Staff Spotlight Four people - two interesting facts. p2
Get to Know the Team IT Unit hightlight. p4
Committee Corner Brief updates from the Reslife committees. p6
Professional Development Learn why meetings kill productivity (and what to do about it). Get tips on how to create a professional development plan. p7
Work Tip
Fall 2019
Achieving inbox zero. p7
Conference Happenings p10 Did You Know... ? p11 Welcome
Brain Teaser p12
Welcome to the ResLife Roundup! The Communications and Marketing Committee are excited to launch the very first edition of this electronic newsletter, highlighting our departmental staff and our achievements from this fall. ResLife Roundup will be delivered once a semester as just one method to keep our staff teams connected and informed of the great work happening across ResLife and within our committees. Staff spotlights will be included as well as professional development tips and tricks to enhance our work. Read on, team!
Reslife Roundup | Fall 2019 | Vol. 1
Cheers to Our Peers p13
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Staff Spotlight
Gidon Rosenthal
Glenn Smith
IT Systems Programmer
Manager, Assignments & Public Inquiry
Where’s your favorite spot on campus?
The mall/reflecting pool.
Stamp Student Union. Students always seem to be happy there.
What is your favorite part of your job?
The challenges I face tend to vary day by day. I like the variety.
Helping students if they have a problem with their housing assignment.
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Reslife Roundup | Fall 2019 | Vol. 1
I also really like the opportunities meetings give me to connect with other staff across the department...
Sylvia Thomas
Ryan Manning
Payroll Administrative Specialist
Community Director, South Campus Commons
The fountain on McKeldin Mall – a great place to people watch and enjoy nice weather
Leonardtown! It’s where my apartment is and it has a nice somewhat off-campus vibe, but it’s also where I go to visit so many of my friends. I also really resonate with Leonardtown’s underdog status.
Interacting with students – they are hilarious sometimes!
Getting to help develop my staff team and work alongside them to take the Commons community to a new level. I also really like the opportunities meetings give me to connect with other staff across the department and help be an advocate for Commons and our apartment residents.
Reslife Roundup | Fall 2019 | Vol. 1
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Get to Know the Team: Meet IT
The Resident Life IT team has a wide-ranging mission serving multiple departments within the Division of Student Affairs. The team mainly serves to support the day-to-day technological needs of each staff member in Resident Life, and support the longer term strategic initiatives of our department. In addition to Resident Life’s mission, the team also supports various technology needs of the Office of
Thomas Lamp
Linh Nguyen
Tosh Patterson
IT Manager for Software Engineering
IT Manager for Network and User Support
Coordinator IT Training and Projects
Responsibilities: Tom provides leadership for our software development, project consultation, database management, data reporting, StarRez training, and development. Some examples of his areas of responsibilities include development and maintenance of MyDRL, StarRez, and the Resident Life and the Division of Student Affairs database environment.
Responsibilities: Linh leads a team to support staff from Resident Life, the Counseling Center, and the Office of Student Conduct staff. The support services include day-to-day technical support, workstation and device management, and telecommunications needs. He also provides engineering and management of our server and network infrastructure, which provides critical services to staff 24/7/365.
Responsibilities: Tosh provides leadership for our department online training efforts through our partnership with the Creative Services team. Tosh’s role also provides IT coordination for projects such as StarRez implementation, installation of technology in the tech-enabled room, and technology training.
Random Responsibility: Tom and the Office of the Vice President of Student Affairs co-administer a jointly operated database server.
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Random Responsibility: I provide support for the maintenance and care of some of the projectors in our residence halls, but not all, so just ask and I can either help you or point you the right direction.
Reslife Roundup | Fall 2019 | Vol. 1
Random Responsibility: Tosh plans our IT unit retreats.
Student Conduct, Counseling Center, Office of the Vice President of Student Affairs, and Capstone On-Campus Management. The IT team provides services in the following areas: user support, network and systems support, software engineering, data management and analysis, online training, and data Security and IT compliance.
