Student Development leaders worked closely with students to reimagine student life at Saint Rose. Shown from left to right are
Theresa Belfance, coordinator of student engagement and campus activities; Jen Richardson, associate vice president for student
development; and Katiuzca Loaiza-Espinoza, director of inclusion and engagement. (Photos by Erin Nagy)
On a sunny afternoon in early September, Saint Rose students faced off against a surprising opponent in an intense cornhole tournament on the Campus Green: the College's Security team. This entertaining – but very serious – game was organized by the Office of Student Development team as a bookend to a jampacked Week of Welcome, activities organized to celebrate students coming back to campus for the 2022-23 school year.
As other students grabbed corndogs from a Sodexo food cart and played giant Jenga on picnic tables while enjoying the last vestiges of summer, three key players in the organization of the Week of Welcome chatted with students and made sure everything was running smoothly: Katiuzca Loaiza-Espinoza, director of inclusion and engagement; Theresa Belfance ’19, G’20, coordinator of student engagement and campus activities; and Jen Richardson, associate vice president for student development.
“The start of this year has been like a breath of fresh air,” says Belfance, who has worked in student development for two years; she also received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in childhood and special education at Saint Rose. Reflecting on her first two years as an employee, Belfance remembers how difficult the last few years were for students because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Because we were isolated for so long, we kind of lost what it was to feel that connection with others,” she explains. “It’s been a lot of rebuilding what we had before the pandemic.”
The pandemic fundamentally changed the needs of today’s college students, but it also presented an opportunity for the College to rethink how to best serve students and restructure the Student Development office to meet today’s needs. “We’ve done a lot trying to get feedback on how students are feeling and what they want to see, and catering to those needs,” says Belfance. “That way, they feel heard, and they can see themselves and their ideas being put into action.”
For Loaiza-Espinoza, who stepped into her role in the summer of 2022, finding ways to empower students through inclusive and diverse programming is key to meeting their evolving needs.
“Being a first-generation college student, being a first-generation immigrant, and understanding what it means to be oppressed and have privileges, that helps with our programming,” she explains. As the new school year progresses, Loaiza-Espinoza says she’s being mindful of students’ various backgrounds as she oversees programming; this can be as simple as including multicultural foods at all campus activities, or as detailed as planning two weeks of activities to celebrate Latinx Heritage Month in September.
On her prioritization of intersectionality, she says, “It’s having that responsibility of thinking not just about the demographic that the school was founded on, which is predominantly white, but the current demographic and the future demographic.”
As the name suggests, Student Development works closely with students in all facets of their lives in college, including the Office of Spiritual Life and Community Service. Niamaya Canady, the College’s new assistant director of community service, is approaching her role by putting the interests of students first.
“We’re providing an outlet to explore what community service means by connecting them to causes that are personally important to them,” she says.
The newly reformed Student Association (SA) is yet another example of how Student Development is fostering deep and healthy relationships with Saint Rose students by ensuring their voices are heard and valued. Belfance, who is SA’s advisor and served as the director of academic activities as a student, says the group is “going back to its roots this year.”
In the past, members of SA held many responsibilities, including overseeing all student clubs and organizations; Belfance herself oversaw up to 15 clubs when she was a junior and was also responsible for managing their finances.
“It was a lot of responsibility on students to be that for other students,” she remembers.
Over the last year, Belfance and her team of students have worked to completely retool SA to better serve the students.
“They need a space where they can advocate for themselves,” Belfance says. “Our Student Association as a whole is a space where students can voice opinions and concerns that incite change.”
Before this year, there were two student-led groups handling events and student affairs: SA and the Student Events Board (SEB). After the pandemic hit, both groups saw a swift decline in interest and involvement, and regaining that engagement once students came back to campus in 2021 was a challenge. However, students like senior criminal justice major and current president of SA, Anita Sanchez Garcia, helped these groups continue as a unit, rather than separate entities.
When she first came to Saint Rose in 2019, Sanchez Garcia wasn’t as involved in student life as she is today. She says she went to a few events, but before she could get more involved, the beginning of her second semester was cut short due to the pandemic. When socializing started to feel safe again, things started to turn around.
“It didn’t feel like it did freshman year, but it was a good start,” she says. “That’s one of the main things that pushed me to want to see other ways that I could make social interactions bigger (for students), and it’s another reason why I wanted to become president of SA.”
At the end of the 2021-2022 academic year, Sanchez Garcia and the former president of SEB created an entirely new structure for SA, which included absorbing SEB, and they presented it to Belfance and Richardson, who loved it.
“It was really exciting to get started,” Sanchez Garcia says.
This transformative energy is being carried throughout all aspects of Student Development. For the first time in three years, first-year students were able to experience a traditional Saint Rose move-in, complete with cheers and assistance from student helpers and the Student Development team. The Week of Welcome was an incredible success, with students attending every event planned to make their first week at Saint Rose special. And that was just the beginning for this revitalized team.
“Seeing the liveliness on campus again has been really encouraging,” Belfance says. “It brings me back to what my college experience was here. It’s nice to see that it can live on.”
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