Students can expect to see some new faces in their dorms next year as the Office of Residential Life will fully phase-out student Area Coordinators, replacing them with professional, full-time Community Directors.
In accordance with recommendations in the Student Life Initiative, four new Community Directors will be hired this spring, which adds to the current four positions.
A total of eight Community Directors will oversee the staff in residential clusters next year, a job undertaken this year by the four existing Community Directors and seven Area Coordinators. This completes the Office of Residential Life's plan to eliminate the student position of Area Coordinator.
Next year's Community Directors will also each control programming budgets of an amount more than 20 percent greater than the funding which is currently available to residential clusters, according to Emily Farnham, Fiscal Officer for Residential Life.
The decision to add this new position to the residential staff structure, a system which prior to this year consisted primarily of Undergraduate Advisors and Area Coordinators, reflects a sense that Community Directors will have more time and expertise to provide support for students and for other residential education staff, according to Jeff Dewitt, Area Director for the East Side of Campus.
Previous Area Coordinators reported to ORL that the position was often too time-consuming for a student to handle and to fulfill most effectively, Dewitt said, adding that most other institutions have a professional staff member living in residence halls.
Community Directors will take over the Area Coordinator's responsibilities of supervising UGAs and dealing with individual and community issues that arise, like conflicts, crises and personal issues within the cluster, Dewitt said. Additionally, Community Directors will help in the process of selecting and training staff.
Cluster budgets also fall under the control of Community Directors, money that is used for cluster-wide events and by individual UGAs for floor programming. Next year the cluster budgets will be 21 percent larger than money currently available to Community Directors and Area Coordinators, an increase from about $32 per student per year to $39, according to Farnham.
Funding from the College will provide this extra money, as programming budgets are not part of the room rent students pay, according to Farnham. Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman stressed that the funds will go to activities for the whole cluster in an effort to make programming more equal campus-wide.
Currently one Community Director lives in each of the following campus clusters: East Wheelock, the Choates, and the River cluster. One director also supervises both Rip/Wood/Smith and the Fayerweathers.
The Office of Residential Life is currently interviewing candidates for the remaining four director positions for Topliff/New Hampshire and the Lodge, Wheeler/Richardson and the affinity programs, Massachusetts Row and Hitchcock and the Gold Coast and Russell Sage. Each director will have an apartment within their assigned cluster.
