Residence Life also recognized members of the Residence Life student staff council and one graduating Neighborhood Manager: Wise Halverson.

The evening included opening remarks from President Connie Book and Vice President of Student Life Jon Dooley.

Student Staff Member of the Year (by neighborhood)

Student Staff Member of the Year is awarded to at least one staff member from each residential neighborhood who has demonstrated excellent teamwork, dedication, and positivity in their role.

Recipients

Colonnades: Mackenzie Perry

Danieley: Jason Adama-Tettey

East: Asia Green

Global: Keali Chang

Historic: Kiera Wenzel

Loy: Catarina Gandara Da Silva

Oaks: Morgan Seate

Station at Mill Point: Annabelle Stephens

Living-Learning Community (LLC) End of Year Awards

Almost 80 nominations were submitted for the Living-Learning Community End of Year awards, including nominations by participating students, staff and faculty advisors. 黑料不打烊鈥檚 nationally ranked LLCs support over 600 residents in 24 different living-learning communities led by 33 faculty and staff LLC advisors.

Living-Learning Community Student of the Year: Odalys Zelaya Figueroa, First Phoenix LLC, Colonnades Neighborhood

Living-Learning Community Ambassador of the Year: Violette Valadez, First Phoenix LLC, Colonnades Neighborhood

Living-Learning Community Program of the Year: 黑料不打烊 College Fellows Murder Mystery Night, East Neighborhood

Living-Learning Community Advisors of the Year: Paula DiBiaso and Kenneth Brown, First Phoenix LLC, Colonnades Neighborhood

Living-Learning Community Resident Assistant of the Year: Grace Smith, Sustainable Living LLC, Colonnades Neighborhood

Living-Learning Community of the Year: Performing Arts LLC, Global Neighborhood

NRHH Rising Diamond Award
Tessa Mattison, senior resident assistant, Historic Neighborhood听

This award recognizes a Residence Life staff member who shows that leadership inside and outside the department is crucial to continued growth in the 黑料不打烊 experience. The recipient of this award has demonstrated that their skill set learned at 黑料不打烊 has positively impacted their community and will continue to impact whatever community joined after positively. The official symbol of NRHH is a diamond 鈥搕he world鈥檚 most precious gem- to signify the value and beauty one finds in their experiences.

Student Leadership and Community Development Award
Maximus Garganta, senior resident assistant, Colonnades Neighborhood听

This award highlights a student staff member who demonstrated extraordinary leadership in their role and promoted community development by challenging and caring for residents through their 黑料不打烊 experiences.

Student Employee Excellence Award
Eva Miller, office assistant, Global Neighborhood听

This award highlights an hourly student employee who has displayed extraordinary dedication, leadership and service to their neighborhood and/or the Office of Residence Life. They consistently positively impact their neighborhood/office staff and community by going above and beyond what is asked in completing their work responsibilities.

Julie Justice Faculty Engagement Award
Claudine Moreau, faculty director, Historic Neighborhood

In honor of Julie Justice鈥檚 depth of service and engagement with her residents during her time as a faculty-in-residence in the Oaks neighborhood, this award honors a faculty member who has contributed to enhancing the residential campus initiative by engaging with students within the residential community, and broadly developing connections within the neighborhood to enhance the student residential experience.

Program of the Year

Neighborhood: East
Program Name:听East Gets on the Bus to Twin Lakes
This award highlights a neighborhood program, event, or series that promotes active engagement of residents with faculty and staff over a topic that promotes the intellectual theme of the neighborhood.

Firestarter Award
Sydney Michel, resident assistant, Historic Neighborhood听

This award recognizes a new student staff member who has shown exceptional promise in their role through creative and engaging floor programming, sound decision-making, and a consistently positive attitude. Their dedication to building community and enhancing the living and learning experience at 黑料不打烊 sets a strong foundation for continued impact and growth.

Trailblazing Guide Award
Nicholas Rugbart, senior resident assistant, Global Neighborhood听听

This award honors a seasoned student staff member who consistently goes above and beyond – not only excelling in their own role, but also serving as a reliable source of support and mentorship for their peers. Their approachable nature and commitment to fostering a strong living and learning environment truly embody the spirit of campus community.

