Residence life


Residence Life is the terminology used to describe the comprehensive program that surrounds the experience of living "on and off campus" in a residence hall at a college or university in Canada and the United States. Residence Life is usually structured with planned events, a code of conduct and/or ethics, and a relatively large array of staff.

Benefits

Residence Life aims to facilitate a students' transition to post-secondary. Residence halls vary in size and population however, they accommodate hundreds of young adults. Other accommodations for Residence Life and Housing are offered for family housing, Graduate/ Post-Graduate and upper-year accommodations. Traditionally, there is less traditional residence life aspects in these communities but residents are still offered a great deal of support from professional staff.
Residence Life is integral in the student experience at most post-secondary institutions due to a variety of benefits listed below. Overall, Residence Life aims to make residence more than a place to eat and sleep but rather, a place to explore identity and explore personal ideologies through experiences living away from home. Typically, many students live in residence at some point in their post-secondary experience. More often, this is during their first year at the institution.
Social/Interpersonal Development: Provides an environment that is conducive to personal connections with peers. Provides an opportunity to be socialized in a new environment.
Convenience and Connection on Campus: Living in residence provides the opportunity to live in close proximity to academic classrooms, faculty and campus resources. This proximity allows for students to develop community in residence and that community translates to the greater campus community.
Facilitated Social Activities : Hosted by professional staff or student staff, social activities are aimed to promote a sense of community and belonging in residence. This is important for residence students because of the ability to ensure students are able to effectively integrate to a post-secondary campus. Programming is aimed at student development by providing co-curricular learning experiences.
Residential Curriculum: Produced by residence life or residence education professionals, students are provided with programming with intentional learning opportunities while living in residence buildings. This curriculum is often connected to learning goals set forth by the department.
Academic Success: Specific live-in staff aimed at supporting academics of residence students. Utilizing faculty and student affairs staff, students have access to specific support that is aided by student proximity to classrooms, faculty and academic resources. Residence learning communities , are targeted building areas that cluster students grouped based on academic program or interest. The purpose of these communities are to provide students additional support and faculty connections. This also allows students to easily create study groups with classmates and increased sense of belonging. Students in these communities are typically taking similar or at least one course that is the same. These students also typically see a higher GPA upon leaving residence at the end of their first year.
Safety, Security & Support: Access to residence halls is typically limited to residents living in the building, this security is maintained by strict keys and access utilizing Student ID. Other strategies in maintaining student safety include, residence student staff and professional staff that live-in to provide 24 hour on-call support. This on-call support is aimed at providing support to students who are struggling with mental wellness concerns. In addition, students are able to have direct access to campus police able to provide immediate police support.
Involvement/Leadership Opportunities: Living in residence provides students access to leadership opportunities like residence council and student staff residence roles like Resident Assistants. These roles typically fall under the Residence Life professional staff team.
Increased Intercultural Competency: Residence provides the opportunity for students to meet other students from different cultural backgrounds. Residence Life focuses on the ability to ensure equity, diversity and inclusion is a priority by creating environments that students are able to engage in their community. This increases intercultural competence for students.
The services and support that residence life offers are impactful to the retention, academic engagement and graduation of students, more so of off-campus living or commuting.

Organization

As one of three components of a college/university housing program, Residence Life is often one responsibility of a larger Housing office or department. On some campuses, however, Residence Life and Housing are responsibilities of separate departments or organizations.
Residence Life, or the department which encompasses it, usually reports to the Division of Student Affairs. However, on campuses with a separate Housing department it is not uncommon for that department to report to the Business Services or Auxiliary Services division or area as most of their responsibilities will be financial, legal, and physical.
Example reporting structures that could oversee an on-campus, institutionally owned, residence life operations are:
1) oversight of housing and residence life via the Vice President and/or Associate Vice-President of student affairs or student services.
2) oversight of housing and residence life via the Vice President and/or Associate Vice-President of finance, operations or administration.
3) dual oversight of the housing and residence life program. The housing operations are reported to the Vice-President Finance or an equivalent unit that oversees ancillary services. Residence life are reported to Vice President and/or Associate Vice-President of student affairs.
Institutions operate differently according to culture, location, organizational structure, and values- there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to manage residence life units.  Regardless of which division to which it reports, Housing departments are usually self-supporting auxiliary departments which receive little or no financial support from the college/university. They are dependent on revenue from rent and cost-recovery mechanisms.

Legal Implications

The relationship between residence life and the students that live within are different than a landlord/tenant relationship. In Ontario, Canada, the Residential Tenancies Act exempts accommodations provided by an educational institution. The reason for this exemption is that on campus student residences are often not full calendar year rentals and there are student advisory groups that provide regular feedback to the residence professional staff.

Staff

Professional staff

Residence Life professionals typically possess post-secondary degrees and in some cases have obtained a Masters Degree in college student personnel, higher education, counseling, or a related field. Typical Residence Life departments are overseen by a director, associate director, or assistant director; these positions may be "live-on", depending on the needs of the university and the size of the staff required to be on-call to respond to student emergencies.
Many campuses also employ graduate students, graduate assistants or entry-level professionals that directly supervise the RAs and other undergraduate staff. This staff are variously referred to as Hall Directors, Resident Directors, or Residence Life Coordinators. The titles vary between institutions with some institutions using the same title to refer to their graduate student staff that another uses for their entry-level staff. These staff members are "live-in" or live-on to fulfill their frequent on-call duties.

Student staff

Typically, each residence hall also employs several Resident Assistants, or RAs. These are undergraduate or graduate students who are tasked with helping the students living on their hallway get to know each other. Resourceful RAs can use a variety of planned or spontaneous events—called programming in the field's nomenclature—to this end. They are also charged with enforcing university rules and regulations and providing general assistance to residents. RAs are often reimbursed with free or discounted room, free or discounted board, a stipend, or even all three. On most campuses, RAs receive intense training at the beginning of the academic year. In addition to ongoing training, some campuses have several days of training at the beginning of the second semester.
If the residence hall has a front desk or area office, it is often manned by students who provide assistance to the residents such as accepting packages delivered to the residence hall, reporting maintenance problems, or opening doors for residents who have lost their key.
Some Resident Assistants may also be assigned overnight duty. Overnight duty is when a Resident Assistant is on call all night. Most of the time Resident Assistants are in their hall office till 12:00 am. After 12:00 am they are to report to their room for the rest of the night. On call duties consist of helping with lock outs and noise complaints.