Brittany Clark - Week 3 - Office of Housing and Residence Life, Mississippi State University

Activities:

• Attended a meeting with Sirena and another vendor selling fabric
• Attended a meeting with Sirena and a vendor selling mattresses
• Attended a meeting with Sirena and the ITS representative redoing the MUW Housing website
• Attended staff meeting
• Assigned room assignments
• Worked with student workers to mail out housing assignment letters
• Attended a meeting with Sirena and a student who was having a conflict with another student
• Met the Vice President of Student Affairs, Dr. Myles
• Checked student’s admission status in the computer to determine whether or not we could assign housing

Reflection:

This week, I attended a lot of meetings with Sirena. Sirena’s meetings with all of these vendors have been so interesting to me. I never took the time to think that Housing is responsible for picking out mattresses and fabrics for the furniture. It makes perfect sense now. We met with a second fabric vendor to compare fabrics and pricing. The vendor also took measurements of the Housing and Residence Life office because Sirena wants to redesign it. The mattress vendor was very interesting as well. The vendor brought a mattress with him, so Sirena, two of the RDs (Dante and Stephanie), and I went out to their car to take a look at the mattress. Dante laid on the mattress and started giving Sirena feedback on the mattress talking about how it has good support in the middle section. Sirena asked the vendor if they had mattresses with inverted seams because the exterior seams are not as durable. We also met with the ITS representative who came and talked to Sirena and I about what changes we wanted to see on the Housing and Residence Life website. We viewed other housing websites from other schools (VA Tech, Florida, University of Delaware, University of New Mexico, etc.) to get ideas of what Sirena wanted their site to look like. We ended up deciding on a format very similar to the way the MUW Admissions webpage is set up. Sirena and I also discussed how The W is rebranding, and how the logos are all changing.

Additionally, something that was really interesting for me to experience was the meeting with a student who was having a conflict with another student who was living in the residence hall. I was able to see Sirena’s counseling skills come out during this session because she would ask the student a question and not elaborate on it so that the student would answer the question she asked without any assistance. Sirena handled the situation really well, and I was really impressed by how objective she was in the situation.

Finally, Sirena had intended for me to go on a residence hall tour with her and an outside consultant who was going to determine what needed to be repaired, worked on, etc. While Sirena and I were waiting on the consultant, Sirena informed me that the VP of Student Affairs would prefer for me to not go on the tour of the halls. I felt so bad for Sirena because I knew she felt bad and that she was so embarrassed, but I completely understood and was not upset about it.

I have had such a great experience working with Sirena in housing. She is such a great leader in that office and has the best interest of the students always in mind. I have enjoyed getting to interact with different MUW students and am excited about the knowledge regarding housing that I have received!

-Brittany Clark

This is the new logo design for The W!