Residential Faculty and Faculty Fellows

We start every week with our weekly Stanford Senior Staff meeting. We meet in the dining hall and go over the pulse of the building, the budget, any concerns/issues, and overview our engagement activities.

Monday evenings in the Fall semester are often filled with First Year U. This year, I was asked to be the faculty presenter and shared an hour on the importance of public health.

The second hour of FYU is typically spent in the living room of my apartment, in small group discussions with my group.

I had a lunch meeting with the Chair of the Residential Faculty and our HRL academic liaison. We were planning for the Finish Strong tutor and study event.

Tuesday afternoons are my weekly Residential Faculty engagement/office hours. I bring my dog Henry into the lobby and connect with students.

Tuesday evenings at 6:30 p.m. are our building-wide engagements. Faculty are expected to attend every week. Every single one of our residents is invited, and they are open to any student across all areas. My colleagues, Marc, and Leslie Knecht, led this building-wide engagement featuring the chemistry of the Miracle Berry. Students sampled sweet and sour flavors and learned how taste is affected by glycoproteins binding to taste receptors.

Every Tuesday at 8 p.m. we have a standing meeting with senior staff and student staff for our residential college. This particular Tuesday was a bit more fun since we met on Halloween right after the Halloween event.

While we attend the weekly building-wide events to engage with students, we plan and host 3 other events per semester with an engagement team. I worked with University and HRL partners to host “Coffee with the Advisors” in the first year of Residential Colleges. The goal was to ensure that first-year students feel a connection with their academic advisor outside of the advisor’s office, and to ensure that any last-minute advising questions were answered before they were actually last minute!

Not much is scheduled for Wednesday, but a former RA asked me to conduct a practice interview with them, and of course, I said yes.

And there was an Iron Chef competition that evening so of course I had to cheer on one of our residents!

 And I bumped into another former RA who graduated. Always fun to stay in touch with our former student staff.

On my “off night,” I opted to host a student event in my apartment. I invited several former student staff members to network with students in one of our master’s degree programs.

Then came SportsFest! This is a signature event for HRL. I am wearing the same shirt to support Stanford, but this event spanned Thursday evening opening ceremonies to many events on Friday and Saturday. Not pictured is me scoring part of the pickleball tournament! SportsFest is a lovely way to connect with current residents as well as former residents!

ENDING MESSAGE: Not pictured are the many interactions over the week with residents and student staff in the Wellness Center, in the dining hall, and around campus. I am so lucky to have so many opportunities to connect with and support our students!