At the 2015 KAHO Annual Conference, a plethora of awards were given out to deserving professionals from around our commonwealth. Because of time constraints at the awards luncheon, the letters of nomination were unable to be read. The KAHO Governing Council wanted each of the outstanding nominees to be fully recognized for the achievements and successes they have championed as well as thanking the nominators for such heartfelt and meaningful recognition.
New Professional Award
Awarded to one recipient for outstanding contributions and service to his or her institution. Recipients must have worked for the institution for at least one year but no more than three years.
Join us in congratulating Bryan Mathis, from the University of Louisville.
Bryan Mathis
Bryan Mathis joined the Office of Campus Housing August of 2013 and currently serves in the position titled Departmental Assistant for Community Wellness and Sustainability. During this tenure he has worked with 4 supervisors! In addition, his employment position has gone through several modifications. Through the leadership organizational changes, Bryan has ensured that the services that he was responsible for were provided without any delays. With the reorganization of Bryan’s roles he now coordinates; fire, health, diversity/inclusion and sustainability through the campaign to build community and teach at all levels of engagement with residents.
During spring 2015 Bryan was asked to completely overhaul our front desk services in our residence halls. This required him to rewrite the job description for our current student staff position as well as create a completely new position that would provide supervision assistance for each hall. Desk Assistants were renamed to Community Hall Assistants and while still providing a high level of safety and security service are now also expected to help Residence Education in facilitating community building with the residents. This required additional training and a complete change on how desk schedules were managed. The newly created position Community Manager, was now responsible for being a liaison between the residence education staff and the front desk operations as well as ensuring administrative duties are being completely properly. Bryan also took on improving training for the night time security staff. To help centralize administrative procedures and to provide a higher level of customer service to our residents, Bryan worked with information technology to install touch screen computers at all the front desks. To close out our safety and security program. Bryan has now started to work on housing training for our hired security staff to infuse the importance of residential learning and care. Also, he now coordinates monthly meetings with Physical Plant – Electrical, University Police and the Fire Marshal to ensure a 360 degree communication format is in place to support the residents and the housing program.
Bryan has taken ownership of the ideas that was placed before him. His level of support has not gone unnoticed and his ability to make the new process his own is admired. Bryan listened, responded, and adjusted where appropriate to ensure that he had gained the buy-in from his colleagues. His positive spirit and support of leadership has truly been appreciated. During these periods of transition, Bryan also been working towards his graduate degree. He will graduate May, 2016 with his Masters’ in Counseling Student Personnel.
Christopher Medley
Associate Director
University of Louisville
Kentucky Association of Housing Officers 