The letter summarizes the first year experiences of Kourtney Spaulding as the Resident Director of McBride Hall at Miami University. Some of her key successes included building strong relationships with residents that led to a low number of incidents and securing the future of the Entrepreneurship Living Learning Community. Challenges included starting late in the summer and adjusting to a large staff. Goals for the next year include increasing programming diversity, building community in a larger hall, and taking language classes.

1. OFFICE OF RESIDENCE LIFE
211 Warfield Hall
Oxford, Ohio 45056
(513) 529-4000
www.miamioh.edu/reslife
May 2, 2016
Sarah Meaney
Assistant Director, Office of Residence Life
Dear Sarah,
The purpose of this letter is to summarize my involvement, including my successes and
challenges, throughout my first year as a Resident Director within the Office of Residence Life
over the course of the 2015-2016 academic year.
Successes, Challenges, and Goals
I am so grateful for the opportunity to join Miami university and Residence Life this year. After a
long and trying job search, I feel as though I have found a space to grow personally and
professionally at Miami.
Successes
As a first time Resident Director, I believe that I have had many successes throughout the year.
I believe one of my greatest successes with the individual relationships I made with students. I
invested the time to get to know many of my residents and I believe that had an impact on the
low number of incidents we had this year in our building. Due to the relationships I have built
with the residents, they have been comfortable to come to me with both personal and academic
issues, as well as with ideas for the future of the LLC.
I believe that my greatest accomplishment this year has been securing the future of the
Entrepreneurship Living Learning Community through my work with the stakeholders and
current students. A new LLC this school year, I have worked with student leaders to learn their
desires for the future of this program and successfully advocated with senior staff on their
behalf. As a result, Entrepreneurship will be moving to Hepburn Hall in the fall, increasing the
number of residents in the LLC by just over 100 students to 250. This includes about 80
sophomores who are either moving on with the community from McBride (about 50) or joining us
as sophomores (about 30). Along with the current programming for the whole hall, all new
students (first and second years) will take ESP101 and all 80 second year students will have the
opportunity to learn in smaller, more focused niche groups.
My ability to work independently but also push information forward I believe was a great
strength. I believe I handled the majority of both my responsibilities and incidents independently.
But I also believe I did a great job of communicating with my supervisor to keep her in the loop. I
was also not afraid to seek clarification or ask for help.
Challenges
Starting off so late in the summer made the first semester quite difficult. I was not as prepared
as I would have liked to have been and felt that I was constantly working on catching up. It took
me a while to find an organizational style that fit me in this type of job.

2. Another challenge for me is working on such a large staff. In the past, I have typically worked
out of an office of no more than 5 and only for one semester in an office of 10+. Moving into a
department as large as ORL was overwhelming in some ways and I found it hard to feel at
home for a while.
Lastly, though it turned out to not be challenging, this was my first experience in having my own
staff. I have advised student boards before, and worked for one semester co-supervising an RA
staff, but this was the first time that I was fully in supervision of a staff and building on my own. I
thought it was going to be more challenging than it was, and it turns out my greatest challenge
was my own self doubt. I have learned to be open and vulnerable with my staff, admitting my
own mistakes and all of us learning together.
Serious Incidents and Interventions
About three weeks into the semester McBride had a resident who was displaying concerning
drug and alcohol behaviors. I intervened a few times with the resident, though the resident did
not stop these behaviors. In the end, after this resident left campus in an Uber to Cincinnati and
told their roommates that they would ‘never have to worry about me again’, and then showed
back up in the hall about 5 hours later, the resident removed themselves from the university.
Their old roommate has informed me that this former resident has been in rehab since the
incident.
There was a sexual assault incident in the fall where a McBride resident was found responsible
and suspended for 1.5 school years, to return in the fall of 2017. Throughout the course of the
student’s allegation through suspension hearings I (and his RA, Jonah Sadowski) offered a
great deal of support. I attending meetings as the student’s advocate, supported the student
while they told their parents what happened over the phone, and, over the course of about a
month, met many times with the student to talk through what they were going through in being
accused of this. In the end, the student’s suspension surprised me. I found this situation
challenging as we do a good deal of training on working with the victim/survivor, but have not
talked about how to support students who have been accused.
Exterior door propping, mostly in Spring 2016 (though it started in early December). There were
many emails and corridor talks about ending this behavior. Over Spring Break Health and
Safety Inspections, I found the tape on the desk of a resident who had been causing other
issues throughout the building. I filed a report to OESCR and met with the resident on multiple
occasions. The propping of the door stopped after the first conversation, though the resident
denied that they did this and claimed it to be another student. After a few more incidents, this
resident has an upcoming hearing to decide if they should be suspended. After many
conversations, I have not seen this resident’s behavior change.
ORL Departmental Professional Development
● Served as a member of the RARS Committee
○ Facilitated and observed at both fall and spring group process weekends
○ Created and implemented the new Lego Activity for spring group process
○ Created the recruitment infographic in the fall using Canva
○ Presented at departmental meeting on 4/22/16 with Jordan Ahlersmeyer to
update the department on the assessment efforts of RARS and how we will use
this data going forward

