April 7, 2015

RE: Letter of Promise for Melissa Van Drimmelen

Dear Portfolio Committee:
It is with great pleasure that I submit to you this letter of professional promise for Melissa Van
Drimmelen. I have been Melissas supervisor since July 2014 at Cornish College of the Arts where
she has served as the Assistant Director of Housing and Residence Life.
From the very beginning of her tenure here at Cornish, Melissa has demonstrated herself to be a
student centered professional who balances the individual students needs with that of the
community and the work team. This set of skills proved quite important for our offices this fall
with two challenging staff members who were not meeting the expectations of their jobs. Melissa
worked hard to coach theses Resident Assistants (RAs) and support them while also being firm in
her expectations and how their performance was impacting the community and the staff team as a
whole. Her passion for community building and serving the community is carefully to balanced
with her ability to both challenge and support the individual RAs needs. In the end, Melissa
compassionately had to relieve these staff members of their duties which ended up making them
happier in the end on a personal level despite the challenge of the situation.
Melissa has a relational approach to leadership. While she is not typically the first to speak up, she
is always actively engaged and finding empathy with the ideas and the people in the room. This can
come forth in her bringing out new and different perspectives in the meeting or encouraging the
perspectives and ideas of others in the conversation of the group. It relies heavily on her strong
emotional intelligence which helps her succeed working one on one so well with students and in
group settings as well. The viewpoints that come forward make the discussion more robust but
also manages to stay student centered. This has been an especially important leadership style for
discussions around student conduct and student retention issues with her membership on the
CARE response team and the conduct management team.
This year Melissa has successfully taken on many important processes and key parts of the
departments functions. Her first month she was charged with planning and executing the 2 week
fall RA training which encompasses a variety of offices and partners from around campus as well as
the week long spring training. She approached the task with great rigor and organization and
successfully began forming one of the most successful staffs weve had at Cornish in my time on
campus. She also was responsible for the 2015 RA selection process, an incredibly rigorous and
involved process which she managed with apparent ease.
With all the successes of this year, I also appreciate the deliberate approach to change which
Melissa has. She is thoughtful and critical of the work we are doing but deliberate in her approach

to implementing changes for our students and our department. I look forward to what she will
bring to all the many challenges we face ahead and her calm leadership in meeting each of the
challenges head on.

Sincerely,

John Paul
Director of Housing and Residence Life
jpaul@cornish.edu 206.315.5853