Talking Stick - July/August 2014 - 23

with friends in one of the lounge
areas, or blow off some steam in
the recreation room. And now, on
some campuses, they can also have
immediate access to in-house student
services, a trend that enhances the
convenience of a living-learning
community with a plethora of
resources, information, and support.

ADAPTING PHYSICAL
SPACES
New residence halls can include the
physical space needed for in-house
student services in their design plans,
but existing residence halls need to
adapt space that is often utilized for
something else. For Michigan State
University in East Lansing, ofﬁces
were moved during renovations
to provide the needed space. This
allowed them to meet their objective
of creating ﬁve neighborhoods,
each made up of six residence halls
and one engagement center that
would provide services related to the
university's four central pillars of
support: academic success, health
and wellness, residential support, and
intercultural engagement. Ray Gasser,
senior associate director of residence
education and housing services,
says, "Each engagement center is
unique in how we were able to ﬁnd
the necessary square footage for each
space." In one case, an engagement
center with a health clinic utilized a
basement. "There was much debate
about that decision because people
were worried that it would not be
visible and therefore not well utilized
by students," says Kelly High McCord,
neighborhood engagement director for
Brody Hall. However, the space was
transformed into a desirable location

with vibrant colors, new furniture, and
new lighting and signage: "a bright,
modern, pleasant destination for
students," says High McCord.
While Michigan State was able
to ﬁnd enough space for their
engagement centers during the
renovation process, institutions
like the University of WisconsinMilwaukee were limited when trying
to house academic support and
mentoring services in their residence

hopes to have a more deﬁned space in
the near future that students recognize
solely as an academic support center.
In some cases, minor revamping
of an existing space may be all that
is necessary. Scott Walker, head of
Aquinas College at the University
of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand,
says that they "sacriﬁced a bedroom
and some ofﬁce space" within the
residence hall for the live-in academic
fellow who provides academic support

MAKING THESE SERVICES EASILY AVAILABLE TO
STUDENTS IS ONLY ONE STEP, HOWEVER; THE NEXT
ONE IS TO ENCOURAGE STUDENTS TO USE THEM.

halls. The solution was to utilize
existing spaces more fully, using
them for one purpose during the
day and another during the evening.
Now the Panther Academic Support
Services (PASS) program is available
to students in the main library, the
student success center, and in three
residence halls. Nicole Heinen,
student services coordinator, says
that in two of the residence halls, the
spaces "are actually classrooms that
are used during the day and where
RAs can meet" but are now used in the
evenings for tutoring and mentoring
services. Making these services easily
available to students is only one step,
however; the next one is to encourage
students to use them. "One of our
biggest struggles is that our students
don't see that a residence hall is a place
for studying and tutoring." While the
space is functional for now, Heinen

to students. When the position was
created four years ago, they simply
"split the deputy ofﬁce to create a new
ofﬁce space."

MAKING THE SERVICES
VITAL
An important consideration in
bringing student services into the
residence hall is to decide which ones
are most needed. Through the use of
MAP-Works, a survey-based tool that,
among other things, helps students
identify what areas they struggle
with, institutions are able to examine
what speciﬁc subjects students are
repeatedly listing as problem areas.
At the University of WisconsinMilwaukee, MAP-Works helped them
identify what services students most
needed; as Heinen notes, "we make
sure that we always have a math tutor

JULY + AUGUST 2014

23
Talking Stick - July/August 2014

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