Our assistant directors are seasoned master's level professionals who oversee our residents communities. We have two assistant directors of residential education, one who oversees Julia Sears and Crawford and another who oversees McElroy Presca and stadium Heights. Contact information can be found on our website homepage under the staff directory.

We ask that you please don't call our hall directors or our community advisors. Our policies are in the residential life student guide. You can find this on our website right now. And we also put printed copies in student rooms, um, that your student will find there when they move in and our policies apply to every residence community, including our apartment community stadium Heights, our students have rights and responsibilities.

Their responsibilities include. Following our policies just as you and I can't say to a highway patrol person, I didn't know what the speed limit was. Therefore, I'm not responsible. A student, a student is responsible to know and to follow our policies. We expect students to leave situations where university policies are being violated.

Oftentimes a student will say, Oh, I just got there. And our rooms are about 170 square feet. So if a student walks into a room and other students are drinking alcohol, or if there are drugs in the room, it's not hard to figure it out. So we ask students to leave those situations immediately for our staff approach, the situation and your students in the room.

Our staff will document that student. And in the meeting that the student has later, they can discuss their role. We, uh, we expect students to cooperate with university staff. We also expect students to educate their guests. Students are responsible for their guests behaviors. So if your student is inviting friends from home or friends from another campus to come down for a weekend, and if that student comes and thinks they have carte blanche to be really crazy, the student, your student is who will be held accountable for that behavior.

We also ask students to report suspicious behavior. This is really hard for first year students because. You know, there's a spree decor that students don't want to be the person who tells on somebody else. So this may be a role that you play sometimes if you're hearing from the, from your student, that there's a problem on the floor, and you're wondering why we haven't done anything to respond.

It's possible that we don't know about it. And so we would welcome you to call us, let us know, give us as much information as you have. Who, what, when, where, and we'll approach the behavior.

There's no student who goes out and rounds up 12 matching cans of beer. So there are some things that we have come to know over time. And if a student has empty alcohol containers in their room, it is most likely they've consumed that alcohol there. So that's one of our violations hosting other people in a student's room with alcohol present because the person who is hosting is.

Creating an environment where they're helping other people violate a policy or encouraging others to violate a policy. And then another example is being in a room where alcohol or containers are present. University responses include. Alcohol education programs. Um, and these, these have a price and the price is not intended as a fine, it is the price that it costs to deliver the alcohol education program.

Um, but as a parent, um, I'm always interested in what's the worst case scenario. So I'm going to share that with you now, a worst case scenario for a student is housing contract termination. So this is where we say. Hey student, we had a contract with you and that contract has behavioral expectations and you've broken your end of the contract.

So you don't get to live with us anymore. In that case, a student owes us 50% of the remaining room balance. When, when might this happen? Well, it would be, um, typically not a first offense, but if it's a first offense, that's threatening personal safety of others in the residence halls, then it could happen at that point.

Um, if a student is hosting, um, parties in their own room, then the second hosting offense would be the time that we would say we met with you the first time we advised you not to do this again. So now you may no longer do this after, after a second offense or, or repeated lesser offenses. Now I want to share with you that we communicate with students in writing.

And we do that through a website where all of the letters we've sent them. They have access to, we send letters that say, Hey, we're going to have a meeting with you. And this is what the meeting is about. After the meeting, we send a letter that says, We had the meeting and here's the outcome and you have an opportunity to appeal.

So a student can appeal, a parent may join a student and an appeal meeting if the student invites them. So as a parent, what I would encourage you to do is to talk with your student about what your hopes and expectations are for them and share with them that you have made mistakes as well and ask them.

Would they be willing to let you know when they make a mistake? Not so you can yell at them, but so that you can help them. Because of course this time of going away to college as a time of trying new things and you want to support them as they do that experimentation, you are more likely to hear from them.

If you approach it that way, if you tell your student, if you get in trouble, so help me, this is what I'll do to you. Um, they will be fearful of you and they will not want to tell you. And so they may reach a, uh, an outcome like a housing contract termination, uh, without informing you. So I encourage you to ask them, would you be willing to share with me if you get in trouble so that I may assist you?

Other drugs. When I talk about other drugs, I'm most specifically talking about the use of marijuana and marijuana has certainly had a growing acceptance in our, in our society currently though on our campus use of marijuana or drug paraphernalia is a violation of our policy smelling of pot. Because they used it someplace else, whether on campus or off campus is also a violation of our policy for individuals who become involved in dealing drugs on our campus, through our conduct process, they can minimally expect to no longer have the opportunity to live on campus.

