Updates & Upcoming Post

Hello Beaty/Jennings Staff! I know it's been a million years or so since I have posted an update to the blog, but read on and you shall find out why!

This summer has been a busy one in the Beaty/Jennings Area thus far. In Beaty, we are housing conferences, and have had over 400 people come through the building in the three weeks we have been open for conferences. My job this summer with conferences is to kind of act like the "hotel manager:" making sure people get checked in ok, making sure the rooms are clean and look nice, posting important information, and occasionally meeting with a camp group to go over rules and regulations. Despite a small problem with our air conditioning system for a day or two (it's been fixed and is now working fine!!), our camps have gone off without a hitch. The interesting thing about conferences is that many of them check in on the weekends or in the evening, so I have added a lot of hours to my week by helping out with that. The DAs have done a great job, though (including our own Abhyona), and have made my job much easier.

In addition to conferences, Room 204 in Beaty East is open as a show room for Preview families. Most of our Preview sessions have already occurred, and many of the students coming through now already know that they have been assigned to a particular building for Fall. This means that I have met several of your residents (and their parents!) already this summer. Lots of parents and students have questions, particularly about the beds, internet access, safey and how early their students should move in. I also have been getting a lot of questions about how many hours it takes to receive a Red 1 parking decal (answer: 50 credit hours) so I wouldn't be surprised to see many of your students coming in with that many (or close to it!) hours. I, of course, have been saying great things about our staff, how helpful you will all be, and how excited you are to meet your residents in the fall.

Speaking of staff, several of our Fall staff members are around this summer, either working as RAs for Summer B or doing other things. I already mentioned Abyhona is working for us as a DA, but Ashlyn, DeeDee, Darrel, Kat, Ming, Britney, Dom and Cindy are working as RAs on various parts of campus for Summer B. Nef (Beaty East GHD) is working as a GHD for Fletcher, and Rhiannon is around working for preview. I do have one staffing update to share. One of the Jennings GHDs that we hired in spring decided not to take the position, so we have hired Brett Scharf to fill her place. I am very excited to bring Brett on board and I really think he will be a great addition to our staff in terms of experience and energy.

Summer B is going well, although we don't have any students living in Beaty or Jennings over the summer. I am actually supervising Reid Hall for summer B and over the past week we welcomed 140 brand new first year students to campus. Overall, we had nearly 2500 new students move on to campus and start classes today! So you can imagine how busy it has been around here. I have already talked to a few students who will be moving to Beaty or Jennings for the fall and boy are they excited to be here!

Now for a construction update! Beaty 5th and 6th floor is going very well, most of the work is already done and the workers were installing cabinets last week and bringing the fridges in this week. They will probably finish ahead of schedule so there should be no problems with move in or storage.

Jennings is also progressing well....you guys will hardly recognize the East side of the building! The bathrooms are almost done...and they look FANTASTIC! All the tile looks so shiny and new :) Little known fact: we are also replacing the tile on the 3rd & 4th floors of Jennings West so those of you on those floors will have a little something new too. The bathrooms next to the office are also being redone and they look great too. The library is getting an overhaul too with brand-new furniture....I'm so excited for you all to see it! All in all, construction is progressing on schedule, so I'm pretty sure at this point everything will be ready to go by the time you all get here on August 9th.

We are about six weeks away from you all returning for the summer! Please don't hesitate to contact me if there is anything I can do for you!

Watch the blog this week for a couple more posts, including (hopefully) another staff bio as well as some construction pictures. I'm also going to do a post on innovative ways to use technology in your RA position. I'm going on vacation July 3rd-12th, but I plan to post several more things after that before you all come back. Enjoy the rest of your summer, and there is more coming soon!