ResEdChat Ep 74: Supervising a Remote ACUHO-I Intern with Paul Gordon Brown

Dustin Ramsdell:
Welcome back everybody to another episode of Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast. If you are new to the show, every other week, we feature a variety of topics of interest to higher professionals who work in and with university housing. So this is another one of our in-house episodes, maybe a clever title for these ones. But this one is going to be fun because I know I, as I’m sure many others, have been in and around ACUHO-I intern processes and interviews and maybe supervised those interns in the past and everything. So it is for the folks that go through them or manage those processes, it’s just a very unique thing. And I think it’s sometimes a rite of passage for graduate students and things like that.
But Roompact has had this program going on for a while. And I’m talking with Paul today to go into a little bit more of the history and the context and the methodology, I guess, around doing a remote ACUHO-I internship. And also it’s unique that it’s through a company versus an institution. So lots to talk about. But Paul, if you want to kick us off to share a brief history of the ACUHO-I intern program at Roompact.

Paul Brown:
Because I have such value for the ACUHO-I process, I’ve supervised ACUHO-I interns at other institutions as well, I just was like, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could do one at Roompact.” Something unique, something different for the students themselves going through the process, but something cool just to show off, hey, these are what our values we want to give back to the field. We believe in that. And so we want to promote the work of these ACUHO-I interns. And so that had always been kicking around in my brain.
And if there’s anything positive that came out of COVID-19, this would actually be one of them. So for the longest time, part of the ACUHO-I internship is you go to campus and they provide you housing. Obviously as a company, we didn’t have housing. And so we even thought through, this was back when we weren’t remote, but we had a physical office in Chicago of like, could we rent an apartment? What would that look like? We thought through those kinds of things. But then when Covid came, ACUHO-I, rightly so, said, “Hey, there can be remote internships, that’s totally okay.” That’s something they hadn’t delved into before. And I said, “This is our chance. This is when we should do it now that that’s opened up that we could do remote.” And we were also then remote at that time now, I was like, “This is it.” And so that’s how it had come to be. It’s something we always wanted to do.

Dustin Ramsdell:
So the 2020/2021 ACUHO-I intern interview process that would have the intern working in the summer of 2021. It is interesting that you said that since so baked into the DNA of these offerings is that you’re living and working just like you would be if you were working as a hall director throughout the academic year, you’re obviously just immersed in that institutional environment. I know a lot of people prefer I think to work at a different institution type and/or a different region or something like that. So yeah, it really was this stars aligning to where you could jump into that process alongside everybody else offering remote internships where … and this is something where I think we’ve thankfully come a long way. But there could be that bias against a vendor getting in and being like, “We’re just doing it completely remotely,” and all that.
So it’s like, for many reasons, like you said, it’s always look for those silver linings, you were able to offer this and then start to set a precedent. And I think, for me, looking back too, during my graduate program many years before that, I graduated from a program in 2014, so it would’ve been summer of 2013 doing one, it’s like I didn’t even know what to look for if anything like that even existed. Which again it presumably did not.
But looking back, it’s like I wish that, and I believe this has happened a little bit more, is just that idea that in that formative time, this professional preparation program, you get more exposure to just the variety of things that you can do with this credential. So just kudos to you for not giving up on that dream and taking up the opportunity to make this remote internship happen.
But I think the idea too that you are challenging the preconceived notions of, well, if this is a residence life thing, shouldn’t you be on the campus or doing whatever? Just to start off, what are some of the benefits that you’ve seen of having remote interns and just being able to offer an experience like this? Regardless of it happening to be at a company. This is just a valuable thing that students can do from wherever they are. So how has that come into play here, I guess, for the applicants and the people have actually done it, what are some of those benefits?

