grapev ne DIVISION OF STUDENT AFFAIRS
AUGUST 2014
RSSP Focusing on Health of Organization
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t’s that time of year again — when all eyes and minds are focused on Aug. 23 and the opening of our residence halls for Fall 2014. We are excited to welcome thousands of new families to our community of Golden Bears. Thanks to you, our work is effective because of the collaborative efforts of staff groups across Residential and Student Service Programs (RSSP) and the Division of Student Affairs. Move-in 2014 will have a new look with the addition of a “concierge” initiative to meet and greet our new students and e From th
Associate Vice Chancellor
their families. A number of faculty and administrators from across campus will join RSSP staff during movein weekend to help our new students LeNorman Strong begin to find their way. The RSSP move-in committee has been busy working to make the process easier for everyone; this is just one of the several ideas you will see during move-in 2014. For more details about the move-in process, see the article at right. As we move forward into the 2014-15 academic year, we are doing so with a renewal of spirit that results from a truly dedicated team of RSSP Senior Staff who worked throughout the summer to help restructure our budget and provide recommendations for us to cut costs and reduce expenses. You will be learning more about this work in detail in the near future. Continued on Page 6
Vice Chancellor Harry LeGrande and Chancellor Nick Dirks and his family greet students and their families during last year’s move-in weekend.
Getting Set for Move-In T
he start of another academic year is just a few weeks away and many departments within the Division of Student Affairs are preparing for the arrival of the students. Residential and Student Service Programs (RSSP) is one unit that is making some big changes in how it welcomes students to the residence halls this fall. “Move-in is a celebration of new beginnings. It’s not just a time for students to move belongings into their rooms, it’s a chance for students and parents to meet everyone who is here to support students,” said Glenn DeGuzman, Director of Assessment and Operations. “Key staff, resident directors, resident assistants, facilities staff — everyone is on hand to be a part of the celebration. The joy for families is seeing their students enter their rooms for the first time as a Berkeley student, and of course, it is bittersweet for many families. “We have over 6,000 students moving into the halls that weekend — so there’s some large-scale organizing that goes into making sure everything runs Continued on Page 2
Berkeley UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
inside>>>>>>>>>>> Thanks to You..................3 stay day ..............................4 Staff fest...........................6 garlic Bowl......................7 Staff Spotlight...............8 csac chair..........................8
Gearing Up for Move-In Weekend Continued from Page 1
smoothly,” said DeGuzman. “Each and every staff involved in move-in is an essential cog in making the move-In process successful.” RSSP’s move-in committee, made up of staff from units within Student Affairs, Parking and Transportation and the UC Berkeley Police Department, meets throughout the year in an effort to review, plan and improve the process for students and their families. “The move-in committee has been working efficiently and productively to enhance our already excellent move-in processes,” said DeGuzman. “We have worked very closely with New Student Services, under the guidance of Director Chrissy Roth-Francis, to create a seamless experience for students starting with move-in through Getting Your Bearings (GYB), Berkeley’s welcome program.” This year, GYB and the move-in committee are utilizing a Guidebook mobile app (Getting Your Bearings 2014) with schedules, maps and move-in details as well as increased social media efforts. The move-in web page, at sa.berkeley.edu/move-in, has also been redesigned to improve the student experience. The traditional welcome week activities have been expanded from one week to three weeks, Aug. 23 to Sept. 14 and are organized around themes: Welcome and Campus Culture, Community and Involvement, and Campus Services and Resources. For more information on Getting Your Bearings, visit the website at: welcome.berkeley.edu. Another big change is the switch to assigned move-in times. To try to alleviate crowded parking lots and elevators, students living in Units 1, 2 and 3 will receive an assigned movein time (either 9 a.m. to noon or 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.) from Housing Assignments. Additionally, move-in will begin at 9 a.m., one hour earlier than years past, to accommodate early risers. “We are also excited to be instituting a move-in volunteer program in which registered student organizations and other staff can volunteer to help students move in their items and provide them with a welcoming experience,” said DeGuzman. “In addition, key administrators will make up a “concierge” service, greeting students and parents as soon as they pull up in their cars.” For the concierge service, administrators will be assigned a residence hall and be given a “cheat sheet” of important information that they may be asked by parents and students. They will also be assigned a CalSO leader and/ or Resident Assistant to assist them and each administrator will have student volunteers to assist families in unloading their vehicles the
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Faculty in residence members give out drinks and pastries during last year’s move-in weekend.
minute they park to unload. And along with the traditional move-in hotline (510-642-3213) and in-person volunteers, students and parents this year can ask questions via Twitter, using the hashtag #gyb2014, and on the official class Facebook group, which will be monitored closely leading up to and on move-in weekend. Staff working on move-in weekend may also notice some larger, more aesthetically pleasing signage, designed by the Student Affairs Communications team.
