Victor Arcelus
So you know, whether it’s a mental health related call, or it’s an alcohol or drug related call, you know, they’re there with campus safety, able to, you know, address the non kind of policy enforcement parts of what happens oftentimes in these kinds of situations. So we’ve created this team approach that includes campus safety, counseling, student life on call, each leveraging the strengths and talents that they have. And going back to what I was saying before, it’s about having the right people on the team and establishing a shared approach that ends up being, I think, a more successful way of managing these everyday kinds of challenges that we face.

Keith Edwards
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs now I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today we’re talking about reimagining the crisis response and on call structures. We’ll be discussing challenges new models and possible innovations to serve student needs better and create systems that are sustainable for staff as well. Student Affairs NOW is premier podcasts and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in longside 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 browser archives it’s student affairs now.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. This episode is brought to you by Stylus as well visit styluspub.com and use promo code SANow for 30% off and free shipping. Today we’re sharing the second 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 share their thoughts, ideas and approaches to generate possibilities first of all 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 Residential Life for making these conversations possible, and for allowing us to share them more broadly with you here.

Keith Edwards
I’d love to have our three guests introduce themselves. And Steve, I think we’re going to start with you. All right.

Steve Herndon
All right. Hello, everyone. I hope everyone is doing well. My name is Steve Herndon, my pronouns are he him his. I am the Assistant Vice President for Student Development and Executive Director of Housing and Residence Life at the University of Dayton. I have been at the University of Dayton 19 years, it’ll be 20 in July. This was supposed to be a two year experience. Yet, here I am. I am a member of the Dean of Students Office as well. So my my I’m a part of the Dean of Students staff here at UD. We are a highly residential institution. So 80% of our students across four years live in our housing. And so Housing and Residence Life as well as the other offices that report to our Dean of Students have a very intimate relationship with our students, given the highly residential nature of our institution. I will stop there, because I could go on forever, but I won’t. That gives you a little bit of context, not only about my role, but also how I know the environment in which all of that materializes. I will also say I’m also the acting dean of students this week as my supervisor is out of the office on business travel. So that has been quite an adventure, and definitely a great learning experience.

Keith Edwards
Well, thank you for being with us, Steve. Kate, let’s hear from you.

Kate Baier
Thanks, Keith. My name is Kate Baier. I use she her pronouns. I’m the Executive Director for residential life at New York University. And I have worked in various roles here since 2003. And so like Steve, I thought it was going to be a two two to five year gig and I have never left. My entire professional career has been in Residence Life. And prior to coming to NYU, I worked in Stony Brook on Long Island and at Ball State in Indiana. NYU, we have about 11,500 students. Most of our first year students are on campus. And then we see about half of our students study away at one of our global sites and then have a decreasing percentage of students who remain on campus throughout their four years here. Happy to be here. Happy to see so many well not right now because you’re before your cameras are off happy to see some familiar faces.

Keith Edwards
It was wonderful. Thank you for being with us today. it. And Victor, tell us a little bit more about you.

Victor Arcelus
Oh, great to be with you all. Victor Arcelus. He him his pronouns, the Dean of Students at Connecticut College. It’s a small liberal arts college, roughly about 1900 students in southeastern Connecticut. It’s my 10th year at Conn. Before that I was at Gettysburg College and then at Bucknell University, before that, in my current role, I’m responsible for overseeing everything. Overseeing Residence Life, student engagement, and New Student Programs orientation, Student Health Services, Student Counseling Services, student wellbeing and health promotion, athletics, campus safety and student contact.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, Victor is one of those people that if you don’t know where it should report, you just have it report to him. That’s how that works out.

Victor Arcelus
It’s been a great experience to come.

Keith Edwards
Well, and thanks all of you, for for for joining us. And we invited each of you because we’ve known that you have been innovating and thinking about really different ways of doing crisis response, breaking free, have sort of what we all did, as on call and the models that we’ve had to really reimagining this in different ways. And you are doing this in different ways. But you’ve also thought about it in different ways. And we want to benefit not just what you’re doing, but what are also all of the other ways that you’ve thought about it or other models that you’ve seen, as you’ve explored and began thinking about this. So we’re going to try and generate some possibilities and help us break free from what we know. And as I mentioned earlier, generate some possibilities that then we can explore and decide what we may want to implement. Victor, I want I want to begin with you. We were on an email thread about six months ago with some other colleagues thinking about this. And you really said we’re doing this really differently, and you had a lot of energy for it. So tell us what it is that you’re doing and what’s worked and what’s not? Sure.

