Michael Christakis, UAlbany's vice president for student affairs and enrollment, talks about how colleges are adapting to changing student needs to nurture a sense of belonging amid what's been described as an epidemic of loneliness in America. It's the focus of his division's new Thrive UAlbany initiative.
Michael Christakis has led UAlbany’s Division for Student Affairs and Enrollment as vice president for 11 years. But he’s been part of the unit for going on 27, and he started in the same way many people do — through Residential Life.
Mike was a graduate hall director at Alumni Quad, which, when it comes to creating a sense of belonging —the topic of this week’s episode — may be one of the most challenging assignments on campus.
It’s axiomatic at UAlbany that Res Life is a training ground for some of the best problem solvers you’ll meet, and those problem solvers often later go on to work in many other divisions beyond Student Affairs.
But why is that? What is it about being an RA that prepares you for just about anything?
We asked Mike that in a part of our conversation that didn’t make the final edit.
We sort of joke on campus that anybody in any unit across the campus who's good at getting things done typically started in Res Life.
MC: Correct.
And we joke about it, but it's also kind of true.
MC: It's so true.
You can go down the list of all the people who are in jobs that have nothing to do with Res Life, but who are organized, good project managers, identify a problem, identify resources. I don’t know what it is about Res Life.
MC: When you're in Res Life, I mean you're quite literally a Jack of All Trades. Even at certainly a large Residential Life program like we have at UAlbany, you're doing a little bit of everything. You're doing a little bit of programming, you're working with a key shop to cut keys, you're doing room damage assessments, you're doing some conduct and some discipline, you're doing some education outside the classroom, you're doing it all. And invariably in the Student Affairs space in particular, those are usually the largest units, even at small places. The Residential Life staffs are huge given the size of our housing program. So you've also got more people that are engaged in that work. And I would agree with you, I think some of the best tacticians on college campuses often come out of Residential Life.
Read more about the launch of Thrive UAlbany
Check out the full suite of Thrive UAlbany resources and programming
Read The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 Advisory on the Health Effects of Social Connection and Community
…and The New York Times’ recent reporting on what’s weighing on college students’ minds today.
Even deeper: In 2021, UAlbany was among the first universities in the U.S. to sign the Okanagan Charter as a Health Promoting University.
Audio editing and production by Scott Freedman
Photos by Brian Busher
Written and hosted by Jordan Carleo-Evangelist
[0:01] Host: Welcome to The Short Version, the UAlbany podcast that tackles big ideas, big questions and big news in less time than it takes to cross the academic podium. I'm Jordan Carleo-Evangelist in UAlbany's Office of Communications and Marketing.
[0:18] Michael Christakis: If you're a student who's looking to connect with a classmate, build your network, work on skills along the lines of teamwork and communication, then it's going to take other people to do that. You're not going to be able to find that in the depths of a calculus textbook at the end of the day.
[0:36] Host: Learning beyond the confines of a textbook. We'll return to that thought in a moment. But first, some important context.
In 2023, while many of us were still processing the pandemic, then-Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy made news by declaring American loneliness an urgent public health issue.
Not a new virus. Not vaping. Loneliness.
At a time of deep social and political division, Murti issued a call to action to reestablish the bonds that make our lives feel full and rich. Building a sense of belonging, he argued, is foundational to our health, our wellbeing and our ability to thrive.
The surgeon general defined belonging as “a fundamental human need — the feeling of deep connection with social groups, physical places, and individual and collective experiences.”
University campuses — long considered incubators for these formative social connections — are a microcosm of the same broader problem Murti saw nationwide. Last year, The New York Times reported that making friends topped college students' list of worries — right up there with cost and getting a job. And a growing body of research suggests that a student's sense of belonging is powerfully related to their success.
That means our interest in belonging has to be more than academic. It becomes central to our ability to ensure that our students thrive.
Michael Christakis is not a scholar of loneliness. His academic background is actually in public administration. But he is a practitioner of connection.
Mike is UAlbany's vice president for student affairs and enrollment. He leads a division that he's been part of for nearly 27 years — and that now includes the Office of Student Engagement and Belonging.
Mike oversees the physical spaces, programming and services meant to bring students together. Thrive Albany is the latest example. It's a clearinghouse for resources on health and wellness, financial literacy, career readiness, and how to be — and feel like — a part of the UAlbany community.
We spoke to Mike about how students' needs are changing, how innovative campuses have to be willing to talk about that and evolve to serve them, and how the COVID-19 pandemic both accelerated our sense of disconnection while also seeding new approaches to solving it.
Here's our conversation.
[3:11] Host: So before we get into talking about student wellbeing and what the current demands on a modern university that's serving students are, I'm interested in how did someone whose interest was in political science end up facilitating the daily lives from perspective to current students? I mean, it seems like it's unrelated, but maybe it's not?
