Required Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in student affairs, higher education, or related field.
At least five (5) years of progressively responsible experience in residence life, residential education, housing, student affairs, or a closely related area.
Significant experience supervising, developing, and evaluating full-time professional staff, including employees who supervise others.
Demonstrated experience providing strategic leadership for a complex residential education or student affairs operation.
Demonstrated success leading organizational change, implementing new systems or practices, and building support across multiple stakeholder groups.
Experience developing and implementing residential learning, student engagement, community development, or student leadership initiatives.
Experience with student conduct, crisis response, student care, behavioral intervention, or emergency management in a college or university environment.
Experience using assessment, operational data, student feedback, and institutional priorities to evaluate programs and guide decision-making.
Demonstrated ability to evaluate organizational structure, workload, functional ownership, and resource allocation and to implement changes that strengthen effectiveness and sustainability.
Demonstrated ability to establish clear standards, procedures, decision rights, and accountability mechanisms across a decentralized or multifaceted organization.
Demonstrated ability to develop and manage productive partnerships with academic, student support, public safety, facilities, conduct, counseling, and other institutional stakeholders.
Demonstrated multicultural competence and the ability to lead inclusive residential communities serving students with varied identities, experiences, and needs.
Advanced knowledge of student development, student learning, organizational development, and contemporary residential education practices.
Demonstrated organizational, analytical, administrative, and problem-solving ability.
Demonstrated ability to communicate effectively with students, families, employees, senior administrators, and campus partners, both orally and in writing.
Ability to exercise sound judgment in complex, sensitive, politically nuanced, and high-impact situations.
Proficiency with contemporary administrative technology, data systems, case-management platforms, and standard office applications.
Ability to work evenings and weekends and respond to significant incidents outside regular business hours when necessary.
Duties & Responsibilities
Strategic Leadership and Organizational Direction:
Establishes and advances a comprehensive vision and strategic direction for Residential Education that aligns with the missions, priorities, and student-success objectives of Residence Life, University Engagement and Student Affairs, and Central Michigan University.
Translates strategic priorities into clear operating expectations, implementation plans, performance measures, staffing responsibilities, timelines, and accountability structures.
Leads the implementation, evaluation, and continuous refinement of the Residential Education strategic plan.
Evaluates emerging student needs, professional standards, institutional trends, legal and regulatory expectations, and peer practices to ensure that the residential education program remains responsive, contemporary, and effective.
Advises the Executive Director on matters involving residential education strategy, organizational structure, staffing, student experience, risk, resource allocation, and institutional policy.
Represents Residential Education in departmental, divisional, University, and external settings and articulates the strategic value of the residential experience to senior leaders and other stakeholders.
Organizational Effectiveness and Sustainable Work Design:
Evaluates the distribution of work across Residential Education to ensure that staffing structures, supervisory relationships, functional assignments, and employee workloads support institutional priorities and sustainable performance.
Clarifies ownership for core functions and ensures that work is assigned at the appropriate organizational level.
Establishes decision-rights frameworks that distinguish matters appropriate for paraprofessional staff, Residence Hall Directors, Assistant Directors, the Director, and the Executive Director.
Identifies duplicative, low-value, unclear, or inconsistently assigned responsibilities and leads efforts to eliminate, consolidate, automate, centralize, or redistribute work.
Develops systems that reduce unnecessary administrative burden and allow professional staff to devote greater capacity to student engagement, supervision, proactive intervention, assessment, and strategic work.
Regularly assesses spans of control, role clarity, staff capacity, and organizational performance and recommends structural or resource changes when needed.
Creates mechanisms for employees to surface operational barriers, recurring challenges, workload concerns, and opportunities for improvement.
Standards, Systems, and Operational Consistency:
Establishes and maintains a coherent framework of foundational Residential Education practices, including written procedures, service standards, documentation expectations, escalation pathways, response protocols, and quality-assurance mechanisms.
Ensures that students receive a reasonably consistent baseline experience across residential communities while preserving appropriate flexibility for community context, innovation, and professional judgment.