3. ○ Assisted with RARS application review
○ Assisted in creating the new selection process for new RAs
● Served as a member of the Assessment Committee
○ Reviewed ALL survey questions
○ Collected data on hall trends
○ Specifically researched the feelings of belonging and engagement of our
residents over the years by ipeds code and wrote an assessment brief
● Served as a member of the Second Year Workgroup
○ Supplied the workgroup with a great deal of data and research papers that I had
used for my graduate capstone
● Pass Mentorship Program
○ Recruited 11 and 6 selected(??) future Hepburn Hall second year residents to
apply for the PASS mentorship program.
○ Due to the large response, Hepburn will house two types of pilot mentors next
year - 1) live in the hall and work in the hall, 2) live in Hepburn and work in
another North Quad building.
Division of Student Affairs Professional Development
● Eboo Patel Book club
● Divisional Assessment Certificate Program
○ Selected as one of 12 participants for the new Assessment Certificate Program
through the Division of Student Affairs at Miami University
● Professional Development Sessions
○ Social Media
Entrepreneurship LLC Development
● Fostered important relationships with the Institute for Entrepreneurship and our faculty
advisors
● Bi-monthly meetings with the advisory board. The Entrepreneurship field would rather
information come via email and brainstorming happen together, so most information is
communicated via email
○ I do stop in once every few weeks to check in and say hello to the professors.
○ I checked into each class at the start of sprint to talk about LLC updates and how
to bring this back to the building
● Spent casual time in the halls having conversations with residents about their goals
regarding entrepreneurship
● As a staff, we empowered students to be creative and confident in their ideas through
conversations and programming
● Second Year Experience for 2016-2017
○ In the fall a student approached me about what to do with a want for restaurant
entrepreneurship
○ Explored options with Sarah Meaney and Tresa Barlage-Zianno regarding the
difference between second year created communities or housing a second year
experience under the current LLC
○ Assessed McBride Hall to gauge interest in a second year experience and to see
if there are niche groups the students might be interested in joining
○ Due to the response of the survey, ORL decided to offer a mixed hall experience
for this LLC for 2016-2017

4. ○ Approximately 50 from McBride Hall and 30 from outside our community were
accepted to move into Hepburn Hall, joining about 170 first year students
○ Worked with the HOME office to finalize 2nd year room locations for Hepburn
● Allowed Hepburn 2nd years to choose their own rooms through an in person room
selection day
● I worked with Hillel:The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, to bring Israeli
Entrepreneur, Alon Futterman, to campus for a lecture
● Attempted a 24 hour challenge. While the program ended up not happening due to
student interest, we will try this again in the fall when students have more time
RA Spring Training Presentation:
● Make Your Flyers Pop - a working session on the uses of Canva as a marketing tool for
the halls. I have had a great response to this workshop from colleagues and RAs across
the department.
Conferences
● I attended ACPA in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in March 2016 and attended sessions on
the following topics
○ UNV 101 teaching techniques
○ Resiliency in students
○ Leadership training through storytelling
○ Emotional Support Animal policies and working with students with different needs
○ CAS Standards and assessment through CAS
○ #blacklivesmatter
○ Tech workshops: Wunderlist; instagram; pinterest; twitter; google
Conclusion & discussion of next year
Overall I think the residents and staff in McBride had an incredible year. Although there will be
some challenges at the start with communication and organization on my part, I believe that we
ended in a much better place than we started. I think that the team in McBride created a
comfortable and creative environment for our residents to live and learn in.
Goals for 2016-2017
● Increase the both the amount and diversity of programming within my own staff to better
touch all aspects of the residential curriculum.
● Moving to a larger hall next year, I will need to work on how to get to know 100 more
students than I did this year and how to create community with almost double the
students and staff.
● Instruct UNV101 in the fall and possibly an EDL class in spring.
● Take Hebrew 101 in the fall and 102 in the spring for personal development.
Sincerely,
Kourtney Spaulding
Resident Director
McBride Hall