This month on the SWACUHO Podcast we are joined by Drs. Robin Williamson, Stephanie McBrayer, and Mimi Benjamin to discuss and dig into "The Great Resignation". While we only scratch the surface, we start by looking upstream at the challenges of recruiting staff before looking downstream at retaining staff once they are with us. We ask the following questions: Is the field less attractive than it once was? Are placement exchanges a thing of the past? Are all "essential" positions created equal when it comes to remote work? Are additional responsibilities assigned due to staff vacancies a legitimate "opportunity?" And, would J.C. have gotten in a fistfight with his counterparts for the "opportunity" to cover additional buildings during grad school? 

Throughout the conversation, we circle back around to how the pandemic accelerated many things, like conversations surrounding workplace culture and social and workplace inequity, reinforcing how these concerns already existed before the pandemic. So the final question we ask ourselves is: should we have seen this coming?

Download the Reflection Guide! (forthcoming) - If you put anything into action from the Podcast, please consider sharing it via [email protected] and you may get featured on an upcoming episode.


Seeking professional advice? Fill out this anonymous form and a panel of housing staff will give you their take on your situation on an upcoming podcast.


Resources Mentioned:
New Growth: Student Affairs Professionals Are Tired and Tired of It. What Are the Questions Today's Leaders Need to Answer to Improve Conditions for Tomorrow's New Hires? [Talking Stick]

On this episode we talk to Past President Nancy Murphy-Chadwick. We start with Nancy's hobby of making stained glass windows and applicable lessons to the workplace and how Nancy originally wanted to be a high school band director, but was steered away because those jobs were for men. Nancy talks about her thirty years as the SHO at TWU, a job she apparently enjoyed enough to come out of retirement to serve in an interim role during a supervisory transition. We talk about how to best share award recognition during job interviews and how determine departmental culture during a job interview, and many others. Nancy has several "firsts" throughout her career that she shares. Throughout this episode, Nancy imparts plenty of practical advice for new professionals, a population she dedicated her career to helping. 

Download the Reflection Guide! - If you put anything into action from the Podcast, please consider sharing it via [email protected] and you may get featured on an upcoming episode.

Seeking professional advice? Fill out this anonymous form and a panel of housing staff will give you their take on your situation on an upcoming podcast.

To conclude Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, this episode features Dr. Rikki Turner, Founder and CEO of Still You Rise, Inc. Rikki worked her way up the housing ranks in Arkansas and through her dissertation research found her life's calling working with college campuses providing suicide awareness and trainings. We begin the conversation with how Rikki disarms groups when talking about the sensitive topic of college student suicide. We then reflect on past strategies and techniques colleges used in the past that thankfully have fallen out of favor, which leads us to current research and what conditions need to exist for someone to act to support students. Rikki also shares with us how she connects with over 25,000 followers on TikTok and how she deals with trolls. We close out the episode with tangible strategies for any housing professional or department to consider to help... right now.

Be Sure to Connect With and Thank Rikki!

• Connect with Rikki on TikTok
• Connect with Rikki on Instagram
• Connect with Rikki on Facebook
• Connect with Rikki on LinkedIn

Download this episode's Reflection Guide

Seeking professional advice? Fill out this anonymous form and a panel of housing staff will give you their take on your situation on an upcoming podcast.

Things Mentioned:
Kognito [Business]
Schitt's Creek - Fold in the Cheese [YouTube]

This month we have a very special guest who was never employed at a SWACUHO-affiliated school but certainly orbited SWACUHO throughout his long career in student housing. Several of our guests talked about SWACUHO being a family, so in my best judgement between him attending a couple SWACUHO conferences, keynoting at SWACUHO events, and consulting at SWACUHO schools, it's almost as if our guest is already family.

On this episode, Dr. Ken Stoner (hailing from the UMR and SEAHO regions) reflects on how it seems everything in campus housing comes full circle. Examples include residence hall designs from the 30s having quarantine rooms (which we recently needed but no longer had), adding phone lines to every room and then removing them, and the absorption and eventual jettison of maintenance, housekeeping, and dining services from housing programs. Along the way we talk about niche roles, fully appreciating the job you currently have, the difference between five years of experience and one year of experience five years in a row. We also get lessons in housing budgets, the value of knowing the gatekeepers at your school, and even a "crash course" in aeronautics.


Episode 013 Reflection Guide - If you put anything into action from the Podcast, please consider sharing it via [email protected] and you may get featured on an upcoming episode.


