Training Day 1

bookofjude — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 03:50:04 +0000

Today I began Head Resident training. The Head Resident has the following responsibilities:

1. Create and/or use opportunities to promote individual student growth and development of the residential community through working with student and professional staff.
2. Maintain required health and safety standards and consistently enforce all rules and policies with both students and staff.
3. Supervise, support, and evaluate student staff.
4. Actively emphasize, initiate, support, and participate in any and all programs in the hall that address student needs.
5. Be sensitive to the needs of high school age students.
6. Assist students in addressing their concerns through one-one-one, small and large group activities.
7. Deal with challenging issues around human relations, multiculturalism, mediation, and confrontation.

I will be working with three other Head Residents and two other graduate students, one is responsible for student activities and the other for judicial affairs. Today was just an overview of the program and our responsibilities. Abby Eller is the director of Summer College who we got to meet today. During the meeting, we got to know a little bit about Abby and talk about the students coming into the program. There are students from 41 states and 38 countries. I will get to work with students who have been funded with scholarships (all the other students have parents who can pay the thousands of dollars Summer College costs).

I’m looking forward to what the summer will bring. Everyone brings really different perspectives and experiences. Mash ups have a lot of potential…It seems like there are lots of opportunities to create while I’m here and I definitely want to take advantage of that. I hope to include multicultural affairs and access work into my responsibilities. One of the expectations I listed that I have for our supervisors was support in connecting theory to practice. I think there will be a lot of learning to be gained in applying student affairs theories to a high school student population and to experience how my practice this summer will inform how I utilize/apply theory.

“amber is the color of your energy”

Now, Ithaca

bookofjude — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 05:24:57 +0000

I arrived earlier yesterday at 11:45am to Ithaca, New York after nine hours of flight and stop over time from San Francisco. I met staff and the graduate assistants involved with Cornell University’s Residential Programs’ summer activities. From what I’ve seen so far, Ithaca and Cornell is pretty rural–even more so than Burlington (how can that be possible?) The university is spread out over a hillside and there is a tremendous amount of foliage everywhere. The streets are narrow and winding at times, so with all the trees it’s hard to see past what’s right in front of you.

For this week I get to stay in Ecology House until my room in Donlon Hall is arranged. I don’t want to leave as my room here as an air conditioning unit. I’ll be provided with a fan when I eventually move =_=

For the next ten weeks, I will be one of four head residents running the Summer College program with professional staff and a couple other grad assistants. Cornell’s Residential Programs will be helping run three main programs this summer: Summer College, the Pre-Freshmen Summer Program, and summer sessions. There are nine grad assistants total and I believe there will be one or two NODA interns arriving later to help with orientation. Basically I have a summer cohort! The group seems great so far: we are all very different with where we come from, where we are studying, and what we bring to our responsibilities. I’m excited to continue exploring Ithaca and the university with them.

Training starts at 9:00am.

summer odyssey

Training Day 1

Now, Ithaca