For this week’s episode, we’re pleased to introduce our 2025 ACUHO-I Intern, Venus, and have her share more about the work she’s been doing on the RA360 resource library. She details what has gone into this project up to this point and how she envisions teams using the content to support their student staff training and development efforts.
Guest: Venus Skowronski (she/her/hers), Summer 2025 ACUHO-I Intern at Roompact & Doctoral Student at Florida State University
Host: Dustin Ramsdell, Independent Higher EdTech Content Creator
Listen to the Podcast:
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Show Notes:
Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast is a platform to showcase people doing great work and talk about hot topics in residence life and college student housing. If you have a topic idea for an episode, let us know!
Transcript:
Dustin Ramsdell:
Welcome back, everyone, to Roompact’s ResEdChat Podcast. If you’re new to the show, every episode our team of hosts brings you timely discussions on a variety of topics of interest to higher professionals who work in and with university housing, residence life, residential education.
Today’s episode is our special yearly tradition where we like to introduce you to the Roompact Summer ACUHO-I Intern. This will be a little bit of the get to know you episode that we usually do, but also focus a little bit more on the special project that she is helping Roompact, RA360. I will let her go into more of explaining all that, I will not steal her thunder.
Venus, if you want to briefly introduce yourself to start us out, go through your professional background, and then we’ll talk a little bit more about brought you to Roompact and what you’re working on.
Venus Skowronski:
Yeah, absolutely. Hello. My name is Venus. I am a fourth-year graduate assistant at Florida State University. Go Noles. I worked in many different areas at my institute as I’ve been here for quite a while. I’ve been in functional areas such as academic initiatives, conduct, and for my fourth and final year, I’ll be stepping into a traditional in-hall graduate role.
Some of my academic background. I have earned all of my degrees from Florida State University. I hold a Bachelor’s degrees in human sciences and psychology. I worked up with my Master’s immediately in higher education. I’m a current going into my second-year PhD student in the same field. Basically, have been at FSU, it has been my home base for quite some time.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, I take it must you like it there. I’ve never been to Florida State campus or anything. Yeah, that’s amazing because I think there’s something to be said for being at a place that can afford you so many opportunities, so many different opportunities. It sounds like you’re getting the diverse professional experiences through your graduate studies there, and obviously having your doctorate program, and all that.
With all of that, I assume you want to try to keep busy in the summers and things, depending on what else you might have going on personally. What brought you to Roompact? What attracted you about the opportunity? What’s the story there?
Venus Skowronski:
Yeah. Honestly, I would say it was just that curiosity, itch to grow. Love FSU, love my time that I’ve spent here. But also, realized that I needed to stretch beyond just one institute, one area. As I’ve talked about my background a little bit, all of it is in higher ed. As I start to sit down, hunker down a bit about what I need to do post-graduation, post final graduation I should say, I wanted to see if I was interested in staying in the higher ed realm, or dip my toes outside the traditional student affairs roles that I’ve been working in so far. Once I do land what I like to call my “first big girl job.”
Roompact was a very cool opportunity through the ACUHO-I platform. That was still that higher ed adjacent role, but gave me that chance to learn and develop in some different areas that I was interested in learning about.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, I think anymore, I’ve just witnessed over my career that I think a lot more people have been curious in that same way. I’m glad. I think there’s just many more opportunities to pursue that in a way that feels still maybe in line with your values and being still in a mission-driven organization where it could be a very different climate of working professionally in a professional organization that supports higher ed, or a nonprofit policy think tank, or yeah, a company, or whatever else. Just knowing that you can see if the grass is greener on the other side, you can get maybe a little bit different perspective, have more impact on a national scale.
But even just, yeah, marbling in some different experiences, whether it’s even what I’m sensing from what you were saying. It’s that idea of if you’re, “Well, I’ve been res life all the time.” Now I’m going to start to go more broadly to student affairs, or now I’m going to a bit more broadly in higher ed, but they’re all happening at FSU or something. It could be I’m doing a bunch of different things at the same institution, but it really is happening to cultivate different skills, broaden your perspective. And at certain points, I think we’ve had some episodes recently on this, it can then still reinforce, “You know what, I still really like res life,” or whatever it was that I started in. Wherever it was that I was for most of my career. I think just all those things being valuable, we always just like hearing folks’ stories. Especially the interns that just air drop in I think always have really interesting backgrounds. It’s great to be able to have folks that are getting this little concentrated dose of a very different experience.
