Follow-up interview with Vice Provost Hradsky on Arch, summer housing, and more

The Poly sat down with Vice Provost for the Student Experience Rob Hradsky to discuss the Arch, summer housing, changes to punishments regarding alcohol, and more. This interview is a follow-up to our previous interview with Hradsky last semester. The following transcript has been edited for clarity.

The Poly: Last time we spoke, there were a couple of things that we spoke about that you said, “in the spring I’ll have more information.”

Hradsky: Yes. So I'm let me give you a sort of broad context, and then I will figure out when I can share the details. So, again, I've spent a lot of time in the Fall talking with students, talking with staff, talking with academic leadership, deans, to really understand, I think, where the opportunities are for us to elevate the student experience. And as part of that, there are some ways that I want to move around units within student experience and also a couple that are in the undergraduate education area in order to better support students. I think that these shifts will help to sort of centralize support in one area rather than requiring a student to go to multiple places in order to get their needs met. Some of them are looking at, so I'll give you one example now. But there are more that are on the horizon that we need to do some more work with our staff, and then we'll share with students exactly what those are gonna look like.

But one example I can share is the Arch. So previously, we had an office called the Arch and Student Transitions, and they were doing a whole bunch of stuff as we really sort of unpacked the Arch experience for students. We did focus groups. We looked at survey data. We worked with the Student Senate to really start to understand the Arch experience. And what we found is that, there was quite a bit of frustration with the way that a student navigated the Arch, the registration process, away semester. It sounded like there were a lot of administrative hurdles to actually doing what you need to do with students.

So what I did was I moved the Arch under CCPD, because the primary thrust of Arch is experiential learning, and CCPD is all about experiential learning and then also helping students with the transition to employment or graduate school or whatever's next for a student. So that is in transition right now. As part of that process, we've also looked at streamlining procedures and so forth, creating more flexibility with the Arch program so that we can better support students in this experience. I also don't think that we've done a great job of really explaining what Arch is and really helping students to understand the benefit. So that's part of what we're doing as well, trying to do a better job with communication so that students understand there actually are a lot of benefits to Arch. You know, it's something that actually is unique and a differentiator for RPI, and I think gives RPI students an advantage. So that's an example of something that's in play right now.

Philip Bruce, who's the director of CCPD, has already taken the lead on that. The existing staff that we're working with are still working with them as we work through HR processes and some organizational structure things in order to complete that move.

When you talk about streamlining the process, what does that look like? What is the end goal of the way that students would engage with Arch on their end?

I think that when you look at our data, maybe sixty, sixty five percent of students do internships. And then there are various other kinds of opportunities that students pursue. They might do research as undergraduates, they might study abroad, they might study at another institution. They might even do volunteer work related to their specific field. So I think in terms of streamlining this, we wanna make it clear and easy for students to understand what you can do and what are the ways that you can actually make it happen. For example, as part of the registration process for this group that will do Arch now, we've created one form that a student can indicate their intentions of what they wanna do.

Previously, you had a form for this, a form for that, a form for another option, and it created a lot of communication barriers for the staff, quite frankly. And then that in turn slowed down the process for students. So they might say, “hey, I wanna do an internship”, and it would take us a while to confirm that. Where “I wanna do self design”, and then students wouldn't hear for weeks and weeks and weeks, about whether or not it was approved and what steps they needed to take in order to move it forward.

So some of those, I would say, administrative things, we've tried to make easier. The other thing we're doing is creating more flexibility. So we're saying once you have 32 credits, whether you're a first year student or sophomore, You can do Arch and make it fit—

Arch away?

Let me just say Arch broadly. You can do Arch to accommodate your interest in your schedule. So for students who are here in the summer and wanna take classes, you could conceivably do that the summer after your first year.

That already exists in Early Arch.

That’s not well known, so we're trying to make that more known and we're trying to make that more flexible.

So a rebranding?

Yes. So I think the intention is that you could most people, the default would be sophomore summer. But I think we'll see more people do it after their first year summer. And then for people who transfer in or have other unique circumstances, they might even do it the summer after their junior year. And then we're looking at the away semester as well and trying to figure out how we can make that a little bit more flexible for students. So one of the things that might do is open up more co-op opportunities.

So co-ops are typically more than a semester. So maybe a first year student does summer Arch classes on campus after their first year. And then after their sophomore year, they do summer and fall co-op. So I think it just creates more flexibility and more options for students.

With doing that, you would have to add more classes that would be available during the summer.

We would need to make sure that we're offering courses that students would need to take right now as first years. So, we're all looking at that right now to try to figure out what that would look like.

