questions by Camille Perlman
Resident assistants are some of the most valuable team members on campus. They provide new students with resources and support and help them navigate academic and social life on campus. While the job of an RA provides the employee with great job and life experience, it is no mystery that the work is stressful and sometimes traumatic. What kind of support are campuses offering for burnout in this position? How are they providing mental health support and care for these students?
Participants in this conversation are Susan Laverty, assistant director of residential operations at Temple University; Deighton Edwards, residence supervisor for residence life and student services at St. Thomas University; Tamera Dunn, assistant director for residential education at Purdue University-Fort Wayne; and Eleanor (Ele) Luna, associate director for training and development at Southern Methodist University.
Susan Laverty: Our RAs go through a week-long training in August and typically two to three days in January as a refresher or to provide new experiences for them based on trends we’ve identified. Our training program is designed in a tiered approach and a flipped classroom model. Throughout the summer, RAs take online modules and quizzes where they’re able to learn much of the detailed content of the job: what the basic engagement expectations are, what time to pick up the duty phone, and how to complete a building round. Then when they arrive to train we can spend the majority of our time practicing those skills and giving space for RAs to work through the heavier responsibilities in practical, hands-on ways instead of hoping they’ve grasped those key elements through a lecture. In addition to the Behind Closed Doors experience that many campuses use to practice crisis response, our team has developed an experience called Through Open Doors, which allows students to practice some of the basic interactions they’ll have with residents that can create more anxiety than we might assume – for example, talking to a resident about changing their major, advising someone on the best way to make an intentional interaction engaging, or explaining how to stand at an event and facilitate a dialogue about alcohol. Giving RAs as many opportunities as possible to practice their skills has been critical to our success in preparing them for all aspects of the role.
Deighton Edwards: Preparing RAs for the role is critical every step of the way, beginning with recruitment. We begin by ensuring that our job descriptions are as updated as possible before we begin hiring each year, holding information sessions for interested applicants to ask questions, and then working to formulate both individual and group questions to reflect skills necessary to handle all areas of the role. It sounds very straightforward, but being as honest as possible with applicants is key to hiring folks with a realistic understanding of what their job will entail.
We focus on having as many campus partners as possible come into our August training to inform our team not only of how they support students, but also how they support our team. Having an initial introduction, especially for first-time RAs, works really well to establish a connection between offices and student staff, making them more likely to ask questions, refer students, or access the office themselves.
I believe we too often take for granted how folks will use tools we provide them. For example, offering a training session on boundaries and then offering a training on conduct does not mean an RA will understand how to apply boundaries to a conduct situation. When staff feel like their learnings are isolated or not applicable to certain situations, it could mean an entire gap in practice. To help combat this, we shape our training sessions to include the following: how to apply boundaries in this area; what self-care in this situation and after this situation could look like; the various diversity, equity, and inclusion principles to take into consideration in practice; and giving lots of practice time. Helping staff be aware of the multiple strategies and applications in these areas traditionally viewed as stand-alone helps bridge the gap and avoids the beginning of harmful habits.
Tamera Dunn: Our campus team is intentional about knowing that the RA role contains some heavy elements and works to address not only the topics, but also the resources that are available for both student staff and students. While we hire staff who we believe are going to best serve their residents, we also spend time to ensure that our staff know that the services they are recommending for their students are not available just for them – we encourage them to use them to ensure their personal and academic success.
Ele Luna: During training, we stress to RAs that their greatest power is getting residents to someone else who can help. An RA is not the counselor or academic advisor or conduct adjudicator. Our dean simply asks them to be a noticer and a connector, and this message is one of the very first things they will hear during training. Framing things in this way helps make their job feel a little lighter, but nevertheless very important. RAs don’t have to fix everything. We have campus experts for that! Their job is simply to notice that something might be wrong and then connect that student with the resource that is best suited to help.
Laverty: Our team has worked hard over the last few years to integrate more intentional conversations with the entire team during training and throughout the year about burnout. In my dissertation research on the subject of RA burnout, a common theme was that RAs simply wanted us to talk about it openly and acknowledge that they aren’t the only ones in the room who may feel broken. By incorporating sessions early in training that encourage students to approach the job with a sense of vulnerability and authenticity and pairing that with opportunities to engage with their peers for some real talk about how to get through the hard parts of the job, I think we’ve started to create an environment where RAs are starting to understand that it’s okay not to be okay and that sometimes their high expectations of themselves aren’t always fair. This very open and honest approach also requires us to adequately prepare our professional staff to navigate these conversations, lead with care, and be able to identify the symptoms and warning signs of burnout.
