🔗 linkedin.com/in/oneilsamantha

Research Focus: Higher Education Employee Assistance Program Policy

“A Qualitative Study of How Responding to Incidents of Crisis Impacts the Well-Being of Higher Education Professionals in On-Call and Live-On Residence Life Roles”

What research challenge did your dissertation address?

My research looked at the support structures available to residence life professionals who carry on-call crisis responsibility on college campuses, a role that regularly exposes them to potential vicarious trauma. I wanted to understand how that support actually shows up in practice: is it a written policy departments can point to, or is it something looser, carried mostly through department culture? From there, I worked to define what a recommended policy should look like for any department that asks staff to be on call.

What inspired you to pursue this research?

I spent years working in residence life myself, and through my network of colleagues across different campuses, I kept noticing the same pattern: burnout and emotional fatigue among crisis-response staff. I wanted to understand why this was happening so consistently, and whether the research literature could point toward something better for the people, especially those also required to live on campus, who take these calls.

What did your research find, and what is its impact?

The findings were clear: exposure to crisis with minimal support led staff to feel unsupported, and often to leave their roles altogether. Staff who worked in departments with defined expectations around the types of calls they would respond to, paired with flexible time off after an on-call shift or crisis response, reported meaningfully higher job satisfaction and well-being. The catch is that this support was almost never codified; it existed as departmental culture rather than written policy. That gap is exactly what my recommended policy framework is designed to close, giving institutions a concrete starting point for protecting the people who protect their students.

“That gap is exactly what my recommended policy framework is designed to close, giving institutions a concrete starting point for protecting the people who protect their students.”

Samantha Sanfilippo