Seeking professional advice? Fill out this anonymous form and a panel of housing staff will give you their take on your situation on an upcoming podcast.


Past Episodes Mentioned:

Episode 001 - Reflections From a Single Institution Career | Kent Sampson [Past President]

This month is special as it rounds off one full year of the SWACUHO Podcast. To celebrate, we are answering listener questions. Four people wrote in over the course of the year asking for advice. Along the way, I've recorded various guests answering these questions. For dedicated listeners, you will recognize every voice today as a repeat guest. 

Today we are responding to the following topics:

• The value of completing seemingly inconsequential daily reports even if nobody ever follows up when they don't get done.
• Whether you should apply as an internal candidate despite projected awkwardness.
• How to respond when a supervisor takes the blame in a very public way for a mistake that was solely yours.
• What to do when everyone on an interview panel always defers to you when the candidate asks "how does your department support Professionals of Color?".

Thanks for your continued listenership over the past year! It's been a fun ride so far. Make sure to share the podcast with others if you think they will get value from it.

Episode 012 Reflection Guide

Seeking professional advice? Fill out this anonymous form and a panel of housing staff will give you their take on your situation on an upcoming podcast.  


Past Episodes Mentioned:

Episode 001 - Reflections From a Single Institution Career | Kent Sampson [Past President]

Episode 003 - Resident Assistant Hiring Practices | Craig Seager [Article Review]

Episode 006 - Student Staff Accountability: Demerits of Development? | Alana St. Cyr, Victor Salazar, and Jason Titus [Feature Topic]

Episode 007 - Overthinking Everything in Campus Housing | Jasmine Jennings and Sara Frick [Book Club]

Episode 010 - Read, File, Delete, or Ignore: Email Management | Monique Berkley and Maggie Guzman [Feature Topic]

Episode 011 - Intentional or Misspent Resources in RA Hiring Processes | Apefa Cooper [Article Review]

Episode B01 - Live Recording at the 2022 SWACUHO Conference

It's been mentioned on the Podcast a few times how time consuming it is facilitating RA hiring processes, so today Apefa Cooper (Texas A&M San Antonio) came back to the show to talk about an article she wrote in The Journal of College and University Student Housing about this very thing. Apefa not only talks about the hours upon hours spent in the various components, but also coverts that time into real money: staff wages. Apefa breaks down her article and the various alterations to RA hiring processes to intentionally look at how we are investing our resources. At the end of the show, we talk about the publishing process and how Apefa grew throughout her experience of publishing her first article.

We have our first Reflection Guide! This reflection guide was designed to promote deeper thought and generate tangible action surrounding small takeaways. If you put anything into action from the Podcast, please consider sharing it via [email protected] and you may get featured on an upcoming episode.


Seeking professional advice? Fill out this anonymous form and a panel of housing staff will give you their take on your situation on an upcoming podcast.  


Article Reviewed on this Episode:

The Price of Hiring Resident Assistants: An Analysis of Human Capital, Opportunity Costs, and Personnel Wages [JCUSH Article]


Other Things Mentioned on this Episode:

009 - Reflections from a Black President | Adonis Thompson [SWACUHO Podcast]

010 - Read, File, Delete, or Ignore: Email Management | Monique Burkley and Maggie Guzman [SWACUHO Podcast]

003 - Resident Assistant Hiring Decisions | Craig Seager [SWACUHO Podcast]

008 - The Expectations and Satisfaction of Residents with Autism | Dustin Grabsch [SWACUHO Podcast]

Dilbert Priorities [Comic Strip]

In the fast pace world of campus housing we have to be effective at communicating through a variety of formats to reach our audiences. One of those formats, is email. This month we are joined by Monique Burkley (UT Arlington) and Maggie Guzman (Texas A&M) to talk about how they manage their email. We start by talking about how many total email and how many unread emails we have in our inboxes, then promptly move towards email etiquette and departmental cultures/expectations for email. Throughout the episode there are many small scale strategies for effective email management. Our guests reveal there is no single right way to manage the never-ending pile in our inboxes.

Be Sure to Thank Our Guests!

Seeking professional advice? Fill out this anonymous form and a panel of housing staff will give you their take on your situation on an upcoming podcast.

Transcript forthcoming.

