PUTTING THE 'E' IN RCE

RC, that's what the letters on the door in light pink and creamy green say. But there’s something missing, a brightly colored E.

Several years ago, there was a position called “RC,” which stood for Resident Counselor. This term is no longer formally used, because the job of an RC grew into more than a counselor for college students.

The previous dean of student life, Debra Jones, in 2015 wanted to professionalize the department and eliminate the camp counselor mentality completely by adding the “E” for educator. The new title is Residential Community Educator.

“There is an element of education and character development that we support,” says Ginger Emden, the RCE of Brooks House, explaining the difference between an RC and RCE.

Noel Carlson, Ferguson house RCE, remembers the job of RC being loose. Their main goal was to “keep the house from burning down,” Noel says with a laugh. Don Hauge was Carlson’s RC when he was a student at Principia College many years ago. Hauge was an assistant football coach, a saxophone player, and the RC for Anderson West, which became Ferguson.

“You could go hang out with them if you wanted, the apartment was always open, from what I remember,” says Carlson. Generally, RCs didn’t have a strong presence.

Fred Lloyd was the RC who ran Rackham West and East when current RCEs Paul Needham, and Geoff Hinchman were in school. Lloyd, was a golfer and ran a couples program that helped students build healthy relationships with their loved ones.

The role of an RC was drastically different, and the student boards were what mostly ran the house in past, says Carlson.

Today, RCEs are expected to be involved in students lives.

Interviews with several RCEs suggest that the job is a bit like parenting, being a teacher, and being a camp counselor all in one. RCE’s have specific meeting times throughout the week with their student-run house boards and department board. And they have other responsibilities, such as having one-on-one conversations with all the students in their houses each semester.

One time, Paul Needham, the RCE of Lowrey house, asked himself, “What do I do all day?” and made this list:

• Woke up at 7 

• Wake up a student who sleeps through their alarm 

• Talk to a professor for an hour about a student who needs help

• Check email 

• Quiet time 

• Discuss state of the Rec Room 

• Lunch 

• Reconcile receipts 

• Oh, and work out a room request 

• Talk to my wife about student room request 

• Get supplies for treat night 

• Set up a meeting with the house president 

• Family time 

• Treat night

Paul went to bed around 1 a.m. that night.

Despite how busy the job is, it allows a lot of flexibility, and Geoff Hinchman, RCE of Rackham Court freshmen, describes the job as being like, “a stay-at-home dad for 46 people that are just all over the place. Some are ready to be seniors, some of them still don’t know if they should be at college, and they want to, or they don’t want to.”

Some RCEs feel they need to be deeply involved in their students’ lives with a hands-on approach, while others give their students more space with a hands-off approach.

The RCE’s main goal is, “to support a student in your house in any way possible,” says Hinchman. He and his wife spend most of their time trying to get to every sports event they can, to support their students even if the couple has the day off.

“I think my job is kind of like getting students to collect on their experience, and not to sort of determine what to think, but to get them to think about their own experience,” says Needham.

The position of RCE has started to shift recently and become stricter as more difficulties have arisen, says Hinchman: “When I first started, there were not any overtly specific policies on sexual harassment or sexual assault.”

Fewer issues were being brought to the college’s attention, and there wasn’t a fluid system in place to deal with the situations even being brought to them.

“That’s probably the larger change – the reporting,” says Hinchman. “Because before, if I had a situation, that was a higher-end situation, something that involved a dangerous thing. I would have been involved the whole way through, and then when the change happened, I was removed … which we’re realizing was not as beneficial as we thought.”                                                                                                           

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