If there’s one thing Jill Rounds is passionate about, it’s treating all majors as having equal worth. Hailing from West Greenwich, RI, Rounds found out fairly quickly into the college application process that not many colleges offered the liberal arts education she was looking for at an affordable price. After exploring several options, she determined that the curriculum at URI was the best option to settle both criteria. She began her freshman year as a gender and women’s studies (GWS) major with a second major in elementary education before changing to secondary education, but she soon realized another major served her desires even better. “I couldn’t figure out what I wanted,” she says, “But I realized quite quickly that GWS and political science are linked. I wanted to look at larger, systematic global issues that women face.”

Rounds made the swap from education to political science and never looked back, graduating in 2012 with a double major in gender and women’s studies and political science. While doing graduate work at the University of South Carolina, she realized she missed her days working as a Resident Advisor during her undergraduate tenure. “I loved working with college students as an RA,” she says, “and I was really interested in working on a college campus. I thought for a long time that you could only do that by being a professor, but I realized later that there are so many other ways to get involved. ” In the end, she found her niche working with residence halls. After working in on-campus residency at two different universities in California, Rounds has now come back to Little Rhody as an area coordinator. “I directly supervise six graduate students and faculty who supervise hall directors and RAs for Eddy, Gorham, Hutchinson, Peck, Merrow, Tucker, the Graduate Village, and Gateway Apartments,” she explains. “I also serve as a support system through the halls and manage the A.N.C.H.O.R. Team. The job is a little bit of everything.” Essentially, Rounds is the one behind the curtain pulling all the strings to make sure everything goes smoothly in about half of URI’s residence halls. 

As for advice to future and current URI students, she looks back both her own experiences and those of the students she works with, stating: “Don’t be afraid to try all the things you’re passionate about.” She also points to the power and importance of the liberal arts to develop skills you can use in a wide variety of careers. “I worked at a STEM-focused university in California where they would laugh in your face if you said your major was liberal arts related,” she says, “and it used to make me livid. A lot of our culture is focused on STEM, while the College of Arts and Sciences focuses on people. We tend to forget that people are the ones working behind this STEM stuff, and working with people is just as important. You learn those people skills every day in liberal arts classes, and I use those skills every day for my job. Find your passion and don’t forget to take care of yourself.”