The other part that I asked you about last time was housing during Arch, one of them was fraternities and sororities letting their members live in their houses.

So we're literally evaluating that right now. I've collected some data, and we're looking at the impact of allowing fraternities and sororities to stay in their houses during the summer. And I'm still in the process of evaluating that and hope to move forward with a recommendation very shortly.

You hope that would be in effect for this summer?

If we're able to move forward in that direction, then that would be the hope. So there's lots of issues there. Students always wanna point to financial issues and believe that we're doing that only for the revenue, and that's not entirely true. Certainly, revenue is a piece of it, but we also have concerns about student support in their houses over the summer. So if you have two or three students in a house, how is that gonna work from a safety perspective, from a dining perspective all those kinds of things. Because those services are provided for students during the fall and the spring. So it looked very, very different, in the summer, and we're trying to figure out what support would we need to provide in the summer for those students who lived in their houses?

Just as one example. Sororities, because of national guidelines, so, the Panhellenic Council, they are not permitted to live in their houses in the summer. So I think that's off the table. So [arch summer housing] really is an issue that applies to fraternities and we're actively looking at that. We've heard very loudly from students and alumni, concerns about that policy.

Concerns against letting students stay in the summer or in or in favor of it?

In favor of allowing students to live in their fraternity house.

That's sort of also related to letting students not be in Greek life at all living off campus as well during the summer.

Part of the mission of Arch is also building community in the summer. If you have people dispersed all over the area, it's much harder to create a community as opposed to them living together in a residential community. We're gonna be much more intentional this summer with the activities that we're dealing with those students who are on campus taking classes, to build community, to really think about where they are in that summer journey and what they need when. So I think you'll see a lot of changes in that area this summer too. But we believe that a major objective is also building community, and that can’t happen if you have people all over the place.

That happens right now, though. You still have upperclassmen that are not necessarily on campus and that community still exists.

So these are still first years and sophomores. And I think, developmentally, students have different needs at different levels. So I still think for the first year and sophomore year, the needs of students developmentally are different than they are for juniors and seniors.

And the other bit was, the thing I asked you about was, allowing more rest time, essentially, both before the Arch summer and then after the Arch summer.

So that is a great, great question. So some of that is related to the academic calendar. The state requires us to have a certain number of teaching days. So it's difficult for us to shrink the spring in order to create a lot of space with summer. And depending on the academic calendar each year, we may have more time between spring and summer. But one of the things we're currently exploring is the idea of instead of doing a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday break, Thursday, Friday, we're looking at doing a Monday through Thursday with the break day being Friday, and that, in essence, would give students a three day weekend. So Fridays could be trips. They could be things connected with academics, or it could be a student really takes the time to decompress and and focus on academics or family or friends or whatever that is for them. But we think that that might create some flexibility.

What's going on right now, and you guys are probably aware of this, is the Senate is conducting a survey, to get feedback from students on the schedule and, what they think about doing Monday through Thursday as opposed to Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. And then, also, we're doing a similar kind of survey with faculty, and the associate deans in the academic units to get their feedback on that approach as well.

Last time you said that RPI was looking to approve three years worth of the academic calendar at a time.

Yes, and that has been approved. I haven't looked to see if it's on the website.

Only the current year’s one is there.

So there's nothing beyond this year?

Yes.

Okay. Well, I will talk to the folks who are responsible for that and ask them to get those additional calendars on there because they have been approved, and they are known. So there's no reason why we're not sharing that broadly with the community

Does that calendar include a week off for Thanksgiving?

That was the goal. When we're done, I can quickly look and see what the calendar is. But that was the goal. We couldn't do it this year, but the goal was next year, there would be a full week off.

As in Fall ’25 or ’26?

I thought it was Fall ’25, but let me look.

So you were at the senate last week and one thing you talked about was a sort of loosening of the punishments regarding the alcohol policy. If could just sort of talk through that

So I think rather than honing in specifically on the alcohol policy, let me just speak more broadly. And that is as I look at some of the sanctions for student misconduct, it seems like we often take a very heavy hand in the way that we handle those incidents. And in particular, I think with alcohol violations, what I've seen is that there have been some mandatory separations based on the nature of the incident. And what Ryan Kitak, the Dean of Students, and I are trying to do is to really take a developmental approach to student discipline. So what that means is, rather than looking at student conduct as a punishment because you haven't met our community expectations, what that means is we're actually looking at you as an individual. We're looking at the context surrounding a particular incident, and then we're looking at how we can help you learn from that experience so that moving forward as you're making choices, hopefully, you're more thoughtful and reflective and don't make those same kinds of mistakes.

