Student Development Opportunities

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Patrick O'Hara

Residential Life is a special and enriching experience. In addition to than an academic or school background our students here gain personal and interpersonal skills. We have tried to enhance the students' learning opportunities by providing a wide range of "hands-on" experiences such as our Evening Program, on-going counseling, doing community service projects, etc. CSDB residential students may gain a whole new perspective on life by using the SPICE (Social, Physical, Intelligence, Communication and Emotional Program curriculum.

Our Evening Program curriculum includes workshops as well as rap sessions that meet the needs of the students. Rap sessions and family living talks are provided so that the students can express their feelings and thoughts about any programs or activities on campus. Evening programs are designed to be both informative and fun and are opportunities for students to understand others' needs and to be more sensitive to the issues on campus. The evening program includes programs in time management skills, team building activities, accessing the authentic self, community buildings, leadership skills, developing personal goals, creating life balance, and stress management.

Counseling is provided as well in the evenings. We can offer both individual and group counseling. Groups include the following:

• anger management
• dating issues
• stress management
• cross-cultural understanding
• emphasizes self-esteem and getting along with each other

For each student living in the dorms, we develop an individual dormitory student's monitoring process checklist. We designed and developed five (5) different age and skill brackets. They are beginner, fundamental, intermediate, advanced, and advanced plus. Through this evaluation progress, we can monitor our students; our expectations of what are the student's skills, how the student is doing and what the student's performance or behaviors should be.

As a result of the Student Development Program our students will voice suggestions to improve the after-school programs. Their suggestions show a satisfying level of maturity achieved through this process. Come of those ideas from the recent and past years includes: doing community services at our local zoo or the wolf rescue center, extending the hours for evening gym time, and countless other requests.

This program, begun several years ago, has grown with the new generation of students in the Residential Program. As in the past, we strive to provide opportunities for learning to continue outside the academic day. The results we've seen from this program continue to support the school's mission to prepare a student for the ever-changing world ahead of them.

For further information on this program you may contact, Patrick O'Hara at pohara@csdb.org or by calling him at 719-578-2158(t).