Alexandra Kytan: Office of Student Life Week 1

Activities:

·         Worked in the Housing office

o   Sat in on Resident Life Coordinator (RLC) meeting with Associate Director of Facilities and Summer Conference Housing

o   Helped evaluate Tiger Plaza; a hotel that was rented out by the University for additional student housing

o   Worked on administrative duties in Housing

§  Prepared housing contracts

§  Learned their process for room assignments

o   Contacted ten other institutions about their move-in day process

o   Sat in on a meeting with the RLC’s concerning their SWOT analysis

§  Able to compare job responsibilities between JSU and State

·         Participated in sexual misconduct meeting for revamping their policy based on Obama’s requirements

·         Sat in on a meeting concerning the definition of exempt and non-exempt workers

Reflection:

This week working in the office has been filled with meetings and administrative work. Being able to intern with the Associate Vice President of the office of Student Life has allowed me to be present at many of the meetings including directors of other departments. One in particular that I got to attend this week as well as last week is the meeting concerning sexual misconduct and title IX. JSU has to revamp their policy and I was able to sit in and help out with what that will look like. It ended up being a combination of things that other institutions use that were decided to be used based on JSU and its students. In my assisstantship at State we always hear about the higher up meetings but never were able to be a part of them. I am thankful I finally got the chance to understand and witness what they are like.

Every week I will be working within different departments because the office of Student Life is over eight different areas. This week I got to work with Housing which was somewhat familiar because I work in Housing at State. I quickly realized just how different it can be. Most of their processes are still on paper which means a lot more administrative work done by the professional staff. I got to help out with these tasks and it made me appreciate that at State ours is online. They will be moving all of their stuff online next year but it was nice to understand how things were done before we had the ability to use the internet and computers like we do now.

Something that I found really fascinating and makes me want to work at a HBCU even more is the amount of first generation students that attend. My supervisor told me about 70% of their students are first generation students. That is mind blowing. That makes their institution unique because they have to gear a lot of their programs and events towards that student type.

This week has been filled with work and new learning experiences and I am excited for this next week working with career services!