As a student, Rebecca Scarbro was parliamentarian for the Student Government Association and worked on the appeals process for an honors board at LaGrange College; she also served on the standards board for Gamma Phi Beta sorority at UGA.

But it wasn’t until her job as a residence life coordinator at the University of South Carolina that she fully realized she had a passion for assisting students through challenging situations.

Scarbro currently is making an impact on the lives of UGA students as associate director of the Office of Student Conduct, a division of Student Affairs.

In her role, Scarbro meets with students about possible violations to the university’s code of conduct. She, and others in the six-person office, work with about 600 students annually to review alleged violations and come to resolutions for those cases that move forward.

“Our mission is to enhance the learning environment for everybody at UGA,” Scarbro said. “My role in this mission is to make sure that an educational process goes along with the accountability side of the student conduct process.”

Scarbro is responsible for supervising senior coordinators, overseeing the budget process for the office and handling conduct training and outreach around campus. She also reviews all police reports and determines the appropriate person to handle conduct cases as needed.

While she enjoys all aspects of her position, Scarbro’s passion is helping students handle and learn from the “speed bump” of a violation.

“Our office can start a really transformative process in students’ lives,” she said. “We facilitate that process; we don’t change the students, but we give them the opportunity and tools to change. Sometimes it’s a bad decision that ends up being the catalyst for students realizing they need a new group of friends or what kind of things they want to do or not do.”

Scarbro said one goal of her work is to improve the campus environment for all students, and that it’s her responsibility to help students grow from the challenges they face.

“Having to deal with an adverse situation so early in life or college and having to persevere through that situation can be a great learning experience for students, and we hope to provide them with tools and knowledge to facilitate that learning,” she said. “We want students to get three things out of the process: integrity, resiliency and social responsibility. Sometimes it’s a tough process, but it’s also a good opportunity for students to have difficult conversations, to start to see and understand things differently and reflect on their impact on others.”

Her job also comes with an obligation to the students she doesn’t see as well as the thousands of UGA alumni.

“It is our job to help ensure that the UGA degree retains value and that this is a prestigious institution; this is a very important way that we serve alumni and the 34,000 students who don’t come through our office,” Scarbro said. “And for those students we do see, sometimes they appreciate being on campus more after having gone through the student conduct process because they really start to understand what it means to be part of the UGA community and want to make that community better.”