For Christmas during his junior year, Jack Hayes received a “Pitt Dad” shirt as a gift from one of his floormates.

No, he wasn’t an expectant father. He was the Resident Assistant — more commonly called an RA. Hayes had organized a holiday gift exchange for his floor in Litchfield Tower A and received the shirt in reference to his pithy nickname.

“Everybody on my floor called me Dad, so it made sense,” Hayes said. “I think that program had to be my favorite out of all the ones I’ve organized.”

Hayes, a senior molecular biology major, served as an RA three times at Pitt before stepping down this year to focus on medical school applications. He was stationed in Tower C his sophomore year, Tower A his junior year and Pennsylvania Hall this past summer.

But, following this year’s Best Of trend, voters still picked Hayes for the best Resident Assistant category after he’d left Residence Life.

Kyle Grabowski, a sophomore dietetic nutrition major, was Hayes’ resident in the Health Sciences Living Learning Community last year. He remembers Hayes as someone with an extremely friendly and laid-back personality.

“We snuck a 6-foot-tall Christmas tree into his room around the holidays, and he was completely chill about it,” Grabowski said.

Hayes first considered being an RA three years ago. His first-year RA, Jamie Siegel, suggested he apply for an RA position, and on a whim, he decided to do so in the spring of 2014.

“I wasn’t too serious about it at first,” Hayes said. “But as I got further into the application process, I started becoming more interested in the work and began really wanting the job.”

After two essays, several team building activities, multiple problem-solving exercises, a networking event with the Resident Directors and a two-hour-long interview, Hayes joined the RA program that July.

Yet it took Hayes a while to adjust to his first assignment in Tower C as he mustered up ideas about how to balance being an authoritative figure and a friend after meeting his floormates during Orientation Week.

“It was hard because Tower C is all single rooms, and some of the guys wanted to hang out while others wanted space,” Hayes said. “I made it work by asking the guys for ideas about what they wanted to do together and by trying to be as open and friendly as possible.”

After enjoying RA-dom in Tower C, Hayes found a new home in Tower A in the fall of 2015. The floor he oversaw was one of six assigned to the first-year Health Sciences LLC. The match made sense, since Hayes plans to apply to medical school this June.

“I was able to be a mentor from an academic standpoint there,” Hayes said. “It helped give me more experience in leading and acting as a role model.”

Bryant Hall, a sophomore exercise science major, said he remembers Hayes for three reasons: his readiness to help, his eagerness to talk and his jam sessions.

“I had a family tragedy last year, and he was always asking me about my family and how I was doing,” Hall said. “It was easy to talk with him about how I felt.”

According to Hayes, many of the programs he and the other RAs organized for the LLC were academically focused — such as attending science lectures on campus, going to a cadaver lab and taking CPR classes. However, he also organized sports games and movie nights.

“Freshman year is pretty tough since you’re learning to adjust to college life, so I was glad I could be there for them,” Hayes said.

Neil Johnston, an area coordinator for Pitt Residence Life and RD for Tower A when Hayes worked there last year, said Hayes had an outstanding work ethic, creating a home away from home for his residents.

“He created a tight-knit community on his floor that was inclusive and welcoming,” Johnston said. “He genuinely cared about the guys on his floor.”

Hayes served as an RA for the last time during the summer of 2016, when he stayed in Pennsylvania Hall while taking admissions tests for medical schools. By then, he had already made the decision to not participate in the program his senior year to focus on medical school applications instead.

“I learned a lot and made plenty of awesome friends along the way,” Hayes said. “I can confidently say that becoming an RA was the best decision I’ve ever made at Pitt.”

Turns out his residents agreed.