Keith Smith
Gidon Rosenthal
Dai-An Tran
IT Coordinator
Systems Programmer
Associate Director
Responsibilities: As an employee for both the Counseling Center and Resident Life, Keith provides IT support to both units. He supervises a team of student staff to assist in day-to-day technical support duties, and he assists in the management of servers and mission critical systems for both departments.
Responsibilities: Gidon assists in software development, project consultation, database management, data reporting, StarRez training and development. Gidon is the go to for providing development and support of MyDRL and StarRez systems.
Responsibilities: Dai-An provides oversight of the Resident Life IT program. Oversees IT partnerships with the Counseling Center, Office of Student Conduct, Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs, University Career Center and the President’s Promise, and Capstone On Campus Management.
Random Responsibility: Coordinates computer rollouts for Counseling Center and Resident Life.
Random Responsibility: Developing and maintaining the Expense Report System that serves the departments of Resident Life and Residential Facilities.
Reslife Roundup | Fall 2019 | Vol. 1
Random Responsibility: Oversees overall data security compliance, including review of contracts for third party cloud based systems.
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Committee Corner
Accomplishments
Action Steps
Substance-Free Housing: For Fall 2019, substance-free housing has expanded from Carroll Hall to also include Bel Air, Chestertown, Ellicott, and Elkton Halls, for which 534 students expressed interest.
Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan Steering Team: The group is preparing for several efforts to continue engaging and improving department interactions, including on-boarding activities with new staff, a January consultation meeting with Karla, and spring semester stewardships visits to individual units.
StarRez: As of July 2019, StarRez, the cloud-based computing service, now manages our housing billing, financial records, inventory, residents, applications, and bookings. Restorative Practices: UMBC hosted a Restorative Practices in Maryland Student Affairs Meeting, which was attended by Laura Tan, Ryan Manning, Avery McNaughton, Tiffany Harris, and Keira Martone. Trash to Treasure: Collections during closing of spring 2019 continued to be strong. Our campus collected 12,783 lbs of good for GreenDrop, approximately 1,350 lbs of food for the Campus Pantry, 516 books for Campus Libraries, and 9 bicycles for DOTS. In addition, we diverted 494 lbs of televisions and 12.4 tons of carpets from the waste stream.
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StarRez: The workgroup looks to implement a new form of Room Selection for both returning and new students within the next academic year. Restorative Practices: The workgroup is currently partnering with ODI to host an opportunity to share best practices at a Maryland Student Affairs Meeting in Spring 2020. Trash to Treasure: Lisa, Dan, and Jennie are currently working with representatives from the City of College Park and university colleagues to assist with the expansion of collection to student residents in the surrounding area of College Park. Lisa, Dan, and Laura are also working with Maryland Parent & Family Affairs to support a re-store alongside Trash to Treasure collections to be able to turn around usable items directly to students in need when they come to campus.
Reslife Roundup | Fall 2019 | Vol. 1
Why Meetings Kill Productivity (and What to Do About It) Have you ever sat through a meeting and said to yourself, “what a waste of time, I could be getting my work done.” Read Ray Williams’ article on business.com for 9 ways to make the most of your meetings.
Professional Development
OpenColleges: Professional Development - Tips range from how to know it’s time to invest in your development to specific skills you might focus on. We are so busy managing the present, it can be hard to devote time to the future. What do I want to do next? Do I have what it takes? Create a professional development plan to keep your eye on the prize.
Work Tip: Achieving Inbox Zero!
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eframe the way you think about your inbox
Quick: Look at your inbox and see how many messages have been sitting there for 24 hours or more. If the answer is anything other than “zero,” it’s time to reevaluate your strategy for managing email. For every email you encounter, choose from the following fast-triage options: • If a message is junk or trash, just delete it right away. • If a message requires no action on your behalf, archive it immediately.
