I’m Renee Piquette Dowdy, Assistant Director of Student Staffing & Training in the Office of Residence Life at Marquette University. More than that, I spent the great majority of my life preparing for college. As a kid I would play college dorms with my cousin Clare, both of us only catching glimpses of what college life was like from TV and movies (which we all know is incredibly accurate). Even before I knew I wanted to contribute to the lives of people in the college setting, I knew I wanted to be in the business of human development. Housing and residence life offers an unparalleled opportunity to impact students in their day to day. My specific work with staffing and training affords me an incredible opportunity to influence the lives of our staff members and in turn impact the everyday experiences of our students. I take this task tremendously seriously and deeply to heart.
So, staffing and training, what does that even include? In our department we hire students in roles including: three graduate assistants, three program assistants, 165 desk receptionists, 128 resident assistants, and 13 building managers each year. Their roles are varied and housed in a variety of living environments, from a traditional, 700-bed first-year student residence hall to a 30-bedroom, university-owned apartment. My role is to be alongside our student staff every step of the way from recruitment to application to interviewing to hiring to training.
My work this year has included changing our resident assistant group process to be a conflict management training program, developing rubrics for candidate evaluation in our desk receptionist process, and editing our manager training program to include more opportunities for individual growth and development. For example, I took our group for a tour of a local coffee roaster that has an incredible workplace culture and onboarding program to help inspire their roles that include supervision of desk receptionists. Upcoming major projects include redesigning our diversity peer educator position, implementing cross-training with other similar student staff positions across campus, implementing a new employee recognition program, developing an institute experience for graduate assistants across the division, and launching online training for resident assistant and desk receptionist staff.
So how does that impact a typical day? Amid these tasks, I also supervise three (very incredible and super talented) full-time residence hall directors, so on an average day, I could break out the tasks as follows:
- 40% Standing Meetings (department, management team, RHD one-on-ones, committees)
- 15% Needs of the day (parent follow-up, meeting with a student for feedback on an interview, staff follow-up on current issues)
- 15% Preparation & Planning (review of files for 1:1 meetings, agenda prep, emails to committees, follow-up from recent meetings)
- 20% Training or recruitment design
- 10% Continuing development, goal setting, long-term projects (reading current articles, books, posts, documenting data on current goals, chipping away at information needed for long-term projects).
Not surprising, I spend a lot of time in meetings but just as important, I spend a lot of time preparing for and following up from meetings. I chair several student-run and staff-driven committees. I’m not flawless at my attempts, but on my best days I make sure to send out agenda items in advance, to focus our time on major discussion or decision items, and that we identify action items at the end of each meeting.
On an average day, I’m easily in touch with the following offices/positions outside of the Office of Residence Life:
- Facilities staff (staffing needs, staff performance, items that need service)
- Dining (staff meals and feedback)
- Registrar (staff grades)
- Student Employment Services (employee compensation, time sheets)
- Campus Ministry (training needs)
- Orientation (cross-training among staffs)
- Event Services (catering, booking space)
- Student Union (cross-training, trouble-shooting employment questions)
- College of Education (houses our for-credit RA class)
- Office of Student Development (campus programs, cross-training)
It is an incredibly fast-paced job as you balance both the needs of full-time staff, which often features the crisis du jour, coaching to high performance, and being attentive to their needs, as well as the long-term planning and implementation of major training programs. You have to be able to get things done but you also have to be creative and thoughtful in your approach. In addition, you have to build good relationships across the university to accomplish your objectives and find ways to communicate what you believe through your words and actions to help others be a part of training goals and ambitions.
Due to the variety of tasks I carry, I utilized a Gantt chart to map out the projects for which I am responsible. This may be helpful to you in your role to be able to visually see and understand your most busy times. This has been a huge help to allow me to plan for summer projects and to know when my down time will be and when I need to prepare for the busiest times of the year (namely November, February, and April). Below is an image of this chart:
I found that the most important thing that I can do is to help others believe what I believe about staffing and training. Every chance I get, I want our frontlines staff to know that they matter, they are important, and because of that we are investing critical time, energy, and enthusiasm into their progress and staff experience. I can’t (nor want) to do 312 student staff positions. So my continual work is focused on the supervisors of those positions and creating high-impact, well-designed training. Guess which of these has the greatest impact on the ability for an employee to retain and use a training program?
What the supervisor does:
- before training
- during training
- after training
What the trainer does:
- before training
- during training
- after training
What the trainee does:
- before training
- during training
- after training
The biggest impact is through a and c; what the supervisor does before and after training! Second is what the trainer does before the actual training (preparation is so important) and finally the next biggest impact is what the trainee does before the training – you have to start with good intentions (Stolovitch & Keeps, 2011).
Isn’t that crazy? It makes me think about all the things we do and do not do to prepare the supervisors of our staff positions for the training their staff will undergo. How much more effective would our training programs be if we just tweaked how we prepared the supervisor? That’s an entirely different blog post.
And why am I telling you about this when I am telling about a day in the life?
My effectiveness, what I can contribute, how I do my job rests on my ability to know training design, to know about human performance, and to know the college student environment so well that I can provide that expertise at every table. Therefore, each day my decisions are based on academic knowledge, current literature, and a deep understanding of what makes Marquette students tick. As you go from a generalist position, such as being a hall director, to a more specialist position, whether that is an AD position like mine or as an academic advisor, career counselor, or coordinator of student organizations, you have to immerse yourself in the nature and purpose of your present work to contribute excellent performance.
The unexpected and cool thing that happens in this role is when you hear your words come out of the people you supervise or those that you train. It’s a reminder that you are surrounded by sponges, each of us looking to make meaning and to matter in our workplaces. So each crisis, each program, each piece of our operations is an ultimate training opportunity. Communicate what you believe, share your process, and be the very best at the work you are doing at present. That will be the ultimate signature for your ability in the future.
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This post is part of our #dayinSA series on highlighting the diversity of functional areas in the field of student affairs. We will hear from #SApros of all kinds – academic advisors, office mangagers, res hall directors, vice provosts of SA, and many many more. Each will share exactly what their typical day looks like, what exactly they work on, and what makes them want to come to work each day. We hope to squash stereotypes within the field and celebrate all the different kinds of great work that #SApros do. For more information, check out the intro post by Sara Ackerson. Be sure to read the other posts in this series too!
