Five Campus Living and Residential Education central office staff left GW this summer, shrinking the department’s leadership from 16 to 11 employees, according to website archives.
Assistant Vice Provost for Student Support and Residential Engagement Kevin Stensberg will leave the University next month after working at GW for about a year, making him the second CLRE department leader to leave in fewer than four months after former Campus Living Director Dan Wright left in June. The departures of Stensberg and Wright leave two of the four highest leadership positions in CLRE vacant.
Stensberg oversaw the Residential Education branch of the department and officials hired Kyle Johnson in March to serve as director of Residential Education — a position that had been left unfilled for more than a year. Seth Weinshel, the associate vice president of business services, leads the Campus Living team, which now lacks a director without Wright.
The Campus Living director typically oversees on-campus housing facilities and housing registration while the Residential Education director leads residential programming and student leadership opportunities, according to CLRE’s website.
Wright had served as director since October 2022 and worked at GW for more than a decade in four different roles. A University spokesperson declined to comment on how CLRE will adjust its operations to account for leadership vacancies and what positions, if any, would absorb the responsibilities associated with Wright’s director role.
Officials posted a job listing for Wright’s role in late May and removed the posting in early August. The page doesn’t list a job posting for Stensberg’s role. The spokesperson declined to comment on if officials plan to announce a replacement for Stensberg.
“CLRE’s resources remain available, and we will continue to provide uninterrupted service for on-campus residential students,” the University spokesperson said in an email.
Stensberg will become the interim senior student affairs officer and dean of students at Bemidji State University effective Sept. 3, according to a BSU release. Wright will join the University of Michigan’s housing office, a University spokesperson said in June.
Residence Hall Association President Andrew Levin said staff turnover within CLRE is “par for the course” at GW. He said sometimes he will work on an RHA initiative with a University employee within the Division for Student Affairs — which houses CLRE — and discover a few months later that the employee left.
“It can be difficult to know who to go to, just because of these changes,” Levin said.
One of CLRE’s seven assistant directors also left the University this summer. Mitchell Foster, the unit’s former assistant director of equity and assessment, took a position in July at Saint Mary’s College of California as the director of its Intercultural Center. Foster served as the interim director of the Multicultural Student Services Center from February to June after holding a position as its assistant director since November 2022, according to their LinkedIn.
A University spokesperson declined to comment on why CLRE no longer has an assistant director of equity and engagement on its website and if any other positions absorbed the role’s responsibilities.
Two of CLRE’s three housing associates — who contribute to supervising student staff and executing housing operations and assignments alongside assistant directors — departed GW this summer. Former Front Desk Operations Housing Associate Trennise Harrison left in July and former Communications and Summer Operations Housing Associate Alexandria Vieux left in May, according to their LinkedIns.
Andy Demma, the technology and occupancy associate, is now the only housing associate at the University, according to CLRE’s website. A University spokesperson declined to comment on how officials plan to address the housing associate vacancies.
“The University’s residential experience is designed to help students partake in a safe, inclusive, community-oriented environment,” the spokesperson said. “Our teams are constantly evolving to best support our campus community.”
Levin, the RHA president, said no one person’s departure significantly affects the department’s operations or ability to work with RHA because other employees will “pick up the slack.” He said he is sad Wright left, because he served as an “ally to RHA” by securing the group an office in South Hall and functioning as RHA’s adviser when the body didn’t have one in summer 2023.
In response to turnover, Levin said instead of setting up regular meetings with CLRE or DSA leaders, he plans to utilize RHA’s advisers — community coordinators — to connect him with the appropriate officials based on specific needs and issues.
“Staff are kind of changing all the time,” Levin said. “Even though coming into this role, there’s something of an expectation of, you hear the list of people that you might want to meet with on a regular basis, because there’s been changes in structures from previous years and changes in positions, I’ve kind of taken a different approach.”