• If a message requires a simple reply that you can knock out in a minute or less, respond right then and there—and then archive it immediately. • If a message requires some level of thought or response that you can’t get to right away, snooze it to a time and date when you will be able to handle it— whether it’s same day, the following week, or two months later. Get the message out of your way so it isn’t distracting - then it will reappear and grab your attention when the time is right.
Reslife Roundup | Fall 2019 | Vol. 1
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tart thinking of email like a messaging service
An entire movement exists around the idea of writing every email in five sentences or less. But being concise doesn’t have to be boorish. The secret is to think of email like a messaging service: Ask yourself how you would compose any given email if it were a text. Make it a touch more formal, perhaps, and add in pleasantries as appropriate, and there’s your message! Continued on p.8
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top writing the same stuff over and over
We all have our own sets of stock emails—the standard messages we write over and over for our work or personal affairs. Maybe it’s making an introduction, declining an invitation, sending an expected document, or responding to a student question. Whatever the case may be, you almost certainly waste your time by hammering it out repeatedly. So here’s the fix: Stop repeating yourself. Almost every email service has some sort of system for creating and using templates. Take 10 minutes to create templates for all of your recurring messages, then take care of all future instances with a two-second click.
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end your time-consuming clutter away
Less than 10% of your incoming mail is probably pertinent—in other words, anything you need to know or that requires a response. First, the easy part: For the next week, unsubscribe from every list-based email you get—unless you really, truly need it. Next, for recurring messages from which you can’t easily unsubscribe, create filters that automatically place them in out-of-the-way areas of your email hierarchy. (I do this for all the HR approvals I get copied on)
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If you know emails from certain senders are never going to be relevant to you, meanwhile, consider the nuclear option: creating a manual filter that sends them directly into your spam or trash folder. Every future email you don’t have to deal with is time saved. Finally, when you get a reply-all thread that isn’t going anywhere, use your email app’s mute or ignore function to quietly unsubscribe from any future responses.
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top organizing your email!
In the physical world, devoting time to organizing documents into folders makes a lot of sense—because how else are you going to find all those papers when you need them? In the virtual world of email, however, that same system has turned into a time-wasting shackle. The fastest way to find an old email is almost always by searching. Stop worrying about organizing all of your incoming email and just power through it. Then, when you need to find something in the future, search. Familiarize yourself with your email app’s advanced search parameters.
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onsolidate your email-handling schedule
If you were to set out to devise the most annoying and ineffective system for email management, you’d probably come up with something where a sound or alert interrupted you every time a new message comes in, commandeering your attention while you’re busy doing something else. And yet that’s precisely how most of us deal with email—in the most productivity-wrecking manner possible. Study after study shows that switching tasks causes us to work less effectively and efficiently. Opening up email is no exception. So stop fighting your brain’s nature and set up a system that works with your brain instead of against it. Pick a handful of designated times throughout the day to deal with email—maybe mid-morning, after lunch, and late afternoon—and then stop peeking at your inbox outside of those windows. Set yourself up for success by keeping your email app closed by default and open only during the times you actively need it. And turn off email notifications on both your computer and your phone.
Edited from The 7-Step Guide To Achieving Inbox Zero—And Staying There
Reslife Roundup | Fall 2019 | Vol. 1
Set yourself up for success by keeping your email app closed by default and open only during the times you actively need it.
Reslife Roundup | Fall 2019 | Vol. 1
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Conference Happenings
Big Ten Housing Officers Conference Recap October 21-23, 2019
In October, staff from the Departments of Resident Life, Residential Facilities, Conferences & Visitor Services, and Dining Services participated in the annual Big Ten Housing Officers conference hosted by the University of Wisconsin in Madison, WI. The campus is nestled between two beautiful lakes, Lake Mendota and Lake Monona and Madison’s vibrant State Street which features shopping, restaurants, the University Bookstore and the State Capitol.
