Tasia Tran is a member of Cohort 14 and a fourth-year student at Central Washington University, where she studies film and digital marketing. In addition to her role as a Resident Advisor, she serves as President of the National Residence Hall Honorary (NRHH) chapter.
Tasia Tran (Cohort 14) is a fourth-year film and digital marketing student at Central Washington University (CWU). Like many college freshman, she lived in a campus dorm her first year. The first thing Tasia noticed about her Resident Advisor (RA) was that she was always there.
Not just available, but present.
The RA was a music education major who hosted jazz swing dancing every other week in the common room. Residents wandered downstairs, learned a few steps, laughed at themselves, and wandered back upstairs a little less like strangers. The RA hosted brunch runs to the dining hall and movie nights too. She made a consistent effort to learn people’s names and say them out loud when passing in the hall.
These efforts made all the difference to Tasia and to other residents on her floor. “People know me. They see me. I know them. I see them,” Tasia said, trying to put words to what those early gestures meant to her. “It made me feel more included. More like I live here.”
The feeling of belonging, and the idea that belonging is something you can build, moment by moment, sparked everything Tasia would do next.
Stepping Stones of Belonging
From her very first year on campus, Tasia was part of her school’s Residence Hall Association (RHA), the student body equivalent for campus housing, where dorm councils organize events, connect with Residential Coordinators, and work to make residence halls feel like something more than a place to sleep.
She wanted to become an RA herself. It seemed like the natural next step—a way to do for others what had been done for her. Tasia applied for her sophomore year, but wasn’t selected. Her grades weren’t where they needed to be.
“That motivated me to be even better,” Tasia said, with the clarity of someone who is always playing the long game.
To fill the gap, Tasia stepped into a different role on the the RHA Executive Board. She helped plan campus-wide events, facilitated general meetings, and supported residents across multiple dorms—essentially doing the work of community building without the title. She was learning, contributing, and building her RA muscles.
The following year, she applied again. This time, she got it.
Building a Philosophy of Belonging
Two years into the role, Tasia has developed a clear philosophy about what it means to support a community of 34 residents on her wing (in a building of 350 students).
It starts with events. Not generic, check-the-box events, but ones turned into what residents actually want: pool tournaments, craft nights, de-stressing sessions before finals, evenings where the whole floor makes food together.
“Making food together gains a lot of attention,” Tasia said with a laugh. “It’s a good way to get to know residents.” Even with a mess of on-campus dining options, sometimes you just want a home-cooked meal.
Tasia also hosts regular “Cat Connections,” structured check-ins, twice a quarter, where RAs sit down with each resident, run through a housing survey, and just talk. Tasia wants to make sure residents have a face to go with the name on the door.
“Sometimes people are like, I didn’t know you were an RA, but I know you live in the RA room,” Tasia said, laughing again. “Which is really funny.” The goal, she makes clear, is to close that gap—to be known as a person, not just a resource.
And then there’s everything Tasia does in between. The smiling in the hallway instead of walking past awkwardly. The quick conversations in the kitchen and the laundry room. The accumulated weight of small interactions that, over time, add up to something a person can feel.
Bringing Belonging to Teamwork
When Tasia thinks about the skills that have helped her in this role, she keeps returning to something she learned long before she ever set foot on a college campus: “Communication and collaboration,” she said. “Those are huge.”
She traces these skills directly back to Rainier Scholars and the active learning skills taught during the Academic Enrichment Phase. Her work as an RA means she’s part of a staff team. Some members are brand new, some return for multiple years, and sometimes a new supervisor rotates in. The ability to navigate that team environment, and to show up authentically while advocating for herself and others, has mattered enormously.
“We have to communicate with each other—to say, hey, this is going on with school right now, I need a minute to step back.”
It’s a version of something Rainier Scholars emphasizes from the beginning: that accountability doesn’t mean doing everything alone. Asking for help is a form of strength. A team only works when people tell the truth about what they need.
Tasia is teaching these same skills to her residents regularly and relearning them herself: from navigating emotionally heavy situations with residents to processing difficult situations for the first time, all while figuring out how to take care of herself and show up for the 34 people counting on her. The skills she built through Rainier Scholars didn’t make any of that easy. But they gave her a strong foundation.
Belonging for Everyone
Tasia’s proudest memory doesn’t involve a single event or a dramatic moment, but reflect cumulative result of showing up regularly.
Her first year as an RA, Tasia worked hard to learn every resident’s name, to show up consistently, to make her floor feel like the kind of place where people wanted to be. And then, slowly, she started to see it working. Residents came to her meetings. They stopped her in the hallway. They took her advice—about a class, about a conflict with a friend—and came back later to tell her things had gotten better.
“I was able to help make an impact,” Tasia said. “I felt like my job made sense,”
She’s graduating this winter, and this is Tasia’s last term as an RA. But her impact will carry forward. The residents who felt seen on her floor—who knew her name and let her know theirs, who showed up to a cooking night or a de-stress session and found that they felt a little more at home—will take the torch now, the same way Tasia carried forward what her own RA gave her.
That’s the thing about belonging. Once someone teaches you it’s possible, you spend the rest of your time trying to build it for someone else.