And at that meeting, I was very clear in saying that there are some situations where separation may make sense. Right? Physical violence, drug distribution, some forms of sexual and relationship violence. Those are kinds of cases where we would certainly believe it would be appropriate based on the context. But rather than taking a one size fits all approach, we really believe we need to look at the individual and really consider the context of what happened and look at how we can support that individual.

Is there a time when those sorts of changes would come into effect?

Yes. So, Ryan is working with the Student Life Committee, right now, actually, and starting to think about those changes, what we think they should be, and how we move that forward. So the student life committee, the Senate, plays a role in the handbook, the GDA. He's working in partnership with them, so we can look at how we move that forward. One of our goals too, have either of you ever looked at the handbook?

Briefly.

So why do you think he looked at it briefly? It's very long. And the language is really difficult to understand. Sometimes I look at it and I'm not really sure what it's saying in certain instances. So I think our goal here is to simplify it, use everyday language so that it's really clear. I think we also wanna look at how do we look at rights and responsibilities? So right now, when you look at the code, there's a lot about responsibilities. I don't think there's as much about rights. Right?

So we wanna take a student centered approach. We're not gonna necessarily change our community expectations because I think the things that are there make sense. Mhmm. But I think the way that we resolve incidents, the way that we communicate with students, the way that we help them understand their rights, those are the things that we're really focused on right now.

Last thing I wanted to discuss is Title IX. I'm sure you know a federal judge struck down the Biden administration’s newer regulations and now they are the old ones from 2020. What are some of the major changes because I assume they're going to release a newer updated version based on the 2020 regulations.

Yeah. So the best person to talk to would be Elizabeth Brown because she's our Title IX coordinator, and she's intimately involved with all of those changes. But with the rollback there were certain things that the Biden administration put into place, and then there were court challenges. And then as a result of those court challenges and the timing of the administration's term, they chose to withdraw those. So in essence, it goes right back to the 2020 regulations. And what we need to do then is figure out what point we have changed, and then, what we need to move back toward. And part of it too is, as you know, New York State is fairly progressive in this area and also has the “Enough is Enough” law that also dictates things that we need to do, as state requirements. So we're trying to kinda look at the federal change, look at the state, and then come up with something that's compliant.

Do you know when roughly that would be?

I honestly don't. But Elizabeth could tell you. She's really the one taking the lead, and she's including others in the conversation, but she's the one sort of driving the process at this point.

When we spoke in November one of the first topics we spoke about was the add/drop deadline. Have there been any substantive changes regarding that policy?

So at the senate meeting, there was a suggestion that something had changed. But then it sounded like maybe something hadn't. So I haven't heard of any updates quite frankly. Part of what we were trying to do was to help students understand the details behind that policy shift and what exactly it means. From my perspective, the voices that were loudest against it had to do with the fact that after the second week, a student would get a W on their transcript and felt that that was punitive.

But in fact, what that does for certain populations of students is allow them to remain enrolled full time so that it doesn't drop them below full time status and then impact financial aid or maybe visa status. So, but on a positive side, what that does is, the new policy is, instead of having eight weeks to drop, students now have ten weeks. So, I think initially, it was like, “oh my gosh I gotta make decisions really early on.” I think that that's actually in the best interest of students. Trying to help you be thoughtful upfront about what credit load is reasonable, and certainly not adding something after the second week point, which, I think, puts students at a real disadvantage.

I'm sure you're aware that the Senate did their own survey regarding the drop deadline and roughly 2 percent of the people they polled supported the changes

I think sometimes surveys are not necessarily reflective of the broader sentiment. I also think that in this case, there's some real tangible benefits of why the institute chose to move forward in this direction. And students who are not the direct beneficiaries of that may not necessarily understand or appreciate why that's important for those populations that I mentioned.

So for now, no major changes that you're working on.

That's right.

Congress is pushing for scholarships and financial aid to be taxed. It's not been passed yet, but if it were to be passed, what would you think RPI's policy would be on either increasing scholarship amounts or keeping them the same.

I think you probably know that the institute is about to launch another fundraising campaign. And I think among the top priorities there are scholarship dollars. So I think that demonstrates our commitment to wanting to support student financial aid. If you look at our data, 100% of the students who attend RPI get some level of funding, financial aid.

I think that also demonstrates our commitment because most institutions can't say that. So I think it's a top priority for us, and we are navigating the executive orders on a daily basis as things come out and change. And we're trying to analyze the impact on us. We're trying to support students because, you know, this has real impacts on members of our community and, trying to be as supportive as we can and learn as much as we can so we really understand the true impact. And some of the executive orders, as you know, were being challenged in court. And some have been put on hold. So, exactly where we're gonna land is, my guess as much as yours.