Edwards: We make mental health and self-care a part of our ongoing team conversations, as well as in 1:1 meetings with supervisors. If an RA comes to their supervisor and is feeling burnt out, we address both the immediate and long-term plans. Each RA is different, but I have seen a range of experiences on how to support an RA through feeling burnt out. Sometimes the RA just needs their upcoming duty shifts covered to have a few days to catch up on rest or school work. At other times, we’ve had RAs drop extracurricular activities. My personal focus is never to approach burnout with the mentality of “how can we keep you in this role?” but with “how can we keep you well?”
Dunn: Having observant and perceptive supervisors who are aware of the behaviors and performance of their staff makes it much more likely that burnout will be spotted early in an RA’s experience with burnout. Having conversations directly with staff who are exhibiting signs of burnout has helped us to not only identify that burnout is occurring, but also determine if there are specific pieces of their role creating this experience.
What adjustments can be made that balance the needs of the student staff member and the experience we create for our residential students? I use this as a guiding question to help our residential education team best shape our approach to balancing the needs of our staff with the needs of our residents. Quite simply, this means that we are personalizing the experience of each staff member while standardizing the fact that we do check in and directly intervene with each staff member as needed.
Luna: Personally, I try to infuse our community development model into my relationship with the RAs. Knowing names and stories goes a long way in feeling cared for. Building community is at the very core of what we do, and RAs need that sense of community just as much as anyone else. But it is our residential community directors (RCDs) who do the heavy lifting on this front. Through their weekly one-on-one meetings, our RCDs are laying the groundwork to truly know their RAs and have a strong relationship with each of them. This allows them to notice if something is off. We are lucky to have small communities and small staffs. Our RCDs are flexible problem solvers who know how to make slight adjustments when they are able to help an RA get through a tough week.
Laverty: We try to integrate reminders about RA mental health throughout training and not just during the session with that title. Yes, they learn about our campus counseling center and other mental health resources that are accessible to all students, but in order to drive the message home it’s important to keep it in their minds. In our conversations about our curricular approach, we talk about how coordinating 40 Owl Chats (our intentional interactions with each resident) can sometimes be a challenge and ways to manage so they aren’t so draining. In our sessions on diversity, equity, and inclusion, we acknowledge that your identity can impact how you navigate your role and process stress when you also may be overwhelmed by current events or discrimination in your personal life. These constant reminders allow us to engage more openly with them and help them identify what type of mental health support they may need before they reach a breaking point.
Edwards: Mental health is a part of every discussion, and we emphasize how serious we are about them being a happy, healthy, and whole human. While it is important for our teams to feel at their best, we also discuss what it means to role-model healthy behaviors for residents. You can never downplay the impact an RA has on their community, floor, and building, so centering mental health can mean an incredible domino effect on how residents care for themselves as well.
Dunn: Mental health is woven into nearly every aspect of the training we do with our student staff team. In the development of our schedule, we consider how various aspects best fit together and how we can balance sessions where we know the content may create emotional responses as well as ensuring that a clear plan is in place for any and all expected administrative duties.
On our campus, we also do an evening training at least twice a semester with various campus colleagues to address areas where we notice trends with the team that we’d like to address. This has proven beneficial since it not only starts conversations but also reinvigorates our team and allows them to have time together, which they have indicated they appreciate.
Luna: Whenever we train RAs on a heavy topic, whether it be suicide intervention or sexual misconduct response, we include an extra step in their list of protocols: a self-check. We ask RAs to speak with their supervisors about how they are feeling after handling a tense situation. We never want an RA to feel like they are alone in handling a situation, and protecting someone’s privacy sometimes makes RAs feel like they have to keep it all in. For this reason, we intentionally talk about balancing their mental health with confidentiality. We make sure the RAs know who they can speak to and what confidential resources are available to them.
Laverty: Strong supervision is the core method of identifying mental health trends on the team and implementing interventions to provide the team with direct support. Our hall teams work hard to build strong 1:1 relationships with each staff member that go beyond the RA role and show a level of care to them as a person and a student outside the position. We encourage hall staff to assess early on what strategies each RA uses to de-stress or take care of themselves and encourage them to use that information throughout the year when they see a person struggling.
Something else that my research was able to highlight was that RAs often get the greatest amount of support for their mental health from other RAs in both formal and informal capacities. Many of our buildings have built-in buddy systems where a returning RA is paired with a new RA to guide them through their first year and provide additional support. We have built on this significantly with the creation of Affinity Groups, which are student-led groups where RAs who share an identity (e.g., Black & African-American, LGBTQIA+, Female-identified, etc.) can come together and discuss how that identity impacts their role as an RA in both positive and challenging ways. Burnout impacts different identities in significantly different ways, and acknowledging that and creating support groups where they can help each other through those experiences are important to their sustained success.
