Leaving Home: My Journey Beyond Residence Life
Recently, my friend Tracy asked me to write a reflection for a regional Residence Life association's magazine about my career transition to a different functional area in Student Affairs. Writing this was a great opportunity for me to think critically about not only the differences, but the similarities that drive our work in higher education. I hope you enjoy it half as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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I found myself in a residence hall. Growing up in a small town, I strived to be a leader, but didn’t always feel I had much of an opportunity to practice. When I moved into my first year experience residence hall, a whole new world was available to me filled with opportunities I did not anticipate when I thought about what college would be like. That hall was where someone I admired told me I could be a leader and introduced me to a group of people who were just as passionate about being an engaged leader as I was (even though I probably didn’t use the term “engaged leader” at the time). These people welcomed me in and mentored me through the path that eventually led to a career as a student development professional.
When I decided to enter our profession, I had a one track
mind: go to graduate school and get a
job in Residence Life. Although I was
involved in a few things beyond Residence Life during my undergraduate years, I
really never considered working in any other functional area on campus. My mentors worked there and my formative experiences
were there, so why bother with anything else?
Residence Life was my world and I entered the profession intending to do
nothing other than Residence Life.
Despite my intentions, a funny thing happened on the way
down my career path. About seven years
in, I decided Residence Life was no longer the functional area for me. I am in no way devaluing the functional area in
which most of the people reading this are probably working. My time in Residence Life helped me to
understand the importance of student transition; relationships between faculty,
staff and students; holistic student development; and the power of
educationally purposeful experiences outside the classroom. I had the ability to practice these values
in our residence halls, but as I progressed in my career, I began to highly
value and appreciate opportunities to work with others across campus to advance
these values.
If we’re being honest, I think we need to realize that
sometimes our functional areas within Student Affairs can become isolated
silos. We don’t mean it, but it
sometimes just happens. Within Residence
Life, we typically have more professional staff, facilities, and student staff
than many other departments across any given campus and can stand alone in most
cases. When I served as an Assistant Director
of Residence Life, I spent a considerable amount of time planning and
implementing large scale campus wide programming that was improved through
collaborations with staff in Student Life, Academic Advising, Orientation,
University Center Operations, Recreation, Athletics, and faculty. I enjoyed the collaborative program
development process and appreciated the opportunity to reach an audience beyond
the students living in the residence halls.
I also enjoyed focusing on developing educational
programming that connected my work directly to the academic mission of the
institution. These collaborative
partnerships across campus led to the development of learning outcomes based
experiences that provided opportunities for growth and development. All of these experiences happened while I
worked in Residence Life, but these initiatives were not necessarily the focus
on my position. I received the support
from my supervisor to adjust my position to focus more on the development of
learning outcome based collaborative educational programming, but there was
always a concern about how much was too much collaboration.
This brings me almost to the present day. When I applied for my current position, I had
no intention of leaving Residence Life, but my experience working with other
areas on campus had me thinking about what else was out there. When a friend and colleague in Residence Life
showed me my current position announcement I realized the focus of my work
would be to lead a department that not only encouraged, but required high
levels of collaboration within the department and across campus. The collaborative program development process
wasn’t going to be something that was nice to do as a “team player”, but
something that was required to advance the role of Student Affairs in the
learning and student success mission of the university.
Now almost four years into my first job outside of Residence
Life, I am extremely thankful every day for the formative experience Residence
Life provided me that I now have the opportunity to expand upon outside of
Residence Life. I appreciate the opportunity to think of all students as the
primary audience of my work and reaching a variety of student demographics that
are a little less captive than focusing on the students living in the residence
halls.
As reflect upon my experience both in and outside of
Residence Life, I am struck more by the similarities of our work than the
differences that exists between functional areas. I believe the future of our profession will
bring functional areas closer together through shared work in cross
departmental work teams. Ultimately, all
of us should work together toward the common goals of student success through
persistence and the development of skills that will prove helpful both during
and after college.
I am eternally grateful for the experiences I had in
Residence Life during the first seven years of my professional career. I am equally grateful that I opened myself to
the opportunity of applying the skills and experiences I gained to other areas
on campus. This move has allowed me to broaden my reach and ability to
collaborate with others to create a seamless, supportive and educationally
purposeful experience for all students on campus.
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