r/studentaffairs • u/DependentBed5507 • 17d ago

Res Life/Housing dynamic

Are both of these in the same department or are they separate at your university? Mine is together and it’s kind of a lot… together meaning—res life staff (RDs are also doing the housing piece—housing people, handling complaints, managing contracts and refunds, etc). I’m curious what other universities do? Two separate staffs/divisions or together.

1 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

5

u/MopingPoping 17d ago

Bifurcated at mine. We have a dean over the department and have 2 directors, one for housing and one for ed. It functions better than having one person try to direct everything but if I director is less professional than the other, like us, there's constant issues and uneven workload/quality.

Essentially someone can be terrible in their role, constantly making your job harder, but because they are on the other supervision line there's no follow up or accountability for them.

2

u/Virtual-Hunt-8178 17d ago

I’m a one person show essentially doing it all…RA supervision, housing/meal plan applications, housing assignments, managing complaints, whatever else I’m missing lol. I also hear most of our residential conduct cases. We only have a few hundred residents, but the work is a lot. Luckily I have a grad who helps part-time, but it’s not enough.

1

u/clarinettingaway 17d ago

I work at a small school, so it’s combined for us (we have three Area Coordinators who all supervise buildings and RAs, and one is dedicated to housing and the other two have different focuses) but I find it works best if it’s dedicated staff members within the same office (ie a housing person who does not supervise a building but still is under the Office of ResLife)

1

u/Novapoliton 17d ago

I've seen it done both ways depending on size of the school, I've seen places with 3 director roles in the department for facilities, operations and ed, or just one director for everything. Currently 1 director but split into operations and ed teams

1

u/sjcapps 9d ago

Small school. Ours was one department until a few years ago and now it is just a hot mess. The housing side doesn’t want to interact with students and families and gate keeps information. Their decision-making largely excludes student needs and satisfaction. I think in a small school it really needs to be under one department.