Resident Assistant at Ithaca College
During my sophomore year, I was selected to become a resident assistant (RA) through the Office of Residential Life and Judicial Affairs at Ithaca College. I joined the Hood, Hilliard, and Holmes staff (Triple H) with 16 other highly skilled RAs and one professional staffed residential director (RD).
Throughout my time as an RA, I have been able to build my leadership skills, written and verbal communications, and became trained in the usage of fire extinguishers, crisis management, and suicide identification and prevention.
In addition, to monitoring the well-being of residents, social and educational programming took place within the residential halls, on campus, and within the town of Ithaca. About 10 to 12 programs took place each semester and provided residents with tips and tricks to conquer their first year, downtown tours, and local farmers market and museum visits.
Working on a staff of 17 also created break out groups called Action Teams with specialized areas of focus ranging from diversity, staff and student recognition, and special events. I worked on the special events action team during the 2015 spring semester, and put on the Upper Quads Bash while collaborating with the Boothroyd, Rowland, Tallcott (BRT) special events action team.
The Upper Quads Bash
The Upper Quads Bash was an event to celebrate the end of the year, and provide a day filled with fun games, fire pits, and movies. The two special event action teams working together creating a group of 10 RAs and 2 RDs that communicated with many offices across campus and worked with vendors in the downtown area. The event started in the afternoon and provided lawn games, inflatable obstacle courses, and food donated from vendors in downtown Ithaca. As the day turned into night we shifted to fire pits and s'mores, and provided a movie screening out on the quad. For 2015 about 450 people attended at least one portion of the event. A guidebook was created to help action teams in the future, this guide is inclusive of all information that was collected by putting on the event in 2015. This event also won the Residential Life Social Program of the Year.
Engagement Points
Engagement Points is an incentive program that aims to increase the attendance and engagement of events and programs within the First Year Residential Experience (FYRE). Within FYRE students are able to adjust to the college setting through programing efforts, lower RA to student ratios, and more interactions with residents living on their floor and within their building. To help provide an incentive to attending these programs and working with the new community building models for the 2015-2016 school year, Engagement Points rewards residents by tracking attendance, community building efforts of residents, and good deeds done throughout the community.
Students can then receive prizes after reaching certain prize levels. This project originally expected to be piloted within the Triple H community for the 2015-2016 school year, has been expanded to cover 5 of the 7 first year housing clusters. This created a group of 5 RDs and an Assistant Director of Residential Life working on the project to ensure its budget and all necessary materials would be bought and disseminated before the arrival of first year students.
