Res Life has new faces

YB and Adams bring experience to department

The Office of Residential Life and Services has been bustling with its usual business this year despite several of its most prominent figure heads playing promotional games of musical chairs.

Yeworkwha Belachew (YB) and Ehrai Adams have been placed into interim year-long positions in the wake of Dean of Student Life Charlene Cole-Newkirk's departure last year.

Belachew replaced now Dean of Student Life Deborah McNish as the Interim Director of Residential Life and Services. McNish was appointed Interim dean of Student Life and Services last Spring.

Belachew has been involved in what she terms "the life side" of Residential Life and Services for twenty years. Starting off as an Area Coordinator, then called a Hall Director, she later moved on to eventually become the Assistant Dean of Residential Life and Services in 1989.

In her new position, she is responsible for overseeing dining programs, residential facilities, budgetary concerns, conference services and the residential staff that she has been involved with for so long.

As an interim Associate Dean, Belachew does not plan to embark on new projects. "I want to continue to enhance and refine what we have started," she said.

For Belachew, the transition into supervising has been a big change. She must now fill the very different role of being the quality control and support person. While she has been put in the difficult position of supervising the people she respects the most, she has found that supervising top notch personnel is extremely humbling. "I see my role as part of the team." She often sites the support she receives from her co-workers as essential to her motivation.

Belachew has outlined four specific areas on which she wishes to focus: multiple meal plans, facilities, the faculty associate program and housing and accomodation concerns.

"I want to make sure the multiple meal plan accomodates everyone's needs," said Belachew. She views this as a huge challenge which she plans to address immediately. "I don't have to wait. It must be tackled on a daily basis," she said.

Belachew plans to create a committee which will survey the dining halls through weekly visits.

She also plans to improve the faculty associate program by bringing faculty members into the residence halls more frequently. Due to construction of a new science building, at least 50 students housing spots will be lost from the south wing of Barrows Hall next year. With students' help in decision-making, Belachew plans to choose a course of action by which to develop new housing.

Ehrai Adams, previously the Area Coordinator in charge of program houses, has temporarily moved into Belachew's previous position as the Assistant Dean of Residential Life and Services.

Adams handles all student crises, communicates with parents and functions as a liason between the 'service' and the 'life' aspects of Residential Life and Services. Above all, her primary responsibility is to supervise the Area Coordinator staff. "I will concentrate or focus a lot of my energies on that staff being successful," she said. She also hopes to build a stronger sense of community within residential halls.

According to Adams, the placement of established administrators into these interim positions has allowed for a sense of continuity and familiarity amidst transition. "[There is a sense of] forward movement," she said. "Instead of being in a 'waiting to see what will happen' posture."

Her supervisees seem to agree. "From my point of view, things are continuing to run very smoothly," said Area Coordinator Jill Medina.