“Of The Month” Campus Recipients Recognized Posted Wednesday, April 7, 2021 @ 4:58 PM OTMs are “Of The Month” awards that recognize exceptional students, staff, faculty, programs, or initiatives during the month. Any resident or staff member can submit an OTM, and the general categories are: Advisor, Executive Board Member, First Year Student, Student, Residence Life Professional Staff, Institution Faculty/Staff, Organization, Resident Assistant, Student Staff Member, and Spotlight. Individuals can also recognize programs for OTMs, and those categories are: Community Service Program, Diversity Program, Educational Program, Passive Program, and Social Program. OTMs are due by 11:59 p.m. on the last day of each month and can be submitted here. The UCF OTMS are overseen by the UCF NRHH, or the National Residence Hall Honorary. Learn more about February’s winners below. Student Staff Member: Hailey Lawson Hailey Lawson is the Marketing Assistant for UCF Housing and Residence Life. Her duties range from assisting to overall marketing tasks and social media content creation and strategy. She is recognized this month for her help reviewing over 40 applications for new hires for UCF Housing’s Housing Ambassador team and assisted with over 10 interviews. She is always willing to brainstorm content ideas for the UCF Housing and UnionWest social media channels, as well as blog posts and newsworthy content for their respective websites. Her nominator stated, “This past month Hailey has gone above and beyond assisting with multiple projects and campaigns. She has been very proactive in creating new and strategic social media content, helping to start a creative COVID social media “Mask Up” campaign. The goal of the campaign is to encourage and remind residents of on-campus COVID policies. Hailey also wrote a blog post for our website that highlighted different and safe ways for residents to enjoy Valentine’s Day on campus and around Orlando. In addition to all of this amazing work, she is also a critical asset to our weekly virtual housing tours.” Resident Assistant: Alexandra Jean-Louis Alex was nominated for her passion for her work and community this month. She has had to balance the difficulties of her heavy coursework, the RA position, maintaining self-care, and two additional to engage with the community. In the Fall, Alex started a new recognition initiative called “Resident of the Month” which included emailing a survey to 1200 residents of the Libra and Apollo communities calling for nominations of fellow residents in the following categories: Academic Achievements, Work-Related Achievements, Personal Success, and Excellent Role Model. For February, there were over 29 submissions! Alex took it upon herself to provide a certificate and small prize to the winners. Her nominator stated “RA Alexandra‘s creation of and dedication to this Community Recognition Committee initiative have resulted in a higher level of engagement and morale among the first-year students in the community. This has been especially difficult since the COVID-19 pandemic has begun. In addition to successfully executing Resident of the Month for resident recognition, Alex also worked closely with her Coordinator to construct “Celebrate Black History,” a window display highlighting some of the achievements and triumphs of the Black community for the month of February. Alex surveyed the community to find out who THEY would like to bring awareness to. This was an opportunity to get residents to celebrate Black history and engage with the content in a more meaningful way. Alex’s passion for community shine through in her work every day, but during the month of February she truly went above and beyond!” Educational Program: Virtual Housing Tour Nothing can replace walking into a housing tour room, looking around and envisioning yourself there. However, the UCF Housing Marketing Team does their best to still help students picture themselves on campus through virtual tours. The feedback received on the virtual tours has been very positive and Housing will likely continue them post-Covid to be more inclusive and accessible. The Nominator stated “Our Virtual Housing Tour program is a weekly Zoom-based program held for prospective students and families. The program gives students and families a chance to view our virtual tour presentation and have their questions answered live. Our Housing Ambassadors assist in presenting and answering live questions. We promote the virtual tours on social media and use a new interactive poll on our Instagram Story each week that quizzes students on our halls. We easily get over 100 responses each week. Students and parents must register to attend the Virtual Housing Tour and since starting the program, we have a no-show rate of only 8%. We also follow-up each tour with a survey and have received amazing feedback including: “The pictures of dorm room examples and decoration ideas were extremely helpful and a good way to see how the space is used commonly.” As well as an average rating of 9.1/10. These virtual tours allow us to show prospective students each of our 10 housing communities – something we are not usually able to do during the regular school year.” Back