RA*Chat Ep 90: Nurturing Scholars: RAs’ Role in Supporting Academic Success

Crystal Lay:
Hello and welcome back to Roompact’s Res Ed Chat podcast. Today is a special RA chat edition where we talk about issues of importance to RAs and student staff members who work in housing and residence life. I’m your host, Crystal Lay. I use a she/her series pronouns. I’m excited about today’s guest because I’ve had the pleasure of knowing them for a very long time. We actually met through a roommate matching service for an institute with the national organization where we were intergroup dialogue facilitators. And I, at that time of meeting them, I really learned about their passion for working with people, but more importantly working with students and their success. And so I thought for this particular topic today, who better than to bring in to talk about how RAs can support their students reach their goal which is graduation, than our guest today. So I’ll start off by having our guests introduce themselves.

Kathryn Palmieri:
Thank you so much, Crystal. It’s such a pleasure to see you. I know it’s been a long time since we were at that Social Justice Institute, but it is one of my favorite memories of working with folks. My name is Katherine Palmieri. I go by KP in the workplace and I use she and they pronouns. I use they pronouns for an awareness perspective because I also have folks in my family who are transitioning. And so I think it’s really important that people are aware, but I am very open to all pronouns. So thanks. I’ve been in this education world for a long time, about 30 years, and I’ve just recently come back to my alma mater where I did undergraduate education at San Jose State, and it’s where I was an RA for the first time.
So I was an RA for three years and I’m familiar with the job and I’ve also been a hall director and an area coordinator. And so since going into academic advising over the last 20 years, I always go back to my housing roots with fondness. And a lot of my friends, believe it or not, are still my RA friends. So it’s one of those … It’s a career that lasts, right? Even though it’s a student job, it’s boosted me and propelled me into my career today.

Crystal Lay:
Thanks for sharing that. There are so many wonderful humans that I met when I was an RA and we’re still in contact. And so it definitely takes me back whenever folks share their stories and those lifelong friendships that you can make when you’re a student staff member. So I wanted to talk to you about academics and academic success. So tell me, what role do you believe RAs or student staff play in fostering an academic environment within the residence halls for the living community?

Kathryn Palmieri:
It’s a great question. I think RAs can play a really amazing role. I don’t know that they all do, but I think that that’s what the opportunity here is. RAs are the first sign of authority on a residence hall floor. And I know that some people don’t like that term, but you’re also the first sign of community and people do better when they feel a sense of belonging. And so if you’re creating that sense of belonging on your floor, you’re already going to have people who feel better about their academics. If they feel like they can go to you for questions about anything academic on your campus, and I don’t mean recommend faculty, although there are some of you who will do that. I can’t do that because I work for the university. So I always say be careful about that.
But I do think that if your students can come to you with a sense of comfort and responsibility, they will be academically successful. I just remember there were whole groups of students that used to study outside my room when I was an RA. And so if I provided a safe, comfortable space for them, that’s what they did. It’s a beautiful thing if you can open it up and be aware of what’s happening to your team. Your team, your floor, I’m sorry. I think about teams in multiple ways just so you know. But I think honestly, when I go back to when I was an RA, academics were important to me and therefore they became important to my floor. And I think your role modeling is a critical aspect of that. And most RAs across the country have a GPA minimum, and they do that for your benefit so that you can maintain your leadership position and also maintain your goals academically. So that hopefully inspires others to do well and keeps you in check.

Crystal Lay:
So I hear providing space, being a role model that academics is important, and then just by nature of the job requirement, you have to have a GPA to stay in the role, and that can be a signal to your students who live on your floor. Thank you. So let’s talk about community building. What role do you think community building plays in supporting student success?

Kathryn Palmieri:
Oh my goodness. It’s one of the key aspects I think I have to go back to when I was a freshman in college, first year student, I was placed on a first year floor. So everybody on my floor were first time college students and we had RAs who did very specific programming for us. And so I work in a CSU, which is a California State University system, and that’s a school where most people come from California, but we’re all from different parts of California. So the natural tendency is to get to know folks, bond about where you’re from, figure out what’s there. And so we all became friends based on those interactions. And that was all put together by the RAs. So we would eat meals together, we would go on, I don’t want to say scavenger hunts, we don’t do those anymore, but we would go on a trip across campus to look for resources.
They would introduce us to certain people across campus, like somebody in the counseling center. So we knew where to go and how we could access those resources. So that community building was actually also resource building. So we were building community at the same time as learning about resources on campus. And to us, that gave us the two pieces. We got some friends who we could work through things with. We got an RA who we could go to if we had troubles, and then we had campus resources that we could go to if we had troubles that neither of those two could effectively resolve.

