Sam Askew, Campus Carrier managing editor

Berry College is not quiet during the summer. Many organizations, offices and staff members stay busy throughout the year, always preparing for the return of students in the fall. While majority of the students are off campus, projects that were put off are in full swing. With the absence of students comes space and time to get renovations done, deep cleaning and landscaping. 

Among the many offices that stay busy during the summer is Physical Plant. Whether it is housekeeping or the grounds team, Physical Plant is stacked all year. Dorms are made ready for incoming and returning students, also while transitioning students who stayed on campus during the summer. Not to mention the immense amount of landscaping that needs to be maintained. All of this is done through the office of Physical Plant.

Another office that remains busy through the summer is residence life. Residence life utilizes the summer to implement new ideas and train new resident assistants (RA). RA training begins late in the summer and goes on until the beginning of the semester. Stephen Swieton, associate director of residence life, has remained busy since students left campus in May. 

“Summer is often, in a lot of ways, busier than the school year,” Swieton said. “We had about 300 students that were on campus for each part of the summer.”

With the summer comes May-mester, the period in which students remain on campus and take summer classes. Students are transitioned from their spring semester housing to their May-mester housing, according to Swieton. Students must be transitioned between all of the summer work blocks and then be transferred into their fall housing.

“You’ve got to get those students from where they’re at to where they need to be [for fall semester],” Swieton said.

In addition to all this moving around, Berry also hosts Student Orientation Advising and Registration (SOAR) over the summer. During SOAR, incoming students meet their advisors, get adjusted to housing and LifeWorks, meet fellow incoming students and prepare for life on campus in the fall.

“You’ve also got SOAR, and we’re part of that, both with presentations to students and parents, but we also offer other activities,” Swieton said.

The office of residence life also has to use this time to assign incoming students to their housing while also getting all the buildings ready, according to Swieton.

“It’s a good time to try and get big projects done because there are fewer students, but we always have students on campus,” Swieton said. “So, there’s constantly stuff happening.”

With the past few years, new developments with regards to residence halls went into place. Last year, residence life implemented a new engagement model. This model emphasizes connection with RAs and their residents, according to Swieton, focusing on how to point residents to the services that esidence Life offers.

“It’s ‘how do we do things like welcoming communities?’” Swieton said. “It’s ‘how do we connect students with the services that we offer?’ It’s helpful for the RAs to see how to do things. It’s helpful to us for how manage, like ‘here’s how we’re looking at things.’ It’s helpful for residence to know that this is what to expect to get from a conversation with an RA.”

This year, one of the changes coming to residence life is the use of Jewel Cottage.

“The only big thing that will be different this year is that we will be using part of Jewel Cottage for students,” Swieton said. “We’ll have a few students there, but only for fall semester. We’re just using it briefly.”

There is also a new door access system that is slowly being implemented throughout campus. 

“A big thing that has begun and that will continue throughout the year is that the door access systems are changing across campus,” Swieton said. “Elmwood [Cottage] and Thomas Berry are already on the new system, so we’re learning a lot about that new system. As we go throughout the year, we will continue to transition the other buildings. That’s a big goal, making sure we can do that and do it well.”

With its eyes turned to the new year, residence life has a few goals that it is keeping in mind. One of those goals is getting the message out about locking doors, according to Swieton. In addition, Swieton emphasized the importance of staying true to residence life’s mission and values.

“A lot of things we focused on with the RAs and we’re hoping that residents will continue to focus on throughout the semester is that we want to be a department that is focused on its mission and values,” Swieton said. “We want to make sure that what we say we’re gonna do is what we do.”

RA training is a big part of the work that residence life does over the summer, and is an important part of student life that often goes unnoticed. This year, there are 84 RAs and 6 Head Residents, according to Swieton. RA training is an all-day commitment for the first couple of weeks before the semester begins.

“They start at 9 a.m. and go through dinner, and after dinner they do in-hall stuff,” Swieton said. “We tell them upfront that during training time, this is it. You know, until the first day of classes.”

Even on what could be considered “off-days,” RAs are working.

“[Some days], they don’t have any sessions in the afternoon, but that’s because they need to be doing room conditions before residents move into spaces,” Swieton said. “They’re walking spaces to make sure that rooms are ready, that they’re clean and there’s been no issues. They’ve got to get their door tags up. They’ve got to get their decorations up.”

