Talking Stick - November/December 2011 - 51

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participation, and creating a seamless entry into the residential space as classroom. Assessment results also showed that coordinators were likely to remain in their positions about three to four years, which led to a plan to upgrade the staff and reduce their number, in the hopes of encouraging them to remain for at least five years. Logic models can also aid in staff training, clarifying the commonality of specific goals. “I believe that one of the strongest benefits from using a logic model lies in staff training,” Schueller says. “It is an easily understandable way to teach new staff about the program and its resources and initiate discussions on short- and long-term goals.” At Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, LLC staff started working with logic models earlier in the year. “I have used the logic model as a way to process the big picture,” says Mollie Allred, the hall director for Brayton/Clevenger Halls. “This includes working to help my RAs understand that there are larger objectives they are trying to meet. Also, we used this as we were determining ideas for the LLC in the spring semester. We were able to take the LLC objectives and turn them into programs that we knew met our goals.” Jenn Goddard, a hall director for Kinghorn Hall at Ball State, values the way that logic models can help assess student satisfaction with their LLC. “Kinghorn directors determined at the end of the first semester that the student staff were not connecting with residents the way they wanted them to, both in quality and frequency, based on the set goals. Therefore, they stopped overly structured programming and moved towards an intentional interaction approach. This involved resident assistants reporting back through a GoogleDoc on the interactions they were having with their residents. RAs reported that this change caused them to be more thoughtful about how they were interacting with their residents in and out of the building.”

In all of these examples, the logic model was seen as a useful tool for all stakeholders involved. It provided a common focused language that communicated across institutional and departmental units, engaging stakeholders as social and educational architects; allowed for a visual representation of complex systems; easily demonstrated programmatic overlap and purpose; and allowed for data-driven decision making rather than anecdotal or short-term thinking. We’ve all heard the adage that a

picture is worth a thousand words; in this case, a single page – utilizing a simple graphic model that describes planned work and intended results – is definitely worth that much. ts
Marc Goldman
is the associate director for residence halls at the center for residence life at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. is the director of student development at Lake Sumter Community College in Leesburg, Florida. Email: bradyc@lscc.edu.

Claire Brady

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Talking Stick - November/December 2011

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