YC&E collaborates with Yale College on new Undergraduate Housing Services unit

 

 

Yale Conferences & Events (YC&E) is proud to announce our collaboration with Yale College (YC) on a brand new Undergraduate Housing Services unit (UHS) that will serve to centralize and streamline the student housing process for Yale’s 14 residential colleges. 

 

The UHS unit, operating under the umbrella of YC&E, will work closely with student affairs and the residential colleges to create centralized procedures, backed by StarRez technology, to manage housing tasks such as housing intent and room draw, as well as provide technical support and training for staff. Knowledge sharing across residential colleges and UHS will be common practice through their new housing services committee, which will meet regularly to coordinate common projects and refine processes, so they work best for everyone. In collaboration with this housing services committee, the UHS team will also take the lead on planning and implementing housing move-in and move-out, as well as pre-term and post-term housing.

 

The UHS team, led by Nathan Lubich (director) and Justin Thornton (assistant director), will continue supporting housing for Commencement, reunions, and summer camps and conferences, in addition to managing isolation housing. 

 

In an email announcement to residential college colleagues, Marvin M. Chun, Dean of Yale College and Richard M. Colgate Professor of Psychology, said, “Over the past two years, we have faced a series of previously unimaginable housing challenges. It has not been easy, but we have persevered in partnership with YC&E.  I am hopeful that we can soon leave the worst of the pandemic behind us, while still carrying forward the advantages of this collaboration.”

 

 

This pandemic-era partnership began in March 2020 when YC&E stepped in to assist hundreds of Yale students retrieve essential items from their rooms (passports, laptops, etc.) after the university shut down. YC&E then coordinated opportunities for students to retrieve the rest of their items once they were allowed to return to campus during the summer months. This was in addition to helping the university establish on-campus respite housing for first responders, which included helping graduate students move to prepare extra rooms for first responders. YC&E’s role expanded to working with Yale Health to provide comfortable and safe housing for students who tested positive during the school year. Our team also managed interim housing over the 2020 winter break for students who could not safely return home during the pandemic.

 

When the need for a safe and centralized housing process arose during the pandemic, YC&E was uniquely placed to assist the university, having already possessed the systems for and knowledge of Yale residential housing as a result of managing summer housing on campus for many years. At the time, housing operations were decentralized between various Yale College Deans Office staff and the 14 individual residential colleges. “One primary objective to a central Undergraduate Housing Services Unit,” Nathan said, “is to provide continuity between the academic year and the summer as well as consistency for our campus partners.” 

 

In the fall of 2020, Nathan and his operations team established an online move-in housing portal that allowed students to efficiently and safely move-in. This effort laid the groundwork for a more efficient housing process and the creation of Yale’s first-ever centralized housing system for students.