Crystal Lay:
I love that too. And then back to your earlier example, then they’re studying in the hallways, because they’ve gotten to know each other, maybe they’re going to class together or even picking out their classes together because they’ve enjoyed living in that community space. So let’s talk about first year students. What are some common academic challenges that first year students face? And then how can RAs help them navigate those challenges? What do you think?

Kathryn Palmieri:
Great question. Honestly, there are three things that really focus for first year students for me. It’s rigor of the courses. So even students who have taken AP classes in high school or have done a community college class are not always prepared for the rigor of a four-year institution. And I know that that changes, and that’s different depending on the instructor, but I think students come in thinking, oh, I’ve got this, and they don’t always have it. The second thing is that they don’t have any structure. So they’ve come out of schools typically where they have a bell schedule, they’re moving from class to class and they have a parent or family member telling them what to do and when. And we don’t do that. And so if you’re not feeling it, if you don’t have your internal sense of structure, you’re probably not going to get your homework done in the ways that you normally would.
The third one is the distractions. So there’s so many distractions, which we also call opportunities. So there are beautiful opportunities to get engaged on campus, and that’s so fun, and sometimes you can have too much of it. There’s a sense of too much fun. So you have to think of your world as college is my job, my academics comes first and then my job. Or if you don’t have a campus job or an off-campus job, then involvements, which might be on campus student leadership, it could be sports, it could be the Greek system if you have those affiliations. So all of those things are also things that can distract you, but they also provide you with so many excellent leadership and growing opportunities. So I don’t want it to be negative. I just want it … There’s a sense that it needs to be balanced. And then that doesn’t even talk about the things like freshmen coming in will may or may not be skilled at taking care of themselves.
They might not know how to do laundry. They might not know how to get a ride somewhere. I mean, nowadays, I think Uber and Lyft kind of take care of that, but they might not be able to budget their money. I mean, there’s so many things, and those are resources that we do have across campuses. I mean, there’s ways to talk about financial literacy and there’s folks that you can connect with folks about homesickness. So all of the things that might be going on for a first time student are in fact, supported at the university. People just don’t know about all the resources. I mean, you come in and you’re kind of overwhelmed. They tell you all this at orientation, but you’re like, what?
Because orientation’s a lot. So once you get finished with orientation, you actually need a resource. That’s when you go find it.

Crystal Lay:
So it sounds like it’s the classroom setting and then there’s all the other things that are taking place and you’re trying to figure out what do I do with all this information? No one’s here to tell me what to do. What time to wake up? To turn in my homework? And so it sounds like the RA or student staff member could be really helpful in normalizing that it is okay it’s overwhelming. And there’s some really cool resources available here on campus, and I am one of them, not the only, but I can be one of. So there’s all these resources you’re talking about. What if I don’t think it’s cool, maybe some of the students are like, I don’t want to go to my academic advisor. I don’t want to go to tutoring. I don’t want to go to the study group. Are there some cool ways that you know student staff have sent their students over to get resources or stories you’ve heard that got them to your office?

Kathryn Palmieri:
The best thing that you can do is go yourself and say, tell a student, “I’m going to see my academic advisor. Do you want to come with me?” Particularly if you’re the same major, that’s helpful or in the same college or subset. What I think happens is that people don’t know that we’re not the principal’s office. There’s this image that you’re going to only go there if you’re in trouble or if you’re in academic trouble. The best thing you can do to stay out of academic trouble is go see your academic advisor beforehand. So I do think it’s helpful when an RA role models that. I also think it’s helpful if you’re in an organization that has a super study skills or a … Sometimes there’s mandatory study hours.
I know a lot of athletes have that. Greek systems have that, but if you have those, you go together. And so you go to the tutoring center together. I always tell students to go to the tutoring center to get their homework done because if you hit a problem that you don’t understand, I work with STEM students, so there’s a lot of math struggles, so if you hit a problem you can’t solve, then you’re right there in the tutoring center. You can just ask for help while you’re there. And not everybody studies well in the same environment, but I think that’s super helpful.

Crystal Lay:
I like that because my brain went bogo, you can go sit in a place and if you need help, it’s there. And if not, you’re just in that. You’re in the space and maybe you’ll make a new friend while you’re there and you get your work done. So thanks for sharing that. Okay. So now I want to talk about specific strategies or programs that RAs can implement to help students stay on track. So are there things that will be helpful in the community that highlight or help support academic success?

