Scholarship in housing and student affairs is often attributed to faculty, but practitioners also have insights to share, and an increasing number of housing professionals are choosing to publish as a means to give back to the profession and expand their skills.
Samantha Babb, a residence coordinator at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, uses writing as a means to reflect. “Reflection is an important part of my practice as a student affairs professional. Reflection through writing keeps me sharp and allows me to articulate ideas and experiences.†Reyes Luna, the director of housing at Cal Poly Pomona, agrees, saying, “It’s my hope that others can build upon my experience and adapt what I share to meet their students’ needs.†Having practical knowledge is essential to sharing strategies across campuses, and housing professionals are well positioned to provide this expertise to their colleagues. As Kurt Earnest, a residence life coordinator at Iowa State University in Ames, explains, “The projects I’ve been involved in have resulted in practical application at my institution and have sharpened my thinking and expanded my perspective.â€
Writing is also important in the way that it can convey the value of housing to those who are not inside the field. Brad Menard, director of housing at the University of Toledo in Ohio, notes that “often housing has to defend live-on policies, the benefits to living on campus, costs, etc. When we can show scholarly work from our field, it supports the importance of on-campus housing.†And as Babb explains, “We are the ones on the ground, living theory. Our experiences are invaluable to those at the top. The opportunities we have to both shape and learn from students are integral to scholarship.â€
While many agree with why it’s important for professionals to write, not everyone understands how to make time for writing. Strategies and opportunities listed by a variety of practitioners include submitting case studies or book chapters, finding co-authors with mutual interests, and turning professional development work done at training or conferences into articles. What most everyone agrees on, though, is the need to carve out time outside the work day for writing projects. As Luna explains, “This is not easy; I don’t set up time thinking today or this week I am going to write something in hopes of being published. What I do is make time when opportunities are presented to me. When someone shares an idea with me, I start writing a draft at my first opportunity, knowing that it is important to just get my initial thoughts written down. Over the course of a week, during breaks in my schedule I shape the thoughts into pieces. It helps to have wonderful faculty peers who share opportunities.â€
— Michelle L. Boettcher and Aja C. Holmes
What’s on students’ minds as they head out the door and into off-campus housing? A group at Florida State University in Tallahassee set about answering that question through a robust survey during the 2018-19 academic year. With more than 800 responses to the open-ended question, “What would have enticed you to live on campus next year?†the housing department was able to form a better understanding of what students needed and wanted from their on-campus housing options.
Working with Skyfactor to conduct the survey, the FSU team identified 1,313 individual codes from 1,030 total responses. After excluding 171 responses due to their irrelevant or nonsensical nature, frequencies were calculated by dividing the number of individual codes into the overall number of responses. The most frequent motivator, mentioned by 35.7% of the respondents, was lower cost. In addition, 27.1% desired their own space, 8.6% mentioned room size, and 7.9% listed privacy in general (without referencing a private bedroom). Of note was also what was not listed as a motivation to move; pet-friendly or gender-inclusive housing or the availability of amenities such as swimming pools or gaming lounges were mentioned only sporadically.
To enhance the generalizability of their research, FSU partnered with Skyfactor to examine the future living plans of current on-campus residents, using data from the ACUHO-I/Benchworks Resident Assessment. During the 2018-19 academic year, the survey was administered at nearly 250 institutions in the United States, with more than 260,000 respondents. Overall, students who planned to return to campus for the following year had higher mean scores on most factors compared to students who planned to live off campus. For questions regarding facilities, there was only a small difference in the mean factor score between students who intended to live on or off campus in the following year (5.47 versus 5.45). When viewed as a percent of students who scored high on the factor, those who planned to live off campus were just as likely to be highly satisfied with facilities as those planning to live on campus (48% of each group). The trend was similar when exploring satisfaction with services
(e.g., laundry room, Internet, cable TV) in that the percent of those planning to stay on campus who were highly satisfied with services (37%) was similar to the percent of those planning to
live off campus who were highly satisfied (35%).