If you have any general move-in questions, please contact Jessica Snider at jsnider@ berkeley.edu. If you have any questions regarding social media and the mobile app, contact Robin Hershkowitz at rhershkowitz@ berkeley.edu. Students check in at Unit Three.
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ttendees to the Fourth Annual Student Affairs Thanks to You Celebration can double down on fun playing casino and carnival games, stepping into photo booths and tasting delights from Top Dog and Remy’s Mexican restaurant, and many other food offerings, such as roasted corn and ice cream. Thanks to You, meant to recognize and show appreciation for all Student Affairs employees and their families, will be held on Aug. 13, from 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Clark Kerr Campus. As is tradition, some amazing prizes will be given out to staff. This year’s prizes include: • HP tablet (valued at $599) donated by Give Something Back • BATS Improv tickets • Cal 1 Card credits • Football signed by Coach Sonny Dykes • Tivoli gift certificates • Noah’s Bagels gift certificates
Having Fun at Thanks to You is a Sure Bet •
T-shirts and mini backpacks from Tang Center Student Affairs • And a variety of other items Another addition to Thanks to CELEBRATION! You this year is a fundraiser for the Bear Pantry, a food bank for low-income student families with dependent children. You may have noticed the collection bottles throughout Student Affairs. If you didn’t get a chance to donate in the last couple of weeks, the bottles will be available at the event. Check out co-workers who have donated at sa.berkeley.edu/ld/thanks-to-you. Shuttles to Thanks to You will be parked outside RSSB (2610 Channing Way) and will make their first departure at 1:15 p.m. and drop off at Clark Kerr Campus (2601 Warring St.). Shuttles will run every 10-15 minutes with the last shuttle leaving Clark Kerr at 4 p.m. FOR THE FOURTH ANNUAL
THANKS TO YOU
Student Affairs staff enjoy the many games and activities during last year’s Thanks to You Celebration.
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Stay Day T Brings Campus Together
he Division of Student Affairs in June hosted more than 360 participants from around campus at the Fifth Annual Stay Day conference at the Clark Kerr Campus. The free, one-day program brings together staff who work directly with students, provide behind-the-scenes services in support of students, or are simply eager to learn more about the UC Berkeley student experience. “Stay Day began in 2009 as a way to bring back a professional development conference that focused on the student experience — a way in which all of the talent and expertise could be showcased from our very own staff on campus,” said Annalyn Cruz, co-chair of this year’s Stay Day. “Vice Chancellor Harry LeGrande was the visionary in creating this opportunity for staff. And Assistant Vice Chancellor Steve Sutton was also an integral leader in its early stages, helping create the framework and logistics within its first year.” The conference uses workshops, poster sessions, interactive theater, roundtables and student and staff panels to facilitate communication and collaboration among student service staff on campus. This year’s theme was “Creating a Culture of Care” and included sessions on professional development, strengthsbased advising, training and hiring student staff within a customer service environment, and building community of the UC Berkeley campus. Stay Day 2014 featured 34 distinct learning sessions, 88 presenters and panelists and 20 sponsors from around campus. The Stay Day 2014 committee was comprised of staff from throughout the Division. They were: • Annalyn Cruz, Co-Chair, Student Affairs Learning & Development • Alfred Day, Office of the Dean of Students • Robin Hershkowitz, Residential & Housing Services • Michael Lai, L&S Undergraduate Advising • Sunny Lee, Ombuds Office for Students and Postdoctoral Appointees • Ellen Levitan, Residential & Housing Services • Haydee Lindgren, Disabled Students Program • Marcia Riley, Ombuds Office for Students and Postdoctoral Appointees • Erin Wixson, Co-Chair, Student Affairs Learning & Development • Brieanna Wright, Incentive Awards Program If you’d like to learn more about Stay Day, visit the website at sa.berkeley. edu/stayday.
