in the right ways with staff over time. That’s certainly promising. Otherwise, I would not be in the job that I’m in if I didn’t believe in it. But it’s also concerning that A some folks, even with technology adoption, are willing to invest the time to make it useful for them. So great example, we’re doing intentional conversations. This is to get students to know about each other. And we want to understand what’s going on with our students. And so you can use software tools to take in that information. But if you’re not then using the assessment data that pops out of it, it’s really not serving any purpose. And so now it becomes a burden in time. Now, the benefits item, right? And so I think Tech has promise. But it’s also concerning to me of like, how can we make sure that we can use this in the best way possible? That’s literally my job description is to try to help people do that. And so I think about that all the time, but I think it’s part of the solution to this, what’s the future of the RA role? And how do we make work life balance better for staff and manage that? I think, I think Tech has a role to play in that as well. In the right order, again, chat, GPT be taking over our roles, and you know, well,

Keith Edwards
but I think that’s a real danger, right? The right tools can really help you. But then I also see people just adding tools and tools. And we bought this and we bought this and we got this, and we bought this and I was like we don’t know how to run any of it. I don’t know how to utilize it. So what are the right tools that can really help us either with efficiency or improve their quality?

Paul Gordon Brown
Yeah, and use us humans to make that the best that it can be? Right?

Keith Edwards
That I think that never, that never disappears from the equation.

Keith Edwards
Glenn promises, promising things concerning.

Glenn DeGuzman
I just listened to just the banter between you and Paul. And I can tell you, and this is not tied to the fact that Paul’s here but there is this gentleman who rolls around the country with this thing called room packed. And we have been using repack now for a number of years, and what you all just kind of summarizing the utilization of technology tools to aid professional status. I think it’s necessary. And if those tools are able to help build metrics and measures and an assessment, I think that the data that’s collected can help tell the story. Because I think in my role, and I think that this is this is this is what is needed. Across this country, when it comes to making sure the resources available for residential life, we have to convince leadership, the next generation is changing. And I think that a lot of the decision makers, they might have this image of what Residential Life was, but that’s from like 20 to 30 years ago, it’s no longer viable, disruptive shifts are needed. But you need the data to tell that story. To demonstrate that if this is our mission, this is what the campus needs are, this is what our strategic plan is. This is the data that’s telling us we are effective or not effective. And as we make the shift, we cannot bury our RAs in this process. Because while we’re trying to figure our I won’t sweat while we try to figure stuff out. We need to make sure that we are paying attention to the RAs because their students first.

Keith Edwards
Thanks Glenn, we don’t have to mark explicit on the podcast. So thank you for that. Sometimes we do and that’s great, too. We are running out of time. This podcast is called Student Affairs. Now we always like to end by asking our guests What are you thinking troubling or pondering? Now it might be related to this conversation or other things that are just really present with you. What are you pondering now, if you want to share with folks how they can connect with you? That’s great, too. Glenn, what are you troubling now?

Glenn DeGuzman
Not troubling me, but actually pondering, I really liked what Heather said about admissions. It’s making you rethink that I don’t have a deep connection with admissions. But I’ve sit in the same room with them. And I’m seeing the who’s coming in. And I need to better partner with them. So that literally is like writing. I wrote it down like to do you know, missions. Watch out. I’m coming. All right.

Keith Edwards
Paul, how about you?

Paul Gordon Brown
I mentioned chat GPT. Twice in this podcast. I mentioned it a third time. I’ve been experimenting with it. I’ve been asking it Residence Life related questions. We’ve been putting out posts on the blog every Friday of random questions that I’ve been asking chat, GPT. And it’s really an I’ve learned a lot in terms of what it can do well, and what it can’t do well, and the brief preview is, you know, if you want it to write a poem to residence hall leaders at the start of the academic year, it actually does a pretty good job. So you will see that coming out in a little bit. But, oddly, I said write a write a script for a series of intentional conversations at six points in the year over the course of a student’s first year in the residence hall. was, and it was eerily good. Like, like, you’re really good that we’d like a little polishing. Like, you’d be like, I would have assumed the human came up with us. So my thing is experimenting with that and seeing what it’s there’s some things it’s not good at. But there are some things where it is good. And it’s fascinating. So I’d encourage people, if you haven’t just played around with it, throw it random questions, see what it comes up with? It’s really, it’s really fascinating, I think.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. And Heather, what’s with you now? Yeah,

Heather Kropf
I think a lot about staff retention, working at a smaller campus, when people leave it, you feel it more. And so staff retention, and also just creating a culture where people feel valued and cared for and meaning in their work is something really important for me. Yeah. And if you want to connect with me, if you look me up, you’ll see a music a musician. But Heather grabbed me and I’m happy to be connected over Instagram or email.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks to all three of you. This has been terrific. I really appreciate your ideating and your willingness to share some thoughts that maybe aren’t fully actualized we’re not here sharing our massive success stories, but really innovating and ideating. I think you’ve given folks a lot of things to think about. So So Thanks to all three of you for being here today. And thanks to our sponsor of today’s episode, Roompact which got several shout outs today. room packed started as and remains a family owned business with a mission to help residents life and education professionals and the residents they serve. This includes helping staff be more efficient with administrative processes, and providing them with access to real time assessment and engagement data for insights into residents educational journeys. From curriculum to programming community development models room packed does it all, run practice committed to its values as a certified B Corp that does right by the planet, its employees and the campus it serves, and the field of Residence Life and student housing as a whole. Also, a shout out as always, to our producer Nat Ambrosey who does all the behind the scenes work to make us look and sound good. We love the support for these important conversations from our community. You can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to the podcast, on Apple on YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts and signing up for our weekly newsletter announcing each new episode and more. If you’re so inclined, you can also leave us a five star review. We’d love that. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to the fabulous guests today and to everyone who’s watching and listening. Make it a great week off thanks everyone.

Links: 

https://ts.acuho-i.org/may_2023/changing_traditions.html

Blog Post Series: What is the future of the Resident Advisor “RA” position and role?

What is the future of the Resident Advisor “RA” position and role?

• Reimagining Residential Professional Staffing by M.L. “Cissy” Petty, Stewart Robinette, and Seth Weinshel in NASPA’s Leadership Exchange (access requires membership)
• GW to Transform Service and Care for Residential Students in GW Today (2/24/21)
• Too Much for Students to Handle? Why One University Decided to Do Away With RAs by Katherine Mangan in The Chronicle of Higher Education (2/25/21)
• Reimagined Residential Professional Staffing Model Celebrates Early Progress by Nick Erickson in GW Today (3/7/22)

We Experiment With ChatGPT: Asking Questions About Residence Life and College Student Housing

JCUSH Special Issue on Staff Well Being (Lynch, J.). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlBTnzaKiZ0

ResEdChat Ep 35: Crystal Cyr and Kimberly Kruchen-Spaulding on their Multi-Institutional Study On The RA Role and Experience

ResEdChat Ep 35: Crystal Cyr and Kimberly Kruchen-Spaulding on their Multi-Institutional Study On The RA Role and Experience

ResEdChat Ep 27: Delton Gordon and Luke Hams on Re-Imagining RA and Student Staff Positions

https://www.roompact.com/2023/04/resedchat-ep-27-delton-gordon-and-luke-hams-on-re-imagining-ra-and-student-staff-positions/