Victor Arcelus
I think just as a starting point, and I was reflecting on this topic, you know, it’s hard to not address the fact that when I came into this field, I never thought that I would be responsible for leading a campus through a protracted multi year pandemic crisis. And I think as you think about crisis response, thinking about it through the context of this unique experience, I think it’s helpful, you know, a crisis response structure is supposed to be about shared responsibility. And when the crisis happens, there’s a tendency sometimes to default to a limited number of people bearing most of the responsibility. And it’s critical to have the right people on the team, and to be really intentional about having a shared approach to leading through that crisis. So this was particularly important in this kind of protracted long term crisis that we were dealing with a pandemic. But I want to apply that kind of way of thinking to a different set of circumstances that have to do with more of kind of our every day, type of of, of managing crisis. So specifically, as it relates to on call and evening kind of work that’s done with with campus safety. In the past, you know, the everyday type of crisis’s that emerge in students lives, you know, during the day, you know, it’s an all hands on deck kind of approach is lots of people able to mobilize to address the situation. But we are 24/7 types of places. You know, at Conn, we have 1900 students, they’re all living on campus. And things happen as they do in all your other campuses in at all hours of the day and night. And after five, the team trunk down to campus safety student life on call, and the counselor on call who is available but available on the phone, not necessarily in person. And what we found is that we didn’t have a broad enough team skill set addressing the situations that we had, you know, before us, so campus safety or the on call struction on call structure, we’re needing to reply, you know, respond to, you know, addressing the issues that relied on skills that were not necessarily their primary talents. And, you know, given the many responsibilities that these folks have, were also was also stretching, you know, they didn’t have the bandwidth to manage it. So they didn’t have the sufficient time in a particular moment, to be dedicated to whatever the sensitive matter was that they were dealing with, which sometimes led to, you know, relatively small problem becoming a much, much bigger problem and sometimes transferring into an actual crisis. So what we did is we created a new position. And I think what’s noteworthy is in our current financial circumstances in higher ed, you know, it’s not easy to create new because additions like brand brand new positions. So we actually did is we converted two campus safety positions into what we call now, Student Support Specialists. These are folks that work from 4pm to 2am. Their background is in counseling and social work. They’re part of our care teams, our behavioral intervention team, they are meeting with students who are referred to them, you know, through care and all kinds of other avenues through RAs etc. Students reach out to them directly, and they’re going to calls with campus safety. So you know, whether it’s a mental health related call, or it’s an alcohol or drug related call, you know, they’re there with campus safety, able to, you know, address the non kind of policy enforcement parts of what happens oftentimes in these kinds of situations. So we’ve created this team approach that includes campus safety, counseling, student life on call, each leveraging the strengths and talents that they have. And going back to what I was saying before, it’s about having the right people on the team and establishing a shared approach that ends up being, I think, a more successful way of managing these everyday kinds of challenges that we face. So I think that now we’re doing a better job of intervening early, before something becomes a crisis, and giving students access to talk to trained professionals during the moments of difficulty, which isn’t necessarily during during business hours. So I think that over the course of the two years that we’ve been implementing this approach for a year and a half, I should say, I feel like we’ve you know, averted a variety of different crises. As a result, we’re serving students better and just more effective in our overall work that we’re doing to provide a vibrant and healthy residential experience.

Keith Edwards
Thanks for kicking us off with that. I just have a quick clarifying question. So these folks, they don’t both serve at the same time, right? They’re they’re switching? And did they? Are they in addition to the same ResLife security student life on call? Or did they sort of sub in and redo some of that,

Victor Arcelus
So they don’t work at the same time, they do overlap one day a week, in order for them to connect together and to talk about their work as a team. But that’s with two people, we kind of cover a full week’s worth of hours of coverage. And it is in addition to still having our own call. It’s funny, we were having a meeting today with our on call team as we’re doing a variety of different reorganizations in that. And a benefit to the on call team is that there are a variety of calls that they’re not now not getting, because the Student Support Specialists are able to handle calls that on call was going to before so it’s relieved some of the pressure that they’ve had as well. So it’s improved that experience, which I know is something that in higher ed, we’re all trying to figure out how to grapple with.

Keith Edwards
So you may have the same student might focus on call, but they don’t have to go to every called issue because Okay, so and so is going to go there. I don’t have already there as well. Okay, interesting. Great. Well, thanks for that very concrete example. And we’ll come back later some of the lessons learned and some of the other ideas. But I want to move to Kate, you’re also doing some innovative things there at NYU. And I want to hear a little bit from when Victor shared kind of, how did you get there? What are you doing? And how’s it working?

