One of the most impactful pieces of the ACUHO-I award process is how it honors the outstanding work done by contemporaries and places it within the historical context of the Association’s long tradition of dedicated and passionate professionals.
This year that connection is made deeper through the re-naming of the celebrated Herstory Award in honor of Carmen L. Vance.
Carmen L. Vance, who in 1997 retired from the University of Connecticut where she served as associate vice president, has been instrumental to our history. Vance served as ACUHO-I president in 1988. She has been honored with the James C. Grimm Leadership and Service award as well as the ACUHO-I Award. She also was the founding chair of the ACUHO-I Foundation in 1988. As a four-time Individual Major Donor to the Foundation, she has a long history of generous giving, helping power a number of key initiatives. She was inducted into the ACUHO-I Foundation’s Parthenon Society in 2013.
Since 2001, this award has honored extraordinary women in the campus housing profession who exemplify leadership and service. It celebrates the courage, mentorship, and commitment of women in our profession.
We are proud to celebrate this legacy with the naming of the Carmen L. Vance Herstory Award.
It is our hope that this award continues to help us celebrate our inclusive community, honor the extraordinary commitments of women in the profession, and ultimately, encourage women to pursue service via leadership roles within the Association. As ACUHO-I takes time to recognize all the 2020 award recipients, let us be sure to remember those who laid the cornerstones upon which we have built.
For six decades Chuck Rhodes has spent his life and his career engaged in issues of justice. His work in campus housing was launched in 1969 when he was the first black resident assistant at Virginia Tech University. From there he would eventually spend 31 years at Sonoma State University before retiring in 2011 as the assistant vice president of student affairs and enrollment management.
While at Sonoma State he helped shepherd the growth of the residential life program from 408 to more than 3,100 beds. He also served as the chief diversity officer for student affairs and the campus’ Resident Commitment to Diversity Award was named in his honor.
His influence went beyond his campus as he founded ACUHO-I’s LGBTQ Network and was an early leader of LGBTQ events with ACPA. He served as the first Director of Equity and Inclusion on the ACUHO-I Executive Board and has received the Association’s James Hurd Award, Judy Spain Award, and the ACUHO-I Foundation Parthenon Award as well as the ACPA Diamond Award.
After retirement, he has earned a Master of Divinity degree from the Interdenominational Theological Center where he is pursuing a Doctor of Ministry in Africentric Community Building and Organizing. Ordained by the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, he serves as the liaison to the Poor Peoples Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
Gerard “Gerry†Kowalski recently retired as the executive director of university housing at the University of Georgia. Previously, he was the director of residence life at Virginia Tech. All told he spent 30 years of his 40-year professional career at Georgia and Virginia Tech.
Beyond his professional contributions, Kowalski continually gave back to the field through his work with a variety of international, national, and regional associations. He was a near constant presence within ACUHO-I, sharing his passion for housing through conferences and committee roles. In 2010, he presented twice internationally as a speaker at the Student Housing African Summit, ACUHO-I South Africa Chapter at Stellenbosch University. Between 1988 and 2017, Kowalski presented a total of 18 programs at the ACUHO-I Conference & Expo. One of his most notable roles was serving as the co-chair of the James C. Grimm National Housing Training Institute. In addition, he served on the Advocacy and Influential Leadership Task Force, the Conference Program Committee, and the board of The Journal of College and University Student Housing. Even as a retired professional, he continues to support ACUHO-I, most recently serving as a faculty member for the 2020 Senior Housing Officer Institute, and is part of a project to study senior housing officer leadership competencies.
Miyah Wilson is a graduate student in the North Carolina State University higher education administration program at where she also serves as a residence director and a graduate research intern for the Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity. Wilson was drawn to housing as a means to use her talents to educate, uplift, and empower students to discover their passions. Within North Carolina State’s Housing Diversity Committee, she has helped to advocate for underrepresented students and to further develop the committee’s larger goals and initiatives. As an intern for the Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity, she researched diversity to improve the framework for engagement and training.
Wilson has been involved in housing at both the University of Nevada, Reno (where she earned a biology degree as an undergraduate) and North Carolina State University and has furthered programs at each university. She served as an RA for the Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) cohort and developed unique programs to help the students succeed. As a resident director, she manages resident advisors to provide academic, personal, and career counseling. Her role also includes extending herself to help the Women of Welch to co-develop a living-learning curriculum with the advisory board. Wilson was also recently honored with the North Carolina Housing Officers Graduate Student of the Year Award for her outstanding work in their student housing department.