We partner with the stadium, heights security, university security, the Mankato police and the Minnesota river drug task force in enforcement of drug related issues. Another Area of conflict that sometimes emerges is sexual relationship. And I'd like to talk just a little bit about how those unfold, a sexual relationship might unfold because a person sharing a room is uniquely impacted when a sexual relationship is occurring and residential life is often the last person to know about it.

Currently every floor gets to vote at the start of the year about visitation. And in my 20 some years on our campus, every floor, every year that's voted for 24 hour visitation. I recognize that if we asked parents to vote, that might look a little different than what our students are voting, but every year, every floor votes for 24 hour visitation currently overnight, guests are allowed for up to three consecutive nights.

With the approval of the roommate. So that is why res life is the last to know we aren't approving the overnight guest. The roommate is. And so you might be frustrated that your student is describing that's a roommate continues to have someone in their space. And you're wondering why residential life is not doing anything about it.

We might not know because we're assuming that approval has been granted. And so if that approval hasn't been granted, encourage your student to ask the roommate to stop the behavior or have your student contact our staff. And we will work with them on solutions to address the issue I'd like to add an adendum to this section about guests in light of COVID.

Currently overnight guests are not allowed to the COVID safety measures and students are limited to one guests in their room between the hours of 8:00 AM and midnight. Now, if this changes prior to move in, we will share that information with students, mental health. We are living in an age when, um, a student can have a mental health diagnosis and a treatment plan.

They can come to college, they can get a degree, they can pursue a profession, marry, have children and be successful in life. This is fantastic. Um, So we have students, many students who come to college with a preexisting diagnosis of a mental health concern, maybe depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or any other thing.

I encourage you to plan for continuation of care. We have resources on the campus and in the community we have student health services. We have a counseling center. We have an accessibility resources office. Um, Let's talk about that student identity thing that I brought up a while ago, where a student is deciding who they are for students who have had a mental health diagnosis in high school, they may feel like they want to reinvent themselves in college and no longer be the person who has depression or no longer be the person who has bipolar disorder.

And they may feel like, okay, I'm going to stop taking my medication and I'm going to stop seeing my therapist. And I'm just going to change my mind. For mental health concerns. Um, our behavioral health concerns, the mind and the body are connected. It's not that simple. I think we would all agree that you can't just decide you're going to stop taking your insulin for your diabetes and hope that that's going to work out.

Okay. Um, so when students come to college, a lot of things. That affects their basic health change. They typically have a different sleeping schedule, a different eating pattern. They now have a new boss. They have new friends, um, all of the things about how they're. Body works in space and time are different.

And so not only is it good to plan for continuation of care, they ...

And so that might be a group therapy. It might be an education class. It might be individual counseling, or it might be an agency here in our community. Our accessibility resources office supports students with disabilities and works with documenting those disabilities and getting the correct accommodations in place, both in the residence halls and in students' coursework.

Our university security office is. Available 24 seven. They always have staff here on campus. They're a close partner for residential life. There are a number which I would encourage you to put in your cell phone and I would encourage you to have your student put in their cell phone. The university security phone number is 507-389-2111 if you're looking for the number later, please go to MNSU university security and their webpage will pop up and you'll see the number and you can put it in your phone then and have your student put it in their phone prior to making that phone call to us. I'm going to ask you to do something that might be difficult.

I'm going to ask you to take a couple deep breaths and be aware of the emotions that you're bringing to the conversation. If you can hold onto this thought that your son or daughter intentionally, or perhaps unintentionally might not be telling you the whole story that might serve you well in that conversation.

And if the first things that you're sharing with us, when you call our, my lawyer and some F-bombs. We've now created a new conflict. And so we're going to have to work through that new conflict before we can actually get to the point of why you call what we're going to do though. When you call, even if it's emotionally charged, is we're going to listen to what your concerns are about your students or other's behavior, and we'll help create a plan for addressing the concern.

We'll give you a good idea in general of what's going on, but we can't always give you specifics based on data privacy. But my style is to give you enough information and you can connect the dots between what normally happens or what might not be, what might be experiencing. You will know our next steps.

Okay, we might provide you some thoughts on what. You're doing next. But we might also provide we will also share with you what our next steps are and our next steps might be letting your student know that you contacted us to share a concern. Some of the options that we can offer to a student is it might be a conversation with your students.