[3:31] Michael Christakis: I got here because I needed to pay for grad school. That's the short answer. I was a resident assistant as an undergrad at Alfred University. I'm a first-gen college student, and so when I was looking at master's programs, I looked at UAlbany's master's degree in public policy at Rockefeller College, nationally known, but had to figure out how to pay for it and got lined up as a graduate hall director on Alumni Quad. And one thing led to another. Had I thought I was going to stay in Student Affairs 26 years at UAlbany, no. Have I reveled in every moment of it? 110% It's been a total dream gig for me, quite honestly. As a public administrationist, it's about studying organizations and people, and the last 11 years leading the division has really been about people, both the people we serve, our students, and our really exceptional employees who deliver on those services.
[4:25] Host: It also strikes me that more of our interactions with other people are sort of mediated through our phones or email or Teams messages. If you're an RA, you have to talk to people. At some point you have to have a hard conversation, and that's not a skill that a lot of us are still learning or cultivating because technology gives us an out. Not just in Res Life, but in your entire division, you cannot get around the fact that it involves dealing directly with students who are learning, who are making mistakes, and it sometimes require tough conversations.
[5:00] Michael Christakis: It's a very relational business. It can certainly be difficult for young people — I think it can be difficult for some adults as well — to have a face-to-face conversations, often difficult conversations. But I think that is so important. The time during the pandemic where we couldn't actually do that face-to-face was really hard for me. That was very difficult for me, and I think for a lot of people in Student Affairs, because it was running counter to what we knew our work to be. The ability to go and sit and have a conversation with a student in person — we could still have conversations, but they were virtual and I was getting insight into students' lives that I hadn't otherwise seen. They were with their parents, their grandparents, their aunts, their siblings. They wouldn't have those, call them distractions, call them stressors, if they were on campus, but here they were trying to learn from home. That was eye-opening to me at that particular moment. At which point I also vowed that I would never give up the face-to-face — a cup of coffee, a lunch, a sit-down in my office in person is important.
[6:04] Host: People talk about the way things used to be, what tuition used to be, what academic programs we used to have. It's almost always with sort of a fond eye for what was. But in your world, I feel like a point that's often misunderstood or not fully appreciated is that compared to say somebody who attended UAlbany in 1985 or 1990, this university and all universities are expected to do so much more for their students.
[6:34] Michael Christakis: Yeah. I think it becomes increasingly challenging because in a place like UAlbany, there are 17,000-plus unique students who require different resources, supports, experiences, and I feel like 26, 30 years ago, you could probably get away with a little bit more of the one-size-fits-all. And these days students are applying to a lot more colleges. So I think even on the very pre-enrollment part of what we engage in, we're trying to make the case that we're going to tailor your experience to you and to your needs. If I'm reflecting a little bit on almost three decades at UAlbany, that's something that I think has shifted in higher education in a pretty significant way.
[7:23] Host: How has your understanding of what constitutes or goes into student well-being changed over the last 26 years?
[7:31] Michael Christakis: We weren't as keyed in to things like basic needs, emergency funding, even getting students connected with their FAFSA. These couple of examples are all-hands-on-deck kinds of things. This is not something that is exclusively in Student Health or in Counseling and Psychological Services. We introduced TimelyCare, which is a 24/7 health and counseling platform. Res Life had a huge hand in it. I started in Res Life. I'm not sure I would've had a hand in that 26 years ago, but [The Office of] Student Engagement and Belonging, you've got belonging in the title of this unit now. We want the student to see themselves as belonging here, as included here, engaged here. I don't know if that was top of mind in the late 90s. I think belonging is really sort of a part of the broader well-being umbrella. I think it's as much about Student Affairs and Enrollment staff as it is our deans, our chairs, our faculty members. We all have a hand in it, and we have so many students that are coming with different lived experiences and whose families have different expectations.
In some ways, I'm reminded by a story that a colleague had shared with me once. They had approached a student at the end of a class who they felt wasn't paying attention or wasn't engaged — and come to find out the student was food insecure. And so the student was embarrassed that they had not been engaged but then admitted to the faculty member that they were trying to figure out where they were going to get their next meal. And so that story really resonated with me because I think it is proof positive that in as much as we're in the business of educating, there's so much more that goes into that beyond just sitting in the classroom.
[9:16] Host: You must find yourself in conversations with people who do sort of remember a different time or had a different experience who say, “Stop worrying about belonging. Just teach them calculus, teach them accounting. Get them a job.”
[9:31] Michael Christakis: I say this all the time when I meet with students and parents during orientation. You are being drawn to this place because of our academic programs, our rigor, our faculty, and for the desire to get a degree. What we do in Student Affairs and Enrollment, particularly outside the classroom, is help ensure that that student can have that experience in the classroom. And it's complemented by everything that goes on outside the classroom. In the cases where I do engage with alums from the 80s, my sense is their experience at UAlbany was that enriching experience. It was the peers, the connections that they had when they were here — whether it was in their residence hall, in the dining hall, in the Campus Center, at football games, you name it. Those are the experiences that they point to. Will they also point to the faculty member that made the impact? A hundred percent.