Tracy Pace Program Assistant of the Year
Sandra Bays, program assistant, East Neighborhood

This award honors a program assistant in Residence Life who utilizes exceptional organization, interpersonal, and customer service skills.

Professional Staff Member of the Year
Mariann King, community director, Global Neighborhood

This award recognizes a professional staff member of the Residence Life team who has demonstrated mentorship, community building and professionalism throughout the 2024-25 academic year.

Community Partnership Award
Grace Smith, resident assistant, Colonnades Neighborhood

The Community Partnership Award is presented to an individual who has continuously partnered and supported throughout the school year with Campus Safety and Police.

Met by Danieley Faculty Director Evan Small and Associate Director of Sustainability for Education and Outreach Kelly Harer, attendees gathered at Daniel Common at 9 p.m., indulging in celestial-themed snacks and beverages before embarking on a journey of inner peace. Itumeleng Shadrek from Counseling Services led a serene meditation circle, preparing minds for the wonders of the night sky.

On the shores of Lake Verona, blankets were spread beneath the stars, accompanied by a melodic blend of tunes emanating from a portable speaker. Astrophysics and astronomy majors and astronomy minors, including Jonathan Berkson, Myka Thomas, Matthew Rieck, Sam Lindo, Jaylem Cheek and Isabelle English along with Physics Department Lecturer/Historic Faculty Director Claudine Moreau and Historic Faculty in Residence Kevin Otos manned three telescopes and gave breathtaking 鈥淲inter Circle鈥� constellation green laser star tours. Colin Vernon, an Environmental Engineering major, treated attendees to real-time views of the Orion Nebula and several globular clusters through the Seestar S50 telescope.

Danieley and Historic neighborhood Faculty Directors ran raffles to give away prizes including telescopes, galaxy light projectors, and a nebula tapestry. With the resounding success of the event, the prospect of future stargazing gatherings seems pretty stellar, promising a tradition that may well become a cornerstone of campus life at 黑料不打烊.

Now, as the 2022-2023 academic year concludes, the Danieley Neighborhood wants to provide its spring update!

Where is Danieley in its assessment process currently?

In the multilevel assessment process (MAP) outlined by Strine-Patterson (2022), there are multiple concurrent and interlocking cycles in the assessment process. Currently, Danieley is in stage 1, “Departmental Educational and Operational Plans,” which you will recognize as our neighborhood plan (p. 65).

Over the summer, we will transition through stages 2 and 3, “Plan Evidence-Informed Strategies” and “Plan Measurement and Data Collection,” respectively (p. 65). You will notice that this will prepare us nicely to begin stage 4, “Implement Strategies and Measurements,” for the beginning of the 2023-2024 academic year in August 2023 (p. 65).

What are we seeing?

Being transparent with our data and related insights is important to us for a few reasons:

1. Evaluation.听Sharing what we know allows us to reflect critically on what programs and services we offered and to make any changes that impact what we will continue to offer.
2. Accountability.听Sharing what we know holds us accountable to providing the best programs and services possible. If we say we will make a change, you can trust that the change is data-driven.
3. Empowerment.听Sharing what we know lets students know that we approach our work with a dynamic and humble spirit in tune with what students want and/or need. It lets students know that we are listening and acting, and it signals that we are co-creating their experience听with听them and not听for听them.

Winter and Spring 2023

With this in mind, here are selected data from Winter and Spring 2023 we want to foreground*:

• Winter and Spring 2023 programs/opportunities overview:
  • Total offered: 35 (average 2.5 per week)
  • Total educational programs: 23
  • Total social programs: 12
  • Total programs with campus or community collaborations: 19
• Winter/Spring 2023 programs/opportunities attendance:
  • Total attendance: 1,093 (average 31 per program)
  • Total individual Danieley residents who attended: 348 (52.89% of neighborhood total)
    • Overall, our resident engagement grew 8.51% from Fall 2022.
    • Overall, residents are generally attending programs in expected demographic rates with one exception:
      • Residents who identify as male are slightly more likely to attend than those who identify as female (6.02% more likely)
      • Residents who live in flats are significantly more likely to attend than those who live in apartments (30.56% more likely)
      • Residents who are incoming students (in their first year of college) are attending at the same rate as residents who are returning students (returning students are 0.41% more likely to attend)
    • Total individual Danieley residents who attended multiple times: 177 (50.86% of residents who attended)

