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Residence life is one of the three interdependent functional areas of a college/university housing program. This area is typically responsible for the comprehensive educational program that surrounds the experience of living "on-campus" in a residence hall at a college or university.
Organization
As one of three components of a college/university housing program[1], Residence Life is often one responsibility of a larger Housing office or department. On some campuses, however, Residence Life and Housing are responsibilities of separate departments or organizations.
Residence Life, or the department which encompasses it, usually reports to the Division of Student Affairs. However, on campuses with a separate Housing department it is not uncommon for that department to report to the Business Services or Auxiliary Services division or area as most of their responsibilities will be financial, legal, and physical (as opposed to the developmental nature of "pure" Residence Life).
Regardless of which division to which it reports, Housing departments are usually self-supporting auxiliary departments which receive little or no financial support from the college/university (i.e. tuition or fees). They are dependent on revenue from rent and cost-recovery mechanisms (damage charges, bills for services such as network or telephone service, etc.)[2].
Staff
Professional staff
Residence Life professionals typically possess a Master's Degree in college student personnel, higher education, counseling, or a related field. Typical Residence Life departments are overseen by a director, associate director, or assistant director; these positions may be "live-on" (required to live on campus), depending on the needs of the university and the size of the staff required to be on-call to respond to student emergencies.
Many campuses also employ graduate students or entry-level professionals that directly supervise the RAs and other undergraduate staff (such as desk workers). These staff are variously referred to as Hall Directors (HDs), Resident Directors (RDs), or Residence Life Coordinators (RLCs). The titles vary between institutions with some institutions using the same title to refer to their graduate student staff that another uses for their entry-level staff. These staff members are "live-in" (required to live in the residence hall, often in a larger or otherwise extraordinary space) or live-on to fulfill their frequent on-call duties.
Student staff
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Typically, each residence hall also employs several Resident Assistants, or RAs. These are undergraduate or graduate students who are tasked with helping the students living on their hallway get to know each other. Resourceful RAs use a variety of planned or spontaneous events—called programming in the field's nomenclature—to this end. They are also charged with enforcing university rules and regulations and providing general assistance to residents. RAs are often reimbursed with free or discounted room, free or discounted board, a stipend, or even all three. On most campuses, RAs receive intense training at the beginning of the academic year. In addition to ongoing training, some campuses have several days of training at the beginning of the second semester.
If the residence hall has a front desk or area office, it is often manned by students who provide assistance to the residents such as accepting packages delivered to the residence hall, reporting maintenance problems, or opening doors for residents who have lost their key(s) (often for a charge).
External links
- Association of College and University Housing Officers - International (ACUHO-I): International association of housing officers which publishes a peer-reviewed journal (The Journal of College and University Student Housing) twice a year, publishes a magazine (Talking Stick) approximately every two months, and hosts multiple conferences each year in the United States and abroad.
- National Association of College and University Residence Halls, Inc. (NACURH): American organization which provides resources to on-campus residents, particularly Residence Hall Associations (RHAs) and other similar groups of resident leaders.
- ResidentAssistant.com: Website providing resources for RAs and other residence life professionals, particularly ideas and resources for social and educational "programming." Of particular interest is the annual Live in/on report which lists average salaries, ratio of residents to professionals, and other similar data from hundreds of institutions.
- ResNet Symposium: Loosely-affiliated international group composed of Residence Life and Information Technology professionals which exists primarily to organize an annual conference about issues related to residence hall computer networks.
References
- ^ The ACUHO-I Ethical Principles and Standards for College and University Student Housing Professionals lays out the three components of a college/university housing program: Business/Management, Education/Programming, and Physical Plant.
- ^ Barr & Desler's Handbook of Student Affairs Administration (2000, p. 131) note that management of auxiliary budgets occupy nearly all (as much as 80%) of a chief student affairs fiscal responsibility; this underlines the complexity of this financial management and the potential conflict between the institution's responsibility for financial solvency and student development.
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