Residential Life

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Use Case:  In the Dorms

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There's a lot that happens in university housing, starting with the everyday
life of student residents - their excitement and disappointments,

triumphs and challenges large and small. The hall or residential living

directors and residential assistants (RAs) help them navigate it all.

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Hire the best staff. Does your residential life department have its own 

process for identifying, interviewing, hiring, evaluating, and rehiring the best

RAs? Starting with the basic tools already in eLife, Colibri can customize an RA management process that suits your programs and your priorities.

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Give staff the tools they need. eLife lets residential life staff manage and record their everyday activities, including dorm access and entry logs and visual persona non grata lists to keep people out who have no business in the dorms. Directors and RAs can also see all the basic information about their residents and print dorm rosters for each building. Did somebody forget their key card and the combination to their front door? We've got that covered. Need a weekly report of nightly hall activities? No problem. Need to know the COVID-19 vaccine status of your residents? Absolutely.

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Track important interactions. Brief but important interactions happen between staff and residents every single day. Staff can record these interactions within eLife and refer back to a history for follow-ups and future conversations. Residential life supervisors will have a handle on the relationships between staff and students on an ongoing basis.

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Manage housing council activities. eLife also records housing council meetings, including leadership, agendas, minutes, attendance, and even audio and video recordings. Do residents get housing priority based on their participation in dorm life and leadership? eLife has tools for tracking every resident's involvement and gives them the appropriate credit for it.

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EXAMPLE: Yvette is a senior at Miskatonic University and an RA in Baker Hall. She is officially on duty on Monday and Saturday nights but she makes a point of speaking with the residents in her dorm to see how they're adjusting to life on campus, to resolve any issues or conflicts, and to get ideas for dorm events and initiatives. Yvette is also the residential council secretary.

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As a second year RA, there are two records of her RA interview and review process in eLife entered by the Baker Hall director and the assistant director of housing.

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During her Monday night shift in the RA office, she meets with one of the new residents to discuss dorm life. In eLife, she enters a record of the conversation. It appears in her nightly report and is referenced in the resident's student record. She leaves herself a reminder in eLife to follow up with the resident in the coming weeks.

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On Tuesday, Yvette takes attendance at the residential council and enters the meeting minutes in eLife along with an audio recording. Each participant receives housing priority for their attendance at residential council meetings. eLife adds credits to student records for event participation, volunteer activities, athletics, and academic achievement. 

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Use Case: Tracking Room Damage

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Students can be exuberant - and at times even rowdy. Occasionally, things

get broken, and somebody has to pay for them. Do you need to document

room damage or other incidents on an ongoing or end-of-term basis?

 

eLife's incident and damage billing tools let you log the incident and

document it with photos and video. You can then bill individual students or

spread charges across all the students involved and tie any charges back

to their bursar accounts. 

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EXAMPLE: It's Saturday, and some residents in Baker Hall meet in John and Seth's room to watch a game. Seth and another student start tossing a football around the room. Unfortunately, neither of them is the starting quarterback, and they break a lamp. On Monday, Seth reports the accident to the hall director, who takes pictures of the broken lamp and records the incident in eLife.  

 

At the end of the term, eLife generates a bill for the damage (split between the two students involved), and the charges are added automatically to each of their student accounts.

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Contact us to learn the many ways you can take advantage of eLife and to discuss your specific needs.