Leads the development and periodic review of policies and procedures related to community management, student engagement, supervision, conduct, care, crisis response, desk operations, opening and closing, break housing, transitions, and other Residential Education functions.
Ensures that procedures are accessible, understood, regularly reinforced, and supported through appropriate training and reference materials.
Establishes systems to monitor implementation fidelity, identify variations in practice, address performance gaps, and disseminate effective approaches across the department.
Uses recurring incidents, service failures, student concerns, and staff feedback to identify systemic weaknesses.
Residential Learning, Engagement, and Student Success:
Provides strategic leadership for a comprehensive residential learning and engagement model designed to strengthen student belonging, interpersonal connection, personal development, academic engagement, well-being, leadership capacity, and persistence.
Ensures that residential learning initiatives are grounded in clearly defined outcomes and informed by student-development theory, institutional priorities, assessment findings, and the needs of the residential population.
Guides the implementation and continued development of the residential curriculum and related community-development strategies.
Moves the department from an activity- and volume-oriented model toward an outcomes-oriented approach that prioritizes the quality, relevance, accessibility, and demonstrated impact of residential interventions.
Ensures that engagement strategies include intentional outreach to students who may be disconnected, under-engaged, experiencing transition challenges, or at increased risk of attrition.
Develops partnerships that embed academic support, student-success resources, well-being initiatives, and other institutional services within or in close connection to residential communities.
Promotes meaningful student voice, self-governance, peer leadership, and participation in decisions affecting the residential experience.
Assessment, Data, and Continuous Improvement:
Establishes a comprehensive assessment strategy for Residential Education and ensures that programmatic and operational decisions are informed by credible evidence.
Defines and monitors key performance indicators related to belonging, engagement, learning, staff capacity, response quality, consistency of practice, student satisfaction, retention, and other departmental outcomes.
Uses quantitative and qualitative data to determine which programs, practices, staffing investments, and interventions produce meaningful student outcomes.
Ensures that data are used to improve practice and allocate resources rather than collected solely for reporting purposes.
Produces regular analyses and reports that communicate Residential Education outcomes, emerging trends, areas of risk, resource implications, and recommendations to departmental and divisional leadership.
Creates structured cycles of implementation, measurement, reflection, and adjustment throughout the Residential Education organization.
Collaborates with assessment, institutional research, enrollment, academic, and student-success partners to evaluate the relationship between the residential experience and broader institutional outcomes.
Staff Leadership, Supervision, and Professional Development:
Directly supervises, coaches, evaluates, and develops the Assistant Directors of Residence Life and ensures that they exercise appropriate director-level delegated authority within their assigned portfolios.
Establishes a coherent supervisory philosophy and baseline expectations for supervision throughout Residential Education.
Ensures that supervisors provide employees with clear expectations, regular feedback, developmental coaching, appropriate accountability, and meaningful opportunities for professional growth.
Develops succession capacity and prepares employees to assume broader responsibilities and exercise increasingly complex professional judgment.
Provides strategic oversight for the recruitment, selection, onboarding, retention, performance management, and professional development of Residential Education staff.
Ensures that professional-development investments are differentiated by role and competency and are connected to identified organizational needs.
Builds a learning organization in which employees examine outcomes, share effective practices, acknowledge mistakes, engage in constructive disagreement, and adapt their work based on evidence.
Promotes an organizational culture that combines strong relational trust with clear structures, consistent expectations, accountability, and shared responsibility.
Training and Organizational Preparedness:
Establishes a comprehensive, competency-based training and development strategy for professional and paraprofessional staff.
Ensures that training is practical, role-specific, sequenced appropriately, grounded in adult-learning principles, and connected to the situations employees are expected to manage.
Oversees the development and maintenance of accessible response guides, decision trees, protocols, and other tools that support consistent action.
Evaluates training effectiveness using participant feedback, competency measures, incident reviews, supervisory observations, and operational outcomes.