Residence life also works closely with other offices on campus to facilitate the best experience possible for incoming and returning students.

“It has been a big year,” Swieton said. “It’s not like it’s just Residence Life doing all these things by itself. We do work very closely with our custodial service teams, our facility services partners, Campus Police, and IT. There’re so many people that support us in what we’re doing. Certainly, the Dean of Students office and everything that they do.”

As the semester comes closer and closer, Residence Life is getting busier and busier. 

“We’re gonna have well over 1,900 students moving into campus, and they’ll all be here within the next week,” Swieton said. “So, getting that many beds ready, getting that many rooms ready, getting the buildings ready, it’s a monumental undertaking.”

There are a few things that students should keep in mind as the year comes into play. 

“Be patient,” Swieton said. “We’re doing the best that we can to get everything done. It is a lot of stuff. There’s a lot of moving parts, but as students move in, if they have issues, talk with your RA or your Head Resident. We can resolve things quickly if we know about them. And you know, it’s impossible for everything to be perfect, but most things will be. And take your trash out. Don’t leave cardboard boxes in the hallway.”

In addition to Residence Life, the Office of Academic Transitions has also been busy making preparations for incoming students at Berry. Madi Rowe, student director of the Office of Academic Transitions, has been hard at work training the first-year mentors.

“Academic Transitions is the first-year programming service at Berry,” Rowe said. “We train and support all of the mentors during the fall semester, and the mentors work with an instructor to co-teach a BCC 100 class.”

BCC 100 and the mentorship that comes with it is an essential aspect to the student experience at Berry. It is a community that functions as a support system in an academic setting, according to Rowe. The emphasis in the beginning of the semester is to build connection and community during Viking Venture that will last throughout the rest of their Berry experience.

Academic Transitions implements rigorous training for first-year mentors before the semester begins.

“We just want [the training] to be a community of support for mentors and so a lot of our training is really broad,” Rowe said. “Like, we have Berry Reducing Assault and Violence through Education (B.R.A.V.E.) and Question, Persuade, and Refer (Q.P.R.), which is suicide prevention.”

Being a first-year mentor is not easy, and it takes a lot of dedication, according to Rowe. Mentors learn and grow with the students that they are mentoring and help facilitate a welcoming community for all people.

“I really think we have one of the best groups of mentors that I’ve ever worked with,” Rowe said. “They’re all so dedicated, so committed, so engaged. I’m just really excited to see us grow deeper with the first-year students. I’m excited to watch them and guide them to whatever their goals at Berry are. And to help them figure out and understand what they want here at Berry.”

With the new year approaching, Academic Transitions has its sights set on improving and growing. A heavy emphasis is placed on social media, according to Rowe.

“I will say one of our goals for our office is to get social media better,” Rowe said. “Shameless plug: @berryacademictransitions.”

All of their events, services, tips and all the things for freshman that come from Academic Transitions will be on their Instagram, according to Rowe. Emphasis is also being placed on providing inclusive, accessible and fun events for freshmen to go to in order to build community and make their transition to college a little easier.

“Another goal is for the mentors to really get into developmental conversations,” Rowe said. “We had training over the past week with the Berry Center for Integrity in Leadership (BCIL), and they taught us how to have these great, really developmental conversations so that we can help guide and lead the freshmen into their goals for the next four years.”

Rowe also emphasized the use of resources that Berry provides to first-year students.

“I see a lot of freshmen not using their resources,” Rowe said. “We have many resources at Berry that are catered towards them, like the Academic Success Center, the Center for Personal and Professional Development (CPPD), or study abroad. In that way, there are a lot of resources at Berry that freshmen don’t realize they should use their freshman year. So, my advice is even if you don’t think you need it, just try it. Who knows? You might find your new passion, or you might find something you want to do that’s easier to plan your freshman year than to try it the year you graduate.”

Berry is never quiet. Even through the summer, offices, staff and organizations work hard while students take their breaks. A lot goes into preparing the campus for the return of students, and it’s important to recognize the faces and offices who made it all possible. So, if you see a housecleaning person, an RA, a mentor or a landscaper, say ‘Thank you!’