Kate Baier
Yeah, so our new approach similar to a position that Victor described is to sort of shift who’s responding to crisis, especially after hours critical incidents. So before 2021, similar to many campuses, certainly similar to my campus undergraduate campus. When I was an RA student residence assistants, we’re often the first line of folks to respond to most crisis or critical incidents. Our setup is that we have campus safety officers in every residence hall. And so if a student needs to enact after hours, support, or we become aware of a situation through any sundry of means, the campus safety officer is often the person who enacted the duty staff. And prior to this new model, that call was going to Resident Assistants. And so around 2017, we noticed a shift or a shift became clarified for us that RAs were. It was an interesting gap. RAs were consistently reporting satisfaction with the position and our training outcomes for a match. And also, they were telling us that they felt underprepared to respond to critical incidents, and really expressed it out the position was causing them stress or in creating distress for them. And so many critical incidents had two layers, I was the student who was experiencing the incident. And then there was distress that was felt by the student, alright, who was responding to the incident and felt perhaps ill equipped to do so. And so we convened a group to look at this and really recognize that student needs have changed. And certainly, certainly on our campus and other campus, there have been entire university structures that have been stood up in response to mental health and well being needs. But the RA role had remained largely unchanged. Many of the duties that we were asking of RAS were exactly the same as the duties that I I accepted when I took the RA role, you know, 25 years ago. And so we took the step to really recenter the RA position to primarily focus on community development, peer mentoring and resourcing. And so in that introduce an 11 member incident response team, that would be on on be at work their workday, similar to the position Victor described, is 5pm to 3am. We came to ours by looking at when incidents happen, and when we wanted these folks to be on campus. We have between four and six incident response team members working every night at four hubs spread spread around campus since our campus as it is our residence halls are spread throughout Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. And so we have a considerable territory that we have to sort of cover and so we place the incident response team at hub offices that allow them to be within 20 minutes of any any residence hall in their hub. And so, with the exception of lockout calls, because it always comes back to lockouts go to the RAS all calls that would have previously been routed to the RAs are directed to the incident response team and they go on site and respond to critical incidents such as mental health concerns, medical transports, escalated roommate conflicts, and then they work closely with our counseling and wellness services on call staff. So we have a staff member who was on call from counseling and wellness services as well as our campus safety officers throughout the night. We’ve also established communication processes so that situations that maybe start at night or start during the day are handed off to our overnight daytime staff. So the residence hall directors in the residence hall assistant directors, we’ve worked closely with our student health center, and other members of the IRT team who maybe are not working one night but will be working the next night so that we have some continuity of response between the daytime and nighttime teams, and also from one day to the next day. And so we’ve seen a similar impact on the the residence hall staff who are on call, we maintain an on call structure. Every night we have three members of our residence hall staff on call and then an administrative layer of on call staff also, that’s available. They have received, they have seen a huge decrease in the amount of calls they get during the day and is offset and then when the IRT is not working after 3am or during the day only weekend’s calls will go to the hall staff and so there’s been some shift there in responsibilities. But considering the the huge decrease of calls they are not getting because the IRT layer professional staff are handling critical incidents, our duty staff isn’t receiving calls from the RAS and so there has been sort of a actual more positive exchange of that work time. And students are being that the service to students undergoing crisis or in crisis situations that is enhanced because our professional staff responding to that who are linked to our other supports of staff and really professionalizing this layer of response has served both the students and in general as well as our residential resident assistant population who no longer are feeling pressured by that responsibility.

Keith Edwards
What are the credentials or the criteria or the skill sets that those IRT Folks that are bringing.

Kate Baier
So we were we’re seeing that we’re drawing from a lot of different areas. Currently on the team, we have folks who have worked for our department and other capacities before a former ra just started on the team, we have people who have counseling backgrounds and would have done some counseling or counseling adjacent work, folks who worked in trauma centers or with people that were experiencing homelessness or were in recovery. So it really draws I think a commonality is that it’s folks who tend to have, like I said, counseling and counseling, adjacent backgrounds, social work, or, or some sort of interaction with a helping profession in the past. Usually, it’s a it’s a position that draws folks who have a bachelor’s degree, some years of experience and experience with a level of crisis response, so that there is comfort, because the entire time they are at work, they’re waiting for the phone call, so they can go to response to a critical incident.

Keith Edwards
Right? I find it really interesting that you’re, you’re so broad in who you’re willing to consider for this. And I guess I’m imagining that over time, you’ll sort of find, maybe we shouldn’t be that broad, and this tends to work better. And this tends to work better. And seems like the most important criteria is people who are comfortable and responding to these things, and don’t escalate or feel comfortable that have seen things and feel like I can be there for the students in this. Yeah. So

Kate Baier
I mean, it’s your to when we, when we initially were interviewing folks really talks about sort of, and we’re honest about this notion that this is a startup, it’s a new way that we are doing things are going to be hiccups. But I have been really impressed with with the team, I’m very happy with the folks that came into the position, because let’s face it, we were a little, we were curious about the types of folks who would work from 5pm to 3am. Like, I think that that also is a particular kind of bend. And so very happy with the team, and just their kind of fluidity and flexibility and motivation to take something that was brand new, and really make something of it, as well as their complete focus on supporting students.

