If you had asked me a year ago what sort of trajectory I wanted my professional career to take, I would have emphatically said residential life. I had been heavily involved in housing leadership roles and employment opportunities throughout undergrad. In many ways I took a very cliché route by going from hall council to RA to graduate RD. I had the perfect path planned out to a fulfilling career in student housing. For all intents and purposes, I fit the typical “mold” of how many residence life professionals rise up in the field.

Unbeknownst to me as I began my first training session for my live-in assistantship in July 2017, several things would transpire that year that ultimately set me on a very different path from the one I envisioned only a year ago.

The Graduate Certificate in Institutional Research: My decision to pursue the Graduate Certificate in Institutional Research was a complete fluke that turned out to be the second-best choice I’ve made in my academic career (after joining the HESA program at Indiana University, of course). My decision to take the introductory IR course introduced me to a whole new world that opened up within the realm of higher education, a truly exciting world of data sets, analytics, and more. Through the course, I was able to connect with some folks that are doing incredible work with in the field. I always had a strong interest in data and analytics from the few courses I took in computer science as an undergraduate. It felt like the IR certificate program empowered me to discover this magical and alluring field that existed right at the intersection between data and education.

My Summer 2018 Internship Experience: During summer 2018, I interned with University Housing at Florida State University to support the needs of their conduct and assessment program within the Residential Student Experience Team This was such a unique and wonderful position, as it is one of the few ACUHO-I internship experiences that don’t deal with managing a summer school residence hall or a camp operation. My involvement with camps and conferences will always have a special place in my heart, but it was incredibly satisfying to immerse myself in Skyfactor data and to gain an understanding of the role of data and assessment within a residential life unit.

The Chance to Pursue a New Professional Opportunity: I’m incredibly appreciative to the director of my department working with me to create an assistantship experience that would be more congruent with my shifting interests and passion areas within higher education. I saw an opportunity to support my department in a new and exciting way, and we were able to forge my new role. For the next year or two that I hold this position, I hope to demonstrate the value of keeping this assistantship available to support my department’s data and assessment needs.

While I approached my new assistantship with a healthy amount of caution, particularly a fear of the unknown that comes with establishing a new graduate assistantship, I can look back in the last month alone and say that my new assistantship working with residential life assessment has been one of the highlights of my young career as a college student educator.

Just to highlight a few of the things I’ve been able to work in as I approach one month in my role:

Supporting Assessment Initiatives for the Residential Curriculum: Working in a live-on role has given me a bird’s eye view of how my department operates, particularly with regards to the role that our residential curriculum plays in the student experience. Without the additional responsibilities that come with direct supervision of student staff, I am able to commit much more time to thinking about the curriculum and how the work of my supervisor and I help to “tell the story” of what it is that that our residents are learning within their communities.

Cultivating Strong Partnerships with Campus Partners: One of my charges has been to identify and cultivate particular areas of our work that could be prime sites for collaborative efforts. One of the fantastic things about being in an assessment role (particularly at a large institution like IU-Bloomington) is that the data infrastructure of the campus is so incredibly complex, with a variety of units that work together to meet the data needs of the University. Just a few units on campus that I have been able to connect with include: the Center for Learning Analytics and Student Success (CLASS), Bloomington Assessment and Research (BAR), the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL), and the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (OVPUE). With each of these campus units I’ve been able to represent the amazing data work taking place within Residential Programs and Services, and to get phenomenal insight into how other data-driven units operate.

All Things Data: It’s no secret that I think data is super fascinating. It allows us to tell the stories of the learning that we facilitate as college student educators and it seldom lies (barring any methodology errors or bias, but I digress). My new role allows me to immerse myself in the data, to generate new data, and to make sense of the data that web obtain.

As I transitioned into my new role, I was worried that I would terribly miss the supervision and student engagement component of my previous role, and I certainly did. The key to assuaging that feeling has been identifying areas or projects where I could provide leadership and apply a similar administrative skillset. While I found that with my residential curriculum assessment initiatives, I was thrilled to be recently tapped to develop and administer the  Thrive@IU program, which seeks to provide access to an IU education while empowering students with professional development and leadership skills. I anticipate a cohort of around 30-40 students, and I can’t wait to meet them in the coming weeks. The program is very near and dear to some high-ranking administrators on my campus and it’s quite exciting (and somewhat nerve-wracking) to know that I have the potential to mold this new program that many administrators are keeping an eye on.

My official title is “Graduate Assistant for Assessment and Special Projects.” I’ll admit, it may sound dry to many of my colleagues. Nevertheless, it truly is the most dynamic role that I’ve held, even compared to my previous assistantship as a traditional in-hall graduate supervisor.

I still have a special love for residence life, and I’ll still likely begin my career as a student housing professional. If there’s anything that my first year of grad school taught me, it’s where my true passions and professional interests lie. That’s something that you can’t put a price on.

At the end of the day, I view myself as a storyteller. I wrestle with data sets, surveys, and whatever else may wander across my desk to tell the story of the dynamic student engagement that takes place in the residential communities at Indiana University-Bloomington. I truly can’t imagine a more worthwhile charge than that.

Thanks for reading,

Joe