Human and Organizational Resources

 

My experiences as a Graduate Hall Director has enabled me to develop my human and organizational resources competency to a proficient level.  I developed my competencies in this area primarily through my supervision of resident advisors and through my participation on the residence life staff selection committee during the 2014-2015 academic year. 

 

Throughout my time as a Graduate Hall Director I have developed my supervisory skills by working with two distinct resident advisor staffs in different residential communities.  During my first year I worked in Kohl and Conklin Halls, two buildings that are separated by other residential communities.  Despite our spatial separation, my supervisor and I wanted to run Kohl and Conklin as a single staff in order to streamline administrative processes as well provide a greater sense of camaraderie among the resident advisors.  In order to build a single staff out of two buildings, my supervisor and I had to strategically utilize our hour and a half staff meeting, as it was the only time when the entire staff was together.  As such, we intentionally developed our staff meeting agendas to include time for informal conversation between the RAs of the two buildings as well as creating space for more formalized team-building activities.

 

Although my supervisor and I created meaningful connections between the Conklin and Kohl staff members, the process was wrought with conflict.  On several occasions Kohl and Conklin came into conflict over a variety of perceived slights.  As such, I had to facilitate mediations between staff members in order to prevent personal conflict from impacting their professional responsibilities.  In these conversations, I utilized micro-counseling techniques to promote reconciliation between staff members in order to ensure that the overall staff could function as a unit without undue conflict.  

 

As a Graduate Hall Director I also meet one-on-one with each of my staff members every other week to provide ongoing professional development for the student as well as discuss any troubling situations in the residential community.  In these meetings, I often utilize reflective and scaffold questions to prompt my staff members to reflect upon their job performance and to identify ways to improve.  As a supervisor I feel that regular meetings with my staff members is essential to properly utilizing, maintaining, and developing the human resources of my residential community.

 

During the 2014-2015 academic year, I also served on the residence life selection committee, responsible for the recruitment of our resident advisor and graduate assistant staff members.  As a member of the committee, I assisted in developing strategies to help recruit resident advisor applicants from traditionally marginalized identifies, including African American males and individuals from the LGBTQ communities.  Additionally, I helped to rewrite significant portions of our interview protocols in order to better align our interview procedures with the actual job responsibilities of a resident advisor.