Keith Edwards
That’s wonderful. Wonderful, what are what a great model. And again, we’re going to hear a little bit more about lessons learned, and what would you do differently? And what do you wish you could do that you can’t do? Various limitations. But, Steve, tell us a little bit about what you’re what you’re thinking about and what you’re doing and what you see ahead there. Dayton.

Steve Herndon
All right, thank you. I would say first, you know, listening to Victor and Kate, there’s there lots of ways I can rent my experience strongly resonates with there’s, in terms of this is a journey. And I think some of it, I think, and I know, we’ll get to lessons learned and challenges later, I think some of them but one of the challenges that we’re facing is having to unlearn how we were conditioned to approach and actualize our work. As we seek recognizing, out of necessity, we need to create a more sustainable future for our staffs. For learning to be at the center of the work, we have to be able to keep we have to crisis is a component of the work but it can’t be this the center or the context by we approach our work. I think for us it started with are we working from the same understanding or definition of crisis? Do we have that do what is how is crises being defined? And does it need to be redefined in a way that allows for us to, to think about the different roles that are played that play a part in crisis response? And then how do we right size expectations from there, and I think over time, particularly here at UD, I think, just discomfort was was treated as as a crisis. And so being able to have some understanding that part of the learning experience part of living with one another, there’s going to be moments of discomfort that’s not good or bad, right or wrong. That just is and so really, us coming to a collective understanding of is everything that creates that is everything that we’re defining as crisis really crisis, or are we just crisis becomes a significant sort of catch all for everything that’s making us uncomfortable. So we had to start there by redefining the term to make sure that we were working from a collective understanding of the concept, I think, for us as it pertains to our undergraduate staff when Kate was talking about staff, undergraduate staff, really feeling like their jobs was creating stress for them. We were experiencing the same thing here and I think as we looked at how we might be contributing to that one of the places we started was training. And as we look at our training schedule, the time that we’re spending, are we training over the course of the experience? Are we trying to inundate staff with all that they need to know over the course of a very complex experience in two weeks? So then how do you in August, right? And so how do we scaffold training in a way and so that it’s an ongoing journey and not a journey that starts and ends in August. So that took working with campus partners and helping to right size expectations, but also to some degree, decreasing some of their presence? Because some some topics or messages are better said or addressed at later points in the experience? What we need to realize is that we were spending very little time focusing on what is the vision for our department, what is the purpose of our work? What is the purpose of the role, and the role is really to build community. And so that as we focus on some of the foundational pieces to the experience, then when we introduce some of the aspects of the experience that can create some discomfort, like crisis, there’s a context that’s already been set, so that the staff are not afraid of their their positions, afraid of their roles as students are being welcomed. We’re doing a lot of let’s give, let’s introduce them to all the various campus partners that are going to deliver important content, but content that to someone who is new, and still figuring their way through the position is going to be overwhelming and intimidating. And so we had to re reconceptualized training, and recognize that it has to be an ongoing process and not a two week experience that happens in August. And they also right sizing, who should be in serving in which rotations and roles and where do we draw parameters and boundaries around that so that the credentialed folks are responding to the the people with the correct credentials are responding to the crisis to which they should be responding. And so the Dean of Students staff, being a part of that, being the Dean of Students administrator on call rotation, so we’re responding to a crisis that has significant implications for the institution on behalf of the Dean of Students. And in some of the more Residence Life related crisis that our full time master’s level professionals are responding to that with a graduate assistant as an as an assistant. And we still have staff, paraprofessional staff on duty in the halls, but they really should be focusing on very specific things and not focusing on anything that could constitute a crisis or something that they’re not credentialed to respond to. It’s also requires working with campus partners, particularly our counseling center staff, that even for our full time master’s level professionals, what is their role and responsibility in responding to self harm or any attempt or suicide attempt? Who needs to take the lead? What, who needs to focus on which aspects of this of this incident? Who who’s focusing on what? And so it’s been a lot of conversation, a lot of recognition that we were operating on a lot of assumptions about one another one another’s work, roll contributions, all of that, and now beginning to sit down and do the work to right size, expectations, roles, training, all of what’s going to be critical for for us to be responsible and judicious in how we support students and in crisis, but at the same time, how we preserve our staff, we’re now talking about the impact of trauma, how does trauma impact our staff recognize our staff are not here just to execute a role or work, but the work that they are responding to the situations that to which they are responding also has a direct impact on them? And so are we as focused on recognizing the impact of trauma and prioritizing recovery? As part of the work both individually and collectively were needed? Is that how was that captured in our protocols? Or is it captured? It wasn’t before? But how do we now include that within the protocol so that anyone reading the protocol recognizes that recovery is a key component, both for the folks directly impacted by the crisis, but also for for others, who played some role in it as well.

