Willie J. Young, Sr., a cornerstone of the Association, a devout student advocate, and a vibrant friend-to-all, is the honored recipient of the 2021 ACUHO-I Award. He started his path in student affairs when he earned his undergraduate degree and a master’s degree in student personnel administration from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He regularly spoke fondly of his alma mater, often saying he was “soaring with the falcons.” From there, he went to work at other Ohio institutions including Defiance College and Wilberforce and Wittenberg universities. He arrived at The Ohio State University in Columbus in 1990 as an area coordinator. Eight years later, he was appointed director of off-campus student services. In this role at OSU, he was instrumental to the health and well-being of the off-campus student community. Much of his time was spent driving through off-campus streets checking on students, taking the pulse of their community, and looking out for their well-being. He befriended these students who came to know him as a trusted confidant.
A fixture at ACUHO-I conferences, Young seemingly knew everyone else in attendance and greeted them all with a smile, whether it was in the hallways, at the new attendee orientation, or helping to start the Fun Run, Walk, and Roll. Young also served on ACUHO-I’s Program Committee for many years, received the James A. Hurd Award in 1993, and was inducted into the Parthenon Society in 2009.
Young receives this award posthumously, having passed away in November 2020. Of Young’s life and his work, James L. Moore III, Ohio State’s vice provost for diversity and inclusion, noted that Young "chose education and guidance of young people over punishment and abandonment. He understood well that young people learn life’s lessons at their own pace.” His compassion for others and his ability to always see potential in students has left a profound mark on his community and his Association.
Currently the assistant vice president and director of residence life at Loyola University Chicago in Illinois, Deb Schmidt-Rogers has been active in the higher education community for almost four decades. Her previous institutional work includes serving as director of residential life at Northwestern University and director of residential education at DePaul University, as well as stints at The Catholic University of America and Trinity College. Along with her professional accomplishments, she has donated countless hours in service to ACUHO-I. Most recently she served three years in the presidential track for the ACUHO-I Executive Board. Previously she was elected to two terms as Director of Inclusion and Equity. She has served as a faculty member for the prestigious James C. Grimm National Housing Training Institute and participated as a faculty member for the Global Housing Training Institute in the United Kingdom. In addition, she presented in Australia and in Italy as part of ACUHO-I’s commitment to our international colleagues.
A veteran of more than 10 years in campus housing, Valerie Bruce is a frequent and valuable contributor to her campus, her regional association, and ACUHO-I. Currently the associate director of housing operations and administration at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, she is responsible for all housing operations including assignments, facilities, finance, summer hotel/conference operation, front desk operations, and off-campus housing. Most recently she served as the president of the Ontario Association of College and University Housing Officers (OACUHO). In addition, she has repeatedly presented on work that is applicable to international members such as specific programs and initiatives, public-private partnerships within Canada, or other regional challenges. She has contributed to the ACUHO-I Global Initiatives Network through targeted pre-conference presentations, providing her global perspective as a member of the Learning Experience Review Committee and consistently engaging with global members at conference events and within online communities of practice. Finally, Bruce contributed mightily as the local arrangements chair for the 2019 ACUHO-I Annual Conference and Expo that was held in Toronto.
As the assistant vice president for student auxiliary services at Clemson University in South Carolina, Kathy Bush Hobgood has demonstrated her professional acumen managing comprehensive responsibility for all housing and dining operations for 7,800 students on their campus in 26 residence halls and four apartment communities. As a dedicated, long-time volunteer to both regional and international housing associations, she epitomizes the power of associations to enhance students’ lives on campus through creating better professionals. Bush Hobgood has been the chair of the ACUHO-I Educational and Research Foundation and previously served on the Foundation’s Trustee Board as the vice-chair for the Regional Cabinet. Prior ACUHO-I service includes being an active author for the Talking Stick magazine, a host committee member for many years, and a term on the Executive Board as Publications Coordinator. She is also a graduate of the James C. Grimm National Housing Training Institute, as well as the ACUHO-I Professional Standards Institute. At the regional level, she is also a past president of the Southeastern Association of Housing Officers and has remained active as the association historian and archivist.
Prior to coming to Clemson as director of residential life in 2006, Bush Hobgood worked at the University of Florida and Albion College. Along with her husband, Brian, and daughter, Katie, she is also an active community volunteer with Prisma Health Upstate and Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Carolinas.
Demarcus Merritt, a logistics coordinator with the residential life and housing department at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, admits that when he attended his first ACUHO-I conference he “felt like a ship lost at sea.” However, he noted that with the help of mentors he soon grew more comfortable. Now, he has dedicated himself to making ACUHO-I and the housing profession a safe and inclusive space. He has done this through a number of articles, programs, and volunteer leadership roles. He has been a faculty member with the ACUHO-I STARS College, co-chair elect for the ACUHO-I Professionals of Color Network, and a contributing author to ACUHO-I’s RA 201 online course. He has presented on webinars, written or co-written numerous articles for regional and international publications, and has made a great deal of impact in other ways behind the scenes. In addition, Merritt has created his own business and is the chief operating officer and diversity doctor of The Demarcus Merritt Signature Experience, a professional firm that provides transformative organizational training, development, event keynote, and consultation services.
