Virginia Tech’s Imaginarium Provides a Decade of Service to Residence Hall Student Staff

Where do student leaders go when they need ideas for new programs, advice about strengthening their hall communities, or just a place to interact with other students who share their interests and responsibilities? At Virginia Tech, they visit the Imaginarium, a resource center in Ambler Johnston Hall that has offered support, guidance, and a sense of community to those who live and work in the residence halls for the past ten years.

The Imaginarium encourages programs that promote hands-on learning among student users and provides resources for the benefit of the entire campus population. Staff advising, in-service workshops, and resources available at the Imaginarium are designed to cultivate enthusiasm for community development.

The space provides access to consumable bulletin board materials, programming publications, development workshops, computer software, and other items needed for effective residence hall programming. It also offers a library of videos, board games, and other tools for community building with residents. Perhaps the most valuable resource, however, is the network of students who can share experiences and programming ideas for the benefit of students who live in the residence halls.

“We hope the people coming here will realize the resources that we have available and be as excited as we are about the campus-wide impact the Imaginarium has,” said Jeananne Tiffany, Imaginarium staff member and senior psychology major in the College of Science.

The Imaginarium is open exclusively to Residence Life and hall council staff members in order to centralize consumers and maximize resource efficiency. Each year the center supplies $2,200 in banner paper and $800 in tape, among other consumable resources, to provide programming for more than 9,000 on-campus residents. Staff members and students use these materials to create bulletin boards and other visuals to promote student-designed programs, as well as support housing and judicial policies and procedures. The Imaginarium also manages its own website, which allows users to access resources and search an online programming database.

Students and staff members gathered for a tenth anniversary celebration at the Imaginarium on the evening of May 2 to welcome resident advisors, hall council leaders, and staff members who have come to think of the resource and programming center as a second home.

“We wanted to recognize what this space has contributed to the department and to student life on campus in the last 10 years,” said Chris MacDonald, associate director of Residence Life and supervisor of the Imaginarium. “We also wanted to celebrate the student leaders who keep this place running and everything they do here to impact their peers.”

The Imaginarium expanded and moved to Ambler Johnston Hall in 2003 from its previous location in Payne Hall. Both space and usage increased as a result of the move. For more information about the Imaginarium, visit www.studentprograms.vt.edu/imaginarium.

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