Perhaps you're calling us to share that your student isn't connecting well with others in the floor, in the hall. In that scenario, we're not going to run up and go meet with your kid and say, Hey, your mom just called us and said, you're not connecting well with people. So we're going to try to connect you with people.

We're not going to operate that way, but if you could provide us with some insight into what your student is interested in and how they like to spend your time. We can indirectly coordinate some of those exercises and activities to try to get your student connected. Perhaps your student is in a conflict with someone, and that might be the roommate or somebody else on the floor.

Our staff can help mediate those conversations and our staff can also help your student practice what they might share with the individual that they have a concern with. Changing rooms is also a possibility. Um, and we can talk with that student about options to change rooms. Now, oftentimes a student thinks the other person should always move a never them.

And that frame is one way to look at it. Another frame to look at it as if there's a space to change rooms, we can make that happen in a day or two. And then your student is in a different they're in a different environment that can contribute to their success. Finally, sometimes the behavior might or could result in student conduct charges for us to move forward in the student conduct process and individual who observed the behavior needs to be willing to put in writing what they observed.

Oftentimes that's our staff, but sometimes that might be a student reporting information about another student. We're not able to follow up and conduct from a third party phone call. And while that might be frustrating for you, if your student is experiencing that, it's also a benefit for your student as well, because a parent who calls us about a concern about your student doesn't automatically trigger us into a conduct process.

Throughout all of the conduct process piece, we do everything in writing. There's a hearing notification letter that goes to the student's email address. And there's also a decision letter that goes to their email address. So students have access to information. If they ever tell you that they don't know what happened, or there was never a decision, or they're not sure what really unfolded.

They might not be telling you the full story, because we always provide that documentation in writing throughout all of these pieces, data, privacy is important and our goal is to work within the law. In addition to working within the law, though, we respect your student's growing independence and self responsibility.

And so we're going to continue to refer you to your student for follow up. We're not going to contact you again to say, Hey, we met with your student. Here's what we all told them. Here's what they all told us. Here's what we agreed to do. We'll refer you to your student for follow-up. If. The situation doesn't seem to resolve itself where it doesn't appear to be moving as quickly as you had hoped or they had hoped it is okay to give us a call back, share with you what share with us, what you know, what you've learned and insights you might have and that might help us develop a different strategy.

Moving forward, successful experience at start of our podcast, we shared a little bit about the goals of student success. In closing, there are a couple elements that I'd like to highlight. Conflicts can be more successfully addressed when they are addressed early. You all know that based on your lived experience, but students who are in this phase of emerging adulthood may not always see it that way.

So anything that you can do to help them take on some conflicts that they are experiencing more early in their experience will help them overall, both academically on our campus and also in the connection and relationship building second, as your student encounters and successfully resolved challenges ahead of them.

They become more competent as adults if I jumped forward. And I think about job search interviews and what individuals are looking for in that workforce, in terms of employees, conflict resolution skills consistently are a skillset. Employers are looking for. And finally students have a lot of resources to draw on and parents and guardians can also utilize those resources as well.

We have well over a hundred student and professional staff members in residential life who are then well connected to hundreds of other professionals on our campus, who all support students in their role of development related to identity, independence, and intimacy.

Each student is raised differently and at times this can cause friction. Now keep in mind that college is a time for learning and growth. So it's normal for roommates to change during their time together, as they grow into independent adults.

To begin let's talk about the moment your son or daughter receives a roommate assignment. I have one do for you and I have one don't so let's just go ahead. We'll start with the don't. All right. So when your student gets a roommate assignment, there's one thing I don't want you or your student to do. I don't want you guys to immediately swarm the roommates social media profiles.

Okay. Or Google them. The reason I'm asking you not to do this is because it can lead to incorrect assumptions which could potentially ruin a [00:01:00] chance for a successful roommate relationship. If you think about what you see you see on a social media profile what you're seeing is just a highlight, not the whole picture.

Okay. You can think about your son or daughter's social media presence. Do they share all the good and all the bad? Probably not. Right. Right. So we're going to ask you not to make those assumptions and not to jump to conclusions on the character of the student based on what you just see online. Okay. We're going to ask you to give that student a chance.

Now in terms of the one thing I do want you to do when your student gets the roommate assignment, is this okay? I want you to strongly encourage your student to call their roommate, to introduce themselves and begin the process of getting to know each other. Now I know cool calling a stranger, maybe hard to [00:02:00] do, and it might seem old fashioned, especially for this generation.

