Fostering Sustainable Wellness Practices Through Programming For Residential Education Staff at the University of San Diego

The purpose of this study is to focus on supporting staff at the University of San Diego (USD). This includes resident assistants, community directors, and graduate students taking on the role of assistant community directors to develop resilience in the form of tangible tools and resources to provide recommendations for office policies and procedures to prevent burnout. The department of residential education (ResEd) is primarily student facing at the USD, so my goal was to focus on the residential life staff experience who directly manage communities of students residing in on-campus housing. I found residential life jobs have a high turnover rate due to the amount of responsibilities that come with the role. The primary objective of this action research study was to address the different challenges of residential education staff and create intentional programming in an effort to support staff, develop resilience, and ultimately produce recommendations for office policies and procedures to prevent burnout. Keywords: resilience, burnout, intentionalit