DEPARTMENT REVAMPS TO REFLECT TIER ONE MISSION
It has been a year of change for the department known as
Residential Life & Housing. In a short time, the department has
brought forth new leadership, new enhanced services and a
renewed department vision. With that change, the department will
take on a new name and mission to demonstrate this new era �
Residential Life & Housing has now become Student Housing &
Residential Life.
�Over the past year, there have been several new staff members
and initiatives that our department has been undertaking as we
strive toward becoming a Tier One campus,� said Don Yackley,
Executive Director for Student Housing & Residential Life.
�Changing the department name and updating the mission statement
to reflect new staffing and programmatic initiatives serves as a
symbol to everyone that we are developing into a stronger, more
intentional student housing and residential life department that
will help the institution get to Tier One status.�
The name �Student Housing & Residential Life� was chosen to
encompass all services provided to residents as well as to
provide transparency to incoming students. The first component
of the name, �student housing,� identifies what the department
does and was selected to make it easy for incoming students and
their families to find the department both online and in person.
The second component of the name will describe the additional
programmatic areas of the department.
�As a department, we want to make sure that incoming residents
know that we are not JUST a location that houses students, but
that there is a significant component to what we do in
supporting students� co-curricular experiences as they live on
campus � this is their �residential life.� As part of their
residential life, we have paraprofessional and professional
staff members living in their communities to support their
growth and development as college students in order to build
their skills and experiences as they become more ethically aware
global citizens,� said Dean Kennedy, Associate Director for
Residential Life.
The development of the name and mission statement began back in
Fall 2011 with multiple weekly meetings where department staff
members (student and professional), UH students and campus
partners could come together and examine residential life and
housing at the University of Houston. The group first heard a
presentation detailing the direction and priorities of the
University and Division of Student Affairs; then began
brainstorming statements regarding Residential Life & Housing.
The conversations were continuously shared with staff and campus
partners for their feedback and after several weeks, the mission
statement and name emerged.
The new mission statement is intended to give people a strong
sense of who the department is, what they do, and how they do
it. The mission states:
A diverse community of students, staff and faculty who foster
student success in living-learning environments by building
relationships, promoting engagement and leading with an ethic of
care.
Kennedy said the mission statement guides those within Student
Housing & Residential Life for direction in their everyday
decisions. For constituent individuals and groups outside the
department, the mission statement will provide them with
information about the department and its purpose.
The next step for Student Housing & Residential Life as it
strives to develop UH into a Tier One residential campus is to
participate in the Division of Student Affairs Strategic
Planning process where it will develop objectives to support the
division as well as the university. Once these objectives are
clear, the department will explore and develop learning outcomes
in order to track the learning that occurs within the
residential communities and continue to support student success.
For more information about Student Housing & Residential Life,
visit
www.uh.edu/housing.
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