Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Engaging Your Student Organization

If you are not sure who I am, my name is Ashtyn and I use she/her pronouns. I am currently in a role similar to that of a Graduate Resident Director at the University of Oklahoma (OU). I spent four (4) years in student housing leadership, and have held various positions in hall council, regional conference leadership, Regional Board of Directors, and on the NACURH Annual Conference Team. Additionally, I have authored 169 Of the Month (OTM) nominations in the last five (5) years, including 23 NACURH winners and 38 regional winners. I helped lead my institution, the University of Central Missouri, to win the 2021 NACURH OTM Traveling Award for the first time in our chapter's 40 year history; and the first Midwest school to win in at least the last five (5) years, if not more. I spend a considerable amount of time thinking and actively working on engagement opportunities in residence life.

What does it mean to 'engage,' and why is it important? Engagement is about creating stakeholdership in an organization - whether that be for orientation leaders, student housing leadership, or admissions tour guides. Engagement is important to have a sense of belonging or a sense of mattering.

When I was the Chapter President of the United Student Housing Association (USHA), which is the equivalent to an Residence Hall Association (RHA), my main chapter initiatives revolved around communication, engagement, and student governance. At the time in my undergrad, I had seen our chapter go from really great by the time of my first year, and as the talented student leaders left, so did a majority of our membership. Essentially, more people were leaving than were entering the student organizations. I spent about 6-8 months during my third year thinking about, "If I were USHA President, what would I focus on and why, and how would I work to increase and engage existing membership?" I had a list of five (5) pages worth of ideas, a membership manual, website, newsletter, a Discord server, and a spirit point system to help re-engage our student housing group.

My advisor originally told me that, "Hey, you know you're not going to get paid, right?" And I said, "Okay, I still am wanting to implement these ideas." Regardless, my advisor told me that these ideas would not work and could not work. After several one-on-ones, in person meetings with my advisor, we created a plan of action to increase our membership - which included about 95% of my ideas, and all of the ones that are listed here in this article. These ideas can be implemented past an RHA, or a National Residence Hall Honorary (NRHH) chapter. However, this article covers my experience as a Chapter President of our RHA (2021-22).

Membership Manual:

This membership manual was about twenty-two pages long, and included a letter from myself as the incoming RHA President, history of the chapter, region, and NACURH, along with other information regarding the alphabet soup that we call housing and residence life. I love the color blue, so that is reflected in the title page! Members would quickly search through this guide to find information regarding the chapter. However, this was not the only location of information. Our chapter utilized Google Drive, so everything was stored on there, including our USHA website which I will detail in the next section.

Website

In this section, this will be specifically about the USHA website that was designed for our chapter. I worked to design the website prior to the academic year, and updated it as the year went on. The website included: minutes, recognition and awards, executive board information, hall council information, advocacy and legislation, MACURH & NACURH, NRHH information, and resources. Having everything in one place was incredibly helpful for our RHA members, some stating that everything was neat and organized in a helpful manner. Resources tended to include manuals, governing documents, and any presentations given by or to the chapter. Our chapter's executive board would update the website weekly.

Newsletter

This was an newsletter that I sent in October 2021. In the bottom of the email, I would put in the footer, "If you are still reading this, email me your favorite [insert favorite thing here]." Those who emailed me back received spirit points. Further information about the spirit point system will be located below! These newsletters were sent every Monday around 5pm, called Mule Mondays - which our mascot for the university was a Mule/Jenny. The newsletters were sent to all student organization members, Resident Advisors (RAs), Desk Managers, Office Assistants, full-time professional housing staff, and graduate resident hall directors. In the emails included upcoming programs, events, weekly leadership topic, and any applications for initiatives. It was a great way to get to know fellow members by doing something incredibly simple. In these newsletters also included leadership topics of the week. In the above section detailing more information about the USHA website lists the fall and spring leadership topics.

Discord Server

In this server, the one shown is an example for resident hall directors, residence life coordinators, or anyone who supervises student staff. This server contains a general outline of what our RHA chapter used. It's important to have pronoun options in there, although not required by members. In our RHA server, we had a terms & conditions for the server, in case anyone were to post threatening, offensive, or harassing information to other members of the server. The bots were also there to warn members and remove any messages containing offensive language. Some bots that I quickly became familiar with include: YagPDB, Mee6, Carlbot, Dyno, and Piggy. There are also many, many other bots that allow people to trade and train Pokemon, among other cool options. Pictured above is what is called a 'role-reaction.' This would mean once an individual clicks an emote to react with [that of which is provided in the server], then they would get a role attached to their server profile [not their user profile, only specific to the server]. Our chapter had a section for hall council advisors, hall council members, RHA executive board members, agendas and minutes, along with channels for non-business things (memes, pet pictures, mental health, etc.), and voice channels. I chose to use Discord over GroupMe to have everything in one place (a theme), and for there to be intentionally with having separate spaces for individuals to connect about various topics, instead of messages getting lost.

Spirit Point System

This is an example of what a spirit point system would look like. The spirit point system spreadsheet had various formulas to calculate spirit points for our RHA membership. Members had twenty-two (22) different avenues to gain points. There was an avenue that was any other points as assigned by the executive board, and those were approved by the executive board before being assigned or given to members. This may have included tabling, posting pictures from various student-organization sponsored trips, etc. At the end of the year, we meant to give out some sort of gift basket, but we ended up giving certificates to the top three (3) student housing leaders that had the most spirit points. We had earned a total of more than 1,200 spirit points from September 2021 to April 2022. The spirit point system was updated between one to three times a week depending on if the week was more or less busy.

As I have listed a few different ways to engage student leaders, I wanted to highlight the ones that I have not covered so far, and have listed them below:

1. Conferences: A great way to present an educational session, volunteer, serve as a boardroom parliamentarian, and network with others in the region, nation, and/or internationally. I was given advise once by my previous institution that said, "Your network is your net worth." -Career Center at the University of Central Missouri.
2. Recognition: Author Of the Month (OTM) or other types of recognition - this may also include campus, regional, or national awards. Other examples may include writing letters to increase the morale of student leaders, providing words of affirmation, or providing any of the love languages. Also think about intrinsic (inward) versus extrinsic (outward) recognition and how that may play a part of recognizing your nominee(s). Practice your nomination writing, find good examples, and see what 'style' does the author or authors use? It is more technical and structured, or is it more creative and descriptive? Find your style and master that!
3. Programming: This is by far the staple of higher education and student leadership. Some may think that only programming can fix the world, and although I would like to believe that, it's not the case. Focus on what kind of programming are you doing? Is it community service, social (most common), passive, active, educational, DEI, etc.? Put intentionality behind your programmatic efforts and the social capital will pay dividends.
4. Community Desk Initiatives: This is something as I was graduating our housing leadership committee want to implement for the following academic year. We wanted to take our leadership topics for each week and ask the desk staff to talk to an 'x' amount of people, while at the desk, about the topic of leadership for that week.

I hope that this information has been helpful in helping engage a variety of student leaders!