Gerry Kowalski to facilitate national housing professionals workshop
Gerry Kowalski of Blacksburg, director of residence life at Virginia Tech, has been selected to serve as a faculty member for the 16th annual James C. Grimm National Housing Training Institute (NHTI) this summer at the University of Maryland.
With 25 years of experience in the university on-campus housing field, Kowalski will be one of 10 senior-level university housing officers to lead program participants in a week-long professional development workshop. Faculty members act as mentors and instructors for the group of 30 NHTI participants, who are selected from a national applicant pool of housing officers with three to five years of experience working in college and university housing.
“This is an excellent opportunity to work with an energized group of professionals who want to advance themselves in the field,” said Kowalski. Although this will be his first time at NHTI, Kowalski said he was excited to participate in the workshop because it will provide faculty and participants “a look at the future of the profession.”
NHTI is designed to be an intense career development experience for professionals starting in the field of college and university housing. Participants develop mentoring relationships with NHTI faculty and interact with colleagues from across the nation. Faculty members and participants share suites and apartments on the University of Maryland campus to help foster open communication and to give them the opportunity to experience university housing first-hand.
The program focuses on a list of 50 competencies, a set of skills and traits necessary for work in housing, developed by the Association of College and University Housing Officers – International. ACUHO-I co-sponsors the annual event with the University of Maryland Department of Resident Life.
Founded in 1872 as a land-grant college, Virginia Tech has grown to become among the largest universities in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Today, Virginia Tech’s eight colleges are dedicated to putting knowledge to work through teaching, research, and outreach activities and to fulfilling its vision to be among the top research universities in the nation. At its 2,600-acre main campus located in Blacksburg and other campus centers in Northern Virginia, Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Roanoke, Virginia Tech enrolls more than 28,000 full- and part-time undergraduate and graduate students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries in 180 academic degree programs.
