Questions:
1. What is your major and year?
2. How did you first get involved with RHA?
3. What do you think is the most important thing RHA does?
4. What do you hope to accomplish in your RHA executive position?
5. What do you want to after you graduate?
Mara Gallagher
Executive president
1. Management: finance, class of 2013
2. I was first involved with RHA my freshman year as Juniper’s social coordinator and an at-large member of the general body. My sophomore year I served on the executive board as the vice president of Internal Development, and this year I am the vice president of Residential Relations.
3. I think the most important thing RHA does is provide a place for residents to develop skills to turn their residence hall into a home, and more importantly a community.
4. As president, I hope to continue to create a vision for the future of the organization. With the help of the executive vice presidents, I would like to continue to develop strong leaders within RHA who can help make an impact on the future of CWRU living.
5. After I graduate I will be looking for a job in financial consulting.
Katie Kleinberg
Vice president of Internal Development
1. Biomedical engineering (pre-med), class of 2015
2. I truly believe that joining this organization was the best choice I’ve made since I came to CWRU. I first heard about it when the current executive members talked to my floor during a meeting with my RA. I was always involved throughout high school, so I naturally wanted to join. I felt that I possessed strong qualities for president, even though I had never held a leadership position in my life. At first it was challenging, but through time, I grew as a leader with the help of my council, my advisor, and the current executive board members.
3. The most important thing that RHA does is creating community. Through leadership, programming, and advocacy, RHA brings residents together through common goals and interests. With this new executive board, we plan to create more personal connections with the residents in order to enhance their residential experience.
4. I continue to think of new ideas to successfully fulfill the duties of Internal Development, as well as enhance RHA as a whole. I plan on making leadership activity templates for the seven different councils. The templates would encourage the council’s members to become leaders and effectively counteract any possible crises (such as accountability issues). In the past, RHA has struggled to retain membership throughout the four years of undergraduate studies. With the new executive board and collaboration of general body, we will design a vision of the qualities of an RHA member in order to sustain membership (such as encouraging, supportive, accessible, intentional, organized, self-driven, creative, and flexible). Also, more involved members tend to make a larger commitment, especially those participating in general body. Thus, I plan to design a mock general body for every RHA member at the fall retreat.
5. I would like to become a surgeon, hopefully working abroad.
Ryan Stroud
Vice president of Residential Relations
1. Civil engineering, class of 2013
2. I first got involved with RHA during my freshman year. During that time I lived in Cedar Residential Collage and served on the community counsel as “the ghost-buster.” Since then I have continued to be involved in RHA.
3. In my opinion, the most important thing that RHA does on campus is that it gives students an opportunity to give back to the community in which they live. Thus, it helps students make lasting connections within their residence hall communities. It provides students a way to build strong connections among other students around the campus and with housing administration.
4. As the vice president of Residential Relations for the upcoming year, I have a few major goals. First, I want to encourage an active dialog between administration and students. One thing that I feel always happens on this campus is that administration is seen as a faceless entity, and I want to attempt to change this. Second, I want to work closely with other organizations on campus such as USG, so we can maximize the beneficial impact the organizations have on campus.
5. After I graduate I plan on either going to graduate school or working in industry… hopefully.
Jeffrey Sommer
Vice president of External Communications
1. Biology, class of 2014
2. I first became involved with RHA this past fall semester as vice president of Glaser House.
3. RHA does instill a sense of community among residents. However, that sense of community is not only related to residence halls or the university, but to Cleveland as a whole.
4. As vice president of External Communications, I hope to further establish a connection among residents to the Cleveland community and to expose them to all that Cleveland has to offer.
5. After graduation I am planning on continuing my education by attending veterinary school and earning a D.V.M. (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine).
Brad Aronson
Vice president of Programming
1. Biomedical engineering, class of 2013
2. I was asked to fill in my sophomore year for missing members of the Murray Hill council, and I ended up getting hooked.
3. RHA provides a very influential role in improving the lives of the residents on campus, especially through community-building programs.
4. As the vice president of Programming of RHA, I would like to create resources and materials that will assist RHA as a whole in improving programming at CWRU, with programs tailored to the residents themselves.
5. After I graduate I plan to pursue a masters degree in biomedical engineering so that I can perform research in the field of functional electronic stimulation.
Erik Larsen
Vice president of Administration
1. Biomedical engineering, class of 2013
2. I first got involved in RHA as a member of the Upperclassmen Community Council through some friends who were in RHA the year before. Originally, I was just joining RHA because they were. However, over the course of the past semester, I found that this organization was worth more than I was giving it and found myself wanting to be a bit more involved.
3. The most important thing that RHA aims to do is enrich our residents’ lives through programming and community outreach. One of our goals is to facilitate a sense of community in the residence halls, and I think that is the prime motivation in everything we do.
4. It is kind of difficult to be ambitious in the position of vice president of Administration and Finance because of the nature of the job. I look after the organization’s money and take minutes in various meetings. However, on the administration side, I want to work to digitize a certain portion of our archives and help make the move to online for past RHA documents. Also, there are a couple of projects dealing with setting up resources for internal RHA that I hope to be a part of.
5. After I graduate, I hope to be going to graduate school in biomedical engineering in the drug delivery field. I will either work for a company as a researcher or as a pharmacist.
Michael Knobloch
Vice president of Public Relations
1. Physics and mathematics, class of 2014
2. I first became involved in RHA after a few friends and I decided on a whim to run for Clarke Tower Community Council, thinking it would be a good leadership experience. I was elected president and my friends also were elected to office, and we went from there.
3. The very superficial answer is that we just exist to put on programs as entertainment for our residents. However, RHA has the potential to deeply affect residents. We exist entirely for their benefit, and I think the most important aspect of our organization is not these one-time programs but instead actions or objects that physically improve the residential hall experience.
4. RHA exists for our residents. One of the biggest goals I see for this position is to develop a dialogue between residents and RHA so we can tune our actions to their needs. To that end, I want to increase the amount of correspondence between residents and our organization so they don’t see us as just “the guys who put on Casino Night,” but as their peers who are here to help them.
5. I’m not sure. I think going to graduate school is the most probable option. Otherwise, I’ll hopefully go straight to work in some sort of technical position.