2022-2023 (Fall, Winter, and Spring Together)

• 2022-2023 programs/opportunities review:
  • Total programs offered: 73 (average 2.6 per week)
  • Total educational programs: 42
  • Total social programs: 31
  • Total programs with campus or community collaborations: 26
• 2022-2023 programs/opportunities attendance:
  • Total attendance: 2,180 (average 30 per program)
    • Our total attendance grew by 234 residents from 2021-2022 programs (n=1,946)
  • Total individual Danieley residents who attended: 479 (70.86% of neighborhood average total [n=676])
    • Our total engagement with Danieley residents specifically听decreased 6.56% from 2021-2022 (77.42% of neighborhood average total [n=682])
  • Overall, residents are generally attending programs in expected demographic rates with one exception:
    • Overall, residents who identify as female are slightly more likely to attend than those who identify as male (1.39% more likely)
      • In the 2021-2022 year, female residents were 32.39% more likely to attend than male residents.
    • Overall, residents who live in apartments are significantly more likely to attend than those who live in flats (21.52% more likely)
      • In the 2021-2022 year, apartment residents were 8.11% more likely to attend than flat residents.
    • Overall, residents who are incoming students (in their first year of college) are more likely to attend than those who are returning students (7.14% more likely).
      • In the 2021-2022 year, returning residents were 6.47% more likely to attend than incoming residents.
  • Total individual Danieley residents who attended multiple times: 303 (63.26% of residents who attended).
    • In the 2021-2022 year, 450 residents attended multiple times (or 85.23% of residents who attended).

What does it all mean?

There’s no perfect formula to capture the human experience in a data set or short article. However, we can infer meaning from the data points with longitudinal data sets for comparison.

You can see that our Danieley resident engagement grew 8.51% this semester compared to Fall 2022– wow! Even so, our engagement fell 6.56% from last year. Despite overall positive metrics elsewhere, our engagement numbers decreased.

So, what happened? Increased numbers from the 2021-2022 may have been the result of the pandemic. Fall 2021 and Winter 2022 saw the pandemic in full effect, and many of our programs were designed to be quicker and door-deliverable. Once pandemic restrictions lifted, it could be that residents resumed regular activities and extracurricular involvements, which also meant they were in Danieley less. We would need to explore this phenomenon more to better understand it.

Another explanation could be in the semantics. You can see that our total attendance numbers actually grew by 12.02% from last year– it’s our听Danieley-specific attendance that decreased by 6.56%. This indicates we’re engaging campus-wide, which is certainly an intriguing surprise! Danieley programs tend to see Colonnades and off-campus residents most. It leads us to wonder how we can work with other neighborhoods in the future while also doubling-down on our own.

You can see that the female-male, apartment-flat, and incoming-returning ratios tend to flip-flop, though as time goes on, it will be interesting to note the salient themes. So far, it’s clear that our apartment residents tend to engage more frequently.

What the data won’t necessarily show us, though, is the intimate and meaningful relationships we’ve formed with residents and student staff this year. Though our repeat resident numbers have decreased, our mentorships and relationships have strengthened. As a personal note as Community Director– what an incredible community we had this year. Our residents were so willing to be in conversation with us, and our student staff culture was tight-knit. Just when we got to know our residents as our Danieley Neighborhood locals, they’re gone and graduated– but, we know they’ll come back for programs and chats (they’ve told us so!).

What will we do with what we learned?

In our 2022-2023 neighborhood plan, we declared four goals based on our observations from the 2021-2022 academic year. Our achievements in goal 1is marginal, though our achievement in goal 2 is significant. Our decrease in repeat engagement is unfortunate, though undocumented in this statistic is the increase in quality connections we feel we have made with our returning residents!