Ensures that lessons from incidents, after-action reviews, assessment findings, and changing student needs are incorporated into future training.
Student Care, Conduct, Crisis Response, and Risk Management:
Provides strategic oversight for Residential Education’s role in student care, community standards, conduct response, behavioral intervention, and crisis management.
Establishes clear boundaries between Residential Education responsibilities and the responsibilities of CMU CARES, Student Conduct, Counseling, Police, Facilities Management, and other campus units.
Ensures that incident and care reports are accurate, timely, appropriately routed, and reviewed for patterns, quality, consistency, and risk.
Creates and maintains clear escalation pathways for significant student, community, safety, facility, and personnel concerns.
Provides senior-level consultation and decision support during complex, high-risk, or high-impact incidents.
Ensures that Residential Education’s response practices are educational, equitable, trauma-informed, developmentally appropriate, legally compliant, and aligned with University policy.
Leads or participates in after-action reviews and ensures that identified improvements are translated into changes in training, procedure, staffing, communication, or partnership expectations.
Collaborates with appropriate University officials regarding significant student concerns, institutional risk, parent or family communication, media-sensitive matters, and emergency response.
Strategic Partnership Management:
Moves Residential Education from informal relationship management toward an intentional partnership-management model with campus stakeholders whose work directly affects residential students.
Identifies and maintains the department’s portfolio of critical partnerships, including relationships with academic affairs, student success, CMU CARES, counseling, student conduct, public safety, facilities, accessibility services, enrollment management, and other relevant areas.
Defines liaison responsibilities and ensures that employees representing Residence Life in cross-functional relationships have clear authority, expectations, communication responsibilities, and escalation pathways.
Establishes shared service expectations, operating agreements, response standards, meeting structures, and issue-resolution processes with key campus partners when appropriate.
Develops mechanisms for identifying, tracking, escalating, and resolving recurring cross-functional problems.
Uses partnership data, student feedback, response timelines, recurring issue analysis, and stakeholder feedback to evaluate the effectiveness of institutional coordination.
Advocates for changes to external systems and practices that create unnecessary barriers, delays, or frustration for residential students and employees.
Recruitment, Selection, and Talent Management:
Provides strategic oversight for the recruitment and selection of professional, graduate, paraprofessional, and student staff within Residential Education.
Evaluates recruitment and selection practices to ensure they produce capable, diverse, student-centered, and mission-aligned employee teams.
Develops long-term talent pipelines and recruitment strategies responsive to labor-market conditions and institutional staffing needs.
Ensures that selection processes assess the competencies, judgment, adaptability, and leadership capacity required for success in increasingly complex residential environments.
Represents Central Michigan University and Residence Life at appropriate professional recruitment events and develops relationships that strengthen the department’s professional reputation and applicant pool.
Reviews recruitment, retention, vacancy, performance, and employee-experience data and recommends changes to compensation, workload, structure, supervision, professional development, or workplace practices.
Resource Stewardship and Administrative Leadership
Develops and manages budgets, staffing allocations, and other resources assigned to Residential Education.
Aligns resource allocation with strategic priorities, demonstrated student needs, assessed outcomes, institutional risk, and organizational capacity.
Evaluates the effectiveness and return on investment of major programs, staffing models, training efforts, and operational practices.
Identifies the resource implications of new initiatives and clearly communicates associated tradeoffs, opportunity costs, and implementation requirements.
Ensures compliance with University policies, applicable laws and regulations, collective bargaining requirements, professional standards, and sound administrative practices.
Participates in departmental planning related to occupancy, facilities, communications, summer operations, technology, emergency response, and other functions that intersect with the residential student experience.
Additional Responsibilities:
Serves on departmental, divisional, and University committees and work groups as assigned.
Acts on behalf of the Executive Director of Residence Life and Chief Housing Officer in designated matters.
Maintains awareness of contemporary research, legal developments, professional standards, and emerging practices in residential education and student affairs.
Participates in relevant professional associations and represents Central Michigan University within the broader housing and residential education profession.
Performs other duties as assigned.