Keith Edwards
Could you give us an example about how you might include that in the protocol, this recovery piece?

Steve Herndon
Well, I think some of it is for us, providing some reflective questions, directions around like once the incident has been managed. Can we provide some reflective questions about not just what what what someone may have learned, but how did this impact you? And what do you need in terms what does support look like for you and from whom do you need that support? Is that your supervisor is that other leadership in the department is is that the Dean of Students staff, and then so that as We think about how the needs of our staff at whichever level, we’re able to marshal our resources effectively and deploy them effectively as well, because I sit as a member of the Dean of Students, staff, I’m also someone’s employer. So they may not feel comfortable or safe speaking with me, they may say, Steve is a great person, very wonderful to be around. We love Steve, but I don’t know. But Steve is also my supervisor, or Steve is also the assistant vice president, and I’m several, you know, levels away from Steve. And so recognizing the role that power plays in this and who is the best messenger and person best equipped to provide the support needed for that individual, and then collectively, for staff as we think about how circumstances are impacting larger groups of people, but it’s being more direct and more forthright. And in capturing within the protocol, it doesn’t end at the time that the incident has been managed, there’s still a residual effect that we have to address as we think about the role of the staff and the impact it’s having on them.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, and really building that in as part of the protocol, not after the protocol, in addition, and we hope you will take care of this on your own but making it part of the process. I appreciate all three of you sharing I’m hearing from Victor, let’s make sure that the there’s a match of skills, right we were we were asking things that people that they didn’t have the skills for. And time, right, we’re asking too much of people that didn’t have the time. But also appreciate Kate sharing this, let’s be mindful of the students in crisis, and tending to that, but also not causing distress in our staff. And when that does happen, how do we tend to that recovery and opening that up, and in various different ways you’re all talking about shift work is how I think about it. And I think so often, we’ve just had, I mean, my whole career, it’s been work nine to five, but not really eight to 630, and then be on call, and, and other places don’t do that. Right? They don’t have you do the job, and then be on call, when you’re on call, you’re on call. That’s the thing that you’re doing. And then that means you get this time or, you know, I’m thinking about nurses, I’m thinking about crisis, mental health crisis, I’m thinking about hospitals, I’m thinking about so many other places where you don’t do the job, and then just slap on call, and particularly crisis management. In addition to that it’s incorporated and part of it. You’re also having me think about, all three of you have talked about breaking apart, what was once a one size fits all roll into, no, you do this, and you do this, and you do this. And I think we’re talking particularly here about professional staff. But I’m also hearing others talk about doing that with the RA role. Thinking about Clemson, in particular, that is has a whole bunch of RAS, but they’re breaking apart, and they’re going to have community builders, and they’re going to have desks and operations, and then they’re going to have on call and policy. And their idea is we can hire people who really want to and are good at this part and just do that. And we can hire people who are really good and want to do this part, and be really good at that rather than saying, you’re an RA, you do everything. And then there’s all sorts of poor fits for that. capacity issues, overwhelm, and things like that, or people turning down 70% of the job that they would love and really thrive at because this 30% is intolerable. So how do we separate some of that out and your points about training is one I keep coming back to often? Why do we train people in August for nine months of a job by train people for the next month or two and then ongoing ways of developing that along the way? I want to shift us to lessons learned, we’re going to stick with you, Steve, what what have you learned so far? What do you wish you would have known at the beginning of the process? And where has this taken you in unexpected directions?

