Colleen Todd is the first Hofstra student to be elected to the regional residence halls board.

Photo Courtesy of Colleen Todd

Since her freshman year, junior international business major and Spanish and music business double minor Colleen Todd has been a committed member of the Residence Hall Association (RHA).

“I saw [RHA] at the club fair my first year at Hofstra and I’d been getting their emails all year,” Todd said. “My roommate became involved in it – I didn’t go to their meetings or anything. Then in the spring of my first year, [my roommate] said they needed a treasurer and nobody was running. I was like, ‘Oh, OK. I’m looking to get more involved ... I’ll check it out and run.’ I was elected, since no one else was running, and I really loved it.”

Todd’s success in RHA did not stop there. She ran for president her sophomore year and won – though again unopposed.

“I loved my year as a treasurer so much – that’s why I wanted to become president,” Todd said. Laughing, she added, “Not all positions are unopposed, but I’ve been fortunate, I guess.”

The “main focus” of RHA is to “try to make the lives of residents better and ... help the overall campus community.”

To accomplish this, RHA puts on a series of programs and events throughout the year that all Hofstra students are welcome to attend.

“We’ve done things like Siblings Day, which we had a couple weeks ago, and Roll with RHA, which was our indoor roller-skating rink,” Todd said.

Despite the term “residence hall” in their title, most of the programming RHA does is geared toward the campus community as a whole – not just residential students.

“I definitely drive this ship more toward the campus and not so much [toward] residents because I think commuters are really neglected a lot of the time,” Todd said. “I know the commuter student association does a great job with that ... but we financially have more to help them.”

While sheer luck may have gotten Todd her positions as treasurer and eventually president of RHA, it is the work she has done in those positions that have made her the first Hofstra student elected to the North East Affiliate of College and University Residence Halls (NEACURH) regional board of directors. 

NEACURH is essentially an honor society for college RHAs. It creates and votes on policies for all RHAs affiliated with it, which includes dozens throughout the northeast.

It is one of eight regional branches of the National Association of College and University Residence Halls (NACURH).

The selection process to get on NACURH’s Regional Board of Directors was “intense,” Todd said.

“First I made a bid and sent it to one of the NEACURH emails,” Todd said. “[Then] I went to ... a boardroom and gave a five-minute presentation and ... a question and answer session. It was pretty intense. I was actually the only coordinating officer elected because everyone else got denied. People get denied quite often,” Todd said. 

She explained that the reason the selection process “is so intense is because they know you’re speaking for all the Northeast, which includes both New England and New York.”

Todd is one of four coordinating officers on NEACURH’s regional board of directors. There are six positions in total, the others being regional director and director of administration and finance. 

As a coordinating officer, one of Todd’s main jobs is voting on the various NEACURH policies that dictate affiliated RHAs’ bylaws and the types of programs they can run.

Todd also helps choose which “educational sessions” will be offered at NACURH’s twice-annual conferences – which she usually attends along with the rest of Hofstra’s RHA executive board. 

These educational sessions usually involve team-building exercises or discuss different types of programs RHAs can run at their schools.

“I will primarily be dealing with a lot of the educational sessions – reviewing them and helping in choosing which ones will be at conference,” Todd said. “We get about 50 per conference.”

Having the ability to make decisions like this has given Todd a change of heart about her future career.

“It’s really made me change my view – especially now, being on the regional board,” Todd said. “I’m thinking about going into student affairs or higher education leadership. I’m interning over the summer at an international student affairs department, so I’m trying to get the best of both worlds.”