Edwards: The best care and management steps come from a proactive approach. Responding to mental health concerns within a structure that isn’t built to prioritize a person’s well-being makes it more challenging to make changes and adjustments as staff needs fluctuate. At our institution, typically onerous and time-consuming tasks, like duty shifts or residence-wide programs, are a shared responsibility amongst the whole team, while more day-to-day tasks, like bulletin boards or community meetings, are an individual's responsibility. This helps lessen the overall burden and emphasize the team approach. There is also more flexibility in expectations. Instead of having a certain number of tasks per month, allowing a semester-long timeline helps staff take care of certain tasks when they are less busy and stressed. This also means that staff who are struggling with their mental health have more ability to take a break that does not deeply affect the overall functioning of the buildings.
Dunn: As professional staff in a smaller operation, we have actively worked as a team to build personal relationships with each student staff member on our team. This has enabled us to approach a situation with any staff member while allowing their supervisor to take the lead to ensure a consistent point of contact.
The interventions that we have in place are primarily conversational at this time, with documentation included as necessary if addressing lapses in performance while navigating burnout. Helping the employee understand that our intent is to address how we can best help them be successful as a person, a student, and then a staff member is something that has helped us be successful in timely intervention.
Luna: Over the past few years, we have tried to examine what was truly necessary and make data-informed decisions related to the RA’s job load. For example, we noticed that our RAs were feeling burnt out during August training because they were staying up late with room checks after a day full of sessions. We took a minute to reexamine whether or not the returners truly had to sit through every presentation. Yes, it’s helpful for them to have a refresher, but through some quick data collection we could identify a handful of topics that the returners were very likely to have already encountered and handled well. We ended up excusing them from a handful of sessions, but in return we asked them to get started on building prep and take on the lion’s share there. It was to everyone’s benefit, as no one was staying up late. Continually examining practices and not sticking to things simply because it’s the way it has always been done can help open the door for a more refreshed team.
Laverty: My research led to three suggestions for professionals to consider when engaging in conversations around mental health. First is openly engaging in dialogue during training and throughout the year about RA mental health and burnout. The more we can call it out, normalize engaging in vulnerable conversations, and break down the stigma of asking for help, the more we can provide support to these incredible student leaders. They crave honesty and desperately don’t want to feel alone in the experience, and we have the power to help them feel like part of a really caring team. Second, I recommend preparing professional staff to lead these conversations effectively. We have a responsibility to practice what we preach. As residence life professionals, we aren’t always good at taking our own advice and tending to our own mental health. If I can adequately prepare a resident director to engage in these challenging conversations, they can do the same for a resident assistant. Finally, I recommend that campuses carefully review their RA contract or job description and ensure that our expectations and compensation are supporting RA mental health in the most effective way that we can. Making policies that encourage time away from the role and provide a structure to request that or outlining the amount of outside commitment (i.e., additional employment, campus organizations, etc.) that is permissible shows students who are only just applying for the RA role that we care about their time and well-being enough to put it in the contract. This sets a strong precedent for how we will support them throughout their time with us in residence life.
Edwards: It is incredibly important to create a clear line of where student staff responsibility ends and professional offices begin. RAs often take on too much of a care role with individual students when they do not feel like there are the proper supports in place across campus for those students to access. Explaining the scope of the role to RAs and then the proper supports and when to refer to those supports helps not only to set RAs up for success, but also to avoid staff crossing boundaries or setting up expectations for themselves that are not realistic. Our RAs are too important for them to feel like lone islands when they actually have a sea of support.
Dunn: I think it’s important to remember that we can have the best of intent, but we cannot prevent mental health issues or burnout as each staff member has a different experience in their role. What we can do is ensure that our staff are able to identify for themselves when they are at pause points when they may need to speak with their supervisor and indicate the need to briefly readjust so that they can address the factors impacting them whenever possible.
What has helped us is to be mindful of our schedules as we develop them and consider what is essential to learn in the moment and what can be learned on the job or periodically throughout the year. Having a training or management system without actively reviewing it, seeking feedback, and adjusting to best fit the needs of your campus is a set-up for creating discontent within the staff team.
Luna: The most important thing is to remind RAs that they are students too. All of the resources that we discuss in training are just as available to the RAs as they are to the residents, and there is no shame in taking advantage of them. Further, cultivating adaptable and approachable managers is key to having a staff that thrives in difficult situations.
Camille Perlman is the managing editor of Talking Stick at the ACUHO-I Home Office in Columbus, Ohio.
