Warren Transfer Living Learning Community (LLC)

Warren Residential Life is the only area to have a living learning community (LLC) dedicated to integrating Warren Transfer students into the college itself. Interested in being an RA for this LLC? Learn more about this unique community here: https://warren.ucsd.edu/res-life/Transfer-LLC.html 

Warren Res Life promotes an inclusive, engaging, and enriching college experience. Being a part of the RA staff ensures an advancement of not only your leadership and soft skills, but it also ensures a friend group for life. Being a Warren RA means gaining a group of people that you share common values with. 

1. How do you handle school and personal activities?

A lot of RAs will have other commitments in addition to the job and classes. Most people seem to be successful through intentional use of scheduling tools and apps (planners, calendars, electronic reminders and notifications, etc.). Good advice is not to commit to too many things—if you’re involved in clubs and organizations across campus, you may have to attend those groups less or take breaks from them until you figure out the balance if you become an RA.

We expect that you prioritize your time in this order: 1. taking care of your physical/mental health; 2. focusing on class and schoolwork; 3. completing all RA responsibilities; 4. work for other jobs and/or participation in other campus orgs and clubs 

2. What does it look like to have an on-campus job and an RA position? Who do I contact to work out these details? 

Like it was mentioned in the info session, the cap is at 10 hours for other campus jobs if you become an RA. We want to make sure you aren’t over-committed as the RA job can be quite exhausting at times. Because the RA role also averages 19.5 hours a week, getting too close to full-time status at the university would also require payout of vacation and sick leave benefits, which your other campus departments would need to pay (and this is generally an issue since not many offices can afford that). If you have another job and become an RA, you would need to let your RA supervisor know, and if you wanted to work more than 10 hours at your other campus job(s), your RA supervisor would need to approve that.

3. What type of training will be expected of an RA? What would be the date we'd have to come back in the summer?

As we mentioned in the info session, RA training occurs at the end of summer before residents move back onto the campus for the school year. We typically begin around Labor Day, and RAs are able to move in during the days leading up to the first day of training. Then we continue with training until early student move-in around mid-September. The training schedule is pretty packed, and we typically work from 9AM to 5PM. Please remember not to commit to any jobs, internships, vacations, etc. that would overlap with RA training--you cannot continue in the role if you don't attend training in full. We cover various sessions that will teach the team how to perform all aspects of the role during this time. In general, it is a combination of lecture/presentation-style and role playing/direct practice. Review the job description for an idea of the topics that are included. During the school year, we will also have continued training during the weekly staff meetings to refresh the team’s memory or cover new topics if issues arise that we didn’t necessarily discuss during the summer training.

4. During the meeting, we discussed RAs leaving campus during the weekends and vacation periods. Is there a specific amount of time per week that RAs are expected to be available to their residents?

There isn’t necessarily a prescribed amount of time RAs need to be available. We trust the staff to manage their time appropriately against classes and other commitments, and that also means creating and maintaining an atmosphere where residents feel their RA is reasonably available and accessible if they have issues they need help with. This is why we restrict RAs working too many additional hours at other jobs and internships that could cause the RA to be away from their community for significant portions of the week. During holidays and weekends for the most part (with the exception of duty shifts during weekends), we don’t expect RAs will be working.

5. If I'm an RA in an apartment, how would I pick people to room with?

If you’re assigned to live in an apartment, we would reach out to you to ask if you have any preferences for roommates. Those students would need to sign an agreement that they are aware you are an RA, but otherwise, our housing assistant and HDH would get them set up with the contract. You will still live in a single room by yourself, and depending on the building, your roommates would be in their own double or singles. You may only request to live with students who are guaranteed, meaning they have gone through the room selection process and already have a signed contract at the time you ask them to live in your RA apartment.

6. How does the interaction amongst professional staff and other RAs look like on a daily to weekly basis?

Typically, RAs will meet with their ADRL supervisor on a regular basis (up to twice a month/every other week) for a 1:1 and during the weekly staff meetings. During 1:1s, the RAs have a space to check in with their supervisor and share how they are doing with class and RA work. If any additional support is needed, this is an appropriate time to ask for help. Generally, this meeting is also used to get to know RAs individually. Then as other situations may arise, RAs will likely work with their supervisor to resolve those issues and may schedule additional check in meetings. During staff meetings, we usually share updates on upcoming events or work tasks, present ongoing training sessions, and engage in teambuilders led by other RAs to create stronger bonds among the team. Lastly, the pro staff in the office are also available for assistance regarding event planning and execution so an individual RA’s schedule may determine how often they interact with the other pro staff.

