ACUHO-I’s online education opportunities provide an affordable and in-depth exploration of emerging topics vital to the campus housing profession.
Created by professional subject-matter experts and adhering to best practices for adult learning, these online courses are efficient ways to complement your real-world experiences, broaden your knowledge, and do so in a way that fits your schedule.
Course Catalog
Certificate In Occupancy Management
The ACUHO-I Certificate in Occupancy Management provides an in-depth and strategic look at the occupancy management process and teaches you to implement critical operations and practices. What separates this program from other ACUHO-I online courses is that it concludes with a capstone project where you demonstrate the knowledge gained through the earlier courses by putting your knowledge to use in a real-world scenario.
Learning Outcomes
- Gain a greater understanding of how to identify influencing factors of occupancy management as well as analyze the pertinent data.
- Learn to manage the occupancy management process and arrange your departmental resources and schedules to best meet your goals.
- Discover insight into the steps necessary to create, implement, and assess your institution’s occupancy management operations.
Architecture Course Series
Even experienced residence life professionals need help understanding the technical aspects that go into residence hall construction and renovation projects. These courses will help you be better prepared to be part of the strategic conversations with architects and designers as you create halls that deliver the exemplary living experience students expect and deserve. The Architecture Online Course Series was underwritten by Treanor Architects with additional support provided by Ayers Saint Gross, Clark Nexsen Architecture & Engineering, and Hanbury.
Learning Outcomes
- Confidently and competently participate in a successful housing facility project through an increased understanding of the elements involved in university housing construction and renovation.
- Gain a deeper understanding of the design and construction industry, the processes involved, and access to the tools you need to become an integral member of a campus housing project design and construction team.
- Understand design that supports student life objectives, helping you become an advocate for design that supports student development and institutional outcomes.
- Learn about the materials and systems, life-cycle project costs, code requirements, and sustainability issues involved in a construction or renovation project.
Creating a Living-Learning Program
Living-learning programs have been shown to foster meaningful connections between students, support overall student success, and help students feel more connected to their academic experience. This course will provide campus housing and residence life professionals with a framework to develop, implement, and support new living-learning programs in their residence halls. Participants will learn to evaluate programs that may be a good fit for the campus community, create implementation timelines, determine campus partnerships and resources that can help facilitate program development, develop a plan for recruiting students, and more.
Learning Outcomes
- Identify what type of living-learning program is the best fit for their campus community.
- Create a timeline for living-learning program implementation.
- Determine campus partnerships and resources that facilitate living-learning program development.
- Develop a plan for marketing and recruiting students to living-learning programs.
- Propose a supporting staff structure for decision-making parties.
International Student Support
This course presents the general needs that most international students face when they attend colleges and universities in the United States and live on campus. Drawing from various viewpoints, this course will challenge you to explore how to best serve this growing student population.
Learning Outcomes
- Explore the needs of international students living on campus, including specific topics such as arrival, making friends, integration, academics, intercultural communication, financial services, and others.
- Examine and assess services currently offered on your campus.
- Learn best practices related to services for international students.
- Create an action plan to help develop your programs, services, and training.
Legal Issues In Student Housing
Campus housing professionals face a wide array of federal and state statutory and regulatory compliance issues, as well as decisions on how to best balance and mitigate risks. Course participants receive an overview of these top legal issues in a manner that avoids overly academic or legal language and instead draws heavily from a range of real-world situations. By focusing on possible scenarios, it guides participants through a clear analysis process to consider relevant laws, cases, and legal principles to arrive at a conclusion that satisfactorily manages potential risk. This course will introduce participants to basic legal principles related to campus housing contracts, constitutional rights, privacy, civil torts, and risk management, as well as an overview of relevant issues, including mental health, freedom of speech, disability, threat assessment, and more.
Learning Outcomes
- Be introduced to legal issues related to campus housing.
- Develop a process to manage potential risk.
- Assess current policies and procedures through a legal lens.
Resident Assistant Training Programs
Resident assistants are a vital part of any campus housing program, and these student workers deserve thought-provoking and engaging training that will prepare them for the position and its responsibilities. In this course, you will learn instructional and curriculum design methodology to improve training for student staff. This course is vital for RA training leaders but has benefits for an entire training team to complete collectively.
Learning Outcomes
- Identify gap analysis and decision analysis opportunities between content offerings and training objectives.
- Apply the ADDIE instructional design model to RA training schedules and presentations.
- Develop an action plan if changes are needed to current training.
- Articulate best training practices and how they can be applied to RA training.
- Identify and initiate proposals for training content to departmental stakeholders.
Supervising Resident Assistants
For many entry-level housing professionals, overseeing resident assistants is the first supervisory role they have held. This course will provide tools for those individuals to explore different supervision styles, workplace and human development theory, competencies for effective supervisors, and more.
Learning Outcomes
- Critique styles of supervision and articulate which ones best reflect your innate practice of supervision.
- Analyze your institution’s expectations for RA supervisors.
- Examine the role of human development and workplace theories that shape the RA work environment.
- Articulate competencies associated with effective supervisors.
- Describe tools used to aid in the supervision of RAs.
- Identify a supervision philosophy and its application to your work with RAs
Supervising Full-Time Staff
Supervision requires a balance of caring, advocating, leading groups, providing context, living with difficult decisions, and holding staff accountable to expectations. After completing this course, you will be able to seamlessly implement individual goals and values into your leadership style, develop recruitment, selection, onboarding, and orientation processes, design a performance appraisal process, and more.
Learning Outcomes
- Develop onboarding and orientation process.
- Create a comprehensive recruitment and selection process.
- Clarify your leadership by identifying, labeling, and understanding your values.
- Actively confront personal areas of bias, prejudice, or lack of understanding.
- Design a performance appraisal process.
- Recognize the forms of communication styles.
Homelessness and Food Insecurity
Awareness of the challenge of home and food insecurity among students is growing. In this course, participants will learn to find and utilize available resources in their department, on campus, or in the community to create a plan of action to assist students facing homelessness and food insecurity. They also will analyze how current practices within housing and food service can be modified on their campus to assist students who need it.
Learning Outcomes
- Demonstrate an understanding of the true costs of today’s higher education.
- Analyze resources available to aid students who are facing homelessness and food insecurity.
- Appraise the ACUHO-I Standards & Ethical Principles and how current practices in housing assignments can be modified to accommodate students who are financially insecure.
- Create a plan of action to assist students facing homelessness and food insecurity on their campus.