“What do you do all summer?”

A question I commonly receive from students, or acquaintances who don’t work in my field, is about what we college administrators do all summer long when the majority of students are gone: “It must be quiet, right? Do you get the summer off?” True, the student foot traffic is a lot lighter than during the school year, and there are much fewer events to attend. But, believe it or not, we in the Division of Student Affairs stay extremely busy all summer long.

First, there is New Student and Parent Orientation, both of which take place for eight weeks throughout the summer. There are student staff (e.g., Orientation Leaders, Resident Assistants) to train, and sometimes new professional staff to hire. Typically, we’ll use the summer to conduct staff retreats to connect our teams together and develop our goals for the upcoming school year. There are websites and publications to update; housing applications to process and residence halls to refurbish; reports to write and budgets to finalize; and many, many events to plan! Some big events on the horizon include Welcome Week and the Hofstra Fall Festival. We also work with Admissions in securing our new class of students. For example, we assist with the Admissions Enrollment Days, and the Divisional staff calls every single student within the incoming class to welcome them to Hofstra.

Despite our hectic schedules, we still manage to fit in some fun. Just about everyone takes a week or two of vacation during the summer (I went to Cancun, Atlanta, and Fire Island! See my picture taken in Chichen Itza, Cancun, Mexico). Often, we’ll have Divisional socials to connect as a staff and celebrate our accomplishments of the past year. We also engage in a friendly softball rivalry with some of the other departments on campus (next week we’ll be taking on Enrollment Services).

We do enjoy the fact that it’s much easier to find a parking spot during the summer. But ultimately, (around this time of year, especially) we miss our students and long for your return. A little bit of quiet is nice for a while, but we enjoy the vibrancy that you all bring to campus. I look forward to seeing you all very soon!