The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 37, No. 2 - 66

David M. Rosch • Joshua D. Lawrie

find success. However, effective advising was not limited to providing information or helping with problem solving. The advisors who helped students learn and develop as leaders were able to provide an effective degree of support for their learning while at the same time challenge them to develop their leadership skills. This intricate balance was a contributing factor to the lasting learning of three participants. For example, the participant currently working in marketing remembered his experience with his hall government advisor in his first year: It was one of the early defining moments of my college experience. Here was a staff person taking the time to get to know me, but at the same time pressuring me to do things I hadn’t done before. It was weird— liked him, —I but at the same time [I] didn’t. Two other participants, looking back on their experiences, identified the need for advisors to play a difficult balancing act, serving as an older sibling at times and as a coach at others. One participant commented, The ideal advisor is someone whom [sic] is going to help you figure out your situation; someone who is trying to help you learn the process and someone whom [sic] is guiding by their own example . . . but not in a handholding or controlling type of way.

ing experiences for students: the necessity to offer challenging experiences, the importance of competent advisors and hall government advisor training, and the significance of appropriate financial resources for residence hall governance organizations. Moreover, these findings are evidence of the developmental capacity that residential governance positions possess for students, and could they be more broadly shared. When asked to identify learning moments remembered years later, every participant pointed to times when success was only possible when they were required to work with their colleagues as a team. They described how their most powerful and significant learning occurred when they recognized that they must learn from peers and accept that others had skills in some areas that were more developed than their own. Institutions should consider giving substantive responsibilities to these student groups, allowing them to significantly impact their environment by working with local and regional agencies, collaborating with other student or campus organizations, or interweaving their efforts with the work of residence life paraprofessionals. Through these challenging experiences, students may learn the types of life lessons identified by the alumni participants in this study. Many of the participants spoke about failing in some of their attempts and learning from those experiences, making it clear that leadership educators and advisors should not be afraid to place students in a position to fail. Creating such challenges can place an institution in an awkward position, where consistent failure can have a long-term impact that out-

IMPLICATIONS
The results of this exploratory research have many implications for those who work with or are responsible for residential governance groups. Three themes emerged across all the interviews related to the institutional catalysts necessary to provide transformative learn-

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 37, No. 2

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