Emily Braught is as a residence coordinator for academic initiatives at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, providing generalized support to the residence life structure. She accomplishes this by participating in residence life committees, contributing to planning training, and serving in an on-call rotation. She focuses on advocating for and implementing academic initiatives into residence life. Before her current role, she attended the University of Iowa and earned a bachelor’s degree in English and communication studies with a minor in gender, women, and sexuality studies. She then received a master’s in Counselor Education from Clemson University. While there, she was the graduate assistant for residential learning with internship focuses of academic advising and assessment.
Braught describes herself as a constant learner, pursuing projects with partners at other campuses and attending or presenting at conferences, sharing what she learns with her peers and colleagues. Braught intends to pursue a career in co-curricular learning experiences, assessment, and strategic planning in conjunction with returning to a Ph.D. program in learning sciences or an adjacent field.
Braught also has been an active part of the National Association of College and University Residence Halls, which led her to believe that student affairs is cross-institutional. In addition, she has volunteered with ACUHO-I in a number of capacities including as a member of the ACUHO-I Conference Program Committee and helping to design the 2019 ACUHO-I Academic Initiatives Conference presentation session schedule.
A first-generation college student from the South Bronx of New York, Yettieve Marquez-Santana earned a bachelor’s degree from SUNY, New Paltz, a master’s degree from Rider University, and a doctorate in education from Fordham University. She now works at New York University as the assistant director for the Office of Residential Life & Housing Services. She oversees 19 staff, 2 graduate assistants, 86 RAs, and 12 live-in faculty fellows in residence. She also directs occupancy strategies such as room selection, room changes, and semester transitions.
At NYU, Marquez-Santana supervises, trains, and evaluates two staff members, one graduate assistant, and two graduate RAs. She manages a substantial budget for programmatic initiatives, creates experiential opportunities for four living-learning communities, and collaborates on building renovations. She is also an adjunct faculty member for the NYU Higher Education and Student Affairs Master’s Program. In addition, she is chair of the ACUHO-I Professionals of Color Network and serves on the Awards Nominations Committee.
Before coming to NYU, Marquez-Santana was a residence director at St. John’s University where she managed an upper-division coed residence hall of 450 students. She facilitated meetings and listened to students’ concerns through weekly meetings with departments such as public safety, judicial affairs, campus ministry, and the counseling center. She was also a strong advocate of community building and created and pushed programmatic initiatives to provide ongoing development. In all her work she believes in the importance of seeking and embracing professional development opportunities that challenge her to explore critical pedagogy, while giving back to the field through her mentorship, professional association involvement, teaching, research, publications, editing, and presentations.
Holly Alexander, the associate director for community development at the College of William & Mary, has been a passionate mentor, educator, and inspiration for women in campus housing and student affairs through her work and numerous volunteer roles with ACUHO-I.
Currently, Alexander is the chair of the James C. Grimm National Housing Training Institute planning committee, collaborating with association volunteers, campus host sites, the ACUHO-I home office, corporate affiliates, and professional colleagues. Her chair position is the culmination of service with the professional development event, helping ensure that the program was coordinated even as it was held on two separate campuses.
In addition to her volunteer responsibilities, Alexander has proven herself to be a thoughtful mentor to many in the housing profession, taking her time to guide them in the right direction. At William & Mary, she balances a myriad of responsibilities, including supervising assistant directors, collaborating with advisors and volunteers, coordinating department assessments and diversity and inclusion action plans, taking care of student wellness concerns, analyzing and interpreting community standards expectations, producing five manuals annually, and talking to students and parents and responding to questions and concerns. Most importantly, through her strong ability to manage and guide people, she is a role model for many women in the housing profession.
Rick Moreci currently serves as the director of housing, dining, and student centers at DePaul University. Since receiving his master’s degree in higher education at Loyola University in Chicago, he has worked at DePaul, first as a residence director and then, over a span of 19 years, working his way up to his current position. He is responsible for overseeing employees, developing and implementing strategic plans and initiatives, communicating with other departments, assessing and monitoring campus climate, and supervising full-time staff, to name just a few duties. His creative and energetic personality enables him to handle all of the tasks required of him, and he thrives in a fast-paced environment.
Moreci has been a member of ACUHO-I since his undergraduate years when he was part of the ACUHO-I Housing Internship Program. Since then he has served on the Business Operations Conference Planning Committee for three years, including chairing the Exhibits Committee for the 2017 conference and serving as chair elect for the 2018 conference and as chair for the 2019 planning team. He has also been active in other organizations, including the American College Personnel Association (ACPA), where he served as an executive member of the Standing Committee for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Awareness. The focus for this board is on education, awareness, and progress for the LGBTQ community. Rick’s commitment to students can be seen throughout his work in student housing but also through his commitment to joining committees and boards to advocate for students.
