Does your institution utilize front desk assistants in residential halls or other school housing properties?

Do you employ Resident Assistants (RAs) as part of your residential life team? If so, do they work as front desk assistants as part of their duties?

How frequently do your desk assistants receive training?

How long do annual/semesterly trainings typically take?

What training formats do you use? 

Do trainings typically occur in-person, virtually or hybrid?

Is there any additional information or resources you’d be willing to share regarding your training process or staffing model?

Faith Bragg, University of Akron, frb8@uakron.edu

Yes! We call them Community Assistants (CA's) for our residence hall desks or Desk Student Assistants (DSA's) if they work in the main office

We have 8 residence halls that are all grouped together differently. North quad consists of: Bulger, Spanton and HCORR. Across campus we have South/Exchange. Our final grouping is Ritchie (main office, extra duties such as keys), Sisler and Spicer. Each CA/RA is assigned to one main group (aka Spicer) but they may work in any of the other buildings in that group (Ritchie, Sisler, or Spicer) as long as their minimum hours are met in their main assignment.

1 week, 1st week of the semester

Canvas/Teams Modules;Large In-person Sessions;Small In-hall Trainings;Virtual Sessions;

We send out an online training through thinkific (that they have access to all year as a resource) that is sent out before the semester begins. They must complete this within the first week of their starting employment (first week of the semester). To follow this up, we have a welcome week training that is in person as well. Throughout the year we have no less than 3 "in-service" meetings that can be either virtual or in-person (depending on the department need). These are used as bench points to assess where we are as a community and what needs improvement. It is a space that is used as updated training, communication and feedback from their end to make sure all needs are met.
Typically we will hold these online to support the students schedule but if we have a lot to go over, or if we see an issue that needs attention we host in person to ensure the message is received.

Our CA's are the first and last person that a resident sees when entering or leaving a building. They have a mix of responsibilities, but their primary focus is safety and community connection. They check residents ID's as they enter (labeled by colored stickers) to make sure they live in the current building. If they do not, they are stopped and asked to sign in. To sign in, a valid resident must be present and with the guest at ALL times. They assit with underage guest policy enforcement, write Incident Reports when a fire alarm goes off, and much more. We also have a routing system for lock outs set up. If it is during business hours and the resident is appropriately dressed, they are sent to our main housing office for a temp. Key. If it is after hours, it is the CA's job to call the RA on duty or one of our 24/7 Professional staff members to assist.

I have attached a semi-outdated CA job description for your viewing. Hope that helps! I am currently working on a mini revamp as well and can keep you updated if interested.
A large part of what I do alongside this is focus on student and staff retention/success. I have 3 Desk Managers who help me oversee our service desks. We work together to plan and host professional development and mindfulness events that all student employees are welcome to attend. I believe we are all people first, and a lot of us are students, so I want to make sure we are cared for. Doing this allows us to have a more bonded staff community and helps them feel seen and supported. Doing this also helps give them a boost to do the same for their residence hall communities.
Thinkific! It is a wonderful website that can hold a lot and is free for the students to use (if your department buys one account as a "teacher"). You can upload pdf files, create slide shows, post videos, track student progress etc.
This is the training we use in the beginning of each semester and is their resource guide. We monitor access and progress on this and require that it is completed.

Taylor L Edington, Cleveland State University, t.edington@csuohio.edu

Yes, we hire part-time student DAs to staff our desks. Each of our communities has a desk staffed by DAs 8am-12:00am, from 12pm-8am we have a security guard from a company we've contracted with cover the desks (except for one desk we have in a freshman community, which is staff 24/7 by student DAs). Our desks are open 24/7 and cannot be left unattended, even for breaks, so we also utilize our RA on call staff to assist with covering breakings or if a DA does not show up or is late to a shift (we have 2 RAs on call each night for this reason). For open or unattended shifts during business hours, our  professional staff team does our best to split and cover the desk until we can find someone to cover or until the next shift starts.

Yes, we employ RAs. In relation to the desk, our RAs are required to work one 4 hours shift a week at their respective building's desk, which the get paid hourly for. They are also able to pick up additional hours at the desk if they'd like but I find that they really only do this during break times. RAs are also responsible for helping cover breaks or open/dropped/unattended desk shifts while on call (which they can clock in for if they do end up getting called to the desk.)

Yearly;As - Needed/Hired Off-Cycle;

Last year we hosted a training in person for DAs right before move in but it was not well attended. We are currently figuring out a good time to have that first training this year but its difficult as desks have to open for move in and many of our DAs don't move in early

Presentations/Videos;Student Employee How-To Guides;Job Shadowing;

Most of our training is done during shadowing/training shifts with other DAs or RA or our desk manager. They usually have 3 of these training shifts before being left alone

The residence life desks are staffed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The Desk Assistants monitors the traffic that comes in and out of Euclid Commons to ensure that non- residents do not gain access to the community. The Desk Assistant is responsible for checking IDs, signing in all guests, answering informational questions, and transferring incoming phone calls.  They also are the face of our residence halls. They are an important part of the overall operation of the residence hall.

We utilize a point system for job action and accountability. This has been helpful to keep track of areas that DAs need to improve on and see where more training is needed. Its also been helpful when it comes to guiding job action and growth conversations with DAs and potential termination if it reaches that point. I've attached our points system for you to review as well!
We hire "floaters" when we don't have any open shifts, and these are DAs that can help cover open shifts when they are dropped and can help cover permanent shifts if someone is terminated or resigns.
We currently have 3 buildings and all of the desks are operating as independent staffs, so DAs are hired for their specific building and cannot pick up or works shifts at other buildings. We have a student desk manager that oversees our two desks in our freshman building, and our full-time housing operations managers oversee the desks at our upperclassmen communities (in addition to the rest of their role). We have considered combining all of our DAs into one pool/staff so that they can work at all three desks, but each building has some specific things that are building specific and we are worried about cross training and having time/ability to do that. We are also worried about the division of supervision since its split between 3 roles right now, it would be a lot for the part time student desk manager to oversee all of the desks, but also too much for the full-time housing operations team members to add to their plate. We also worry that if given the option, our upperclassmen DAs, will only want to work at the upperclassmen building they live in, which would deplete our staff in the freshman building until we can get enough freshman to backfill which could take a few weeks at the beginning of the semester. I would appreciate any thoughts or experience you have around separate staffs or combined staffs and how to train DAs for multiple buildings that have specific needs.