Students will have the opportunity to submit resident assistant applications online for the first time ever tomorrow, according to Resident Life Assistant Director for Human Resources Laura Tan.
Previously, students could print application forms from the Resident Life Department website but had to fill them in by hand and deliver them to the Resident Life office.
The change will decrease paper use and data entry time, Tan said. In past years, Resident Life employees had to manually enter information from applications into databases, she said. Tan was unsure how much money and time Resident Life might save or if the applicant pool will grow.
Resident assistants were split on the issue.
“I think they’ll get a lot more applicants that way,” senior biology major Josh Pearl said. “I think people will find it easier to just go online. … You can do it around your schedule.”
And the greater number of applicants could affect the kind of people who apply, Pearl said.
“If you increase the pool size you will probably get a wider range of people, which could be a good thing or a bad thing,” Pearl said. “[But] I feel that the interviews will still find the best people.”
And the online application could help with the quick turnaround time of the application, Pearl said, which gives students only 17 days to attend an information session, complete an application and sign up for interviews.
Junior English and secondary education major Dave Hatton predicted the change would have a smaller effect.
“I think if [it changes the number of applicants], it might be very little,” he said. “I think it would make it a little easier to apply, but not to where you would get a lot more people. I think the same people that were going to apply are still going to apply.”
Applicants will still have to go to the office to set up an interview, Tan said, but within the next three years she said she hoped the program would become fully automated, with students only having to show up in person for an information session, and a one-on-one and group interview.
The move is part of a greater shift to online for the university. Students can already do a number of things online, such as sign up for classes, apply for other jobs within the Resident Life Department and pay their bills.
“Students are more accustomed now to doing things online than they are on paper,” Tan said.
The university’s Office of Human Resources allows people to apply for some jobs here through online applications, and soon the room-selection process may move online as well, Director of Resident Life Deb Grandner said.
Resident Life and the Residence Hall Association will work together to develop a system to administer room selection over the Internet instead of the free-for-all in the Stamp Student Union ballroom, Grandner said.
“I think if it’s done the right way, then it will be extremely beneficial to students,” Residence Hall Association President Alex Beuchler said.
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