Welcome to the Housing and Residential Life web site, a great resource specifically tailored for the parents of California State University, Stanislaus students. Whether you are an old hat at sending children off to college or sending off your first, you’ll find a variety of useful information about residential housing and the university.

As you and your child ponder the benefits of living on-campus versus off-campus consider a bit of the following research by Alexander Astin.  In his book What Matters In College: Four Critical Years Revisited Mr. Astin reports on his study of college students who lived on campus.  The results shed light on something long known by housing professionals, namely that students who live on campus are statistically more likely to:

• Be satisfied with their university experience.
• Have a higher persistence rate and graduate sooner than students who live off-campus.
• Maintain a higher grade point average, with a higher percentage of residence hall graduates pursuing professional degrees after obtaining their bachelor degree.
• Be more involved in campus life, including: clubs, Greek life, and student leadership.
• Build relationships with their faculty and university employees.

Being curious about how our community modeled to the national standards we decided to take a look and see how we compared....I am happy to say that we faired very well as evidenced by an analysis of how housing residents at CSU Stanislaus compared to non-residents. 

• Housing residents who live on campus as freshman have a 12% faster 4-year time to degree than students who didn't live on campus.  They have a 7% faster 5-year graduation rate.
• Over 56% of our community have semester GPAs of 3.0 or higher, with 28% obtaining GPAs of 3.5 or higher.

This information helped confirm what we in housing already prided ourselves on, namely that our residents are more successful because of their residential experience, both personally and academically.  Having learned this we are even more committed to providing them with the best living community we can. 

With this in mind we are introducing a new sophomore community this fall, adding additional Resident Advisors and augmenting our Resident Advisor training to give them a deeper understanding of the student experiences and challenges commonly experienced for EACH ACADEMIC YEAR.   This will help drive our community activities and events for the 2011-12 year and will compass:

• On-site tutoring
• Study nights
• Floor and community events
• Off campus events and activities
• Academic wellness workshops
• Faculty-In-Residence

Living on campus is an unforgettable experience and we are committed to ensuring that our residents are able to be both personally and academically successful.  With this in mind every activity we sponsor, every decision we make and every action we take is based on four core concepts:  leadership, relationship, citizenship and scholarship.

I encourage you to look through the resources posted through this web site and to contact our office if you have any questions.  We look forward to welcoming you to our community this Fall!

Sincerely,

Jennifer Humphrey

Interim Director, Housing and Residential Life