CU People: Joyce Jackson

Title

Executive Director, Columbia University Housing

Years at Columbia

36

What She Does

Her team manages room assignments and works closely with Columbia Facilities on cleaning, maintenance and renovations. The Housing team also works with Residential Programs to provide residence hall advisers and directors.

“For students, we’re the face of the work that gets done in residence halls,” Jackson said. “They are able to contact us on any issue—from being locked out of their room to getting game equipment—24 hours, 7 days a week,” she added, noting that Columbia Housing runs a hospitality desk in Hartley Hall.

Jackson also oversees conference housing, working with groups that stay in residence halls during the summer and between semesters. These groups include local high school students who participate in educational programs, organizations that hold conferences on campus, alumni attending reunions and parents who need accommodations during Commencement.

Columbia Housing’s motto is “Make it your home,” Jackson said, noting with amusement the year that a student arrived with two U-Hauls and then had to decide what to keep while parked on Amsterdam Avenue. “Students must think their rooms are bigger than they actually are because they often bring so much stuff.”

Jackson says her team tries to make the housing process as efficient and easy as possible. To that end, they launched an online portal to help students apply for rooms, reserve the “famous blue bins” for moving personal items and arrange self-check-out.

Best Part of the Job

“The opportunity to work with students and see them develop from when they first arrive to their graduation,” she said.

Jackson is also very proud of her team, which started an annual basketball tournament for employees from eight departments that raises more than $5,000 annually to support local nonprofits through Columbia Community Service.

Most Memorable Moment

In August 2011, Hurricane Irene was forecast to hit New York City the day of first-year check-in. Columbia arranged overnight rooms for Housing and Facilities staff to ensure that everything would be ready for student arrivals, which began at 5:30 a.m. Students had always been welcomed under a big tent on Low Plaza, but the tent was not feasible to erect due to the expected high winds. Check-in was moved to the residence halls and has remained there. “There’s nothing like a hurricane to get you to rethink and improve your process,” Jackson said.

Road to Columbia

Jackson, who was born in Texas City, Texas, attended Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, and received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1975. She then worked at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville as a researcher in plant pathology, helping a professor clone pine trees. She had never imagined herself as a researcher, but she met staff through a campus bowling league who introduced her to their work in residential life. “I loved the atmosphere at the university and was excited to find that there was work I would enjoy in a campus environment,” she remembered. Jackson then studied psychology and higher education administration at the University of Georgia College of Education and went on to work as a residence hall director at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.

She came to Columbia in 1980 as assistant manager of the Housing Office, overseeing mail delivery, billing and annual check-in and check-out. In 1986, while working in the Conference Housing office, she finished the program in organizational psychology at Teachers College, earning a second master’s degree. She went on to work in other areas in Housing with increasing responsibility, including human resources, purchasing, room assignments and summer housing.

In Her Spare Time

Jackson met her husband, Richard Abba (CC’71, SEAS’78), one Christmas Eve while working in the Housing Office. Abba, who is now director of technology at York Prep School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, had come to drop off a proposal for automating housing assignments. The couple lives in Morningside Heights with their two cats, Lana and Della. Jackson said they enjoy that the neighborhood is “almost like living in a small town.\" They also enjoy attending Columbia sports events, where she roots for students who worked in the Housing Office.