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Stay Day Committee members
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Kim McPhee, top, right makes handmade Christmas ornaments. Bottom, Kit Fornoff, who recently retired from RSSP, shows just a tiny portion of her Christmas decoration collection.
Summerfest Highlights Life After Five
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wo Student Affairs staff members in June showed off their “Life After Five” talents at Summerfest, UC Berkeley’s annual staff appreciation event. Summerfest, held this year in the area surrounding Haas Pavilion, featured a variety of food trucks, free t-shirts, massages and live entertainment throughout the afternoon.
RSSP to Focus on Organizational Health Continued from Page 1
A number of your have asked what our priorities for the year are going to be. While achieving financial stability is certainly one of our main priorities, we are also going to focus on: • Communications and messaging • Student success and satisfaction • Financial sustainability and new net revenue • RSSP organizational health and development • Common good initiatives within RSSP and Student Affairs While each of these is important, I want to focus on the priority of organizational health and development within RSSP. As a peoplecentered organization our efforts to take care of our students, and other clients/customers, often overtakes our commitment to care for ourselves. With the help of our Student Affairs Learning and Development team and our partners in Human Resources, RSSP Senior Staff, and committed supervisors and managers, this year will be one during which there will be a renewed focus on organizational health and culture from a number of perspectives. We will be working hard toward
improving our effectiveness as supervisors and managers through intensive work in supervisory training and development, performance management, civility and customer service. In addition, there will be work to enhance our staff recognition initiatives. Most RSSP supervisors completed our civility training this past spring. I sincerely appreciate the effort that went into planning a really terrific set of trainings. Feedback has indicated that the trainings were worthwhile and should be continued. We are working to ensure that supervisors understand that respect and civility are important in our work, and that we expect RSSP leaders to be models to our staff and students. As we complete our supervisory trainings, we will explore strategies for bringing respect and civility training to all RSSP staff. Another tool we will be using to improve our organizational health is the quarterly performance review program launched by Student Affairs last year. The reviews will provide all of us with support in having timely conversations, which will allow us to update one another on the priorities we’ve committed ourselves to, and to work through challenges that undoubtedly come with the work that we do. I am personally looking forward to this process for myself, with my boss, and with the colleagues with whom I work directly. Because we are an organization committed to service, developing good strategies to examine the service we do, in light of our performance commitments and needs, provides a meaningful way to bring a broad perspective to our work. We will also be implementing more comprehensive efforts in the areas of communications, feedback and assessment. You will be hearing more about these priorities in upcoming editions of the Grapevine. As we prepare for Fall move-in and opening, I wish you only the best. I’m looking forward to seeing your smiling faces and wonderful move-in shirts as our new academic year begins. Keep smiling and Go Bears! — LeNorman Strong, Associate Vice Chancellor, RSSP Bob Flaherty, Executive Director of Enterprise Operations, RSSP, asks a question during the Senior Staff meeting.
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Above, Chef Mary Ferrer and, right, Chef Jennifer Albers.
Heated Competition at Gilroy Garlic Bowl C
al Dining chefs Jennifer Albers and Mary Ferrer faced some hot competition, both in the kitchen and from the 101-degree temperatures, July 25 at the second annual Gilroy Garlic Festival Garlic Bowl. The Garlic Bowl pitted top chefs from UC Berkeley, California State University, Fresno and Santa Clara University in a onehour cook-off in which the two-person teams prepare, plate and serve two dishes, each containing at least six cloves of garlic. With just a few points separating the three teams, the Berkeley chefs were edged out by Santa Clara’s Tellicherry Peppercorn-Crusted American Kobe Beef and Garlic Godzilla Oshi Sushi. Albers, executive chef at Foothill, and Ferrer, executive chef at Café 3, prepared beef tenderloin with a garlic gastrique on a bed of garlic-fired rice with green onion slaw (with more than 20 cloves of garlic) and garlic-bacon whoopie pies with a sweet cream cheese filling. The whoopie pies carried on the tradition, started last year, of making a dessert that uses garlic. While Berkeley’s chefs were disappointed in not bringing home the top prize, they enjoyed the competition and plan to come back
again next year if invited. “It’s always fun to compete at the Garlic Festival. The volunteers were great and very helpful,” said Ferrer. “Of course we’ll be back! We have to bring home a win for Cal.” The competition had a decidedly Berkeley slant with College Football Hall of Fame and Cal broadcaster Joe Starkey handling hosting duties (along with professional chef Jason Gronlund) and UC Berkeley graduate and former San Francisco 49er Rhett Hall serving as a judge. Asked if she’d do anything differently, Ferrer pointed to the infamous Gilroy heat and the dessert they prepared. “I would probably not do anything that would melt under the sun,” she said. “My cream cheese frosting just oozed out of the cookies.” Santa Clara claimed $5,000 in general scholarship money. Berkeley and defending champion Fresno State each received $1,000 toward their university’s general scholarship fund. — Carol J. Tady, Student Affairs Communications
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STAFF SPOTLIGHT
What Would
You Say?
