The guest speakers prepare presentations and activities geared toward helping the staff grow in areas of leadership, resourcefulness and will pass off information for the staff to relay to the students on how they can make improvements to campus. Some of the guest speakers who are regulars at RA training include: members of the TTU Counseling Center, campus police, Chartwells dining services, Public Affairs, and the Office of Residential Life. The Counseling Center has a very effective activity in teaching RAs to notice and help students who may be depressed or having other personal issues. During training, RAs engage in a one-on-one dialogue with each other, one acting as a student with an undisclosed issue while the other acts as the RA and tries to assist the student.
In addition to the manual training and guest speakers, RAs participate in a worst case scenario activity known as Behind Closed Doors. For this activity, veteran staff members, such as hall directors and coordinators, act out scenes in vacant residence hall rooms. RAs then deal with each scenario, such as loud partying, roommate issues, etc. Not only is this great practice for the methods RAs learn in training, it usually ends up being a lot of fun for the hall directors who get to act out crazy situations.