VIEW FROM THE ACADEME There is a satellite health clinic in each neighbor-hood, for instance. That’s how we know if we have a flu breakout in certain area of campus. We also have mental health professionals in each neighborhood. Our student affairs staff does a great job in each neighborhood to identify needs. SHB : What are the challenges for MSU’s student housing, other than implementing the second-year live-on requirement? Gore : We have similar challenges that every large institution has. Safety and security are always a challenge with such a large campus. It is an area we pay a lot of attention to. And not just to physi-cal safety, but emotional and psychological safety. Students feel very isolated in this virtual learning environment. Like other universities, we have multiple vintages of our housing stock. Several of our residence halls were built in the 1930s with Works Progress Administration money. They are beautiful buildings in the Collegiate Gothic style, and we couldn’t afford to build those buildings today. They are 90 years old, however, and re-quire a lot of attention. We also have high-rise residence halls. We are managing a wide variety of properties. Once you get to a system that’s as large as ours, you have all the consistency issues that come with that. Since I also run hospitality, that is a huge challenge. We feed about 50,000 people a day. It is a large and complex operation. We are a pretty large auxiliary. With hospital-ity, we also have the campus hotel and the Jack Breslin Events Center, where our basketball team plays. We also have two golf courses and a tennis facility. The MSU Union, which at most universi-ties is under student affairs, is under hospitality here. SHB : How did your career in student housing begin, and evolve? Gore : I came to student housing somewhat by accident. Erin and I share a common alma mater: I went to the University of South Carolina as an undergraduate and Erin went there as a graduate student. I was involved in student affairs. I de-cided to get a master’s degree in student affairs. I went to Indiana University. My assistantship was in housing and I became a housing geek. Since then, I’ve been in housing my entire career, in Indiana, Illinois, Washington and Wisconsin. I’ve been at Michigan State for almost 14 years. Carter : I am a little different. I went to the Uni-versity of Toledo for physical therapy. I did that as a career for a while before returning to gradu-ate school for higher ed and student affairs at South Carolina. I worked in student affairs and student life, then came to Michigan State and became the community liaison. I was the person at the university who was responsible for the relationship with the city around student issues; the town-and-gown representative. In the process of that, I completed my PhD in higher education at Michigan State. When I graduated in 2017, Vennie was working on a potential project with downtown East Lansing and needed someone who had familiarity with the municipal govern-ment to spearhead relations. I joined that team and have been part of housing in various roles since then. SHB : What would you like the industry and your peers to know about Michigan State’s housing? Gore : We are a fully integrated academic student affairs housing program. If someone were to come visit us, I would walk them through Case Hall and they would see the dining, the class-rooms, the faculty and advising offices, along with the residential space. SHB texacraft.com | 800.327.1541 | Jrega@texacraft.com StudentHousingBusiness.com March/April 2021 45
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