After working in residence life professional capacities for 14 years, James “J.C.” Stoner transferred to the operations side of the house and now serves as the associate director for housing operations at The University of Texas at Dallas. Since earning a doctorate in educational leadership and policy studies from The University of Texas at Arlington in 2016, he has continued his academic writing and has presented a number of manuscripts to regional and international publications. He notes how he finds great value in writing and engaging in research, trying to prompt engagement in the research and assessment competency area, among others. His research explores the interplay between the perception of mattering to others and the toll of burnout, especially among paraprofessional staff, having written extensively about the experiences of resident assistants. That work, in many ways, culminates in 2021 as he serves as one of the guest editors for the ACUHO-I The Journal of College and University Student Housing theme issue, which focuses on resident assistant hiring practices. He also serves as a reviewer for the Journal, has been a conference program reviewer, and maintains active involvement in the SWACUHO region and regularly presents at their regional conferences.
When he started writing his award-winning article, published in the May/June 2020 issue of the Talking Stick, Nicholas Santilli had no idea how prescient the article – or its headline, “Leading in Volatile Times” – would be. As the senior director for learning strategy for the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), he was well versed in touting the benefits of integrated planning. But as the COVID-19 pandemic had an increasingly dramatic impact on campuses, his message of leading in environments that are volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous became all the more resounding.
Santilli joined the SCUP staff after 34 years as a faculty member and administrator in higher education, which included serving as vice president for academic and student affairs and as provost and in positions in assessment of student learning and development, institutional effectiveness, accreditation, and integrated planning. Among his responsibilities with the society, he serves as the lead for the SCUP Planning Institute.
Santilli closed his article by noting that, when he taught classes, he would encourage students to “act with compassion, to lead with integrity, and to live for justice” before adding that “We cannot lose sight of these three aspirational values of higher education. We must keep these aspirations in mind as we plan for the future – perhaps now more than ever.”
Residence life professionals have experimented with many ways to positively impact educational environments within residence halls. However, many of these efforts have focused on programmatic interventions. In their manuscript in The Journal of College and University Student Housing (Vol. 46, No. 2), “CUE-ing Student Success: Evaluating Academic Support Space in Residential Communities,” the authors spotlight the importance of also evaluating the role that the physical spaces play. Through the use of post-occupancy evaluations and other environmental assessment measures, they considered four residential academic support spaces on the merits of inclusion and accessibility, scholarship, practicality, community, propriety, and awareness. The manuscript concludes with recommendations for improvement in each of these areas, which were presented to the housing staff. As a result, a number of short-, mid-, and long-term modifications could be planned and implemented in the different spaces.
The team's faculty lead was Phia S. Salter, an associate professor of psychology at Davidson College whose contributions to teaching, research mentoring, and service have been recognized with the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues’ Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring Award in 2018. She worked alongside Dustin K. Grabsch, the director of academic initiatives within residence life and student housing at Southern Methodist University where he co-leads an undergraduate and graduate student research team. Student members of the team included Jaren Crist, a graduate student in the doctoral program in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A&M University; Jagadesh Lagisetty is a computer science student at Texas A&M University; Lane Dyer is a new graduate from Texas A&M University with a degree in finance and a minor in economics; and Estephanie Olvera graduated with her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Texas A&M University in 2020.
Looking to make meaning of the lived experiences of Black women senior housing officers at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs), Chandra Myrick focused her dissertation on the intersection of racial and gender identities in order to understand how this contributed to their experiences. Myrick, who earned a bachelor’s degree in print journalism and history from Troy State University and a master’s degree in higher education from Florida State University, currently serves as the assistant vice chancellor for student life and executive director of university housing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her dissertation, “I'm Speaking: Narratives of Black Women Serving in Senior Housing Officer Roles at Predominantly White Institutions,” uses Black feminist thought as a framework upon which to build the narratives of 10 Black women who were often faced with dual forms of oppression: racism and sexism. She learned that, despite their marginalization, these women were making meaningful connections with staff and confronting oppressive behaviors and language, while also advocating for those who are underrepresented on their campuses. Her study illuminates a pathway for others seeking to advance in the housing profession as well as those interested in making PWIs more welcoming and inclusive for Black women administrators.