Steve Herndon
Wow. I would say some of the lessons learned is as close as we’ve worked to get as close as we’ve worked with one another, how we define concepts, the assumptions that we’ve made a lot of assumptions also about each other, and what what this office should do versus what this office does versus what this other office may may do. And so it’s on some ways, I think the lesson learned for me is that we’ve made a lot of critical decisions, I believe about structure and infrastructure based on assumptions. And so in some ways is we’ve had to pause in and it’s in some ways, reorient ourselves. It’s given us an opportunity to have better clarity, both about our own contributions and what we should be contributing to this overall to the overall experience, but I think also what others are contributing. And so as we build these pods, partnerships and design models and protocols and start to build out that infrastructure we can do so now in a more informed fashion. I think we also got out of the, the lesson learned that it can be very easy to get in this space where we’re trying to one up each other over who’s more put upon. Then then the the other. So you tell me that your team is, has been managed, hasn’t slept all week, well, I haven’t slept for two weeks. So we’re just trying to, you know, want one up each other over who’s more tired, who’s more put upon, and who has the fewest resources. And all of that are is. Our real circumstances, there are a number of external circumstances that we are facing as a profession. But as I’ve continued to impress upon my staff and my team overall, is that despite the circumstances that we are in response to, and the chaos that has resulted, we still have agency. So where do we need to deploy our time and energy that’s going to result in the greatest effort, and we’re going to have to do that we can’t do it in a silo, it has to be done within a community. What we decided Housing and Residence Life has implications for the Dean of Students Office, it has implications for public safety, it has implications for community standards and civility, the Counseling Center, and vice versa. So it is to our it’s in our best interest, it would behoove us to make sure that we are building relationships, and that we’re all at the table and sitting through the discomfort because there will be some discomfort, there will be moments of impasse. But I also believe those moments of impasse have been tremendous lessons for us as well, because it’s forced us to stop and to really, truly interrogate what are the circumstances that’s creating the impasse? And how do we collectively navigate it to be better to be more informed, to be more collaborative and our approach and understanding of the work?

Keith Edwards
And how do we think about this as a whole system solutions rather than these micro

Steve Herndon
and rather than it being on the, you know, again, falling on the most beleaguered staff, so we’re the ones that are doing all the work, and no one else is doing anything? No, we all are, it may be manifesting differently, but we all are impacted by the work. And so it would be to our advantage to understand that and now collectively work towards solutions.

Keith Edwards
Very, very, very wise. Kate, what have you and your team been learning? You said, You’ve been doing this for two years? What did you What do you know, now that you wish you would have known back then?

Kate Baier
Um, I, I think I’ve focused on a couple of things here first, from an approach, maybe sort of a mindset and a developmental approach. And I think what I’m about to say, complements and doesn’t contradict Steve. And I was perhaps reminded of this and didn’t learn it. But the categorization of what, what is considered a crisis seems to be individual. If a crisis is simply a time of intense difficulty are difficult, different folks are going to set the line about what is a crisis or not in a different place. And people are going to have different reactions to that. And sort of, well, I don’t think this is a crisis, I would think this is a crisis. For example, when we started the work that eventually led to the creation of the incident response team, we were hearing from Ras that simply being on duty was stress inducing, because the duty phone would ring and they would never know what what was coming. From their perspective, it could be a lockout, it could be a student mental health issue. And they were always just expecting the worst and so on heightened edge because of that. So that’s one side of the spectrum. On the other side of the spectrum, when I’m hearing about this, I’ve been on an on our call rotation have some variety since 1997. And so and now in addition to being on call, I’m always on call, I regularly get calls from staff who are on call who want to consult on situations, and I also get the calls when a situation is especially dire. So either through experience or exposure or personality. I don’t get stressed out by this. And so my understanding of the RAs report of that stress was difficult to get to right because it wasn’t my experience. And so my understanding was different. And so I think it was a good reminder of how we hear things and approach things and how our different experiences informed what our response is going to be. So my experience and how I approach things can’t discount others experience and this was important for all of us to sort of grapple with as we were having, having these conceptual and planning discussions. Opperationally, it’s been interesting to sort of think about what it means to have almost a completely separate and rarely overlapping, daytime and nighttime team in the context of total team development. When we when we do things, Staff Recognition, training, all staff meetings, we have to think about, okay, so we are geared towards a team that is primarily daytime. And now we have to be mindful of how we also incorporate the the team that is not during the day, and what that looks like. And there have been other sort of logistical resource. So things that we had to consider, like, for example, we bank most of our bank holidays, to be closed the last week of December, but our residence halls are open. And so the IRT had to work. How did we fulfill our obligations to them to give them their time off? And how does that impact the schedule? You mentioned, shift work. The IRT is in this unique situation where they have scheduled 10 hour shifts, so they follow sort of we based our schedule on sort of the thought of a nursing schedule. So they have 10 hour work days, but they are salaried employees. And so they’re sort of in this amorphous area between having what we term as a shift. But also they are not hourly, hourly wage employees. And so that’s an interesting question when a crisis goes past 3am When they start something, and they stay late, and staying late when it gets to a 4am. That’s, that’s really, really late. And then something that Steve had mentioned this notion of unlearning what we do, it’s for us it was both unlearning what we do but being patient with others, as they unlearn our, we have campus safety officers who have worked at a post in a residence hall for 20, some odd years. And so their go to is to call the RA. And so it took a lot of unlearning, to fight that muscle memory, and embrace this new model of calling someone else. And recognizing that it’s going to take a little bit of time and patience, and reminding so that folks could begin to incorporate a new way of doing things in their long standing practice.

