Due to a shortage in undergraduate advisors, programming coordinators and hall coordinators for next year, the Office of Residential Life will be accepting a second wave of applications until today for these positions.
According to West Campus Area Director Vicki Gist, such a shortage is nothing new.
"It's a situation that we are in every year actually," she said, adding that ORL often fails to fill all of its positions during the spring term.
Despite that next year's compensation for such positions will be "significantly" higher than in the past, some 20 spots remain vacant after the completion of the first selection process.
"This year we had about the same number of applications as positions to fill," she said.
Gist said that although ORL's request for a second set of applications has caused some campus concern, the only circumstance that has changed since last year is the process by which the vacancies in the program will be filled.
"I would say that we've always done it this way we've just never advertised it this way," she said.
In past years ORL has taken applications for empty spots on a rolling basis, with some not being filled until the end of the Summer term. Because of this inconvenience, the office decided to attempt to select next year's UGAs, HCs and PCs as soon as possible via a second selection process.
"The problem we ran into last year is that we were doing it so sporadically ... so this year, as opposed to making it a long, drawn out process we decided to take a couple of days to interview and fill a few of the positions," she explained.
According to Gist, however, there will be little change in the application methods and selection criteria for this second round.
"The only thing that's going to be different from the first process is that there won't be a group process," she said, pointing out that these later applicants will be unable to participate in many of the group exercises required during the first selection.
And even in the face of shortage, Gist said ORL does not plan to lower its standards in the selection of next year's student advisors.
"We are still as selective as we would have been," she said.
Applicants who were recently rejected during the first selection procedure are invited to apply again, however.
"If there are people who weren't offered a position, then we send them that notification. We also ask them if they want to be reconsidered in the case that there are spaces that we can't fill," she said.
When asked if she thought rising sophomores might apply with ulterior motives simply due to this year's housing crunch, Gist said that ORL could not be sure.
"I don't know what people's motivation could be -- I guess that's something we can find out during the interviews," she said.
