Last week, the Office of Student Life (OSL) welcomed this year’s First-Year class to campus with events such as Capture the Flag, Movie Night and Carnival BINGO.
The OSL also welcomed Reynard Benschop, the new director of student life, who joined the college on July 15.
Benschop took over this summer after Ken Brill, former director of student life, retired after nearly 40 years.
“I’ve been here for about a month and a half at this point, and it has been great,” Benschop said. “When you’re working with students you want to build those relationships and have students that are open to try new things and really kind of get out of their bubble. I think that the Augustana students embody that in a major way, and I think the same goes for my colleagues. They’ve all been very willing to collaborate and talk about new ideas.”
Previous Director of Greek Life, Tia Steele, left the college this past summer as well, making Benschop the head point of Greek life until another director is hired. The OSL hopes to hire a new director before recruitment begins this upcoming spring.
“We obviously can’t tell the future, but for our timeline, we will have someone here by the end of the semester,” Benschop said. “In the interim, I will kind of be the first point of contact for our Greek chapters.”
The OSL hosts many activities that students are encouraged to participate in, he said. All activities that happen on campus can be found on the Vike app.
“We put out a few Hallmark programs throughout the year that are focused on engagement. Working with our programming boards like Student Life Programming Board (SLPB) and our Multicultural Programming Board (MPB),” Benschop said. “Outside of engagement we do a lot about leadership, especially for our First-Year students, they now have the opportunity to enroll in our Emerge program, which is a leadership series that we host here on campus.”
There are several leadership and employment opportunities surrounding the OSL. Junior Kristin Rundle works for the OSL as co-marketing director and said she encourages students to join in on the fun.
“We’re trying to make the OSL more of a place for students to always be welcome. I feel students can be kind of scared to go in there if you are not directly a part of the OSL because you’re like ‘Oh, it’s a scary office,’” Rundle said. “We really want it to be more of a hangout spot. I really encourage freshmen to come in and ask questions and ask what’s available.”
The OSL offers paid positions, but students are also encouraged to reach out for volunteer opportunities of different committees throughout the year. Senior Alvin Theccanat is the director of Welcome Week and works on MPB.
“We have subcommittee members for our committees, so this would be an unpaid position where you’re volunteering to help plan events on campus,” Theccanat said. “If you contact basically anyone in the OSL they should be able to help you out with this.”