But they're going to get a better feel for their roommate doing this instead of sending a text message. In fact, 60% of our students who lived with us this school year, they told us that they had their first meaningful conversation with their roommate regarding shared expectations and what they needed from each other.

They have that conversation before they moved in. Or on their first day living together. So here's my advice to do have your student skip the text and have them make the call.

Next. Let's talk about roommate concerns. Now. Unfortunately, your student's roommate is not going to be able to read your son or daughter's mind. Problems will arise in that's to be expected.

What's [00:03:00] important is that roommates openly discuss these small conflicts as they come up, instead of letting it bottle up. Now, when it comes to roommate conflicts that I know we can usually trace it back to you is a lack of communication. So learning how to work through a conflict. We know that takes some courage and it takes some practice as well.

But most of all, it takes both roommates working together to fix the problem. Now we can tell you from firsthand experience that students avoiding those little small conflicts avoiding it is not going to make it go away. All right. Oftentimes that can only make the situation worse. So what I want you to know as a parent is that our staff are willing to help coach your student through those difficult roommate conversations in the event that they need some reinforcement or support.

Now after students move [00:04:00] in, we will provide each roommate pair some conversation topics for them to talk about. And then also during the fourth week of class, we will have students sit down together with a roommate and complete a roommate agreement. So these are great tools for students to really sit down and to have that conversation about what's okay to share when's it okay.

To have guests who's going to clean up the space, et cetera. So those are some tools that we'll put in place once your student arrives. Now, a lot of times parents want to know about They want to know how many students have roommate conflicts or roommate problems. What I want to tell you is from 2020, the academic year 85% of residents reported either they didn't have any roommate conflicts or when they did have conflicts, they talked with the roommate about the issue.

So again Talking with the [00:05:00] roomate is going to solve a lot of the issues along the way. There are very few students that decide to pursue a room change as a result of a roommate situation gone bad. So just keep that in mind, most of these can be resolved with a little bit of work from both parties.

So you may be wondering when your student will receive their roommate assignment and the answer is it depends. If your student applied for housing. By the April 2nd priority deadline, your student will be eligible to choose their own roommate, April 5th, through the 26 in the housing and dining portal.

Through a process that we call roommate matching. If your student is eligible for this process, information will be emailed to them about how it works so that they can pick their own roommate. If your [00:06:00] student applied for housing after April 2nd. They will be assigned to a room in a roommate and they can expect to receive the room and roommate assignment in June and July.

So as soon as our department makes an assignment for students, it's going to show up right away in the housing and dining portal. So if your son or daughter is ever wondering if an assignment was made. That's where I would redirect them to check first. Additionally, when we make those assignments in the summer, we will also send an email to the student so that they're notified that way as  well.

Lastly, let's talk about room changes. Now, if your student is interested in making a change to their room assignment, or their roommate assignment, before they move in the process that they're going to want to utilize for that is called the wishlist request form.

Yes. [00:07:00] I said wishlist.  In a nutshell, what this process does is that it allows students to tell us what they're hoping to change their room or said wishlist.  In a we're able to make that happen, we will information about the wishlist process will be available on our website beginning in may.

So you can check there for the forum and for any other relevant information. Now after your student moves in the first chance I'll have to change rooms is during room change days. And so room change days takes place after the second week of class. And during this time, students can basically select any available space at that time.

And when we approve the room change, they can start moving in a matter of days. Okay. Um, after room change days is over. We still allow students to change rooms. They can continue to do that. Until about the [00:08:00] end of the fall semester, we do have a deadline generally three weeks before the end of the semester is kind of when we'll cut off the ability for students to change rooms.

But so there's gonna be many weeks. In both the fall semester. And the spring semester to change the room assignment. If that is something that your student is looking to do now, for students who are interested in a single room, what I can tell you is that we have very limited single rooms on our main campus.

You'll probably find the highest percentage of single rooms at stadium Heights due to our. Reduced occupancy due to COVID. So that may be something that you consider checking out for. Students who are looking for their own space. Students during the school year can always add their name to this single room waitlist.

So in the eve...

We're excited to have as a part of our university, because it adds another really important thread to the fabric of our campus and everything. Today I'm joined by Jacy Fry, Jacy I'm gonna let you share your official title and everything here. But she is our campus expert on all things international students.

And so she's going to share a little bit more today in our conversation about how we support international students, the work we do to both recruit them and retain them and everything. And well, you'll see, as you listen to it more, so Jacy please share with us, uh, who you are, what you do here at the university.