Keith Edwards
Great, thank you, Victor, what have you and your team learned? You said, You’ve been doing this for a year and a half? What what do you think about as you look back.

Victor Arcelus
I think what up just to build on some of what Kate was saying earlier that I think would be helpful, is we were talking about like credentials for these very similar kinds of roles that Kate’s describing what we have at Conn. And, you know, we’ve started out with a grandchild of expecting somebody to have a Master’s in Counseling or in social work. And that was very intentional in terms of what we wanted people to be able to do in these roles, was also designed in a way that we wanted to somebody else Kate was saying earlier about continuity of care, we made sure that these positions were not confidential positions, even though they’re trained in jobs that lead to confidential professional roles. These were intentionally designed to not be confidential, because we wanted information private, but we want the information to flow back to the care team, we want information to flow back to the folks who are working during during the day. But a challenge that I think we’re facing moving forward, particularly in the current employment climate, is can we keep filling these positions moving forward, I anticipate that this is the kind of job that folks are going to be in for probably two years. And then they’re going to rotate out. We have an opening right now. So if anybody’s interested. But you know, keeping these positions filled is going to be, you know, really critical and could be challenging, which may lead us to think about the credentials a bit differently, in order to, you know, open, open it up and get more candidates. Right.

Keith Edwards
Well, I want to move through to our next couple of questions pretty quickly, and then open it up and bring some of our UMass folks in. I’d love to just hear from each of you. What are some new possibilities you’re beginning dia or wish you could explore more fully on your campus context. Every campus context has limitations, whether it’s New York City or the size of Conn College, or the mission of University of Dayton, what are some things that you think if if you were in a different context, you’d be really excited? but just to quickly throw out some maybe some possibilities that aren’t in what you’re currently doing. Kate, anything come to mind for you?

Kate Baier
well, there are certainly some big operational things and I’m focused on but from a crisis related project that I’m giving attention to is how we consume various sort of streams of data and establish key indicators to help us spot trends or give us early warning. So for example, we have, we have access to data about the number of incidents and the number of students we send to the hospital following alcohol intoxication, and the number of calls that are being routed to the IRT and the calls that are being routed to the duty stub after hours, Community Activity amongst students and other things. But these are all sort of snapshots and isolation in silos. And I think a bigger picture would be a lot more robust to help us get a sense of the total experience and also help us talk about talk to others about trends. Like I was sitting next to a colleague who oversees our global operation. And he mentioned he was seeing something on a campus and I, I said, I’m seeing that too. And what do we know about that? And so being able to get a picture of, of what’s happening by being able to digest many of these genomes had in data together is something that is really exciting to me. And right, yeah, exactly how to do it.

Keith Edwards
How do we take all this reactive data and inform more proactive approaches? I think that really excites me to Victor, what are some possibilities that you are radiating around?

Victor Arcelus
Actually no, very similar to what Kate was just talking about? Like, how do we take the information that we have across this campus, and you know, from a retention standpoint, from a student support standpoint, provide the most effective kind of support structure for students. And in particular, the amount of information that’s in the experience that students have with faculty, and really capturing what faculty know about students in a way that allows us to use that in a in a responsive and proactive way. So that it doesn’t become a crisis down the road. And harnessing that information, it’s just not always the easiest thing, because, you know, it’s difficult to tell faculty what to do. And to engage them with, you know, software systems that they’re not familiar with using on a regular, you know, an irregular period of time. So, we’re working very closely with the Dean of the College on figuring out strategies in which to make inroads on that.

Keith Edwards
Great, great. Steve, what are some possibilities you’d like to explore?

Steve Herndon
Um, I think, again, being a member of the Dean of Students staff, and recognizing that the work in that office has significant implications for Housing and Residence Life, I think increasing the outreach efforts, Dinas, student, staff, I think the community sees the Dean of Students Office as sort of, again, the the ER, so someone is upset someone is in crisis, and a lot of folks are uncomfortable in between. The Dean of Students Office can manage and some of what we get are, I’m uncomfortable talking to a student, so can you talk to them for me, regardless of the content? So how do we position the Dean of Students Office so that the university has a more accurate understanding of its vision role, and where it fits within the larger fabric of the institution, and of the institution’s landscape? I think we also see crisis only at the intervention stage. And there are lots of stages that precede the intervention stage that allows for all of us to share the responsibility for being a partner in students experience, particularly as they are encountering the various challenges and difficulties they will naturally encounter in the four to five years that they’re here. That I think a lot of I think we still see ourselves in very bifurcated ways and in in very siloed ways, and constructions of our institutions show that but I think our students lives are not as compartmentalized as our infrastructure illustrates. And so topics that are showing up outside of the classroom or showing up in the inside and so how do we prepare the community to understand their role responsibility in a way that makes sense for their their understanding and comfort level with crisis?

