Where Yale lives

Nathan Lubich is director of Yale Housing, where he leads a department of 19 that supports Yale College undergraduate housing, on-campus housing for graduate and professional students, summer housing, and off-campus living resources. He joined Yale in 2018 in Conference and Events and became director of Yale Housing in 2023. 

Born and raised in Wisconsin, Lubich graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point with a Bachelor of Arts in history, Spanish, and international studies and then earned a Master of Science in college student personnel from Arkansas Tech University. His career began in Connecticut at Fairfield University as an area coordinator, the natural next step after serving as a residential advisor (RA) in college.

What does your role entail?

I oversee Yale Housing, where our goal is to support Yale’s mission by reducing housing-related friction so that students, faculty, and staff can dedicate more time to scholarship, research, teaching, and work. Housing is an important part of our daily lives — who we live with, and where we live. It really matters for people’s well-being. 

One major responsibility is supporting undergraduate housing for Yale College by managing the room-draw process, post-term housing for students working Commencement or reunions, and the appointments and technology for move-in and move-out. We work very closely with the Yale College Dean’s Office, Office of Student Affairs, and staff throughout the residential colleges.

First-year students are assigned to their rooms by the residential college deans. Four of the 14 residential colleges house their own students (Silliman, Timothy Dwight, Benjamin Franklin, and Pauli Murray). The remaining 10 assign their students to Old Campus. The way these housing assignments are made is a testament to the pride that the deans take in matching people they think will be great together as a roommate pair or as a group living in a suite together.

Sophomores, juniors, and seniors choose who they’re going to live with and select their rooms through StarRez, our housing system. It serves as the record for our housing assignments, enabling us to report metrics to campus partners and university leadership. The students choose their own rooms by random lottery numbers unless they opt to live off campus, which they can do as juniors and seniors. This ensures the process is fair and equitable for every student, regardless of their residential college affiliation. StarRez streamlines the process and allows Yale College staff to focus on student-facing concerns such as academic advising, and more.

How does Yale Housing manage graduate housing?

When people think about housing at Yale, they’re usually only considering residential colleges, so I always like to talk up our graduate and professional student housing portfolio. There are almost 9,000 graduate and professional students at Yale, and we only have capacity to house about 800 in our on-campus graduate housing. For those who live on campus, we’re the primary resource for their residential experience. We have a small team of live-in community fellows who foster community through programs and events.

In our grad housing portfolio, we manage everything from dorm-style buildings to apartments. We also have family housing, where entire families spend the length of a Ph.D. program. If they have children, then where they live also becomes their school district, so it isn’t uncommon for them to stay in one place for the length of their graduate programs. 

Some graduate buildings are owned by their professional schools, like Baker Hall where the law school students live. The Divinity School now offers housing for its students as part of the Living Village. 272 Elm St. is an apartment building near The Shops at Yale which is only available to students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. It’s a great location with a one-year occupancy limit — a landing spot for international students, those not from New England, or those who are unfamiliar with the New Haven housing market. They can live there for a year and get a sense of where they might want to reside. 

How does your work change during the summer months? 

We manage summer housing for over 10,000 guests who live on campus because they are working during commencement or reunions, are attending Yale Summer Session and summer programs, or are conducting research. It is our busiest time of the year.

We collaborate closely with Yale Conferences & Events who bring in these amazing summer programs, and with Facilities who work miracles to turn over rooms quickly as one group leaves and another arrives. It’s not unusual for 1,000 people to check out on a Friday and 1,000 new people to check in to those same rooms on Sunday. You can imagine how much work goes into collecting and issuing keys and prox cards! That’s a heavy lift and why we set up a 24/7 central summer office in Rosenfeld Hall to support these groups. 

What makes you proud of the work you do?

We think on our feet and act quickly. We don’t often have the luxury of thinking of solutions over days; we must turn on a dime in many cases. During COVID-19 we pivoted rapidly multiple times to provide emergency responders with housing on-campus, to develop special contact-free move-in procedures, and to support isolation housing where students who tested positive could quarantine on-campus. I’m so proud of the work the Yale Housing team and our campus partners did here.

Another example is when something happens to a residential building that requires us to temporarily house students somewhere else. We’ve had pipes freeze in severe winter weather or a new building that isn’t completely finished on schedule, and we have to figure out where the students will be temporarily housed. I’m glad to say that we always find a solution and work closely with campus partners to achieve positive resolutions in the face of challenges.

What qualities are essential for success on your team? 

To succeed here, you must be a problem solver. I think that staff at Yale are the best at what they do. I am able to collaborate with experts in their fields. This applies to campus partners like the business office, emergency management, student affairs, and more, and this applies to my team as well! They are so good at what they do and really are industry experts.  An added benefit for my team is that we get to work on this campus. I’m so happy to be on site, walk across campus, and see beautiful buildings surrounded by the energy of all the students. It’s great.