Jacy Fry: Sure. Thanks. David I'm Jacy Fry and I'm the director of the Kearney International center at Minnesota State, Mankato, and our office was probably, I would say the most fun office to work on because we are always busy and always helping students we recruit international students from all over the world from our desks, you know, boots on the ground abroad.

And we also provide them support services. When they're here on campus. So we do programming, you know, retention activities, orientation put on huge events; singing, dancing, and food. And we also support our students, when they graduate and then stay in the US on their visa and look for employment, so we get to really build some deep connections with students as they're preparing to get here and all the way past graduation, which is pretty neat.

David Jones: I would think so. Gosh, so, international is one of those areas that, that you really get to be a specialist within it and such. So career-wise how did you find yourself working with international students?

Jacy Fry:  Great question. I would say I've been fond of international students back to when I was in high school.

I'd befriended students all the time. And and then that carried on to college. When I started my graduate program at university of South Dakota back in the early 2000's, I had to do an internship. And at that point I was working in academic affairs and I was a study abroad advisor and yeah I liked that, but I really liked working with international students when I had to give them placement testing out of academic affairs.

And so I decided to do my internship by shadowing the international student advisor there, and what, the best way for me to learn the job to essentially make. How to be a international student advisor for dummies book, you know, just a survival guide, and it was a blast. I learned so much. And it was actually perfect timing because I graduated that year in August, and in October, the international student advisor had taken the job.

And so she had just spent that an entire semester training me on how to do her job. And I just walked right into this. 

David Jones: Oh, that's excellent. Well, I count ourselves super lucky to have you in this role here at Minnesota state, it's just expertise in the energy and creativity you bring to it, it's just been phenomenal. So thanks, and I think our listeners will totally believe that as well as you share a little bit more about the work you've been doing this past year in particular, how impactful it's been. So if anything, um, your area's really been, one might easily make the argument, that has been the most impacted by the pandemic because of our relationship with both our international students who are in Minnesota, as well as those across the world that have wanted to come study here.

Know. So how has the pandemic changed the way you're doing your work?

Jacy Fry:  Yeah, so, you know, we really had in the past three pandemic really thrived on that in-person connection with students.

 Our office in terms becomes their home away from home. And we have a chance to really get to know our students. And if they're in the building we would swing by and buy a cup of coffee and, and chat with our front desk well, March 2020 that ended.

And so we had to quickly figure out how we could try and keep that connection to the students, but do it virtually and Our advisors quickly made all of their advising sessions online and started having more open sessions where students could pop in and ask questions as they needed to try and still make that easy access still there for students.

Um, recruiting. I mean, I, I send staff abroad 8 to 10 weeks a semester. And I had to call a staff person home she's in the Philippines and saying that it's time to come home, and you know, we stopped her recruitment trip one-third in. And so we had to figure out how we could still get our name out there, and tell our story with good students from our desks at our homes.

And so, we had to learn having to use technology a little differently, we paid more closer attention to time zones, and when we could reach those students, when they we're awake, not necessarily when we would be awake. And then we also had to figure out how we could still support our students who had enough time to return home right after the pandemic had started so that they could continue their studies online from home and be with their families during the global pandemic.

So it was always moving. I have a fantastic team that really took it on and I think we'll be successful maintaining those relationships with our students and then continuing to build new ones.

David Jones:  It totally makes sense. Is your did you find as you're interacting with different with students from different parts of the world, did it require different solutions or.

Jacy Fry: Yeah that's notable questions for sure. You know, we have students in countries where, you know, Internet's not a problem. It works all the time, every time. And then we were working with students from other countries where they had blackouts for days. And so, you know, the university shifted to online delivery.

And if the student had gone home to be with her family and they were in blackout they could not even let the professor know that there was this blackout and that they weren't attending because it absolutely couldn't and it wasn't because they chose not to. I just think that time-zone thing is huge, because it's hard to ask the student to get up at two in the morning to meet you know? Who knows what they're doing at home, because. As economies and as community started closing down you know, they were experiencing what we were, but it was hitting them differently because maybe their parents owned a small shop, and that was their only income, and so there's suddenly wondering how are we going to pay our bills next month? And so to take on all of that stress, as well as from study online 14 hours I think we just had to pour a lot of advice out there.

David Jones:  I just can't imagine that. I mean, I, I saw it. We both have kids, you know, at home or trying to study as well during, during this as well as we're trying to support them.

Um, I was somewhat fortunate, had a high school, senior and junior, and they're pretty self sufficient, you know, to...