RAs will likely interact with each other much more often in any given week due to event planning meetings or if there’s an issue occurring in your building that will require you to consult with each other to properly address everything. You will also have about 6-7 duty shifts scheduled a quarter, so you’d be spending between 6-8 hours with your duty partner per shift. The RAs tend to be social, as well, so it’s common RAs will spend time with each in non-work settings.

7. What are all the committees within the RA job?

In addition to the core responsibilities of the job, we supplement that work with various committees so RAs can exercise/learn different skills. For this year, these are the committee options that Warren RAs could choose from:

Fall/Winter/Spring Command Performance (CP) – CP is the name of our large-scale events that typically have a cultural theme to them. In the past, these committees have planned events such as Dia De Los Muertos, Lunar New Year, Holi, and Diwali. Each quarter has a different committee that will plan the event for the term.

Community Development Interns – this group coordinates the evacuation drill that occurs in fall quarter and assigns work shifts for various tasks, such as when winter break room checks occur and when campus closes at the end of the spring, in addition to when Sun God occurs as we have RAs working on their respective campuses during that time. this group will also staff the Warren Res Life table at Triton Day and sit in on HDH Appeals committee meetings. lastly, the Community Development Interns will regularly update our RA Handbook resource for RAs to reference throughout the year.

RA Staff Bonding– this group is devoted to helping the team create stronger interpersonal relationships to enhance working relationships. They are tasked with planning and executing fun events meant only for RAs and also taking/collecting pictures for a staff scrapbook. So far this year, this group planned a trip to the Haunted Trails at Balboa Park during Halloween.

OTMs/Rezzies/Recognition – OTM stands for Of The Month, which is a recognition movement across campus and various other universities throughout the country. OTMs are submissions that can show appreciation for specific people or events and highlight achievements, and winning nominations are selected each month. Because so much good work happens on campus, this is one system we use in Reslife to recognize all the amazing efforts of RAs (and other student groups/staff). The Rezzies is an award ceremony at the end of the year for Reslife, and similar to OTM nominations, people can submit recognition of work/people from the entire year to be recognized.

Warren Word Podcast and Newsletter – this group is focused on sharing important and fun updates with the community. Most of the updates released so far have been in newsletter format to highlight upcoming events, but we are preparing to record podcast episodes that will feature guests and fun and engaging topics in addition to sharing updates to Warren residents.

RA Selection Committee – this group is made up of RAs who are planning to graduate at the end of the year. They provide their perspective as students on the RA interview/application process and assist with info sessions and interviews.

Warren Garden – this group focuses on increasing awareness for the garden at Warren and planning events that are sustainability-focused. They also collaborate with the Warren Grow group, another student org at Warren.

WRC – WRC stands for Warren Residential Council, which is a student-led group that focuses on event planning and helping Warren residents build community through fun programs. RAs in this committee support the group with event execution and administrative processes, like funding requests and purchasing. HDH Appeals refers to tasks and meetings with HDH that RAs may be asked to assist with.

WCSC Representative – WCSC stands for Warren College Student Council. We have an RA rep attend their regular meetings to provide updates on what the RA team is doing, and the rep then brings updates from WCSC to our weekly RA staff meetings.

8. I'm just curious, but what are the most common problems that RAs deal with?

In terms of resident support, helping resolve maintenance issues is common, but it’s typically assisting with roommate conflicts. RAs may meet with residents individually or facilitate group mediations to try finding lasting solutions. Of course, depending on the issues, this can be time-consuming. Otherwise, RAs will also regularly encounter possible policy violations when serving on-call afterhours (noise, smoking/vaping, alcohol, etc.). With other areas of the role, RAs may also have to work at their time management and prioritization against other responsibilities, like class and clubs, especially if they are in their first year as an RA. There are also a lot of different rules and policies to learn that we teach during training at the beginning of the year that RAs are eventually expected to know, but our office tries to take the approach that RAs will learn on the job as they are able to practice different tasks and projects. We do expect that staff members devote the proper time and energy to engage with the material so they can reliably recall information or at least know where to look to find it. A couple of the more complicated administrative procedures RAs work through regularly include submitting event proposals and checking out their university credit cards for purchasing.