Vicka Bell-Robinson is the director of residence life at Miami University in Ohio, where she works to create powerful and effective co-curricular experiences for college students while simultaneously providing leadership, vision, and support for staff. She does this through developing meaningful campus partnerships and utilizing data-driven decision making in order to evolve approaches to on-campus living, student development, and organizational management that are in alignment with student needs, shifting priorities, and changes in structure.
Prior to working at Miami, she held positions at North Central College and Ball State University. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Illinois, a Master of Education in College Student Personnel from Grand Valley State University, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Leadership from Miami University.
Beyond her campus, Bell-Robinson has also been an extremely active member of both GLACUHO (where she has served on numerous committees, boards, and task forces) and, more recently, ACUHO-I. She currently serves on the Public Policy Advisory Committee and, in 2017, was part of the James C. Grimm National Housing Training Institute faculty. In addition, she served as a panelist for ACUHO-I’s Mentorship for Professionals of Color: Navigating the Field of Housing webinar.
Bes Liebenberg currently serves at the University of Pretoria in South Africa as the manager of student support and leadership development. In this role, she addresses the emotional needs of students and helps to resolve their issues through short-term counseling or referrals to professional internal and external service providers, giving these students the resources they need to be successful graduates.
Beyond her campus, Liebenberg has connected the profession on a global scale. She has presented programs on student support at international conferences to further the development of student housing in South Africa and around the world. She is also an active member of ACUHO-I, serving on the Executive Board as the Globalization Director from 2017 to 2019. In addition, from 2014 to 2016, she was co-coordinator of the ACUHO-I SAC Roelf Visser Student Housing Training Institute and a faculty member from 2016 to 2019. During this time she was ranked as one of the top faculty members of the institute. She has also coordinated and hosted three International Symposiums, initiated the Global Housing Training Institute, and led the Global Initiatives Network to become a prosperous volunteer network group. In addition, she coordinated several ACUHO-I SAC Conferences and presented on several student housing-related topics at these conferences. In 2018, she presented at the APSAA Conference in Australia and launched and coordinated the first ACUHO-I SAC Women in Housing Symposium.
Krista Prince has served as assistant director of student staff development and multicultural competency at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for five years, designing a curriculum for student staff training and social justice education initiatives. She also supervises the professional staff responsible for residential leadership development as well as the department’s public-private partnership facility. In addition, Prince serves as the chair for the Student Staff Training Committee as well as the Student Staff Multicultural Competency Committee where she facilitates social justice and multicultural competency training for professional staff.
Such work is no surprise considering that, before Chapel Hill, Prince had completed her doctoral work at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro with a concentration in curriculum theory, social justice education, and critical pedagogy. It was there that she wrote her award-winning dissertation, “An Exploratory Study of Social Justice Education in Residence Life.†The work explores social justice issues in the context of residence life. She begins by reviewing the different ways social justice is practiced in student affairs programs as well as how social justice is defined in the field and how student affairs professionals teach social justice through their training and program initiatives. She then identifies key behaviors that professionals draw upon when developing social justice initiatives, such as personal experience, professional preparation and development, and academic resources. She then distinguishes key behaviors that influence the delivery of the initiatives, including institutional factors, stakeholders, and human resources. Her scholarship supports enhanced training for professionals to incorporate more social justice initiatives.
In their article “Underlying Expectations†in the January + February 2019 issue of Talking Stick, Jasmine P. Clay and Trebby L. Ellington offered an informative and insightful look at how a singular story of professionalism marginalizes professionals of color throughout campus housing. Drawing from established research and revealing interviews with numerous professionals of color, they explored concepts such as tokenism, microaggressions, and relationship expectations. In clear language their article offered valuable advice for professionals of color as well as white co-workers and supervisors who want to be effective allies.
Clay currently is the director of residence education for undergraduate housing at the University of Michigan where she is responsible for leading student-centered work for more than 30 full-time staff. As a first-generation college student, she began her journey into student affairs as a resident assistant and through her active involvement in the Black Student and Womyns Associations as an undergraduate student, while working in the Vice President of Student Affairs office. Today she is a member of the review board for the Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education. Her research interests focus on the intersections of race and gender in the workplace. Those experiences were documented in her dissertation, which examined the experience of African American female vice presidents of student affairs at predominantly white institutions.
Ellington, also at the University of Michigan, serves as a hall director where she is responsible for facilitating the living-learning experience with residents by utilizing a strategic community development and engagement model to assess student experiences. She also does non-clinical case management, behavioral intervention, and bias and crisis response. This includes building and sustaining meaningful relationships with campus and academic partners such as the Health Sciences Scholars Program and the 1st Gen Theme Community. She is also a qualified administrator for the Intercultural Development Inventory; facilitates student courses for first-year students on identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion; and presents locally, nationally, and internationally at conferences.
