Quality Vs. Quantity:
An OTM Can Be Judged By The
QUALITY Of Its Proverbs!
NRHH National Board
What is an Of The Month (OTM)???
An OTM is a way of giving recognition to a deserving
individual(s) that have worked hard on improving or
enhancing a students’ experience in the residence halls.
This award in general means different things to different
entities.
– Campus: Way of recognizing a job well done.
– Regional: Going above and beyond the call of duty;
Showcasing exceptional programming with emphasis
on educating and enhancing residential
communities; and Exemplifying commitment and
dedication to a cause.
– National: An Exceptional individual(s) who personify student
leadership at its best going above and beyond the
call of duty to improve/enhance residence life across
all areas.
What is an OTM??? (Cont.)
An OTM from a residence hall is supposed to showcase the
best that a residence hall has to give to the campus level
An OTM from the campus level in general should highlight
the best your institution has to offer.
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Exceptional Programming
Dedicated Resident Assistants
Passionate Residence Life Staff
Ambitious First Year Students
Driven Students
An OTM from the regional level puts the regions best foot
forward via originality, creativity, storytelling and
grammatical expertise.
Well QUANTITY works for us!!!
Yes, it is wonderful to log onto the OTM account and see
350+ OTMs submitted to the database.
Yes, it is great to see that schools have submitted OTMs in
all categories.
BUT…
No, it is not great to see an OTM written for a Resident
Assistant that is 137 words with a 600 word maximum.
No, it is not great to not send a regional winner to the
national level because no OTMs submitted measured up to
the challenge.
No, it is not the goal of the AD-NRHH to just submit just
any OTM to the national level. It important to not waste the
time of the OTM readers.
Why do we want QUALITY???
Quality OTMs tell a story
Quality OTMs answer who, what, when, where, how many,
who or what for, and What effect
Quality OTMs leave the reader with minimal questions and
in some cases no questions at all
Quality OTMs are well written and leaves no room for vague
passages
Quality OTMs win regional awards
Quality OTMs win national awards
Quality OTMs display Quality individuals and institutions
Do you have the quality to put into an OTM on your college
campus???
I think you do…
What does it take to write
QUALITY OTMs???
Pertinent Information
Time
Patience
Focus
Grammar
Proofreading
Imagination
Creativity
Pertinent Information
To build a Quality OTM you must have all the meat and
potatoes of the individuals’ work or program:
– Name and contact info of individual(s) / responsible party
– Title of Event or Party of Individuals
– Program attendance / Target Audience
– Amount Spent on Program / Amount of people planning
– Date of program / Date of events
– Origin of Program / Origin of idea
– What the individual(s) did / What did the program consist of
– How much time went into planning these events
– What were the lasting effects
– How can these program be implemented on other campuses
– 3 brief sentences to describe this program
Time
It takes time to type a quality OTM.
If you only have five minutes to spare to type an
OTM…DON’T DO IT!!!
A quality OTM can take anywhere from 15 – 20 Minutes to
type (depending on the type of OTM it is).
Do not rush the process; if there are more individuals that
can help, delegate areas of the OTM to them. This is true
especially with program OTMs.
Patience
Patience is a virtue…That is for sure.
Sometimes you have to be patient when working on OTMs
in which you having trouble writing what you want to say –
especially sometimes when confidentiality is an issue with
the individual you are nominating (campus crime, rape,
assault, and abuse instances where RAs help residents). In
these cases tell the story leave out the names and any
identifier information.
A quality OTM looks like time and effort was put into it;
where a quantity OTM looks like someone just wrote
something and turned it in.
*** I personally believe that if an OTM looks like it was
thrown together it is not even reviewed (i.e., an OTM that is
less than 500 words).
FOCUS
No, I am not kidding…Focus!
Sometimes we get distracted by things like the phone, AIM,
Roommates, and friends.
When working on OTMs pay attention to detail.
Think about what it is that you’re trying to get the OTM
readers to know or see.
Focus on the individual/program and think about the
characteristics/benefit that they have that positively affect
the residence life program on your campus.
Focus, Focus, Focus…Pretend that the person you were
writing about was you. Wouldn’t you want to look good???
Grammar
Grammar is very important when writing OTMs.
The committee scans each OTM for content and usually
when that happens grammatical errors stick out like a “sour
thumb.”
When typing OTMs check for the following:
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Incomplete sentences
Misspelled words
Run-on sentences
“Big blocks of text”
Unknown Acronyms – (Not RHA, NRHH, RA, RLC, or Regions)
The best way to combat this is to type your entries into
Microsoft Word and then copy and paste it into the OTM
form on the otms.nrhh.org website.
Proofreading
I am not going to get to deep into this topic it is self
explanatory.
Proofreading helps you make sure that you OTM makes
sense.
In general, if it makes no sense to you, you can guarantee
that it will not make sense to anyone else.
Remember: Read, Read, Read!!!
