The number and acuity of crises experienced by college students is increasing, and for those campuses with on-campus housing, entry-level Residence Directors (RDs) often oversee and implement institutions' initial crisis response. RDs conduct this crisis response work while being faced with competing institutional pressures and stress on their…

College student suicide is increasing but little research addresses it. We examine student-housing-staff responses to student suicide using meaning making, trauma theory, and trauma-informed counseling. The phenomenological study included 11 participants who experienced student suicide on campus. Student staff experienced trauma, guilt, and…

The Resident Assistant (RA) role is unlike any other student position in the university setting. It is complicated, nuanced, and increasingly complex as the needs and expectations of residents and RAs rapidly change in a post-pandemic era of residence life. The role itself has been forced to evolve to address these changing needs. This thesis…

Resident assistants are at the front line of crisis management within college campus residence halls. As such, it is imperative that student affairs professionals consider the specific needs of this paraprofessional group and build networks to guide these student leaders through the traumatic occurrences to which they respond through their roles.…

More than 17,000 professional staff live where they work in Residence Life and Housing (RL&H). Those staff members live in the dorms with the college students whom they serve, as has been the arrangement of RL&H staff members since the inception of colleges in the U.S. in the 1600s. However, there have been recent shifts in the ways in…

Higher education provides a transformative experience for students, allowing the opportunity for continuous change and the development of skills needed to grow independently and interdependently with students around them. Similarly, higher education equips students with the tools to continue changing and flourishing after graduation. For many…

Peer socialization agents (PSAs; e.g., resident assistants, orientation leaders) are trained to facilitate belonging through formal socialization initiatives. We used secondary qualitative data analysis, in combination with a critical constructivist approach, to explore PSAs' sense of belonging and the contexts in which they experience it through…

Creating uncertainty and stress, the COVID-19 pandemic and increased attention on racial relations, drastically changed how higher education and student affairs operated. For African American women, combatting racism and sexism has always been a daily occurrence in their professional and personal life but the pandemic heightened the challenges…

The intent of this study was to explore and understand the effects of professional experience on the ethical profiles of housing and residence life staff. Through a survey design, this study used the Managerial Ethical Profile (MEP) to analyze the professional experience of members of the Association of College and University Housing Officers --…

During the 2017-2018 academic year, the authors co-supervised a building of 29 resident advisors (RAs) and approximately 1,000 undergraduate students in a large residence hall. To ensure that this community is successful each year, Housing & Residence Life (HRL) at Virginia Tech places two full-time professionals in this residence hall. This…

Staff members in live-in positions often find themselves faced with a difficult choice: Leave their roles in search of a job that offers a better work/life balance or stay and hope their department is invested in making the changes necessary to support their staff. Live-in staff are in a unique position because the challenges they face in…

This explanatory, sequential mixed methods study aimed to explore (a) the prevalence of secondary traumatic stress (STS) in resident assistants (RAs) at a 4-year public university in the southeastern United States, (b) the personal and institutional supports and barriers that impact resident assistants' responses to this STS, and (c) the roles STS…

Every year university housing departments engage in processes to select Resident Assistants (RAs) to be peer leaders in their communities. The purpose of this study is to better understand the job expectations and competencies interview questions address. This study uses qualitative content analysis to chronicle the questions asked of RAs across…

This narrative qualitative study aimed to understand how residence hall directors navigated their unanticipated transition due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using Schlossberg's (1984) transition theory, this study explored the perspectives of residence hall directors within the Southeastern Association of Housing Officers (SEAHO) region as they…

Well-being is pertinent concern in higher education, especially as it relates to residence life staff who have substantial outside-the-classroom responsibilities for students' health, safety, and development. Resident assistants (RAs) assume significant roles and can experience secondary trauma from encountering various crises during the course of…