A hallmark of your experience this summer though is working on the RA360 project. I think it’s been something in the ether and burgeoning for a bit. But if you want to tell our audience a little bit more about the project, just the elevator pitch as it were, but then what you are doing in support of this project.
Venus Skowronski:
Yeah. Overall, I think it’s been really fun and I think it’s a super meaningful project to work on. The way I took it, the idea was create a centralized, free accessible resource for student staff members that was holding a similar adjacent role to resident assistants, RAs. On some of these very common but sometimes very tricky just parts of the job. How do you handle and work with students who are facing homesickness? How do you help support students with time management and different things like that? It’s a blend of a lot of different practical tips, quick guides on different topics. And also, just different little wisdom pieces from across the field.
I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to write some blog posts on the different areas that I have been working on. There’s different members of the Roompact team and blog team that have done that. But then, there’s also some podcasts and different materials from the field that are dispersed throughout these different categories. It’s still, I’ll say, a little bit in the early stages. I was only able to delve and do deep dives into seven topics and develop a new one in general. But it’s definitely a very nice bridge to the gap of what is training when you start in the fall for RA training into that day-to-day on the job reality.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, that’s what I think is interesting. Like I said, I think this has been in the ether, and I can say that biased, knowing that there’s been a lot of research and things going into this behind the scenes. I think this is helping to inaugurate putting it out into the world more in earnest. Yeah, that idea that, just from my experience and I’d assume that this must be similar to other folks to some extent, is that the amount of training or staff development resources really just vary by institution, the size of the time, and some people just have their own little portfolios or binders of things that they’ve used over the years and they bring with them everywhere, or whatever else.
It’s that value in trying to build, agnostic of all those variables, a library that is accessible to people that covers the wide range of topics, and really honors the range of duties, and the things that student staff members do so that maybe they can scratch their own itch. They can be leveraged intentionally by the professional staff that support them. I think it is, if folks I would hope know, our intention, to your notice, that we are just putting out a lot more content around with the podcast, the RA Chat and everything else, it’s just that idea that I think we’ve gone a while without fully embracing that. I’m personally not working directly on that aspect of what Roompact’s doing content-wise, but it’s great to see that that is the blossoming area of content to really address some of the gaps, at least in terms of what we’re putting out there.
Hopefully, also addressing gaps of what other teams out there, I know foster their own, maybe enable dedicate the bandwidth to developing it. There’s always that philosophy of, okay, does every residence life team across the country have to reinvent or do the same work over and over again? Here’s, at the very least, a basis, a groundwork, a foundation to work off of. Everybody doesn’t have to labor over the same things over and over again.
That’s at least my point of view. Do you want to say a little bit more about how you and how Roompact envisions this resource being used? I don’t know if that’s much of what I’ve mentioned, or if there’s other ways that you see these being used intentionally by teams.
Venus Skowronski:
Yeah. I think overall, I envision it and would potentially use it for upcoming staff meetings and staffs I’ll be supervising in the future. It’s like a digital mentor almost. It’s like a pick your own adventure. For new RAs or new student staff members coming into the role, it’s I think a very good, approachable peer mentor guide almost. When we wrote out these different pages, it was written as if it was somebody speaking to them as an equal, it wasn’t coming up from a higher-up person or perspective. It’s an approachable guide for those moments of, “Okay, how do I actually do this? I was trained on these duty protocols, but what does that actually look like?”
But also, for our returning staff members, it’s a refresher. Of something like, “Oh, yeah, I remember that I was trained on this, but now it actually makes a little bit more sense now that I’m in this time, this place.” It’s not meant to, say replace training overall. I think it’s really important for each institute to obviously train their student staff members. But it’s a good supplement in a way that feels a lot more informal, peer accessible, and helpful.