Imagination
Writing OTMs is an art-form within itself.
Taking words and putting them together to form a sentence
that tells a story is a hard job.
It is made harder by the fact that you are trying to explain
to a complete stranger how something, someone, some
group, or some program was beneficial to your campus
community.
Thinking in this respect, you have to give a lot of supportive
information.
– A little background information is good. A good rule of thumb
on that is 3 - 5 sentences.
When you go back to proofread through your creation,
erase your mind of everything you know about the program
and when you have finished reading answer the 7
questions.
Creativity
Creativity is in the hand of the writer!
OTMs are not meant to be boring reports…they are fun
reviews of events and energetic accounts of hard working
individuals.
If you write an OTM and it makes you sleepy, imagine what
it can do to a OTM reader.
If you write an OTM like the Resident Assistant OTM in 300
words or less, it would be safe to say that either they did
not do much or you are missing a lot of supportive
information.
Be creative when typing OTMs!!!
Quantity or Quality???
Advisor OTM (119)
This is Amy’s first year as an Hall Director here at Ocean
Valley University. So far she has been nothing but amazing.
She has really taken the time to be involved with the hall
council. She sends us emails to personally thank us, as
RA's, when we've handled difficult situations. She really has
taken the time out to get to know us and show that she is
making every effort possible to make this the best
community ever. Her upbeat and energetic attitude is
something you can't help but feed off of. I enjoy working
under her and I hope that she stays as part of Ocean Valley
family for a very long time.
Quantity or Quality???
Organization OTM (593)
I’ve been involved with the Phoenix Club for the past two years, being the public relations director
my first year and this year being the president. I am also involved in several other club executive
boards on campus. What I have witnessed this year so far from my executive members in the
Phoenix Club, I would never have imagined what has happened this year. On September 8, 2006
the recently elected Phoenix Club executive board met in a lounge on Purdue’s campus for the first
time as a group to plan out their great year. We really did not know each other before then but by
the end of the night we were all good friends. We worked extremely hard putting together a list of
goals that we wanted to accomplish this year and how we wanted to do that. We created an
extensive budget to support all of their club programs for the year. We even planned out a list of
programs that we wanted to do in a variety of categories from social to educational. By the end of
the night we were a highly functional unit. We did all of this in just 5 hours, which is phenomenal
since the retreat was planned for 2 days.
They really are a driven group, always wanting more of me and the others on the board. For
example, I as president was kind of lagging behind by not getting people the information that they
need or setting up a time for our first executive meeting. So they we e-mailing me like crazy
wanting the information that they needed and wanting to know when the first executive meeting
was so they could get the year going. They were the ones that chose to hold their retreat on a
Friday night at 6 pm, knowing that it would not get over until about midnight.
We are a very supportive group of individuals. The whole board is at every program put on by the
club and the resident assistants, supporting each other, offering assistance and encouraging
residents to come partake in the night’s activities to make the program a success. If someone is
having a problem or something is not going as planned, there is someone going out of their way to
help that person so we can make this year a great year. We have teamed up with the Hillenbrand
resident assistants to put on a couple of programs, the most current one a Notre Dame versus
Purdue Party.
So far the executive board has redone how the general assembling meetings are run and how
business is submitted for the meetings. We have also made the executive meetings more
interactive then in the years past. The club has not had a constitution for 2 or more years a partial
constitution for about a year, and select members from the board sat down and completed it in
about 2 hours. Now the constitution is now in its final stages of approval. As a group we have
completely overhauled the club and made it more of a place to come and make new friends.
It is not everyday a group of eight strangers can come together in a night and become friends, and
even more change the way an entire club functions. Even our general assembly is noticing the
difference, and is becoming more involved by participating more during the meetings. As the year
goes on I know that the bond that this group has is going to strengthen and take the Phoenix Club
to new heights.
In Summation
OTMs can be put into the database at anytime (up until the
regional due dates for that months submission).
Max out the word count – 600 (or at least more than 500).
Gather as much information and comments as you can on
the individual(s) or program.
Try to type program OTMs the week the program happens
while it is still fresh on your mind.
DO NOT RUSH TO TYPE OTMs…IT LOOKS RUSHED.
Make sure all of your information flows together.
Write your entries in word first to check for grammatical
errors and then copy and paste into the database (don’t
forget to hit the word counter).
Proofread the OTM and pretend you know nothing about the
individual(s) or program and see if it answers all your
questions.
Get Ready, Get Set, Go!!!
By now you should have a pretty good idea of what it takes
to write a quality OTM.
It may take a time or two to get it right, but to compete
with some of the other institutions within our region and
outside of our region in the realm of OTMs there has got to
be an upgrade in the quality of our OTMs.
I have no doubt that there are quality individuals and
programs in our region; it is just the fact that the OTMs are
not written to display this. Get Your head in the game!
If there were some parts about the presentation that leave
you with questions please feel free to contact me
The Race Is On To Quality OTMs!!!