Kathryn Palmieri:
Yes, and I always want to preface this with your academic advising centers might already do this. I don’t know if they do, but it’s always good to ask them first before you duplicate what they’re doing. Or you can bring them in and have maybe a program in the halls that is similar to what they would normally give on their own time. And that way you have them face-to-face with people. I like to share, there was a school that I worked at that used to have a residence hall advising team, and they were all peer advisors and they went into the residence halls at key times during the year and they would present programs for about 15 minutes. And everybody knew this. We would list the times. You knew when your residence hall advisors were coming. And they would do a 15-minute presentation, they would stay for an hour.
So the first 15 minutes was whatever the topic was. It might’ve been study skills, it could have been time management, it could have been how to register for classes for the next semester. Any of those things could have been how to choose whether or not to take pass, no pass, or credit, no credit. All of those topics, you do it in quick 15 minutes. People can come and go or the people who have the questions can stay. And so you spend that next 45 minutes answering individual questions that obviously FERPA wouldn’t allow you to answer in a group. And that said, you always, of course, have food because the only reason … We know how people come out for pizza. You get some pizza and do the program and you have four of those every semester. So they hit at the key moments in the semester when the deadlines are coming up, when we know that there are problems that people will encounter.
So to me, that’s a peer advisor role, but it’s also great for RAs to support that. I want the RA’s to be able to do effective programming. And so if there are people who can do that with you to help support it, it’s fantastic.

Crystal Lay:
I want to reiterate what you said. You don’t have to do the thing on your own or by yourself or at all. You can bring in experts. There’s so many really cool resources on most to all of our campuses, where you can go and say, “Hey, can you come in and do this event? Or if you can’t come in, is there maybe a program in a bag or do you have a lesson plan or something I can utilize to bring this and do this with my students?” And also talking to your supervisor because I bet they have some really good tips too, on some of those programmatic pieces to use. So thanks for sharing that because I think sometimes, even as a director who used to be an RA, I think, oh, I can just do this. I’m like, no, there’s an office for that.

Kathryn Palmieri:
There is. There’s always an office. There’s an office for everything.

Crystal Lay:
Okay, so let’s say we have a student that is really struggling. We are getting to midterms. We get that midterm report grade back, and the student’s just terrified, like, I’m really struggling. The RA notices this. What are some ways that RAs can maybe identify, one, and then if they find out the student is struggling, how do they approach that without overstepping boundaries? Because we’re talking about a peer, right? A peer-to-peer thing that’s happening.

Kathryn Palmieri:
Yeah. I think one of the things that works well for me when I’m peer-to-peer is just saying, “I noticed something’s weighing on you. Do you want to talk about it?” And I think you just need to have that gentle entree into the conversation and then let them share with you what they will. Because what we find out is that most of the folks who are in academic difficulty are dealing with way bigger problems than just academics. And so when we start out, they come in because of it’s a grade issue, great. We start talking about is this the right class for you? Do you like your major? Do you want to change your major? All the things that you would think an academic advisor might say. But then we also find out maybe somebody in the family is sick or I have to work two jobs because my dad lost his job, or there’s this or there’s that.
And it quickly becomes something much bigger than academic advising. And that’s when I at least tell my staff, you need to take a step back. You need to listen of course and support the student, but then you also need to refer to our counselors on campus. We have licensed counselors who will handle those scenarios, particularly if they go very deep.
But I think that it’s important that we talk about that one struggle is not usually just one struggle. One struggle can become many struggles. And again, there is an office for everything. So one of the things, I worked at some point in the Midwest at a predominantly white campus, and we had students of color or international students who were just not feeling like they belonged, and it was really important to go to a space where they felt comfortable talking to somebody. And maybe that is a multicultural center, or maybe you have subsets of multicultural groups on campus. You don’t have to look like the person who has the struggle to be able to help them. You just have to understand what all of the issues are and therefore let them share what they will. So I think that’s really important, is the listening is the first part.

Crystal Lay:
Okay. I think I know the answer to this, but I’m going to ask. So if a student says to me, “I’m not passing my class,” should I say, “Is that all that’s going on? I bet there’s another issue.”

Kathryn Palmieri:
I would never say, “I bet there’s another issue.” I would never assume that there’s another issue. I would just say, “Tell me what you would like to do about that.” Because you always want to encourage the student to be the person who’s in charge of their own destiny. You want to make sure they’re taking control of their life. You don’t want ever to be the person who tells them something and then they come back and say, “That was bad advice. That’s your fault.” No, no, you don’t want to be that one. So, “What do you want to do about that?” And so if they say, “I want to drop the class.”
“Okay, well, is it past the drop deadline?”
“No.”
“Okay, then you can. What does that mean for your schooling? Does it drop you below 12 units? Are you not full-time? Does it affect financial aid?”
Of course, there’s all these issues that go through that. You don’t have to be the one to know that. You have to get them to the academic advisor who’s going to tell them that. You don’t have to do that job. You just have to get them to realize that this is an important moment in their life and that decision can impact many things. That whatever you decide, if you decide to drop that class or if you decide to fail that class, either one is going to impact you and you should talk that over with an academic advisor.