Keith Edwards
Well, and some of these crisis, particularly when they’re lower levels can be wonderful learning opportunities, rather than natural difficulties and challenges and discomfort. As Kate points out, that’s really different from person to person. And then sometimes, there’s overwhelming that are not a learning opportunity. And we have to manage harm and safety for that person in and for others. Well, we want to move to wrapping this up. We call this podcast Student Affairs NOW we always like to end with ask you what’s on your mind? What are you troubling thinking or pondering now? And if folks want to be in touch with you, maybe how can they do that? So Steve, what’s what are you troubling now?

Steve Herndon
Well, the continued departure of staff who I think have have recognized that this may not be the most healthy environment, or profession to work in, and that that pains me because I truly enjoy being a part of being a student affairs practitioner, I enjoy the work that I have have done, but I also can understand why people are leaving. And so do we have the patience as an institution to and the willingness to sit in our discomfort to create a more sustainable future? Are we going to still continue to try to repurpose a dysfunctional past that’s no longer and never was perhaps serving us? Well, it’s easy to cling to what we know, rather than to sit in the discomfort of what we don’t know, to be who we aspired to be. And can we collectively as an institution, do that and do it? Well?

Keith Edwards
Yeah. I love that human beings go to what we’re familiar with, even when it doesn’t serve us. And you’ve pointed to unlearning. And, you know, Adam Grant and his book Think Again, talks about the the key to rethinking is curiosity, and unlearning, right? How do we be curious about what we don’t know? And how do we unlearn some of what we do know, Victor, what’s troubling you now?

Victor Arcelus
What’s the like, specific to our campus? No, we feel you’re not familiar with our campus, we’re just right outside of a small city of New London, up on a hill, kind of in an enclosed campus. And we’ve experienced some enrollment growth in there recently, and planning on maintaining some of that growth moving forward, which means that we don’t have sufficient housing on campus, in our heads are beginning to initiate on these this goal that we’ve had for many, many years at the college and in the city of New London to have students living downtown in the city. This past year, we are leasing a building downtown, it’s about two miles from our campus. So it’s creating these two experiences in his residential experience on campus with his residential experience in the city. And they’re very different. And students living in the city are experiencing things they want experiences living in a city and managing those expectations and managing those circumstances. And how do we keep kind of building on this movement into downtown, which is good for the city of New London, I think it’s good for the college and for our students, while managing risk. And the potential for various crises that can you know, come about when you have students living at a distance, that on a campus, it’s been so centered historically on being here. You know, I know Kate, you were talking about having, you know, students living all over New York and in a variety different places. But when you have a campus, it’s really just been one way for 100 plus years, and we start to shift away from that. How do you do that successfully and bring everybody along in that process?

Keith Edwards
Right. Kate, what are you troubling now?

Kate Baier
I think maybe this is a another point of view to what Steve said about this notion of departure of staff I think we’re seeing or I’m seeing the effects of a colleague of mine framed it as a broken pipeline or it’s a gap of experience or institutional knowledge, which is happening at a both the professional staff and the the resident assistant level. All of our RA’s are juniors and seniors. So students thought RAs this year, likely experienced an interrupted year when we had to shut down our campus, or if they were RAS if they were first year students. Following that, they experienced a very different first year NYU, so we we can’t assume that they’ve had an experience or have experienced some of our foundational activities. And then they might not have the experience to inform their approach as an RA because they wouldn’t have done a base conversation, for example, with an RA which is a guided conversation with all the students so that they haven’t been on the receiving end of some of these very foundational things that we do. And similarly, most of our staff or professional staff didn’t work here prior to 2020. So while this is exciting, and certainly accelerates this notion of unlearning, and provides a lot of opportunities to curiously consider why we do things and how we do things. But we also offer off don’t need to remind ourselves that most of the team has never seen an opening weekend or a mid year turnover setup that a lot of times we have to get into the weeds on things and really start at, at the building block level, and reestablish the language of how we talk about things and how we painted the experience. And, and, and focus on the details rather than the big picture making assumptions about what people have done in the past. And so I think that a lot of a lot of the effort is going into a rebuilding. And so I’m spending a lot of my time focusing on on what that looks like for our professional staff and how that then pours into the student, RA and the student experience.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. Well, thank you to all three of you for sharing what you’re doing and helping us again, break out of what we’re familiar with breakout of what we know background of what we did or what has been done and think about things a little bit differently.

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.