Erin Duffy, Director of Residential Life

In addition to being the director of residential life, Ms. Duffy also teaches Classics at Taft. When she’s not teaching Latin or overseeing the dorms, she likes playing golf, doing crosswords, and spending time with family. Ms. Duffy lives on campus with her wife, Riann, who serves as the Director of Nursing at Taft, and their two children. Here, in her own words, she shares her thoughts about residential life at Taft.

Since I arrived at Taft in 2012, I have been able to witness renovations to eight of our 12 dormitories, which indicates how important the residential experience is for our students. The beautiful spaces where students live allow for daily interactions with residential faculty and their families. As a graduate of a boarding school, I loved spending time with my advisors, coaches and teachers, and that is what has driven me to work in boarding schools for over 19 years. I believe that Taft is intentional in incorporating adults into the lives of our students, and that plays a huge part in our residential system.

One of the things I love most about my job as director of residential life is interacting with the student monitors. The monitors run through two days of rigorous training prior to new students arriving for the first time, and this is when residential faculty and monitors start to bond as dorm teams. Once the school year gets off and running, I pay close attention to life in the dorms through weekly meetings with dorm heads as well as communicating regularly with the Deans' Office. I work with dorm heads to facilitate any evening programming such as dorm meetings, monitor sponsored student events, goal setting sessions, or even Q&A sessions for new students. We work hard to make the dorms at Taft warm, safe, ordered, and fun, since they truly are students' homes away from home!