• To increase incoming student engagement
  • Our incoming student engagement grew by 0.67%
• To increase male resident engagement
  • Our male resident engagement grew by 7.45%
• To increase repeat resident engagement
  • Our repeat resident engagement fell by 21.97%
• To establish a living learning community (LLC)
  • We will revisit this goal once the 2030 Residential Campus Plan is complete

Based on our observations and on what the data are telling us, our new goals for the 2023-2024 academic year are:

• To increase incoming student engagement
  • To be transparent, our gains were marginal in this area. We know we need to be more intentional with this population, who noted feeling isolated in Danieley from other first-year peers in other neighborhoods and who also explicitly are looking for first-year friends. With Danieley’s first-year population expected to triple in Fall 2023, we will be committing to create a quality first-year experience for our residents.
• To increase male resident engagement
  • We’ve been hard at work creating a better connection with our male residents. In 2021-2022, female residents were significantly more likely to engage with us than their male peers; in 2022-2023, female and male engagement was almost equal. We want to continue to create meaningful opportunities for our male residents in the upcoming year.
• To implement quality measures
  • Over the past two years, we’ve built an infrastructure dedicated to collecting and evaluating quantitative data points like attendance numbers and survey responses. We know we can go broad and get folks engaged– now we want to go deeper and understand their听experiences with being engaged. We want to personalize our assessment efforts and get students talking with us more about their experience in Danieley.
• To establish LLC presence
  • Our final goal remains the same: we want LLCs in Danieley! Our proposal process unfortunately has hit snags along the way, but we remain committed to establishing LLC presence in Danieley. Why? Because the peer-reviewed AND 黑料不打烊-produced data all point to the positive impact LLCs have for students.

References

Strine-Patterson, H. (2022). Assessment is a leadership process: The multilevel assessment process.听New Directions for Student Services,听2022, 61-76. doi: 10.1002/ss.20429

*All data collection has been reviewed and approved by 黑料不打烊鈥檚 Institutional Review Board.

奥丑补迟听is听BJs in your PJs?

BJs in your PJs is the signature program of Danieley’s Wellness Week. Now in its second year,听Danieley Wellness Week is a layered programming sequence that aligns with 黑料不打烊’s HealthEU听initiative. Our Wellness Week encapsulates many dimensions of wellness, including physical, emotional, and community.

We wanted to discuss sexual wellness, and we played on the abbreviation of Ben and Jerry’s to entice our audience. Knowing also that residents enjoy food-based (ice cream) and casual, come-and-go (PJS/pajamas) programs, we decided on this concept and format. Based on our mid-year survey, we also knew that residents wanted programs that started later in the evening so that they’d be in Danieley after their day on main campus.

A growing body of research tells us that Gen Z students want “snackable content” that they can consume quickly. In “Marketing to Gen Z” (2018), authors Fromm and Read share that Gen Z typically has an 8-second attention span with preference for content that is bite-sized, punchy, and text-slim.

That’s exactly what this program was designed to be– provocative, unfiltered, and intriguing. The play on words in the title gets folks’ attention. In a popular mobile app, Fizz, an anonymous poster shared an image of our email advertisement of the program, which garnered 923 upvotes. It became clear that our residents and other 黑料不打烊 students were eager to engage.

You can see in our advertising that we played into the Gen Z marketing techniques further. We emphasized a sense of humor, graphics over text, and incomplete information. Asking the question and not giving the answer was intentional– we want to encourage students to come to the program to learn the answer, to talk with their peers, or research the question further.

When considering the important topic of sexual wellness, we knew that we needed to do this intentionally amidst the touchy subject of sex. Sex is often seen as socioculturally-taboo in today’s society, though sex positivity is increasingly becoming inherent in the Gen Z psyche. Sex is also often politicized, with legislation affecting many areas of society, including education and curricula.

Sex education in schools is often structured to pathologize sex as a problem or as risky behavior, and little to nothing is spoken of sexual desire. Examples of this pathologization include sex education that emphasizes abstinence outside of marriage as a positive choice, heterosexual and monogamous relationships, pregnancy prevention, STI education, and sex in terms of reproduction only.

For example, Alamance-Burlington School System’s essential health standards for grades 听reifies these concepts and demonstrates the suppression of education surrounding sexual positivity and desire, same-sex and polygamous sexual wellness, trauma-informed education, and social-justice-informed education.