I see it as something that professional staff members can use during weekly trainings or staff meetings as reminders and refreshers as they’re going throughout the year during the different peak seasons. Of maybe midterms and they’re doing in-hall inspections, or when they’re closing down for winter and for spring closing as well.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, I appreciate you making that mention of we are not intending this to be a full replacement. That idea, “Oh, great. Yeah, we can just totally take our hands off the wheel.” Because yeah, it being a supplement, an augment, an added resource that supports whatever it is that you’re already doing. It is even that big thing I think just to keep bold circling, underlining here of what you were getting at there of this being a way and a jumping off point for throughout the year. I think that is the other pitfall here is that you go through that intensive RA training at the beginning of the academic year, and then you just don’t revisit anything unless maybe there’s some issue or problem, or whatever else.
I think it’s just part of a healthy diet to be bringing things up recurrently and using these good resources to have discussions, and have folks engage with. I think just having that library to pull from and that roadmap, you can see, okay, I’ve got all this laid out in front of me. Yeah, we can discuss this this month, and this month. You can have that cyclical pattern of just always keeping things top of mind, especially when they’re timely or relevant. Just a good habit to get in from the professional staffs’ point of view. I think like you said, even that a lot of it, it speaks to RAs directly, just the language or the framework, and stuff, I think that idea of having somebody, the professional staff point you in the right direction at the right time.
You build great content libraries like this and it’s like, “Well, it’s all there for them to read. Why aren’t they engaging with it?” You’re not giving them any structure or guidance, and stuff. If you just maybe want to expand on that part of it too, of trying to find that right balance of this is, in a sense, just for the vernacular phrasing way of it, for RAs, by RAs, that sort of thing. All right, we’re speaking your language, we’re speaking from this experience firsthand and stuff. As much as you want to go that direction, you do want to also have that aspect of it of, okay, we do need to maybe have instructions for professional staff to encourage that cyclical nature of it. Can you just speak to that dynamic of when you’re working on this content?
Venus Skowronski:
Yeah. I think when I’ve been working through these different topics, obviously keeping in mind that the main audience is for these student staff members. Using the different lingo that they’ll use. I use a lot of fun, little different patterns, different little POVs, you’re doing this. Keeping up with the social media trends, and whatnot. But also, keeping in mind from my perspective I’ve had as a professional staff member of remembering these are incidents and occurrences that I’ve seen or faced that were helpful to remind my staff for.
When I’m imagining it from that professional staff lens and how professional staff members can use it throughout their year is just remember about that cyclical style throughout the semester. When we get to midterms, that’s when the students are going to start facing massive amounts of burnout. Intentionally looking at these sections and saying during staff meetings, “Hey, RAs, hey, student staff members, this is something that we’ve seen as a historical pattern at our institute that this happens during these couple weeks throughout the semester. We’re going to intentionally train you and remind you about these different topics before it happens so that maybe you can plan events around it, or have intentional conversations with your residents before this huge events happens.”
When I’m planning out and creating these, it’s just coming from that lens of, “Okay, how can I be intentional and help other professional staff members intentionally and proactively reach out to their staff?” Rather than just have that reactive lens of, “Okay, well, now burnout’s here, now homesickness is here. What do we do?” Here’s some ways and this is how you can utilize it a little bit in advance.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, that’s a really good call out of you really want to be as proactive with this stuff as possible, versus having to deal with, yeah, I think even in just past experiences of me of being a student support coach, never purely in the academic sense. You’d want to encourage students to be utilizing tutoring before you get that really bad grade on the midterm, that sort of thing. But yeah, that idea of somebody starting to have some bad behaviors, bad habits, checking out, burning out, or whatever else, and then there’s some sort of issue or something. Yeah, you would just hope to be able to prevent that, and there is a lot that I think you can do to at least make every best effort in that direction. I think that is a great way to look at this.
Like you said, we’re still in somewhat of early stages maybe with a lot of the stuff getting out there. But as of this moment, we’re recording this in the depths of summer here. As you’re looking ahead towards the fall, towards maybe the next year, any teases for the future of this project?
Venus Skowronski:
I don’t want to give away too much because I don’t want to spoil it for everybody. I can definitely say take a look at it because there’s a lot more build out on some of these pages that I’ve been working on. But I will say in general, the project is just getting warmed up. I believe I am the first intern that’s taking a really big deep dive into these categories that have been published. If you have been using RA360, you’ll start to notice that these pages are getting just more and more in-depth with a lot more resources, a lot more tailor-made things that are for specifically residential life or RAs in general, rather than just broad spectrum.