[10:33] Host: How did the pandemic change what students needed from us, and has that changed continued?
[10:44]: Michael Christakis: Our teams are still engaging remotely with students, which I actually think in some ways has positioned us in a very strong way for sort of the growing interest in online programs, right? Students are still able to access our services remotely. Now, I'll say the other thing was: How are we making sure that students are familiar with resources on the regular? When you're in it, as much as we're in it, you know what resources exist. And so I think we tend to take for granted does the first year student know that that exists? And if they know that it exists, do they know where to go to find it? And so those kinds of elements continue to be top of mind. And I actually do think that was a little bit of a COVID lesson. How are we messaging activities to them on a regular basis?
[11:35] Host: You talked about the sense of belonging, financial security. How does Thrive bring all that together and how is a budgeting workshop or something like that illustrative of what you're trying to do?
[11:48] Michael Christakis: We've identified four primary areas under the Thrive program umbrella. There's health and well-being, financial literacy and wellness, career readiness and purpose, and then community and belonging. Those are the four broad buckets, and what Thrive tries to do is make programs and resources across those four areas available — that is, elevate awareness for students— as well as bring those programs closer to students. And what I mean by that is we're in the spring [2026] going to be opening this Thrive Hub in the Campus Center. The idea behind the Thrive Hub is that programs like the financial well-being budgeting workshop that Financial Aid or Student Accounts would be running would actually take place in the Thrive Hub. And so you can do all types of programs in there across the Thrive areas. We're also looking at developing mobile programming options. Again, this is in the spirit of trying to bring these initiatives closer to students.
I think some of the logic behind this is that students are on devices and may be less inclined to want to get out of that, but if the program is literally an arm's reach for you, and it's something that is top of mind for you — that is, “I need to figure out how to pay my bill,” or “I need to figure out how to budget. The billing deadline is due. Oh, there's a program going on tonight in the Thrive Hub? I'm on my way there anyway because I'm going to go down to Halal Shack. I might swing through to get resources.” That's what we're trying to achieve.
[13:23] Host: Every cohort that comes through is a little bit different in some way. And so you, sitting here in that chair now, you know that four years from now or eight years from now, your division is going to have to be doing what it does differently. How do you try to stay ahead so that you're in a position to pivot when that next group comes through and needs something else?
[13:44] Michael Christakis: What I have found is that the exposure that we have to high school students, to counselors, to principals, to teachers, they are sharing with us what they are seeing. And we've gotten really good at building relationships through visits to the actual high schools, through counselors coming to campus, through engaging superintendents where those insights are actually super useful to us, which is why it's been really important for us to frame a lot of our work in Student Affairs and Enrollment, including the Thrive initiative, around the student life cycle.
It doesn't begin for our student on Aug. 20 on the first day of classes. In some cases, it might even begin their sophomore year of high school with us, and it doesn't end on graduation day, right? It continues well past graduation day. Some of it is career and professional development in Student Affairs. Some of it's out of the Alumni Association. But that's the full cycle that we're very cognizant of and that we've really tried to build our divisional infrastructure around.
[14:58] Host: It strikes me that you could say like, “Listen, we don't have the time, the resources, the bandwidth to do all this stuff. We're just not going to do it.” But that sort of undermines your ability to really talk about yourself as a place that is inclusive. And I think it's one of the things that I really admire about UAlbany, that it really does feel like a place that wants every student to be able to succeed here.
[15:25] Michael Christakis: I often say that our work is hard work. I also then follow up by saying that it's heart work. It doesn't end at the end of the workday because we are committed to helping every student succeed. I was very struck early on in President Rodríguez's tenure. He and I were having a conversation, and he effectively said to me, “It begins with one student, Mike. If you help a single student make it through a class, navigate a conflict, get an internship, that's a game-changer for that student. And it's not always going to be a success story, but we know we've given it our all.” And I think that really resonates with me — that whole notion of helping a single student succeed, helping a single student thrive, is a total win for us at the end of the day.
[16:24] Host: That was Mike Christakis, UAlbany's vice president for student affairs and enrollment. Mike is also chair of the board of directors for NASPA, the largest association of student affairs professionals in the country.
To learn more about Thrive UAlbany, to read the surgeon general's advisory, or to learn why Mike thinks the skills developed while working in Res Life can take you almost anywhere, be sure to check out The Longer Version in our show notes.
The Short Version would not be possible without contributions from many people, including this week: audio production and editing by Scott Freedman in the UAlbany Digital Media studio, deep inside the Podium tunnels.
We'll be back next week with another conversation about something interesting.
I'm Jordan Carleo-Evangelist here at the University at Albany, and this has been The Short Version.