We must be concerned about the lack of holistic education around sex and its many facets given the current climate of sex education prior to college. We also must be concerned about the lack of diversity in current sex education curricula, knowing that Gen Z is the most diverse generation in history.

Talking about sex and sexual wellness is connected with healthier and safer sexual practices and increased self-esteem and sense of self-worth. And, — the type of relationship you want, sexual boundaries, consent, and more.

Co-Creating Knowledge

We know that the co-creation of knowledge with students is what creates lasting and meaningful impact in their learning, as opposed to a transactional approach to learning where we supply content in a vacuum without their input or interests considered. We wanted our residents on board with us in creating a successful program in which they steered the content.

In a survey sent to all Danieley residents asking for sexual wellness tips, content suggestions, or questions, we received plenty of interest in learning more. Salient themes centered around wanting to learn more about same-sex sexual wellness, how to communicate effectively in sexual relationships, about campus resources for sexual wellness materials and education, and more.

We partnered with 黑料不打烊’s SPARKS Peer Educators in order to have knowledge about sexual wellness shared with our residents by their knowledgeable peers, which we feel enhanced the ability for our residents to converse openly about the topic at the event. SPARKS provides many resources regarding sexual health.

Show Time!

At our program, we were prepared with pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream; many safe sex materials provided by SPARKS like internal and external condoms, lube, and more; stickers with sexual wellness tips and facts (informed by our residents’ suggestions in our survey); glow sticks and dim lighting; our raffle prizes; and many staff to handle the crowd!

Fifteen minutes prior to the event, we had crowds forming in anticipation! Once we started, we ran out of ice cream in just four minutes. All in all, we had more than 100 students in attendance!

It was great to see the students engaging in conversation with SPARKS educators and with each other about sexual wellness and the materials available. Students were excited to point out the stickers with the information they suggested on them.

What’s Next?

Though Danieley’s Wellness Week was in its second iteration, BJs in your PJs was new to Wellness Week this year. Based on our turnout and on student engagement, we plan to do this again!

We hope to expand the scope of the program by bringing in more campus and community collaborators, providing interactive educational opportunities, and more! And, of course, providing even more ice cream!

To collaborate with us in future iterations of BJs in your PJs or in Wellness Week generally, please contact the Danieley Neighborhood Office leadership team!

Participants will answer questions about each of the four Winter Term themes 鈥� health, intercultural engagement, media and politics 鈥� among other topics. All who participate in and complete the game in full will receive a voucher good for one free item on the coffee side of the Oak House.

Prizes in the form of Visa gift cards and Oak House branded glasses or coffee cups will be awarded to the top three finishers.

Anyone interested in participating should .

All participants were offered a free coffee-side drink before showcasing their knowledge across a variety of topics. Two teams of students finished first place and won $200 in Visa gift cards. One team comprised Abbi Decker, Jessica Flacksenburg and Seth McKee. The other co-winners were Megan Noor, Kaitlynn Dixon and Mackenzie Martinez.

Finishing second were Annie Lemasters, Jayne Bennett, Emma Siritzky and Jacob Hayward, who won $100 in Visa gift cards. Third-place finishers Emily May, Shannon Rogers and Megan Casner took home Oak House-branded mugs.

鈥淭his is the fourth consecutive year we鈥檝e offered a Winter Term-themed trivia event,鈥� said Colin Donohue, the faculty director of the Oaks and the School of Communications director of student engagement and alumni relations. 鈥淲e think it鈥檚 a fun way to reinforce the central thrust of 黑料不打烊鈥檚 Winter Term. The questions help us understand how those themes are central to our lives.鈥�

Teams of four will answer questions about each of the four Winter Term themes 鈥� health, intercultural engagement, media and politics.

Prizes in the form of Visa gift cards and Oak House branded glasses or coffee cups will be awarded to the top three teams. Every trivia participant will also be offered a free drink on the coffee side of the Oak House.

Meeting Danieley faculty affiliate Ryan Johnson at the Durham station, the group toured the downtown area, spoke with local leader Nicole Thompson (President and CEO of ), visited art galleries and a bookstore, and sampled local cuisine.

