Finance senior Abhinav Katiyar is in his second year as a mentor at Rather Hall. While the applications for hall mentors have gone up, possibly as a result of the struggling economy, Katiyar said that wasn’t the main reason he wanted the job.
—When Abhinav Katiyar looks back on his first few weeks in the U.S. as a freshman at MSU, he remembers sitting alone in the cafeteria. And he remembers one person — his resident mentor — waving him down and carrying his tray over to join him.
To Katiyar, a finance senior who is now a mentor in Rather Hall, being a mentor means “paying it forward.” He is what his mentor was for him: A first friend.
But the benefits of a job as a resident mentor encompass other types of payment: free room and board and a free meal plan, valued at $7,076 for the 2008-09 school year. As Michigan’s economic situation becomes even darker and tuition continues to climb, more and more students turn in applications for the job.
“(It) certainly saves a lot of money,” said Val Meyers, MSU associate director of financial aid.
“If you can work and earn (free room and board) while you’re in school and you don’t have to repay after you leave, that’s a good thing. For most students, what that’s doing is making it possible for them to borrow less.”
This year, MSU reported a 13.5 percent increase in applications, with 666 this year compared to 587 last year, said Residence Life Director Paul Goldblatt. Other universities in Michigan recorded a similar trend: The University of Michigan received about 30 percent more applications than last year and Western Michigan University received about 62 percent more, housing officials from the universities said.
It makes sense for students to apply for the position in hopes of saving money, said Rick Shipman, MSU’s director of the Office of Financial Aid. Last year, a total of 21,788 MSU students received loans, he said. By the time of graduation, students on average owe $18,500, but having room and board covered could significantly decrease the amount of money needed, he said.
“It’s like a huge scholarship, but you have to work for it,” he said. “It would reduce (a student’s) reliance on loans and allow them to graduate owing less money, which is also a great thing. I think it’s a really good approach for financial aid.”
Applications to Central Michigan University’s resident adviser position decreased by 15 percent, surprising housing administrators who expected an increase as students try to save money in a weakened economy, said Kim Voisin, assistant director of CMU’s Residence Life. Voisin said she didn’t know why there was such a decrease in applications at CMU.
The prospect of free room and board could be the factor that initially attracts students to the position, but students chosen for the job are those who genuinely want to help others, said Krystin Foster, a mentor in Hubbard Hall.
“People come to me and say, ‘Oh, it’s free room and board,’ but it’s more than that,” she said. “Girls on my floor who applied for next year see what I do and they’re like, ‘I want to do what you do,’ and room and board is just a bonus. They actually enjoy the bond we have and they want the same type of bond we have with future residents of their own.”
For Foster, a political science and pre-law junior, the most rewarding part of the job is not the money saved but rather the opportunity to impact the lives of students who, like her, come into their first day of college not knowing what to expect or who to ask for help.
“When I first got here, I couldn’t tell you where my classes were — I didn’t even know where the cafeteria was,” she said. “So having a mentor and being able to turn to someone who wouldn’t judge me because I didn’t know what I was doing was great.”
Goldblatt said he is often struck by the passion resident mentors have for making a difference in the lives of their residents. In his seven years at MSU, he said he has seen mentors impact and even save the lives of their residents.
“It goes far above the room and board,” he said. “A lot of students are really driven to become mentors. … It’s pretty amazing seeing the level of commitment mentors have.”
And given the amount of dedication he sees in the students selected for the position, Goldblatt said he is less concerned about the initial motivation and more concerned about the outcome.
“For me, it’s about someone having the ability to do the job,” he said. “That’s number one. But I certainly hope there were other factors that led them into the situation.
“I hope that they want to create a strong community, want to develop leadership skills, want to grow as an individual … because I think the position offers so much more to the student.”
Katiyar said the room and board is the “icing on the cake” of a job that allows him to fulfill a sense of moral responsibility to help students the way his mentor helped him.
Now, when residents of Rather Hall’s second floor sit alone in the Brody Hall cafeteria, it is Katiyar who carries his tray to join them, just like his mentor did four years ago.
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“I think it’s the small things in life that make the biggest difference,” he said. “Through informal hellos and informal greetings; by meals in the cafeteria and basketball games and counseling (my residents) … I think I’ve been able to touch, if not everyone’s lives, a lot of lives.”
