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Elizabeth Will/KANSAN Sarah Waters, KU’s new housing director, meets with students in her Corbin Hall office to assist them in finding their ideal campus housing plan.
Meet Sarah Waters, new Student Housing director
The new director spoke about her plans for the future of student housing and what it’s like to return to her home state of Kansas
ANGIE BALDELOMAR @AngieBaldelomar It was move-in day when Sarah Waters realized accepting the job as the new KU Student Housing director at the University meant coming home in more ways than one. As a Kansas native, Waters, who was the director of residence life at Bowling Green State University in Ohio until June, knew she was coming home when she accepted the job, but it was during a talk with a student on move-in day, who was wearing a shirt from Lansing High School — the same high school Waters graduated from — that she realized how much that meant for her job. “I was telling him I went to Lansing High School too, and then his mom was like ‘I did too! What year did you graduate?’ She actually graduated after me, but it was that whole back home and that connection,” she said. “It’s kind of an instant connection in some ways.” Waters arrived to Lawrence in July to take on her role as the new University housing director after working as the director at Bowling Green State for seven years. The adaptation to both the city and the University has been good so far, she said, but with more hills than she was used to in Ohio. “I was able to get my
foundation and figure out where I was going, just walking around campus with hills, that was a big adjustment,” she said. “You can see straight through at Bowling Green.” Her transition process has also been filled with meetings, which continue to be a part of her routine work day. “I’m able to get across campus and participate in conversations, so always, I sit on several different regular meetings and committees,” she said. “Right now, my day really is about relationship building and then helping to support if we have a concern or an issue.” She grew up in Leavenworth and went to college in Washington University in St. Louis, where she got her degrees in English and secondary education. She became an resident assistant as an undergraduate, and that’s when she started to consider student affairs as a career path. “I saw how we were impacting and what we were doing for the students, and so a lot of what I wanted to do with teaching was this, being able to have discussions, learn, and I realize that I was doing a lot of that in that college and residence hall setting,” she said. This experience is something she hopes to recreate for the undergraduate staff at the University.
“Being an RA, often, is a defining moment for a student because you’re a leader, and maybe you’re not a people’s person, but you’d like to make a difference,” she said. Waters said housing is all about the student experience not only for residents, but also for the undergraduate staff working for KU Housing.
“For me, [my goal] is just to make connections and to listen a lot.” Sarah Waters KU Student Housing director
“The impact of what you can do by working for housing, by living in housing I think is something that is emerging as a theme for me in conversations, and in general our commitment to creating inclusive environments and creating strong leadership programs, and always keeping the students’ academic success and support at the forefront of our initiatives,” she said. Waters has worked in residence life for almost 20 years. Based on her experience, she knows it is important to make KU Student Housing a great partner and contributor in helping the University achieve its goals. She said she has been
meeting with different offices across campus, particularly Student Affairs, to make sure her office is working toward this goal. “My goals are all around that KU Student Housing should be the go-to place, especially for new, incoming students to get that foundation for what their KU experience is going to be,” she said. “My goal is to continue [to] develop strong programs where students feel supported, that they are also challenged to learn.” Kip Grosshans, KU Student Housing associate director, said Waters brings new ideas for improvement to make students’ experiences better. “Sarah’s plan has been to ask lots of questions and learn our systems and processes,” he said. “I’m confident that will produce positive results.” As part of her transition process, Waters has also been meeting with a lot of key stakeholders and partners around campus, including Student Affairs and the departments that fall under them, something Grosshans is quick to remark on. “She’s been spending quite a bit of time meeting and coming to know the needs of our campus partners because growing those partnerships is important to our shared successes,” he said.
During this first year, her focus will be on relationship building within KU Housing staff and with different partners and organizations across the University, she said, which doesn’t mean she is not focused on enhancing current students’ experiences. “For me, [my goal] is just to make connections and to listen a lot, but also know that we don’t have time to just sit around and say ‘Oh, we’ll get around to that next year,’ because this is about the current experience and the current 5,000 students living on campus,” she said. Part of the challenges she expects to face as housing director is the cost of housing for students. “Living on campus is a major investment for our students and their families and a huge commitment, so for me that’s always going to be a challenge,” she said. Housing offers many types of housing from apartments to residence halls and scholarship halls, so the challenge is how to market all of this to students and showing the importance of living on campus, she said. “The whole idea of continuing to show how living on campus and having a network of support and resources is critical to a student doing better academically and getting connected, and then also grad-
uating within that four-year window, so to continue so much of the amazing work that’s already going on here, I want KU Student Housing to also be seen as a critical and essential campus partner,” she said. Waters is married and has three children, so when she is not at work, she said she is in “mom mode,” taking her kids to soccer or band practice in a minivan she never imagined driving. “I never thought I would be a minivan driver, but with three kids it was hard to make them all fit in a backseat,” she said. She is also looking forward to exploring the Lawrence and Kansas City area since she has not lived in the state for over 20 years, but this time with her own family. “I’m excited to, in many ways, be home and to just be a Jayhawk,” she said. “It sounds almost cheesy, doesn’t it?”
— Edited by Wesley Dotson