tonia valmore Project Policy Analyst, Student Affairs Administration What is your favorite book? One of my favorite childhood books is Where the Wild Things Are. I think my favorite book is Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison…because in the end the people could fly. I remember being so uplifted after finishing the book. Who is your hero? My parents. They have championed so much for me. They’re solid rocks within the family — immediate and extended. Our house has always been the house where on Sunday people come over and then it’s time to have dinner with the family. Everyone is welcome. We always have impromptu gatherings and they’re big on family time. We’ve always had family dinner. What is your favorite thing to do outside of work? Recently, hiking. I decided to start walking and wanted to do something that really gave me a good workout. Then I started taking landscape photos and I realized that it really is therapeutic at the end of the day. I never thought that I would like hiking. And now it’s so easy to get five miles in after work. Other than hiking, my favorite thing is to write. I write poetry. Sometimes it comes to me and I just sit there with a notebook. Now I’m ready to take my photos and try to come up with some haikus. I’m going to see what comes to me. If you could invite three people to dinner, living or dead, who would you invite? Maya Angelou. I would want to know if there was anything that she really missed. She didn’t seem to live life with regrets. I would want to ask her how often she doubted herself. Zora Neale Hurston, author of Their Eyes Were Watching God. She was laid to rest in an unmarked grave and Alice Walker found her in Macon, Ga. I wonder if she felt lonely during her writing because she had such great literary works of art, but she was more recognized after she was gone. My grandmother Effie Valmore. I would like to just sit with her again and have her meet the two writers and then get her thoughts. If you had an hour and you could do anything, what would you do? I would probably sit in a circle with a bunch of four year olds and just talk about something. They are hilarious. They have no filter. They just say whatever they want to say. We’d come up with a solution to something I’m sure. And we’d definitely have snacks.
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Naranjo to serve as CSAC Chair
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ayla Naranjo, Incentive Awards Program Director, will serve as chair of the Chancellor’s Staff Advisory Committee (CSAC) for 2015. The group acts as an advisory committee to the Chancellor and Vice Chancellors on a host of issues, with the aim of helping to create a positive working environment for all staff members. Naranjo has been a CSAC member since 2013, received her BA from UC Berkeley in Chicana/o Studies and attended St. Mary’s College in Moraga for her masters work in Counseling. She has been with the Incentive Awards Program since 2004.
grapev ne Grapevine is published for employees of the Division of Student Affairs at the University of California, Berkeley. Please send all correspondence to: Carol Tady, at cjtady@berkeley.edu —————
Tell us about your worst job ever. I don’t think I’ve had a worst job. I worked at Wilson’s Suede and Leather and that’s when I realized I didn’t want to do sales. I also worked at San Francisco General Hospital in the pathology department, so I spent my day using a Dictaphone typing up cause-of-death reports.
Writing, editing and design contributors: Robin Hershkowitz , Matthew Sun and Carol J. Tady
Best part of working at Student Affairs? I like the fact that we employ a lot of work-study students. I like to find out what they’re studying and catch them at what could be their first job, but more important, it’s the work we do for the students that makes my job so awesome. It’s really cool to be as close to working with students as you can possible be. It’s important work that we do.
You can also find Grapevine on the “O” drive. Just go to the “All RSSP” folder and look for the Grapevine folder.
All photographs taken by Carol J. Tady