NASPA and ACPA (2010) define the Human and Organizational Resources Competency as, “selection, supervision, motivation, and formal evaluation of staff; conflict resolution; management of the politics of organizational discourse; and the effective application of strategies and techniques associated with financial resources, facilities management, fundraising, technology use, crisis management, risk management, and sustainable resources.” I have achieved an exemplary proficiency in this competency through both my role as Graduate Resident Director at Oberlin College and my role as an intern at the American University of Afghanistan. 
 

My responsibilities as the Graduate Resident Director for Living Learning Communities at Oberlin College have given me multiple opportunities to advance my competency in this area. In my role I supervise 15 student staff members who are the resident assistants for the learning communities at Oberlin. My supervisory style is developmental with a social justice framework. I find it important to orient students effectively to my expectations of them. In doing so, I help students understand their role and responsibilities as a resident assistant through routinely reviewing the resident assistant job description and contract. Furthermore I engage student staff members in a reflective activity where students construct expectations of me as a supervisor. In our first staff meeting, my area coordinator and I presented our expectations and facilitated a dialogue over the areas where our expectations conflicted. We facilitated this exercise in order to empower students as supervisees and to consistently communicate expectations. I facilitate student staff member’s growth through engaging students in their biweekly one-on-one (1:1) meetings. I utilize a rubric to guide my 1:1 meetings in order to ensure they are supporting the students holistic growth as well as consistently reviewing their position responsibilities.I am mindful to follow up and provide feedback upon my expectations through a formal evaluation process at the end of the fall semester in their year long term of employment. In this evaluation, I am sure to provide examples of their current performance as well as ways that the student staff members can continue to grow.
 

In my responsibilities in Residential Education, I have also served on the student staff recruitment, retention, and training committee. On this committee, we facilitate the recruitment and hiring processes for all of the resident assistants that are employed by the department. I contributed to this committee through creating and facilitating a recruitment plan. I created a marketing plan that individually reached out to students by allowing stakeholders on our campus to nominate individuals to be a resident assistant. I then created a postcard that invited these student leaders to apply for the resident assistant position. In tandem with this process, I also created a flyer that sought to effectively reach a wide range of students and encourage them to apply for the resident assistant position. I was able to use the nomination card to create a more personal outreach mechanism to encourage students to apply. In addition, I was mindful to reach out to diverse stakeholders  and specifically solicited nominations from the Multicultural Resource Center in order to attempt to create a diverse pool of candidates for our hiring process.

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My certification as a social justice mediation trainer through the Oberlin College Dialogue Center is another way that I have advanced my competency in this area. The social justice mediation training allowed me to develop skills in facilitating mediation sessions for two or more parties with the lens of multipartiality. With the training I was able to mediate faculty, staff, and student conflicts through our Office of the Ombuds. The training was critical to the ways in which I resolved conflict. I am now incredibly mindful that conflict is often indicative of challenges with power and privilege. I have consistently utilized this lens to resolve conflict between students and professional staff members. I am intentional through creating structures that are equitable and allow for individuals to share their story. I have also gained a great deal of facilitation skills that enables me to validate and empathize with an individual while empowering them to create a solution for a conflict.
 

During the summer of 2011 I interned for the Department of Student Development at the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF). The institution was founded in 2006 and the department of student affairs was created the year after in 2007. The staff in that department was made up of both American and Afghan employees. Due to the young organizational culture and the differences in cultural backgrounds the professional staff communicated different expectations for their student staff members. The resident assistants were charged to build community and enforce policy within the residence halls at AUAF. In addition they also maintained the receptionist desk in the main departmental office. The students in this role had received little training for their role and were caught between the different expectations that the professional staff members communicated. In my role, I sought to understand and build consensus regarding the differing expectations for student staff members. I then facilitated the first ever Resident Assistant training. The training consisted of a number of team development exercises that engaged students in leadership development while communicating the professional expectations that were affiliated with their position. The desk receptionist training was based on the customer service perspective that my supervisor wanted to introduce the students to. I intentionally created a model of " gold standard" in order to motivate students to have positive interactions with the individuals that come into the office of student development. These experiences helped me learn how to motivate new and returning staff members to a para-professional position. All of these individual experiences in concert have helped me gain a greater skill set in the Human & Organizational Resources competency.