Conversations ranged from Emotional Support Animal policies, budget cuts, StarRez implementation, Diversity and Inclusion programming, moisture control crisis responses, apartment living, graduate student and family housing to marketing and communications ideas for new and returning residents, annual reports, Food Services robot delivery services and more. Our UMD team returned to campus energized and fueled with great ideas from colleagues across the Big Ten.
The Big Ten Housing Officers conference is unique in that the majority of the conference time is spent in positional function groups engaging in dialogue. Participants share campus happenings, ideas, and resources with one another. Prior to the conference, participants are invited to post questions on the message boards which shapes the group discussion questions. It is invigorating to hear from colleagues across the Big Ten who are willing to help problem solve and share strategies for how they approached issues on campus.
Participants also had an opportunity to tour the residence halls and the University campus including a behind the scenes tour of Camp Randall Stadium where the Wisconsin Badgers play football. We were also treated to a welcome featuring each participant’s name on the stadium jumbotron. Our Res Life team also took a tour of the State Capitol building which was quite interesting and included lots of badger references. If you would like to learn more, please reach out to any of the participants with questions. We would be happy to share our experience.
Upcoming National Conferences ASCA | February 2-5 ACPA | March 2-5 NASPA | March 28-April 1 ACUHO-I | June 27-30
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Reslife Roundup | Fall 2019 | Vol. 1
Did you know... ? All student, faculty, and staff at UMD get a discount on their cellular wireless services and equipment from Sprint, AT&T and Verizon. Ask your provider about it! The Garden at the Chapel has two benches. In a compartment under each bench is a journal - feel free to read others’ entries or add your own thoughts. Check out the notes, reveries, hopes, dreams, and sorrows of our UMD community! The State of Maryland has ZERO natural lakes? EVERY SINGLE lake is human-made! (FYI – West Virginia only has one and it’s more of a pond)
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Brain Teaser 1
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Across 2 It’s not easy being _____. 4 Our marketing campaign. 5 The name of our oldest residence hall. 7 Rub his nose for good luck
Winner’s circle.
Down 1 Our new housing assignment system. 3 The haunted inn on campus. 6 Potential Princess of North Campus.
The first 10 staff to complete the puzzle and send the correct answer to Janet Archer will win a prize!
Click here to complete the crossword.
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Reslife Roundup | Fall 2019 | Vol. 1
Cheers to Our Peers ABS Unit takes on DC The Administrative & Business Services (ABS) unit utilized our fall unit retreat to continue enhancing and informing our work in the diversity and inclusion arena. The staff spent the day touring the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. and shared a meal together on-site. Many of the staff had never been to the museum while others had been there several times. For all, it was a powerful, thought-provoking and insightful day. In a follow-up conversation, staff shared their own reflections on their experience and ways the visit could help them in their understanding and awareness. ABS continues engagement activities in regular unit meetings to address these important issues regularly and is committed to embracing and moving forward the great work within the Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan.
Fostering Terp Success The University of Maryland’s Office of Parent and Family Affairs under Brian Watkins’ leadership recently launched the Fostering Terp Success program. This program was established to provide support for students who were or are in foster care, are homeless, at risk of being homeless, or without a supportive family system. Campus Coaches, comprised of staff, faculty, and alumni are committed to removing barriers to and assisting students in accessing essential campus services, navigating challenges, and developing self-advocacy and life skills. Resident Life has several staff who were selected to attend the training and are now participating in the program. A warm thanks to Glenn Smith, committee member and coach, as well as Keira Martone, Chamika Ellis, Joann Prosser, Daniel Ostick, and Tracy Kiras.
We want to hear from YOU! What do you like most about the content? What new topics should we consider for future editions? Staff are invited to share ideas, feedback, and to contribute content to make this an inviting and helpful resource for all! We hope you enjoy the first edition and look forward to hearing your feedback. Send any thoughts to tkiras@umd.edu.
Reslife Roundup | Fall 2019 | Vol. 1
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