Furthermore, regression analyses used to identify the top predictors of overall housing perceptions (e.g., learning outcomes related to personal interactions and self-management; satisfaction with room assignment) showed that results for students who intended to live on or off campus were very similar: Factors that predict the overall program effectiveness were similar for both groups.
According to Dave Sagaser, director of facilities and operations at FSU, this information demonstrates that the decision for students to move off campus is driven more by expectations as a young adult and less about housing’s programmatic offerings or amenities. He adds, though, that it cannot be overlooked that students who return to campus the following year had higher mean scores on most factors compared to students who plan to live off campus.
— Steve Kleuver
The 2020 ACUHO-I Senior Housing Officer Institute welcomed forty-one participants to New Orleans in early February. Held bi-annually, SHOI is designed to elevate the knowledge and practices of senior-level leaders in housing and residence life programs, via a specially curated curriculum of expert presentations, case studies, large and small-group conversation, and networking opportunities.
Led by six hand-selected faculty members, this year’s agenda topics included strategic planning, fiscal management, master planning and public-private partnerships, legal issues and crisis management, institutional change, and staffing. Participants also engaged in sessions where they learned about building a professional portfolio as well as future trends in student enrollment.
Faculty for this year’s Institute included Amal Awini from York University, Gerry Kowalski from the University of Georgia (Emeritus), Linda Kasper from The University of Georgia, Ana Hernandez from the University of South Florida, Travis Douglas from Rowan University, and Jeff Janz from Milwaukee Area Technical College. Sandi Scott from the University of Wisconsin-Stout was event chair, and Chris MacDonald from West Virginia University served as chair-elect. The next Senior Housing Officer Institute will be held in 2022.
Promising to bring a new level of authenticity to its recipes, this January the University of California, Davis opened a new 500-seat dining facility that will deliver students the flavors of the world. The aptly named Latitude residential dining facility will focus exclusively on global cuisine and offer more than 300 recipes specially developed by executive chef Roger Thompson and his staff. Many of the ingredients used will come from the campus’s student farm, local suppliers, and alumni. Kraig Brady, the director of hospitality and dining services, explains that chefs tried to keep recipes as authentic as possible. “We wanted to bring a sense of comfort for those from abroad and challenge those who haven’t been abroad,†he said.
The UC Davis campus includes students from 113 countries. The dining hall is divided into four regional sections: Latin America, Asia, Europe and India, and the Middle East. A glance at the menu shows options such as Brazilian salted skewered sirloin cap, moules-frites (mussels and fries), Korean braised tofu, Middle Eastern shawarma, kesari bhat (saffron rice pilaf), Indian shrimp curry, and Spanish chicken legs. Desserts include candied sweet potato, macarons, saffron rice pudding, and grilled pineapple. The hall also features a to-go section that will offer pre-made options like sushi, paninis, and wraps as well as a hot bar section that sells by-the-ounce noodles with a variety of protein choices.
While a number of laws and policies exist to dictate how campus housing must accommodate disabled students, recent research spotlighted the value of going beyond the law and taking a social justice approach to housing these students, promoting their engagement in the community, and improving their residential experience. The article, authored by a team led by Autumn Wilke, the assistant dean of disability resources at Grinnell College in Iowa, appeared in the Fall 2019 issue of The Journal of College and University Student Housing.
Interviews with 24 students from four highly residential liberal arts colleges showed that the accessibility and flexibility of the accommodations, as well as staff awareness and responsiveness, was a definite influence on their social integration and experience. Students stressed the need for flexibility, transparency of information, and awareness and responsiveness from staff, including RAs. In addition, they noted that some accommodations, such as single rooms, came with trade-offs that affected their social integration. The full article, including additional implications for the practice, is available at nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/acuho/journal_vol46no1/index.php#/46. The group’s research was supported, in part, by a grant from the ACUHO-I Foundation.
