Nathan Sexten started in Residence Life on Feb. 2 as the student experience operations coordinator, a position that had been vacant since the fall 2024 semester when Residence Life restructured the department.
Sexten braved a 15-hour drive from Nebraska, a snowstorm and a water outage to begin his role at Allegheny.
“Everyone here has been really welcoming, and it’s exciting to be here,” Sexten said. “Allegheny students are very unique and exciting to be around so far, and it’s a change of pace from the large institution I was at previously.”
Prior to starting at Allegheny, Sexten worked for three years at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the Residence Life department, primarily focusing on housing and managing front desk operations and student staff. Before that, Sexten worked as a residence life coordinator at the University of Akron.
Sexten is getting acclimated to the small-college culture at Allegheny, having previously worked at mid- to large-sized institutions, with Akron having around 2,200 students and Nebraska close to 5,500.
“It’s a change of pace from the large institution I was at previously, where my office was in a building that housed 1,500 students, of several buildings, to the smaller campus where we have spread out buildings with less students in each of them,” Sexten said. “I think there’s a really cool opportunity for the community that happens in those buildings, and it’s exciting to be a part of.”
Sexten was hired by Tiffany Hrach, ’01, director of student experience operations & strategy.
Trae Yeckley, dean for student life & title IX coordinator, said Sexten was “by far, the best candidate” for the position.
“We’re very excited that he’s here,” Yeckley said.
Sexten’s role as coordinator will focus primarily on housing for the short term, as that is Residence Life’s current priority at this point during the spring term. The Student Housing Agreement opened on Feb. 24 at 7:30 a.m., and in a campus-wide email from Residence Life, students were notified that when the time comes for registration, second years will be permitted to live with upperclassmen, reversing the decision made before the spring 2025 selection.
“When we restructured last fall, we created this position, because we knew that there was a need,” Yeckley said. “We want housing to focus on housing, but there’s a lot of operations work in that, and so this is where we came up with the idea of promoting Tiffany Hrach as the student experience director, and this position falls under that.”
The restructuring of Residence Life took place after the departure of Associate Dean for Residence Life Stacie Wolbert, as well as a number of other positions. The restructuring took different positions and responsibilities and consolidated them, assessed existing needs, then created new positions to address those needs.
“It’s a new structure we have, and it’s working out great,” Yeckley said.
The department is currently working to establish the long-term specifics of Sexten’s position. Eventually, Sexten will also support the Maytum Student Success Center in some projects related to the health profession and global experiences.
“Academic work in administration is very cyclical, so we go through cycles of hiring RAs, going through housing selection, move-in, move-out, those are things that I am very familiar with because of my experience before this,” Sexten said. “With health professions, it gets very busy during the summer, is my understanding, students are applying for graduate programs and things like that, so there’s ebbs and flows to all of these projects and stuff and so we’ll figure out the cycle of those, where I can be most helpful and effective.”
One of the goals of Sexten’s role as coordinator is to “free up” operations so that other staff members are more free to engage with resident advisors and invest time in the “people-work” aspect of the department, according to Sexten.
“There’s a lot to learn,” Sexten said. “Each institution — as I’ve gone to different jobs in higher ed — it’s all higher ed, but they’re all very different and have unique aspects to them. So the first task is to learn the culture here, learn the needs and the way we do things here, and then hopefully, the ultimate goal is to streamline some processes, document what we do so we can do it easier the next time, and have some continuity of operations to then allow people to be freed up to interact with students and spend the extra time with RAs and residents and things like that.”
At this time, three positions remain unfilled in Residence Life, with the interview phase currently underway and prospective hires visiting campus before and after the spring break.
“We’re moving along quite well,” Yeckley said.
