On Wednesday night, Residential Life held a final meeting with student staff regarding the decision to change job titles and descriptions of their employees. This change would include the current Assistant Director (AD), Hall President (HP), Hall Advisor (HA) and Student Advisor (SA) positions.
ResLife is currently continuing to work out what these changes might entail. As of Fall 2013, SAs and HPs will be renamed Community Advisors (CAs) and Senior Community Advisors (SCAs).
The general focus of the change is to shift the load of supervision off of the new SCAs. Instead, the CAs will report to the Assistant Directors. This is to allow SCAs to focus more on building community and helping students integrate into campus life.
The ADs themselves are also undergoing role changes. The two current ADs, Jessica Kaeding and Todd Porter, will become Area Coordinators in the fall, along with new hires.
Kaeding explained that their new job is evident in their title: “coordinating between students [and] administration along with mediation and supervision.” The 21 residential halls will be divided among the ACs.
For SAs, the work is relatively the same as CAs. The change concerns the HPs and HAs more. The transition from HPs to SCAs will cut down the number of senior staff to 14. Some buildings such as the Mandelles, that previously had two HPs, will be consolidated under one SCA position. However, the total number of ResLife student staff will remain 90, because more CAs will be added.
“We feel it is more helpful if a peer helps students resolve issues,” explained Castanza. “The change is not because something is not going well; the key part is to partner with the students and help people grow, connect and build community.”
Some of the student staff changes also involve changes in duty schedules and peer supervision. In the new job descriptions, SCAs will have less of a supervisory role over CAs.
“The Assistant Directors have always been supervising student staff, they would come report to us,” said Kaeding. “We have always been around, meeting with everyone and coordinating.”
The new ACs may move back into the halls – they moved out when there was a shortage of student housing this year – but that does not mean that they will be integrating into dorm life.
“They don’t have the time to walk around the halls, they’re not going to be part of the community,” said Castanza. “Todd walks around the halls with his laptop even now. Maybe they’ll move back into the apartments where staff used to live and be more visible around the buildings. Their offices are still going to be in the ResLife building.”
CAs will continue coordinating hall programs. There will, however, be a few changes to the required number and type of programs they have to organize each semester, with a focus on the needs of their specific communities.
The change, in general, focuses on improving coordination within ResLife.
The department developed the plan based on the nature of student housing at Mount Holyoke. “[At a] residential college, Residential Life is about building a sense of belonging and community while helping people do better academically,” said Castanza.
The tweaking of job positions and titles is just another way that ResLife is trying to work on building community, explained the director.
“I suppose if there are less SCAs [than there were HPs and HAs] there may be less job openings,” said Natasha Ansari ’13, Safford HA. “But of course we trust [Res Life] so we know whatever they do will be towards the betterment of the campus.”
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- Hallway discrepancies raise questions for residential life community
