In her position as an assistant director within the Division of College Housing, Erin Warner helps college students negotiate Madison’s complicated and typically anxiety-inducing housing market. Picture by Joel Ninmann/College Housing
At a latest campus discussion board for UW–Madison college students about housing choices within the metropolis, panelist Erin Warner paused the proceedings early on to safe extra chairs for the overflow crowd and to verify everybody knew concerning the free lunch buffet.
“I’m a mom,” she instructed the scholars. “I need everybody to be fed and comfy.”
The assertion may virtually be Warner’s job description. It’s actually her mantra.
Formally, Warner oversees Off-Campus Housing Services as an assistant director within the Division of University Housing. Unofficially, she strives to be everybody’s Badger mother. In serving to college students negotiate Madison’s complicated and typically anxiety-inducing housing market, she brings to bear no matter is required — TLC, frequent sense, robust love. Typically she seems like a therapist, different instances a 911 operator.
“OK, first I want you to take a deep breath and cease panicking,” she instructed a distraught undergraduate who approached her at a latest housing discussion board on the Pres Home. The scholar was having issue discovering an reasonably priced house.
“Nobody has ever gone homeless on my watch, and I’m not about to allow you to be the primary,” Warner instructed the coed. “Mama Erin’s acquired this.”
‘An enormous fan membership’
The Division of College Housing established the Off-Campus Housing Providers unit final 12 months to assist college students and households navigate Madison’s increasingly challenging, highly competitive housing market. The trouble, which constructed on and enhanced a earlier program in Campus and Customer Relations, now has a chosen workplace and full-time workers member.
Jeff Novak, affiliate vice chancellor for finance and administration and director of College Housing, introduced Warner on board in April 2023 to get the re-envisioned program up and operating. On the time, Warner was the administrator for the Honors Program within the Faculty of Letters & Science. On the aspect — and informally — she usually would leap onto the Fb web page for Badger Dad and mom and Households and attempt to assist individuals who had considerations or gripes. Typically that meant giving recommendation, different instances debunking rumors. Warner is a UW–Madison alumna and the mom of two Badgers. She and her husband Jim have a daughter, Jamie, who graduated in Could, and a son, Chase, a junior.
“As a father or mother herself, she had an exquisite method of speaking with different dad and mom and responding to their fears and considerations with empathy and compassion but in addition details and cause,” Novak says. “Serving to others was a transparent ardour for her, and he or she had developed a giant fan membership doing it.”
Joselyn Diaz-Valdes, an assistant director within the Workplace of Scholar Monetary Support, says college students can discover it intimidating to achieve out for assist.
“Erin makes it simple as a result of she’s so approachable,” Diaz-Valdes says. “And she or he’s phenomenal in a disaster.”
Of their nook
Warner earned a bachelor’s diploma from UW–Madison in social welfare and sociology and a grasp’s diploma from Indiana College in social work. She approaches her job squarely from the angle of somebody who’s been there, skilled that.
Between her two youngsters, she’s helped set budgets, navigated lease splits, monitored bedroom-picking lotteries and co-signed leases — even joint ones the place she was accountable for individuals she didn’t know.
“Belief me, if there was a technique to make it difficult, my Badgers discovered it,” she says. “After I inform college students and households that I’ve discovered lots of classes the exhausting method, I actually imply it.”
One time, Jamie and her roommates unwittingly signed two legally binding leases concurrently for 2 completely different residences.
“That was so loopy,” says Jamie, now a scientific analysis coordinator on the UW Carbone Most cancers Middle. “Whenever you’re 18 or 19, you don’t all the time know what you’re doing, or what you’re signing, or what you’re getting your self into. That’s what’s so nice about my mother. She’s so educated and so keen to assist.”
Jamie is okay sharing her mother with 50,000-plus college students.
“I’m fortunate sufficient to be quarter-hour from house,” she says. “But when your loved ones is 1000’s of miles away, she will be your Wisconsin mother.”
Warner has an workplace at Slichter Residence Corridor however prefers assembly college students wherever they’re — the Starbucks at Smith Residence Corridor is a favourite spot. She will get the phrase out about her companies by staffing info tables at eating halls and showing at boards, workshops and different occasions throughout campus. (“I insert myself in key locations,” she says.) Earlier this semester, she coordinated the campus’s annual housing discussion board. Greater than 2,500 college students attended — a file.
Warner usually meets with college students one on one. (You’ll be able to e-mail her at off-campus@housing.wisc.edu. ) She opinions budgets and housing choices with college students, on the lookout for methods to assist them save on lease. She encourages them to distinguish between needs and desires, throwing some exhausting truths their method — “That rooftop pool could also be tremendous cool, however you’ll pay for it.” She offers suggestions on methods to discover properties which may take advantage of sense for them.
“I need college students to really feel like they’ve somebody of their nook who understands that this course of will be very hectic.”
And to all of the Badger dad and mom on the market throughout the nation or the world over, Warner needs you to know she’s on it.
“I hope that if one in every of my youngsters ever leads to your yard, you’d do the identical,” she says.
Written by Doug Erickson
Hyperlink to authentic story: https://news.wisc.edu/in-helping-students-find-housing-mama-erin-brings-the-tlc-and-hard-won-street-smarts/
