User:Ande2280/Residence life

Residence Life 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. Many student live in residence at some point in their post-secondary experience due to various benefits, including:

Social/Interpersonal Development: Provides an environment that is conducive to personal connections with peers. Provides an opportunity to be socialized in a new environment (campus).

Convenience: Living in residence provides the opportunity to live in close proximity to academic classrooms, faculty and campus resources.

Facilitated Social Activities (also called Programming ): 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 (RLC) or living-learning communities (LLC), 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.

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 (EDI) is a priority.This increases intercultural competence for students.