Talking Stick - September/October 2008 - (Page 53)

During the last nine years that I have been in Oregon, I have had the pleasure of working with over five complex directors who had higher education degrees and experience, but they had never thought of residence life as a career option. We were able to teach them the technical aspects of the job, and their higher education background helped. Their passion and enthusiasm to work with students helped to make them successful student affairs practitioners who are all working at other universities in highly successful positions. Carson: Based on Sandy’s last comments it reminds all of us that to work in our field is more than a job – it’s a calling. As such you really must have passion for what you do or you will burn out or get jaded. Oftentimes a fresh perspective from outside of higher education can be a real asset in our housing programs. When you think about blending customer service with student development, you realize that many people have terrific transferable skills which fit with focusing on the client or in our case focusing on the student. To this day, I truly believe that the work we do has great meaning, and we are allowed the opportunity to impact individual lives and families. It is hard to find something more invigorating than working with a student and seeing them grow, change, and develop into responsible citizens. Our housing programs are great places to have that kind of impact. As I think about the hiring process for housing officers, I realize that housing programs are complex organizations and as such require skill sets in many areas and not just student affairs. If you look at our work in facilities, information technology, crisis management, construction and renovation, budget management, and public safety, to name just a few, you begin to see the myriad ways we contribute to the campus environment and our students’ lives. So we must be more creative with our positions, more open to a diversity of backgrounds and experiences when hiring; and we must understand that although we want our staff members to have a strong student development basis, they may also need other skills just as much or more. The landscape is definitely changing. With the onset of more government attention to accountability and costs, we really will need to continue to ensure that we are being good stewards of our university’s resources. the business, facilities, or IT areas of our operations. This helped because of the bottle neck that exists in most residence life operations (i.e., 10 hall directors and only 2 assistant directors . . . who may stay a while). This also allowed us to keep good people around by promoting from within, which can be easier (and cheaper) than recruiting and training external people. Has our specialization and/or complexity caused us to look beyond this model? Blattner: I agree, especially for the positions that are “specialists” (like accountants, Web designers, engineers, etc.). It will be rare that we find many of these folks with a background in higher education (beyond having lived on campus and maybe having served as an RA), and these are the very positions with candidate pools that tend to ebb and flow as the economy transitions. It seems that in years past, hall directors (who understood housing and higher education) could pursue training or experiences to direct their careers out of the student development area and into Schoonover: I think that you bring up an excellent point about people specializing in finance, IT, marketing, etc. after being in a live-in position. So often I find that many of the residence life professionals do not want to spend time in these areas because they do not feel they are really working with students. In reality, they are helping with the infrastructure that is needed to serve our students. Perhaps, as a profession, we should consider giving live-in staff more development in these areas in order to allow them to expand out of the traditional roles in residence life and housing. ts Editor’s Note: Conversations is dedicated to capturing dialogue between high-level professionals on the topics that affect college housing. If you would like to be a part of a future conversation – or have a topic you want to see discussed – let us know at talkingstick@acuho-i.org. September + October 2008 53

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Talking Stick - September/October 2008 Contents Online Now Vision Just In Your ACUHO-I Transitions Res Life Facilities Business Calendar Safe Harbor Think Globally, React Locally Conversations First Takes Reporting Out New Members Snapshot

Talking Stick - September/October 2008

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