Staffing shortages at the Office of Campus Life (OCL), spurred by the departure of five staff members in the last year, have caused delays in the registration process for Registered Student Organizations (RSOs), though other impacts on students have been minimal, according to OCL staff.
Doug Schiazza, senior associate dean of campus life, first acknowledged the staffing shake-ups in an email to students on Aug. 13.
OCL oversees student housing and residential education, which includes student campus involvement and residential life events. It administers the House Coordinator program and supervises the Junior Advisor program alongside the dean’s office. OCL also manages RSO finances, including purchasing cards and expenditures.
Five staff members — Ivy Campos, Patricia Leahey-Hays, DaQuan Vidot, Trevor Biggs, and Mike Bodnarik — left OCL earlier this year to pursue positions at other institutions, leaving the office with nine members. In the wake of the departures, College administrators promoted Heather McCarthy and Zach Cramer to the roles of associate director for housing and assistant director for residential education, respectively. Cailin McGowan has also filled the position of financial and administrative coordinator, and Trevor Biggs has returned to serve as the assistant director for student involvement in an interim capacity.
Two roles — area coordinator for upperclass students and student involvement and events coordinator — remain unfilled.
Searches to fill the two vacant positions began over the summer, Schiazza said, though the College’s transition to Workday delayed the posting of the jobs. Schiazza said that he hopes to fill the roles within the next few months.
In an interview with the Record, Schiazza said some turnover in OCL is not uncommon. “It’s the nature of the role,” he said. “It tends to be entry level.” The recent rate of departures, however, were outside of the norm, he added.
“Everybody has their own reasons for things,” he said. “Not to say that there aren’t other things that impact that. It was a rough year last year, and that may have been part of that.”
Schiazza wrote in an email to the Record that while he was on leave for much of last year, both the initial departure of some OCL staff and the death of Toby Woods ’27 contributed to the difficulty of the year. “My team was involved in supporting students through difficult situations, all while being understaffed,” he wrote. “I’m very proud of the work that the team did.”
Cramer attributed people’s departures mostly to their personal career goals. “I don’t think it was a dissatisfaction with Williams — I think it was a continuation of wanting to do what’s best for them,” he said.
Staff at OCL, including Schiazza and Cramer, said that they believe that the shortages have had minimal impact on students’ day-to-day lives at the College.
“We’re down a few people, but I think this is a group that jumps in,” Schiazza said. “This is a group that says, ‘Okay, what can I do to help?’”
“The last few months made us all get to know each other not just as employees but as human beings, and it’s been really great to see the ways we can support each other outside the office as well and work as a team not just in the 40-hour workweek but in our lives,” Cramer added.
Aracely Watson ’25, residential director of Currier Quad, however, said that the staff shortage has impacted students hired by OCL or RLT.
“Zach is doing the job of two people, which is really hard, and then it makes our jobs obviously a little bit more difficult,” she said. “There’s only so many hours in the day, and Zach can only respond to so many emails and do so much on our behalf.”
Watson, who will assist with interviewing potential candidates for the job, stressed the balance between filling the positions quickly and finding the right candidates.
“We just need another body,” she said. “But we don’t just want anybody — we want a quality body. That has been a little bit more difficult than I originally hoped.”
Cramer agreed, saying that the committee is taking its time to ensure that it hears from the best possible applicants. “Whether or not we are fully staffed shouldn’t have any bearing on who we hire,” he said. “I think Williams students deserve strong, passionate, excited career professionals.”
“I’m feeling cautiously optimistic,” Watson said. “We got through the move-in [and the] beginning of the school year. We got through that hurdle.”
Schiazza acknowledged that OCL staff is charged with a number of responsibilities at the beginning of the academic year and said that the office has prioritized housing-related tasks, as well as planning for the Purple Key Fair and Jamboree, which both took place over the weekend. The Purple Key Fair and Jamboree, which took place about a week later than in the past, were delayed due to the availability of event space and not the staffing shortage, Schiazza wrote in an email to the Record.
“Even if it seems like our office is busier than ever, we never don’t have time for students,” Cramer said.
