Housing looks to welcome new director

ASU’s search for the new housing department head is coming to a close as three finalists are selected among the list of candidates. Mr. Peter Rivera, Mr. Andrew Johnson and Mrs. Tracy Baker are the remaining applicants that will be considered for the position—near the end of this week, the job will be filled and the selected candidate will be revealed.


Bradley Petty, director of student affairs and university recreation, acknowledges that the job will have several qualifications.


“Whoever is selected as the new director will need a lot of experience,” Petty says. “Budgeting experience is necessary, as well as facility maintenance, programming and construction supervision.”


The job requires not only experience in these technical fields, but in several others as well.

“The director will oversee operations with the RA’s and will need to work collaboratively with other department heads of the school,” Petty says.


Paul Hamilton of ASU’s housing and residential programs agrees that the candidate who best exhibits these qualities will be chosen for the position.


“They will work closely with the resident advisors and will try to implement any changes that the RA’s want to see,” Hamilton has said. “Supervision of the residence halls is an important aspect of this position.”


Resident advisors too weigh in on the search for the new director, and what it will mean for ASU.


Jacob Ebanks, RA for Centennial Hall, implies that there is always room for improvement. “Everything is pretty much great,” he says, “but I wish there were more RA’s like there used to be. Other than that, I think it’s all good right now, but a new director does mean change, so we’ll see what happens with that.”


“With any supervisor position, especially the Director of Housing, you have to know what everyone in your department does,” says Alyssa Lewis, senior RA. “We need someone who will walk around our buildings, attend our programs, be visible to each individual staff on campus, and someone who cares about our entire department as a whole, as well as smaller groups such as individual staffs.”


Ashley Martin says, “I would like to see our department as a whole make more use of being collaborative with the entire campus. I believe collaboration between every department on campus, whether it is Residential Programs, UCPC, Academic departments, or Athletics, will make our university as a whole a more inviting university. I believe the more collaboration there is, the more school pride and retention will occur all across campus.”


Of the three candidates, Tracy Baker is the only internal applicant for the job. Baker is currently the assistant director of operations.