If practice makes perfect, then summer creates success. That’s the motto Jennifer Jones adheres to every year around this time.
As the associate director of facility operations for campus recreation at Florida Atlantic University, Jones, like the rest of her campus recreation peers around the country, is busy all year. But the pace slows down just enough between late May and early August to allow her and her team to accomplish some pretty significant tasks in advance of the academic year.
“You have to set yourself up for success now, because it will be too busy to make large-scale changes in fall,” says Jones, whose summer plans this year include updating student-employee training videos and onboarding processes, overseeing some facility improvement projects, and completing preventive maintenance work.
“Summer doesn’t mean there’s less work to do, and those two-and-a-half months can evaporate really quickly,” adds Jason Incorvati, associate director for programs and student development for RecWell at the University of Massachusetts, whose summer 2026 to-do list includes supporting the development of programming for the NEST (Nurture, Empower, Support, Thrive) Challenge Course that opened in April, assisting coworkers in piloting a summer camp for elementary school students and participating on new student affairs committees. “But, we still need to take a breath, acknowledge that another year has passed and celebrate our wins along the way.”
Summertime strategies
Summers weren’t necessarily more carefree when Jones and Incorvati were in previous, less administrative roles, but they were certainly different.
“When I started, like many collegiate recreation professionals, I was specialized in one area,” says Incorvati, now in his 21st year as a campus recreation professional, preceded by five years as a graduate assistant and undergraduate student employee. “My sole focus was on that programming area: looking at the calendar and preparing the marketing materials, reviewing the training materials, updating them.”
“As you move up and you have more responsibilities and more oversight for other areas that may not be so hyper-busy in summer, you do have the time to focus on evolving, to concentrate on areas of improvement, and then plan and implement,” adds Jones, who began her campus recreation career 15 years ago as an aquatics coordinator and to this day keeps a running year-round list of potential summer projects and tasks.
Fall training preparations begin with identifying broad objectives. For example, where are the operational gaps? Are those gaps impacting how students, administrators and other on-campus entities not only understand how the recreation department operates but also what its values and benefits are? What deficiencies in performance or outcomes need to be addressed? Does the staff culture need tending?
Depending on the answers to those types of questions, Incorvati suggests creating a plan to help ensure the upcoming fall semester will be better than the previous spring semester. One component of that plan likely will include finding ways to make student trainings more engaging.
“Utilizing students to lead trainings is a great way to provide professional development opportunities, and students tend to listen to their peers a bit differently than they would a member of the professional staff,” says Incorvati, who also is co-chair of NIRSA’s Student Staff Development Committee. “However, it’s critical to clearly distinguish that professional staff are the experts in their specialized functional area, and they should be providing the content. The students execute and are coached by the pro staff. Students can suggest changes or innovations in training, but if we are asking them to come up with new content, then we are not maximizing the learning that can happen — which can lead to outcomes not being met or performance for the students they trained slipping because the training lacks critical information.”
Jones offers additional suggestions.
“Reflect on and analyze policies and operating procedures. Those are not things that should just sit in a binder and collect dust. You’ve got to see what’s working and what’s not,” she says, noting that one recent change at FAU involved implementing a new work-order system that allows for real-time tracking of requests in a central database. That, in turn, can more easily help identify, say, worn-out equipment that might need to be repaired or replaced during the summer.
Jones also recommends reviewing data, such as student survey results and user entry swipes, to identify areas in need of changes and then determining the best way to implement those changes. Trends might also emerge from that data that can lead to new programming ideas or preventive maintenance schedule updates.
Last July, for example, FAU installed new fitness center flooring and reconfigured the equipment layout to accommodate up to 50 additional users in the space at any given time.
“We did not actually increase our space or square footage, but through strategic decision-making with equipment purchases and placement, we were able to increase the amount of people we can accommodate, prevent overcrowding and offer new equipment options — based on data interpretation to see which equipment gets used more often versus which equipment gets used the least,” Jones says. “And we intentionally scheduled the renovation at a time that was least impactful to our students.”
This summer, the department will undergo less obvious but no less important facility improvement projects such as replacing all gymnasium wall pads and giving the student-staff break room a refresh.
“One of my favorite phrases, which I learned at my very first lifeguarding job at a water park, is ‘make it work.’ And I’ve adopted that throughout my whole life — you’ve got to make it work,” says Jones. “But you also have to prioritize and say, ‘It is always going to be about the students first’ — which is why we push to the summer anything that’s going to be large-scale and can wait.”
Remember that it’s still summer
In the midst of taking on big projects and other major summertime tasks, it’s important not to spend all your time at work and neglect giving yourself a refresh, too, according to Incorvati.
“Take care of yourself,” he suggests. “If you have PTO, use it. The wellbeing of your students starts with you. If you can’t bring your best self to your work, you can’t expect the same of them.”
He often recalls a quote from a UMass faculty member: “I don’t believe in work-life balance. I believe in work-life harmony.” Campus recreation professionals need to find their harmony, especially during the summer, Incorvati says. That might mean leaving the office earlier and checking emails from home or checking emails on Sunday night to avoid inbox overload on a Monday morning after time away from the office.
“What’s going to put you in the best position to be your best self?” he asks. “Sometimes that means experimenting to find that harmony. I come from a generation where my identity is tied to my job, in ways that are both positive and negative. But I have younger staff members who have no trouble asking for flex time, which I don’t look at as a negative. I’m like, ‘You’re already ahead of me in that area.’ You’re finding that harmony.”