Helping students through traumatic events and responding to crises is an unfortunate part of an RA’s job responsibilities. While training can prepare paraprofessional staff to respond, an increasing amount of research is emerging about the potentially negative impacts this responsibility can have on those personnel. Among the effects RAs may experience are cognitive decline, increased anxiety, and declines in physical health. In his article “Work Environment Factors Impacting the Report of Secondary Trauma in U.S. Resident Assistants†published in the Fall 2019 issue of The Journal of College and University Student Housing, R. Jason Lynch of Old Dominion University examines how resident assistants are impacted by secondary trauma. In addition, he writes about the value of RA training and supervision as well as how “it is imperative that scholars and practitioners understand how to equip RAs with the tools to manage their own trauma as they seek to be a resource for their residents.â€
Lynch’s research on secondary traumatic stress in higher education has been featured in a wide array of outlets other than the Journal, including Talking Stick, The Review of Higher Education, and The Journal of Student Affairs Research & Practice. His work is informed by more than a decade of experience in college student affairs in a diverse array of functional areas at a diverse set of institutions. He also welcomes opportunities to speak, facilitate workshops, or consult with regard to secondary traumatic stress in education contexts.
Lynch currently serves as an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Educational Foundations & Leadership at Old Dominion University, as well as the assistant director for MBA Student Engagement Analytics at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. He holds a bachelor’s in biology and a bachelor’s in psychology from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, a master’s in higher education from North Carolina State University, and a Ph.D. from Old Dominion University.
When Diane “DP†Porter-Roberts speaks to students and describes the effect that decisions made early in college can have later in life, she uses herself as an example. Her decision to apply for an RA position at age 18 was life altering, as she would end up spending almost half of her life working and actually living in campus housing. It led to her current career, lifelong friendships, her spouse, and even her son, whose first home was a residence hall apartment.
Porter-Roberts currently serves as the academic coordinator for the Innovation Academy at the University of Florida. She has held positions in the UF College of Education as a faculty member and coordinator of the Student Personnel in Higher Education graduate program. Earlier, she worked with UF’s Department of Housing and Residence Education as the associate director of housing for student learning and engagement and was also a faculty-in-residence. Porter-Roberts holds a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from the University of Florida and is also a three-time graduate of Appalachian State University. Her research interests include college student transition, engagement, and success; student learning outcomes assessment; living-learning communities; competencies of student affairs professionals; and the power of humor, creativity, and play in our lives.
Her work has been an influence on the ACUHO-I community for many years. The Association has benefited from her contributions as a two-time host committee co-chair, conference program presenter, contributor to Learning Reconsidered 2, and service to several committees. She has authored chapters in ACUHO-I’s Campus Housing Management book series and two editions of Advice for Advisors. She co-authored the national study of advisor responsibilities, along with the corresponding article published in The Journal of College and University Student Housing, for which she served as associate editor for six years. Finally, her doctoral research on housing officer competencies was utilized in revising the curriculum for the James C. Grimm National Housing Training Institute and later adapted for the online course “A Competency Development and Assessment Toolkit for Hall Directors.â€
Due to her generosity and outgoing spirit, Nancy Field, president of Brill Seating, Inc. and vice president of Brill Company, has been as integral to ACUHO-I and its members as the furniture her company provides.
A graduate of the University of Oklahoma, she began her furniture career in Dallas, Texas, working with The Worden Company in the library furniture market. After marrying her husband, David, she moved to Iowa where she worked in publishing, graphic arts, and commercial construction. Next came a move to Michigan and for the next several years she focused on raising her two sons. In 2002, though, she returned to the world of furniture and since then has been a constant figure at ACUHO-I and regional housing events as well as an avid supporter of the Talking Stick magazine, (The Brill Company has advertised in every issue since March 2005), the ACUHO-I Foundation (through several contributions including achieving Corporate Major Donor status) and the Association home office (through the donation of furniture). Field’s contributions, though, go far beyond the financial. Many in the field— both corporate and practitioners—cite her mentorship and accessibility as traits that eased their transition into the field. Plus, whether it is at the conference expo hall or in the Brill Company factory, she has the amazing ability to make a genuine, personal connection.
Thank you to the ACUHO-I Awards and Recognition Committee for their work with the nomination and selection process. (chair) Bill Mattera, (chair-elect) Patrick Connor, Amy Fitzjarrald, Andrew Naylor, Becki Bury, Brian Rock, Janelle Pace, and Olan Garrett.More information about the recipients and how to nominate colleagues for future awards is available online at acuho-i.org.