Paul Brown:
Our internship isn’t for everyone. It’s unique, it’s different, like we’ve talked about. It’s offered by a company. We’re, to my knowledge, the only company that’s ever offered a ACUHO-I internship. But it’s also remote, which when we started back in 2021, I think there were quite a few other remote positions then at that time, but now that COVID-19 has receded, we’re at least to my knowledge the last couple of years have been the only fully remote one as an option. Although I think there is a school that does a hybrid where part of it’s remote, but then there’s a period of time that they need you on campus to do certain things, but it’s a much shortened part of the overall experience.
But it makes it unique, which means some people are going to be like, “I don’t want that experience.” And that totally makes sense. “I want the on-campus experience. I want …” Like me, I wanted to go to Alaska. Sure, sign me up. But for some people it actually works out really a lot better. We’ve had intern applicants and even some of our own past interns that it gives them a flexibility in terms of where they can work from. So we’ve had interns in the past that needed to spend time with their family. And so being remote, this allowed them to have that space to do that.
The other cool thing about being remote is we can also structure it. So if they need to go halftime for a portion of it, they can. So we’ve had a couple interns where they were full-time, meaning a 35 hour a week deal, but then they went halftime towards the end, when they were getting back on campus and starting to do some things, but still had some time and wanted to make some money. So we can be flexible with dates because you can start half-time, we’ve never done quarter-time, but you can flex those kinds of things, which is really, really cool.
It does privilege a certain type of person. It’s a lot of project work. You’re not in the moment running a campus conference housing operation, where you’re making decisions and people are physically coming in and you’re addressing it as it goes. A lot of our remote work is more project-based. And so you need to be able to manage your time, think through what are my goals. We allow our interns to tailor the project a little bit to them. So we give the broad brushstrokes, but don’t fill in every detail about here’s exactly how it needs to look. And so that gives a lot of flexibility. Which some interns have taken and really thrived with. And I think all of them struggled in some way with it as well of, I’m not sure what I’m working towards or how this all fits in and things like that. And that’s also been a little bit of the challenging part at least of it for folks. But it does provide a different type of work and gets people exposed to different things, which is a huge benefit that really no other ACUHO-I internship offers.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, which I think is just again important, one, the exposure to the ed tech side, if that’s of interest to people, that might help them to know that, “Oh, maybe this isn’t, I thought it’s something I wanted do, but maybe it’s not.” Or “I never considered this, but now I actually do really like it.”
And what I found was that, yeah, you tend to have internships where it is on ground, you’re managing, yeah, a conference services or some summer housing program, or it is more project-based. You may be having very little, if any, student interaction. And I think, again, people often try to get the opposite of whatever they had. If it was like, “Oh, well, I’m a hall director at my grad program, I want to do project-based for the summer to get exposure to something different.” Or vice versa.
But it is sometimes like conceptually they’re like, “Oh yeah, I’m sure just doing projects over the summer, it’s going to be great.” It could be like, “Oh, this isn’t everything I imagined it to be.” Obviously you may not be seeing the immediate impact or getting the whatever. It’s just like, okay, we’re building something that will then be implemented by the end of the internship or afterwards and stuff. So those things can be I can imagine challenges.
And I think if you could maybe talk about this a little bit more too, because I think you’ve had a much broader spectrum of the types of people who have been interns for Roompact over previous years. Where again there is this tradition that is typically in the summer between year two years of a master’s program in higher education. So I think I don’t know if that was always the intention to have a wider variety of people serving or what. But I guess if you could just speak to that because I think it’s both a pro and a con. It’s a benefit and a challenge kind of thing. The idea that it’s a wider funnel that you’re able to pull in for this.

Paul Brown:
Yeah. Our interns have been maybe … Is there a traditional one? They generally have not fit the mold of, went straight from undergrad into their master’s program, they’re doing this between years one and two of their master’s program, that has not described really the interns that we’ve had.
We’ve had folks that have worked for a few years and then went back for their master’s. We had a PhD student who is way post-master’s, had done a lot. And coming up this year with Sephirin, where she currently works as a full-time professional on a ten-month contract. So she has the summers free, and has been doing internships to fill in that gap, learn, get exposed to different people. And so that’s not been what maybe the quote-unquote traditional mold of an intern is in people’s heads.
I think that’s actually been what we found to be more beneficial for our particular type of internship. So because it’s remote, because it’s project-based, because it’s asking you to take some initiative in defining what the project and what it would be, folks who have a greater well of experience to draw on and have had some of those work experiences tend to adjust better or more easily to this type of internship being remote, being project-based and things like that. That it’s just a taller order for people that don’t have the well of experience to draw on. To be like, “Oh, I’ve done something like this before. I’ve figured some things out.” It can be done, but it’s more difficult.
And so I think we’ve learned over time which profile of candidate is going to be more successful in the internship over others. Because I think through that, I’m the primary supervisor for this intern, so it’s twisted my brain about what I know about supervision because I’ve never supervised people prior to this, fully remote, never met them in person. Some of the interns I’ve met at conferences since. And a couple even I got a chance to meet beforehand. But a couple I’ve never seen physically ever.
What does that look like? How do you do that? What’s the right amount of checking in and what’s too much? How much structure do I need to provide? How much opportunity for customization and free exploration or empowerment do I give? What’s the right balance there to set them up for success? So it’s also really challenged me as a supervisor to think through, how do I even approach this?

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, I think that’s a good thing to recognize is that somebody listening to this maybe like, “Maybe we want to start a remote internship program.” But it’s like, good just going in to identify and do some reflection work of like, wait, hold on a second, have I ever supervised someone remotely? And also what do we need to have done over the summer? Which is also I think absolutely fine to change summer to summer and that could change how you recruit and market the internship. But that idea that’s like, “Okay, this probably is going to be better suited for someone who might be in their master’s or post masters.” Or like, I know they do technically allow it, some people do it prior to starting their master’s program. If it was going to be like I just graduated from my bachelor’s, I’m 22 years old or something. Or even again maybe if it’s like, I have professional experience but don’t have a master’s yet.

