University Residential Life (URL) strives to promote a sense of community and encourage the growth and development of each student in a variety of living environments. Our program seeks to complement the academic mission of Northwestern University by providing students opportunities for learning in a safe, diverse, and respectful environment.

To realize these purposes, URL accepts certain underlying assumptions and pursues a set of general objectives. These assumptions and objectives are enumerated below.

Assumptions

1. The value of the individual. Each Northwestern student is a unique individual of worth and deserving of human dignity and respect.
2. The Wellness-based education. The co-curricular education should emphasize core values and life skills such as: Career Development; Health and Wellness; Community and Civic Engagement; Ethics and Values; Leadership Development; Intercultural Competence; and Emotional Intelligence.
3. Personal Growth and Development. Personal growth is a result of appropriate challenge and support of the student. Students should be empowered to grow through leadership experiences, peer counseling and advising, faculty, staff, and peer interactions, and exposure to issues of diversity.
4. Responsible Behavior. Student conduct is the result of the interactive process of people and their environment. Inappropriate behavior should be confronted and addressed in both an educational and interventionist manner. Exemplary behavior should be acknowledged and supported. Student conduct is monitored by peers and University employees to ensure the rights of individual students and the best interest of the University.
5. Need for community. The University community should create a sense of care among students in order to enable them to creatively deal with life's challenges. A sense of community and service to community should be encouraged, celebrated, and supported.
6. Student needs change As Northwestern students enter and leave the campus community their needs change and evolve. In order to address these needs, Residential Life must perform its service in a proactive, adaptive manner.

URL General Objectives

1. To provide students opportunities for individual growth through activities and leadership programs which encourage interaction with students of different lifestyles and cultural backgrounds.
2. To nurture a sense of community within each of the living environments. To promote psychological and physical health and to affirm each resident’s pursuit of identity by establishing a network of support within the Residence Hall.
3. To encourage student interactions with faculty, staff, and individuals from outside the Northwestern University community.
4. To offer students the ability to integrate the many aspects of their college experience: the classroom with the living unit, academic with the social and emotional, and private introspection with public interaction. To equip students with skills which prepare them for life after Northwestern.
5. To provide supervision to staff (paraprofessional and professional) with clear performance expectations, timely evaluations, support, and opportunities for active participation in management.
6. To select quality staff. To provide content-rich training and development programs which engage staff with a variety of learning styles and enable employees to perform their jobs in an efficient, highly competent, and ethical manner.
7. To create and maintain living environments which are believed by students to be safe, secure, comfortable, aesthetically attractive, conducive to scholarship and personal growth, and reflective of the diverse student body which attends the University.
8. To monitor facilities, equipment, technology, programs, and staffing patterns in a manner that is both fiscally sound and responsible. To ensure a maximum degree of quality service at a minimum cost.
9. To ensure all living units are well managed; this requires adequate planning, clearly written policies and procedures, appropriate assessment and timely evaluations, effective advising and referral, and open communication within URL and throughout the Student Affairs Division.
10. To maintain residential units that are best managed with the support and guidance of the University professional staff in partnership with student staff.