This month we are joined by Adonis Thompson, who served as President of SWACUHO in 2018 and 2019. We start by talking about Adonis’ career on the operations side of the house and how processing conduct cases built the necessary skills to be successful in operations. We talk about catch phrases, picking your battles, balancing job responsibilities and self-care. We then move into his SWACUHO involvement and the pathway that led him to become the first Black man to serve as President. Adonis talks about the expectations and hopes he felt and the platform he ran on to involve more HBCUs. We also breakdown the potential pipeline problem with the pathway to leadership for young Professionals of Color looking to elevate their involvement. Adonis then shares his experience moving to the private sector and working for StarRez. During that part of the conversation, we talk about the lack of knowledge depth housing staff have in the products they use and so-called “power users”. Finally, we close out this episode talking about how many of my staff over the years have told me how much they would rather work for Adonis than me! This is an episode you really shouldn’t miss. 

Be Sure to Thank Our Guests!

Connect with Adonis Thompson on LinkedIn or Facebook!

Seeking professional advice? Fill out this anonymous form and a panel of housing staff will give you their take on your situation on an upcoming podcast.

Transcript forthcoming.

April is World Autism Month, so this episode aims to share the stories of residents with autism. To do so, we are joined by Dr. Dustin Grabsch from Southern Methodist University who published an article last year in The Journal of College and University Student Housing exploring the expectations of residents with autism to increase satisfaction with the on-campus living experience. We discuss the five themes that emerged from the resident interviews including academics, campus housing, community, roommate expectations, and the student experience. Throughout the episode it become abundantly clear that professional staff need only think just a little bit deeper to find small-scale and simple ways to better support residents with autism. Plenty of resources are provided for staff to explore on their own time to increase their individual knowledge and skills surrounding the topic.

Be Sure to Thank Our Guests!
Connect with Dr. Dustin Grabsch on LinkedIn

 Seeking professional advice? Fill out this anonymous form and a panel of housing staff will give you their take on your situation on an upcoming podcast.

Resources Mentioned

Understanding the Expectations of Students with Autism to Increase Satisfaction with the On-Campus Living Experience [Journal Article]

003 – Resident Assistant Hiring Decisions [Podcast Episode]

Hiring Decisions of Graduate Assistant and Full-Time Hall Directors on Resident Assistant Recruitment [Journal Article]

Autism Speaks [Organization]

Texas A&M Explores Living Learning Community for Those on Autism Spectrum [News Article]

Talking Stick [Magazine]

College Autism Network [Organization]

Students with Asperger Syndrome: A Guide for College Personnel [Book]

College Autism Network Training Courses[Training Courses]

FEMA Independent Study Courses [Certifications]

Committee on Publication Ethics Cases [Organization]

Today our guests use the book Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking as a vehicle to discuss those inevitable rabbit holes within our mind that every campus housing professional has fallen down at one time or another. Our guests today are two self-described overthinkers, Jasmine Jennings and Sara Frick, who reveal an important truth: you aren’t the only person overthinking your work in campus housing. Takeaways directly from the book include overthinking as a dial versus a switch and questions we should be asking when we find ourselves overthinking things. From there, they provide plenty of real examples related to working in campus housing and cover a range of topics including toxic positivity, imposter syndrome, committee work, performance evaluations, office culture, and the additional overthinking associated with navigating the work environment as a Person of Color. Even if you haven’t read the book, I’m sure you’ll find something to overthink about within this episode.

Be Sure to Thank Our Guests!

Connect with Jasmine on Facebook

Transcript Available!
In February at the 2022 Annual Conference, the SWACUHO Executive Board approved additional funding for the podcast to be allocated for transcription services. This is the first episode to have a transcript provided for people who would like to read the conversation. Moving forward, all episodes will be released with a transcript and all past episodes will have a transcript uploaded by the end of March. 
 

Seeking professional advice? Fill out this anonymous form and a panel of housing staff will give you their take on your situation on an upcoming podcast.

People, Places, and Things Mentioned in This Episode

Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking [Book]

Baylor University [University Website]

Southern Methodist University [University Website]

The University of Texas at Arlington [University Website]

Make Your Bed (Admiral McRaven – UT Austin Commencement Address 2014) [YouTube Video]

The University of Texas at Austin [University Website]

“It’s Just a Job” [News Article]

Beyoncé [Instagram]

Taylor Swift [Instagram]

Michelle Obama [Instagram]

Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen [Book]

Understanding the Expectations of Students with Autism to Increase Satisfaction with the On-Campus Living Experience [Journal Article]