Is it weird that assessment gets me excited? I don't think so!
As a Residence Hall Director, I feel that everything I should be doing should be for the students! Therefore, in order to put on some programs that are for the students, I feel the need to ask them what they want.
I just got done creating a survey for all of the residents in our Central Campus area in Housing. This survey is going to assess what THEY want for programming in a week that myself and other committee members have titled Central Campus Pride Week.
At the University of South Carolina, Central Campus is well-known within the Residence Life community. We try to live up to a standard and be the best we can be. Everyone within our department is aware of this. Recently, the other areas of campus have focused on pride within their area too.
As building supervisors, we have reached to our Resident Mentor staff to be just as proud of where they work. The RMs understand Central Campus and are proud to be a staff member of Central Campus. So now our next step was to reach out to our residents. They had NO idea of the pride that the RM, grad, and professional staff members have created. Therefore, we wanted to showcase this to them. In order to do so, we wanted to plan an entire week of events to build the bonds of a strong community and create a sense of pride. When we first thought of this idea, we immediately went to our Hall Governments to get them involved. We were shot down by some and supported by others. So we needed to take another approach to have them be engaged in this concept.
Therefore, we asked the RM staff and the Hall Government exec boards to come up with ideas for programs for this Central Campus Pride Week. I created a survey out of these ideas by grouping different ideas together as options for competitions, large events, etc. I am now going to send this survey to the residents of Central Campus - which is a lot - via email and we will also be setting up stations in the residence halls for us to survey the students this way too. I hope this combination of methods will create a lot of feedback.
I think that using assessment is going to create a lot of buy-in and involvement with this week of events. I am excited to be able to plan events that the residents will want. I think everyone can take this into consideration when thinking of what to give to students!
I know of other building supervisors here at USC that have polled their residence halls for Hall Government events or Living Learning Community events.
I am grateful that assessment is being used in University Housing! :-)