For example, I’m working on program planning this week. We had some broad, general YouTube videos about program planning in general. But we’re now creating content that’s specifically for this audience of student staff members.
Also, this round, making just more interactive content. Quizzes, and polls, and some things to make it much more user-friendly, interactive, and not just reading through all of this information. It’s hopefully going to be sometimes that people and student staff members will read more than just once, and throw it away, and forget it.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah. I appreciate your perspective about this so much because I think it is just good philosophies when it comes to content, especially just learning resources like this. Because the thing that comes closest to my mind with this if you’re using a tech platform or something, a lot of them will have really robust help centers and guides, some of them have community boards, or whatever. But that idea that you can be engaging with, “Here’s how you do this thing, and this thing.” One, it’s just come back here whenever you have a problem. We probably, one way or another, will be able to help you with it. But then even if it’s you go over concepts at one point, you have a session about it during RA training. Come back to it again if it’s like, “I feel like I’m just missing something, I’m not getting it, or I want to check my work,” or whatever.
Just really recognizing that that is just a great way to hone your skills and reinforce your learning. It’s just recognize that it is there. I’ve always appreciated that about this moment of, yeah, you have YouTube videos about something. Yeah, sometimes I’m just going to watch it at one-and-a-half speed, I’m just going to go through it. It’s a webinar about something and I just try to get through it pretty quickly. But then there’s other times where it’s even if it’s just a five-minute video about how to fix something in my house, I’m going to end up watching it probably 10 times because I’m stopping it at each step. Then I’m going to circle back, “Did I do that right,” or whatever.
That is the beauty of on demand learning content. You go back to it, you read it again, you share it with other people. You can just, like you were saying, choose your own adventure with it in the sense of you are somebody who wants to take your time with something, watch a video a bunch of times, and do all that, go for it. If you want to just give it a skim, do whatever else, and go on your way, that’s great. But if, as we all do, if you make a mistake or if you forget something, then it’s there for you as well. I think that is great advice.
To build off of that, whether it’s just great, sage life advice, or regarding RA360, or whatever else, always like to give the final word, final thoughts to our guest for conversations like this. If you want to wrap everything up for this episode with a final bit of advice, people certainly have ways to connect with you and with RA360 in the show notes, but yeah, just final piece of advice to wrap up the episode with?
Venus Skowronski:
I think my final sage piece of advice is just have fun with what you do. Res life can be very serious, especially with some of the on call responses. It might seem like a lot with all the training that is done, but it doesn’t mean that you have to lose your spark and lose your interest in it.
Some of the best I think growth just comes from when you let yourself step outside of your comfort zone. If you’re a returning staff member or even if you’re a new staff member and you have never done program planning, or you’ve never had student athletes on your floor before and it’s not something you’d ever thought you’d be comfortable with, have the fun with it. Create some really fun, goofy plans. Do fun bulletin boards, or do a new door dec that you’ve never done before. Try something new and just see what happens, you never know where it will take you. Worse comes to worse, it can get changed.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, that is good advice. In general, in life, trying to get better about recognizing the things that aren’t permanent, but sometimes maybe feel like they are. Where it’s just like, “Okay, we’ve got to make a choice here, but we can also change it at some point. We’re not going to be locked in forever and if we make a mistake, it’s this permanent blemish,” or something. I think that idea of, yeah, it could be a bulletin board is a very small example. It’s like, “Oh, I tried this one thing, didn’t really work out. Just going to scrap it,” or change it up for next month, or whatever, and let bygones be bygones.
Yeah, I think it is if some of the procedural stuff, if that can become more intuitive and all that, and just try to be fun and creative with the work. Having great tools like RA360 hopefully maybe it’ll provide some inspiration there. It’s something that I think, yeah, there’s an inherent fun of just being on campus, that experience of all the quirky, weird, unique things that come with that.
Yeah, I think that is great advice. I appreciate you and all of your work on this project and keeping it moving forward. I think it’s such a great initiative. Just appreciate your time here to hang out and talk a little bit more about it.
Venus Skowronski:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
