By Rebecca Dickman
October 22, 2020
As the Pandemic wears on students, Residence Life and the Office of Student Inclusion and Involvement are staying creative and finding new ways to keep students engaged on campus and maintain a connected college community.
Programming has taken many different forms this year, according to Claire Mand, Director of Residence Life. “This year we’ve needed to switch a little in our approach. We’ve needed to have more virtual programming and more remote participation in things that are going on, so we’ve had to more campus-wide programming and things that engage students remotely.”
However, a large barrier faced by those planning virtual events is how to separate their programming from students’ online classes.
Shaunda Brown-Rivera, the Director of Student Inclusion & Involvement, explained this struggle. “For some events, it gets really tricky using the same mode of instruction that you all take for your classes. That is definitely the biggest challenge. How do you engage students who are using that exact same format to go to school?”
Mand also acknowledged students’ hesitation to join online programming. “What students want is in-person programming and in-person connection, so I think there is no doubt that doing things as remotely as we have been isn’t what people really want.”
Many of the campus programs have been successful so far, but near the beginning of the year the RA’s ran into some difficulty planning events.
“We had some issues figuring out how to properly program with the restrictions of how many people can be in a room, and we were really struggling with proposing things that wouldn’t just get residents there but would get them engaged,” said Second floor West Regina RA, Katie Lange.
“There’s a difference between having a resident come, grab food, and leave versus having them come and they stay and feel welcome and feel like a part of their community,” said Lange.
Events such as these have been harder to plan because of the limited space for RA’s, and the number of residents some RA’s must account for.
Vivi Velasquez, the RA for the third floor of East Regina said “My floor has about 30 residents because I have roommates, and then there are other floors that have 40, so what we’ve been doing is trying to break up people into smaller groups instead of having everybody at one time.”
OSII has also been struggling with spatial issues, and have been implementing smaller programming, just as RA’s are.
“We do something we call smaller programs. For example, terrarium night historically brings in about 300 students, so we just broke it into three different locations…so it’s still giving students what they know happen every year… but structure it in a way where we don’t have to be all in the same place.” Says Shaunda Brown-Rivera, the Director of Student Inclusion & Involvement.
The RA’s are teaming up more frequently with The Office of Student Inclusion and Involvement to plan programs and help bring their programs to a wider audience.
“We are helping the RA’s be able to program in a way that is larger, pulling in more than just floors and have the budget to program for all the buildings, while also pulling in marketing to off-campus and commuter students,” said Brown-Rivera. “I think it’s cool because they are able to take an idea that they would have just done for their floor and turn into campus-wide programming.”
With both campus-wide programming and virtual events, students can connect to those both on and off-campus creating a broader sense of community.
“Really what it’s doing is its creating what campus would look like. Because when you go to a regular program it won’t all be people who live on, and it won’t all be people who live off. So, it mimics in a smaller way what campus would be like.” Says Brown- Rivera.
Although programming isn’t ideal right now, it is a unique opportunity to connect with students off-campus and create a broader Edgewood community.
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