鈥淎s car-centered Americans, riding a train isn鈥檛 necessarily the first thing that pops into our minds, so Ryan and I wanted to show students they could easily access most major cities in North Carolina in a safe, affordable, and more environmentally conscious way,鈥� Buckmaster said.听 鈥淒urham in particular is a fascinating city to explore, with a complex history and community-centered urban development plan, so it was really a sort of mini-Study USA experience for us.鈥�

Students learned about the history of Durham, including Black Wall Street, a thriving business and residential area where the first African-American-owned bank in the United States was founded.

Thompson spoke on the history and politics of the urban development in the downtown area, including the influence of nearby Duke University and how community leaders are continuing to grow in a community-centered way.

Students also learned about the impact of public transportation in North Carolina, including 黑料不打烊 College鈥檚 own train station (demolished in 1961), which was one of the main contributors to 黑料不打烊鈥檚 early history and development. They pondered the meaning of the historical plaque outside Belk Library and the real impact of automobile emissions on the environment.听 After the day-long excursion, students traveled back to 黑料不打烊 the way many alumni during 黑料不打烊’s first seven decades did 鈥� by taking a ride on the train.

The Danieley Center鈥檚 monthly Immersion Excursions are a new initiative aimed at deepening living and learning in this residential neighborhood.听 The excursions are designed by faculty to align with the neighborhood鈥檚 learning outcomes and 黑料不打烊鈥檚 commitment to diversity and inclusion.听 Students self-select and apply for each excursion, and all expenses are covered by the Danieley Neighborhood.

A previous excursion took students to the Greensboro Folk Festival, and future planned excursions include a trip to a Raleigh comedy club and to the International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro.

黑料不打烊 students, faculty and staff were offered a free lunch Sept. 26 in the Snow Family Grand Atrium in Schar Hall in exchange for the steep price of their First Amendment rights.

But not many Americans can name those five, reinforcing the importance of continuing to inform citizens of the First Amendment privileges. According to a 2017 survey from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, 37 percent of Americans can’t name one of the five rights afforded to them by the First Amendment. And only 48 percent could remember freedom of speech.

“Sometimes the First Amendment seems only like words on a page, so we use this event to try to bring it to life,” said Director of Student Media Colin Donohue ’05, who organized the event. “Sadly, it’s easy to overlook the importance of the amendment. And in today’s charged political climate, it’s especially important to explore our rights.”

As people walked into the atrium, signs warned them that they were entering The People’s Republic of 黑料不打烊, where the motto is: “Tread carefully and keep your mouth shut.”

Among the people who wouldn’t stay quiet, though, were Communications Dean Rochelle Ford, who loudly expressed her disappointment that so many people were willing to trade their First Amendment rights for a free burger. Fellow protesters Marjorie Anne Foster ’19, Madison Hays ’22 and Emily Holland ’22 led chants decrying the loss of diners’ rights.

​

Alex Roat ’20 and Sam Porozok ’22 attempted to cover the event for 黑料不打烊 News Network before being forcibly removed. And Hannah Garcia ’22 and Joshua Grossman ’20 proselytized and offered blessings at their own peril.

Keeping everyone in line inside The People’s Republic of 黑料不打烊 were Dictator for the Day and SGA President Kenneth Brown ’19 and police officers Cammie Behnke ’19, Selina Guevara ’19, Jeremy Palladino ’22 and Kenny Harvey ’22.

​

Donohue, an instructor in the School of Communications and the faculty director of the Oaks Neighborhood, brought the event to campus but didn’t originate it. It’s the brainchild of Michael Koretzky, who started it in 2006 at Florida Atlantic University with funds from the Society of Professional Journalists.

黑料不打烊’s version of the First Amendment Free Food Festival was sponsored by the School of Communications, Oaks Neighborhood, Danieley Center Neighborhood, Historic Neighborhood, Council on Civic Engagement, and 1 For All, which is a national nonpartisan program designed to build understanding and support for the First Amendment.

“I think the First Amendment Free Food Festival is important because it shows people what it would be like to have their First Amendment rights taken away,” Roat said. “Our First Amendment rights are the cornerstone of American democracy and we take them for granted, but this event helps students to realize how important those rights are to our everyday lives, and what our lives would be like if they were denied.”