TJ Hill
Colorado State University

What do you see as opportunities in collegiate recreation and our Association? How would you collaborate with the Member Network team to address these issues?

This is an incredible time to be in collegiate recreation. Our association and career field has pushed their way through a trying time in history and are coming to a time where we get to rebuild how we operate and manage collegiate recreation for our participants, students, staff, and community members. Opportunities we are seeing in collegiate recreation are increasing access for college students through hybrid program offerings, expanding demographics of our institutions and our direct participants, and a return to play for undergraduate students who are finally able to experience recreational programming at its full (or soon to be full) potential.

In the Region V Member Network Representative role, I would introduce ways for our regions to share ideas about how we intentionally program our collegiate recreation opportunities for our diverse institutions. I saw innovative and creative ideas on “return-to-recreation” programs and services at collegiate recreation facilities during reopening processes through the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than leave these ideas in the past, I want to bolster how we continue to collaborate on new and innovative programs. Region V, alone, had a wide-array of institutional requirements to “return-to-recreation” on our campuses. If we can harness the innovation and skills our association demonstrated during that time, we can continue to share these ideas across regions and build on collegiate recreation at our association level and our institutional level. The Member Network serves as a virtual table where these ideas can be passed, discussed, and shared within each of our regions and states.

In describing your contributions to NIRSA, identify how your involvement and experiences meet the position criteria and qualify you to serve NISRA in this role.

I whole-heartedly believe I would not have completed a master’s degree or found my passion without NIRSA. My involvement in NIRSA started in attending a Regional Conference at CSU-Fort Collins many years prior to working for in this department or at this institution. That experience introduced me to a career field I hadn’t known to exist, but one where I immediately felt like I belonged. From there, I had opportunities to serve as the Colorado/Wyoming Student representative, served on multiple tournament planning committees, Colorado State Representative, and now the NIRSA Assembly. In each one of these roles, my passion is to introduce, inspire, and excite current- NIRSA Members and non-NIRSA members to our community because it has given so much to me. I see this role on the Member Network as an even larger opportunity to pass my passion on to the state representatives and their constituents in order to continue to drive passion for collegiate recreation to new students each year. Another aspect of my time in NIRSA is the networking and friendships I have made through our association. It is fulfilling to talk with and learn from so many outstanding NIRSA members in Region V and to have folx’s in our region that I can reach out to for input, to share resources, or to ask for help to improve what I am able to do in NIRSA and at my institution. My involvement and network have shown me many sides of what NIRSA offers to members and students and I want to use my lived experience to instill that passion in others. I am excited for an opportunity to continue to illustrate how NIRSA can build students and professionals’ development.

Please share your ideas for engaging volunteers and identifying leaders in your region.

We are living in a time in Region V where there are a lot of new members, new professionals, new students. In this role as the Region V Member Network Representative, I can help create and instill community for an ever evolving and growing association. Region V is “small but mighty” in our engagement, so during my time as the Region V Representative, I would want to continue pushing engagement at the state-level in state workshops, Student Lead-On, and to develop NIRSA Leaders through these channels. I think it is important to continue to create a buzz around our Region V conferences due to only hosting regional conference every other year. I see these conferences as valuable connections to make with our fellow NIRSA members in our Region. With the amount of geographical space between institutions and states in Region V, it is important for us to innovate the way we stay connected. COVID-19 showed us there are successful ways to engage each other virtually, so in my time as Region V representative, I would want to explore what virtual connections we can develop in order to sustain Region V leadership, membership, and member pipelines for our students. Region V is dedicated to supporting NIRSA and as Region V Representative, I want to continue to foster a regional culture of service, excitement, and enjoyment for our members.