As a second-year graduate student and residence coordinator at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, Trevis Belle has already done much in the world of campus housing and has received numerous accolades for his work. In his current role he supervises Greek sorority housing and works towards building community by implementing housing policies and engaging residents in programming efforts to develop themselves holistically. He has served a practicum internship with the campus’s Office of Diversity and Community where he served as co-advisor for the Minority Mentorship Program and planned and implemented the Bridging the Gap educational and cultural-based program, which focused on raising cultural competency and cultural awareness among students. He has also completed ACUHO-I internships that enabled him to assist with conference coordination as well as developing marketing materials. His active involvement has allowed him to be recognized by national organizations as a recipient of the NASPA Region IV-W Rising Star Graduate Award and the Arkansas Student Affairs Association Outstanding Graduate Student award for 2020.
Kristina Callahan, in her third year as a residence hall director at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has made her impact felt on her campus as she works to create pipelines of access, celebrate joy, reduce barriers, and support students. In her hall she oversees the honors living-learning community as well as Nuestro Hogar, a predominantly Latinx community focused on identities and celebrating culture. In addition, she co-chairs her department’s curriculum committee, works as part of an institutional committee for homelessness, and serves as a member of the institutional Bias Incident Response Team. She has also led efforts to utilize the Intercultural Development Inventory for students and staff in order to increase cultural awareness and has hosted sessions for RA training on diversity and inclusion.
Beyond her campus, Callahan has presented at the Upper Midwest Region (UMR-ACUHO) conference, sharing knowledge on living-learning communities and navigating politics in an institution. Remembering the benefits it offered her while an undergraduate student, she continues to volunteer with the ACUHO-I STARS College. And she has created an anti-racism resource guide for student affairs professionals filled with activities, reflections, and ways to engage in anti-racist works from all levels.
A first-generation college student from the San Francisco Bay Area, Chris Flores earned a bachelor's degree from UCLA and a master's degree from Oklahoma State University. He now serves as coordinator for residential education at the University of California-Santa Cruz's Merrill College. In his current position, he helps manage four residence halls and the student staff, as well as a trans-housing community. He oversees the supervision, training, and development of the residential student staff of Merrill as well as managing the oversight of a residential curriculum and the programmatic aspects of the residential side of the college. In addition, Flores has been active in his regional housing association, WACUHO, serving as chair for the Northern Student Leadership Drive-in, as member-at-large for the Executive Board, and presently as the vice-president for the region. Outside of his role at UCSC and WACUHO, Flores is a strong advocate for community building in a college setting and has pushed initiatives and projects to bring students at Merrill College together. In all his work, he believes in the importance of continuing professional development that challenges his way of thinking and develops best practices. Flores also sees and appreciates the value of giving back to the field through regional and national association involvement, mentorship, and presenting to others.
As the senior director of analytics and research at Skyfactor and Macmillan Learning, Sherry Woosley, along with her team, is responsible for driving the content strategy for more than 50 assessments and student retention tools. While her work is certainly well known among the campuses that partner with Skyfactor, her knowledge and expertise are routinely shared with ACUHO-I members and the profession at large through a number of other avenues. Drawing on more than 20 years of researching college student transitions, student success, and higher education assessment, she has delivered more than 100 presentations at various national educational conferences. She is also a regular contributor to the Talking Stick magazine and has been published in the pages of the College Student Journal, The Journal of College and University Student Housing, the Journal of College Student Retention, and the Journal of College Student Development. Prior to working at Macmillan, Woosley worked in institutional research and assessment at Ball State University, where she taught in the higher education program and founded an institutional research graduate program. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Karen Kurotsuchi Inkelas, an associate professor in the higher education program in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, has, through her work, become almost synonymous with living-learning programs. Along with also being the sixth principal of Virginia’s Hereford Residential College, she is the founding principal investigator of the National Study of Living-Learning Programs and lead author of the book Living-Learning Communities That Work: A Research-Based Model for Design, Delivery, and Assessment.
Inkelas currently serves as the lead research director for UVA’s Crafting Success for Underrepresented Scientists and Engineers Project and is the research director of undergraduate initiatives for the UVA Contemplative Sciences Center. In addition, she has consulted with living-learning communities and housing and residence life departments at several higher education institutions and two national architectural firms. She has been a featured speaker at several U.S. and international venues, including a World Bank-funded workshop on teaching and learning in STEM in Cambodia, a keynote at the Teaching & Learning in Higher Education Conference at the National University of Singapore, and as a plenary speaker at the second Global Forum on the Innovation of Higher Education at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea. She has been an invited speaker for several national conferences concerning living-learning communities and residential colleges, including the Residential College Symposium, the ACUHO-I Academic Initiatives Conference, and the Residential Learning Communities Conference.
Thank you to our 2021 ACUHO-I Awards and Recognition committee members who offered their time, counsel, and flexibility over the course of the awards process: Patrick Connor (chair), Olan Garrett (executive board representative), Andrew Naylor, Sarah Waters, Amy Fitzjarrald, David Grimes, Brian Rock, Tiffany Chan, and Laura Storey.