One of my favorite things about our profession is the way it combines the lessons, theory, and research of academia with the crafted, measured, and trusted work of housing practitioners. Sure, there may be times when it feels as though the two camps aren’t marching to the same beat, but I think most of us would agree that neither one alone is as valuable as they are together.
Examples of this synergy and cooperation occur all the time on our campuses and within our Association. It is particularly true this time of year as we prepare for Campus Home. LIVE! in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As volunteers comb through the program submissions, they try to strike that balance between topics that explore the nuanced and nebulous ideas that underlie student development work and those that get to the bones of day-to-day operations and real-world applications. I think back to so many conferences over the years where, during one session, I would feel the spark of one a-ha! moment after the other. Then, when it was over, I’d head into a different room, and before I knew it, I was ready to roll up my sleeves and get elbow-deep into crafting a new procedure or policy. Campus housing truly is a wonderful place for those who like to use both sides of their brain.
This issue of the Talking Stick is another great example of the two halves making a whole. In our cover story, Keeyana Talley, the assistant director for academic initiatives and experiential learning at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, speaks with three of the most noted researchers in the area of living-learning programs: Karen Kurotsuchi Inkelas, Mimi Benjamin, and Jody Jessup-Anger. Reading their conversation, it quickly becomes obvious that it’s important to build a program on the foundation of established research and models, but it’s equally important to recognize that all the theories in the world don’t do any good if they can’t be applied in day-to-day conditions.
In the second feature, Michelle Boettcher, an associate professor in the School of Education at Clemson University, is interviewed by Tina Tormey, the director of residential education and housing at The College of New Jersey. They discuss Boettcher’s latest book, in which she explores law and ethics in student affairs. It can certainly be a thorny subject filled with all sorts of twists in interpretations, but in the end, she and her co-author Cristóbal Salinas, Jr. present their findings in a framework specifically designed to help practitioners, from graduate assistants to senior housing officers, apply these lessons.
Housing professionals are a fantastic amalgamation of thinkers and doers (with a healthy serving of feelers in there as well). It’s just part of what makes us uniquely suited to making campus home.
Finally, this issue may introduce many of you to the concept of liberation. Associate professors D. Chase J. Catalano (Virginia Tech) and Rachel Wagner (Clemson) and vice provost Susan Marine (Merrimack College) have all spent the last year as guest editors of the themed issue of The Journal of College and University Student Housing, which focuses on this topic. In their article, they not only define and explore the idea of liberation but also challenge practitioners and housing departments not to be satisfied with just understanding or even endorsing the mindset but to make an effort to manifest it in their housing environments.
Housing professionals are a fantastic amalgamation of thinkers and doers (with a healthy serving of feelers in there as well). It’s just part of what makes us uniquely suited to making campus home. I look forward to seeing many of you in Milwaukee and celebrating all of us.
— Gay Perez, ACUHO-I President
Talking Stick magazine takes its name from the symbol of international friendship presented to ACUHO-I in 1973 by the Ohiat Band of the British Columbia Indian Nation. The talking stick, or speaker’s staff, is hand-carved, and the inscription explains, “It is a sign of authority carried when proclamations are to be made or a meeting of chiefs is in session. It is a token of common heritage both to Canadians and Americans.”