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Introduction to Special Issue
. . . it is my hope that housing leaders take heed of how the current
work culture and structures of college and university housing are
not compatible with staff well-being and career sustainability.
For too long, housing departments have burned through staff in
pursuit of the ideal residential experience.
Mapping the Special Issue
In this special issue of the The Journal of College and University Student Housing,
authors explore issues impacting the well-being of professional and paraprofessional
residential life staff across numerous contexts. Opening this issue, Craig Seager
explores how the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the mental health of
housing staff across multiple factors including social identity and organizational context.
His findings shed light on how housing leaders, particularly those at small institutions,
must go further in supporting the mental health and well-being of new and
racially marginalized professionals. Building on this theme, Jody Kunk-Czaplicki and
Maureen Wilson examine the phenomenon of burnout in a sample of housing professionals,
as well as the work factors that contribute to burnout, including exposure to
student trauma. Their work illustrates how as job demands increase, so does burnout,
but increasing job resources can mediate the experience of burnout. Complementing
these first two quantitative studies, Brittany McDaniel and Laura Dean approach their
work using multiple-case analysis to explore the ways that housing departments are
successfully balancing student support and staff well-being. They also call on housing
leaders to reevaluate the role of live-in residential life staff and help campus partners
better understand the work of these staff in order to combat the increasing scope
creep of these roles.
The next two articles in this special issue seek to highlight novel perspectives on
the impact of specific job responsibilities on the well-being of residential life staff.
Valerie Glassman introduces the concepts of judicialization and critogenic harm, which
can result from the kind of student conduct work associated with many residential life
positions. Her findings illustrate an urgent need for new professionals to receive training
that will enable them to better understand the legal implications of their work and
education to mitigate critogenic harm. Peter Trentacoste and David Nguyen continue
the discussion of how specific job responsibilities can have significant impacts on staff
well-being by presenting the stories of current and former live-in residential life staff
who supported a resident assistant experiencing suicidal ideation. Their work extends
our understanding of how this type of support serves to reinforce or redirect career
goals in entry-level staff as a function of job demands and resources before, during,
and after supporting RAs experiencing suicidal ideation.
Finally, this special issue is rounded out by two articles that explore well-being
through the lens of live-in student staff such as resident assistants. Stephen Sutton,
Jacquelynn Thomas, Sunny Lee, and Glenn DeGuzman offer key insights regarding
the mental health and well-being of resident assistants, as compared to residential
students, through analysis of several surveys administered to on-campus students
10 The Journal of College and University Student Housing

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