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By Geoff Smith
Arizona Daily Wildcat
August 23, 1996
The Department of Residence Life has revamped its approach to educational programming in an attempt to improve the quality of its services.Jim Van Arsdel, the department's director, said the changes are an attempt to uniform the programming in all 17 residence halls.
In previous years, resident assistants could choose a topic, time and approach to almost every program.
"The resident assistants were all putting on good programs, but there was no way of guaranteeing that residents in all halls had the same opportunities," he said.
The residence halls offer educational programs and speakers on topics such as campus concerns, sexual awareness and self-improvement.
Last year, a Residence Life committee began to work toward a program that was more structured and placed a lighter planning burden on the resident assistants.
Van Arsdel said the resulting plan will try to unify programming among the halls.
The committee organized a timeline of programming for the school year, to ensure that all residence halls are putting on similar programs.
Now, because each hall is required to put on a particular program within a specified time frame, they will be able to guarantee that all residents have similar opportunities, he said.
"'Who' and 'when' were our two main concerns," he said. "The programmer needs a target audience and a timely topic. You don't do a program on homesickness in May."
Under the new changes, resident assistants are provided with summaries of all educational programs. Each summary provides them with all the basic information on a subject, which cuts down the amount of repetitive research that is done before a presentation.
Although some resident assistants expressed concern to Van Arsdel that the new system may limit their creativity, he said it may in fact provide more room for it.
"Hopefully, they will find that they actually have more time to be creative. They won't have to recreate the wheel every time they plan a program," he said.
Several resident assistants and hall directors asked about the changes said they were unable to comment, directing all questions to Van Arsdel.
Van Arsdel said Residence Life would have to wait until at least October to seriously evaluate the effectiveness of the new approach.
"The new system is not going to be perfect," he said. "We will have to make some changes along the way."
He said he hopes the changes will allow the department to put a greater focus on the quality of its academic programming.
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