Belonging in Practice: How Residential Life at LUMS Trains Its Leaders

How a six-day program turned 25 students into a leadership cohort and what it taught us about peer education

Every August, thousands of new admission students move into hostels and dormitories around the world. And in most of those residences, there is a student — often nervous, often undertrained — whose job it is to make sure everyone feels okay.

At LUMS, we call them Floor Advisors.

This past summer, we decided to take their preparation seriously in a way we hadn’t quite done before. What emerged was a six-day training week that was less a set of orientations and more a small experiment in what student leadership development could be.

Here is what we did, what surprised us, and what we learned.

The Problem We Were Solving