Welcome to residence life at Rose-Hulman. I'm Erik Hayes, vice president for student affairs
and dean of students, and I had the good fortune of living on this campus for over 20 years.
First as a student, but later in life as a professional working with our residence life team
and helping our students enjoy their experience on campus. The time living in our halls is some
of the most critical parts to the student experience. You all know that Rose-Hulman has
been ranked number one in the U.S. News and World Report year and year again but what you might not
know is that our students have ranked us number one in the country for best overall residence
life experience in our residence halls. Princeton Review recently ranked our residence halls for
best dorms as one of the top 20 in the country. And while several of our residence halls certainly
are beautiful, it's not the bricks and mortar that makes the experience so special. It's the
people you meet in there. It's the memories you make and the experiences you have. I definitely
was a huge introvert in high school, but getting to Rose just automatically having that residence
hall culture just made it so easy to get to know people. There's just something so special about
Rose kids that we just click. I mean, a majority of us were people that always try to go above and
beyond in high school, we have ridiculous hobbies all over the place, and all of a sudden you
come to Rose-Hulman and you realize that there are 2,000 other people just like you. And I think just
getting that immediate connection, especially during orientation week, where you realize that
you are clicking so easy, I think that's what really makes the family environment happen.
One of the most fun things in all of the freshman halls is they all have murals all over the walls.
So there's just fun jokes from years past and a whole bunch of signatures for the people who lived
there that year and just these bright hall murals that kind of show the culture of that floor, that
hall in the past. You'll see resident assistants and sophomore advisors who are committed to
knowing every single student on their floor. The RA is kind of there to be like "the parent" almost.
So, we're here to make sure that you're doing okay emotionally, that you feel supported.
Sophomore advisors are very special Rose thing. The big joke about sophomore advisors is that
they're paid to be your friends. Definitely no one does that for the money. But it's such a fun job
to have. You live inside of the freshman residence halls and work in like a leadership position there
organizing events for your residents and just having a super fun time. Greatest floor is the
best event you are ever going to experience. That's where every floor competes against each other in
a 24-hour event. So, in those 24 hours, every hour will have one event. And we use this event to
kind of break up the stress of winter quarter, to get people out of the rooms for a weekend, to
build relationships halfway through the year. And it is one of the most exciting and hyped events
during the year. You'll see students collaborating on projects together, working in the lobby on
homework together, you'll see a partnership with academics unlike any other place. And you get a
chance to experience the family atmosphere that makes this place so special. The open door policy
is something very unique here to Rose-Hulman where a lot of residents in the halls will keep
their doors open. We want to make sure that we can come by and talk to you, but it's also to make sure
that every other resident on your floor or in your hall is able to come by and say "Hey, you're in my
class. Do you want to work on this together?" And having just every aspect of Rose-Hulman support
the learning environment is amazing. It's just so much more of a welcoming atmosphere if you walk
down a hall and all the doors are open and you can see people working on their homework or having fun.
Floor dinner!
Floor and hall dinner is designed to make sure that you can go to dinner every single day and
have somebody to sit with. It's basically the entire floor, the entire hall just goes all
to dinner at the same time. That's really where you get to know them, get to have conversations
with them, kind of relax after the day is done with classes and you really get to know each other and
really build those relationships. And a lot of people are very surprised that this translates
after just like orientation week or even the first day, but we try to make sure that we have that
family sitting down for dinner every single day. I think the most Rose-Hulman thing that's happened
to me on a tour that I was giving, one of my residents just like came up and hugged me mid-tour.
And was just like, happy to see me, gave me a hug and then I had to just keep the tour going.
Kind of saw, like a glimpse of Rose-Hulman culture there because you see how much
having those residence life connections mean to your residents. Thank you for
joining us on our journey through residence life at Rose-Hulman. For more information,
hop on our website. You'll see a whole list of contacts people in residence life that would love
to give you more information, or feel free to email me directly. We look forward to seeing you soon.