Paul Brown:
You can be an undergraduate and go through the process. So you can be even a junior or a senior in between. We have, because of the nature of it, we decided we would only look at at least graduate students or more of experience. Because we just thought, I was like, “I don’t know how to give what I need to give to an undergraduate who may have far, far less work experience, may not be exposed.” Plus the types of projects that we had would really benefit from the knowledge that someone with a master’s degree has. And it just wasn’t appropriate for an undergraduate student. And so that was actually intentional from the start.
But then, as I mentioned, I think the further we went into it, we’re like, “Maybe we need even more advanced graduate students after their second year. That seems to be even more fitting.” It goes back to the project, it goes back to what you’re asking an intern to do. I could see where I could come up with a different answer to that if the project we had them work on was different.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah. So I think it just creates that opportunity where, I’m sure within a certain extent you’re refining, you’re making a copy and refining from year to year. Like, well, we always know we have an ACUHO-I intern who’s a conference services manager, so the bounds to the sandbox that they’re playing in, so we’re going to refine just post that again. And always keep a recurrent … Which it has its benefits. But if you are looking into potentially doing a remote ACUHO-I intern, which again would be very well suited if you wanted to have an additional one that’s strictly working on projects or if it’s like, “Well, you know what, we don’t actually have as much work for summer programs or conferences or something, we can maybe pivot to being remote.” It really is an opportunity to rethink who is the ideal person, what would they be working on? Again, that could change summer to summer. There’s just much more fluidity. There’s going to be much more ambiguity around the supervision and management and maybe what tools you’re going to be using and all that.
And just if, yeah, it could be a better opportunity for one person to another when you think through that in terms of who is this person going to be working with day to day and all that. So I think just all good things from your experience to help get people thinking. And I think, again, any in-person or remote is always going to have pros and cons, benefits and challenges. But just going through into the experience very thoughtfully and intentionally and hopefully just having good awareness of as much as possible prior I think is definitely good advice.
But as we wind down, if there’s any other, just want to give you the opportunity, any other tips or resources or advice or things that you wanted to share that folks can maybe check out or just to make sure that they’re in a good place if they want to seek out doing this on their campus?

Paul Brown:
I am more than happy to ever speak with anyone about this process, be it another company, be it someone who’s looking at just remote, whether institution-based or not. I would welcome that because I’m alone in that regard on a lot of these things. So I would love to find someone else that wants to really collaborate and talk about this or just ask me questions. And if they do, I certainly want to ask them questions. So that’s always an open offer that’s out there.
But the other thing we’ve done is, since we do have interns and because we do have blogs and podcasts and things like that, is we’ve asked them to, “Hey, hop on an episode of ResEdChat, talk through your experience.” Because that provides a resource to future interns, not just our own, but in general.
And so some have written just on the internship process. Some have specifically spoken about their experience with us of course, which is a little bit unique compared to other schools. But there’s not a ton of content out there for intern candidates to see what other interns have done or what do they think about the process. So we’ve emphasized that a little bit too. Like a, I guess, that’s a meta part of the internship. So there’s a meta project, which is how can we advance the ACUHO-I internship process as a whole in this. And so that’s a bunch of different resources. We actually catalog it. I’ll include it for the show notes here. That has all that content things curated across there that I think that can be really helpful.
But yeah, that’s it as far as interns. For supervisors, not a lot out there. Other than looking at general resources about supervising remotely and things like that. There’s nothing specific to this process. So you have to look through, how do I supervise remotely? And I really would encourage people to think through it because it really is different. And after I start getting into, I’m like, “Wow, this is really different than anything else I’ve done.” And I just never thought about what that would be or how that would look or things like that. Pretty eye-opening to me. Good learning experience for me.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Well, and that’s the beauty of it too. It makes me think of something like the refrain of like, ‘to teach is to learn twice’ or something. It really like, and I guess it even like a different way of just shifting point of views on management, supervision and mentoring and all that stuff.
But what I’m also hearing is I think we’re trying to help, like you said, model the way, create some content around this experience, but people creating more, tell their perspectives and their stories or create the content around supervising ACUHO-I or NODA interns remotely and those sort of things. Because I think hopefully, like you said, it becomes more common, more organizations offering them because I think there’s just such a wide variety of cool opportunities out there for folks who go through master’s programs and higher education or just have a wealth of higher ed experience that can be of service and valuable to a lot of other stakeholders and things.
So yeah, absolutely. I know I’ve helped curate some of the podcast episodes and things over the past couple of years, and it’s always fun for me to talk with those folks. So I do definitely want to emphasize that as well, to go check out those past episodes, they’re really cool people doing cool things, you can keep up with them as they move along during and after their internships and everything.
But yeah, just really appreciate you Paul hopping on, talking all about this stuff. And hopefully it inspires some other people to get into this game.

Paul Brown:
Yeah, thanks for having me, Dustin.