Crystal Lay:
I love that. And I just wanted to have you talk about that piece again, because I think sometimes we get an idea of like, okay, 1, 2, 3, I’m going to go through in these steps. And it’s like, okay, again, there are lots of offices and resources and ways to support that student, and you have to continue living in that space with that student and you want to be seen as an additional resource. So it’s a healthy balance between resource and referral agent, I think, [inaudible 00:19:47].

Kathryn Palmieri:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, and I always say, I mean, I was given this advice when I was an RA, and it’s probably one of the best piece of advice I’ve kept my whole life: never be the last person with the information. Because you want it to go up. You want your boss to know whatever, just you were told, and up and up and up. So you don’t know if a student is really distressed, if they have suicidal ideation, if there’s something that’s going on, you want to make sure that information goes up to the next person. And we don’t always think of that when we’re talking about just a bad grade, but if you start to hear other things, you don’t want to be the last one with that info.

Crystal Lay:
I love that. Make sure it goes up

Kathryn Palmieri:
Always.

Crystal Lay:
So we’ve been talking about how RAs can support students and guess what? I think we know RAs are students too.

Kathryn Palmieri:
Absolutely.

Crystal Lay:
So what are the tips that you have for students who are balancing academic responsibilities with part-time jobs, extracurriculars, other commitments, there’s so much to get involved in. You talked about it, you’re overwhelmed, in seven clubs and now I have to support students who live here. What advice do you have or what tips for folks who are trying to balance all those things?

Kathryn Palmieri:
I love a color-coded calendar. I might be crazy, but it’s not unlike me to have highlighters at my hands to just color-code all the things. I have my biology class, I’ve got my math class, I’ve got my … Whatever it is. So I know what classes I’m going to. I map out the entire syllabus in my calendar before the semester starts so that I can map out what the big projects are and backdate. So you know that there’s a big final on this day, two weeks before you got to do this, whatever it is. I always put all of that on one calendar first.
It’s fascinating to see how many people don’t use calendars any more because of phones, right? We have these little [inaudible 00:21:47] handheld computers and everybody puts it on their phone. I love to see it all at once so I put it on the wall. I want a big giant calendar. I color-code it, so I can glance and say like, “Wow, that day’s going to be a lot”. And there are words that I use that are not that nice, but I’m like, “Wow, I’m going to have to prepare for that.” So maybe there are days I just need two cups of coffee, I don’t know.
But my suggestion is that you plan and prepare it at the beginning so that it is not as bad in the middle because it’s really hard to go backwards and to fix the things you break. It’s much easier to prepare. I always tell students there’s no one right way to organize yourself. And I’m a big proponent of this. I know there’s many learning styles. I used to teach elementary school, so I know you got 32 people in the classroom. They’re not all going to learn the same way. But one of the things that I like to ask them is, what is the way that you’ve remembered things in the past and find out what has worked. So some people do use a phone and they do great with those. Some people do post-it notes and they stick them in their pocket before they go to class. Fine. Again, I think it’s great if somebody has something that works for them and not everybody’s skill or tactic is going to work for everybody else skill. So

Crystal Lay:
So find the thing that works for you.

Kathryn Palmieri:
Exactly. And if you don’t know what works for you, go and check with the tutor. Go check with an advisor, see what is out there. Because there’s so many things that you can also Google. If you were to Google ways to organize your life, you’ll get 27 different options.

Crystal Lay:
Yeah, I had this Tasmanian Devil planner that got me an undergrad and I loved it. I still have it. I’m not going to tell you how old it is, but it’s this nice memory of having this paper planner with my favorite cartoon character on there, and it was sentimental. I wanted to see it every day and it made me want to use it. So get something that feels familiar and you feel drawn to it. I think that can be helpful too.

Kathryn Palmieri:
Most schools also still print. I don’t know. I mean, maybe you guys do or don’t have a printed academic calendar available in the bookstore. They used to give those out at orientation, but nowadays, I think they’re optional and people don’t always write things down. So again, pros and cons about that is that you fold it up and put it away. And so if you’re not inclined to pull it out, and if you let it sit there for three months, that is not a useful tool for you. You want something visual if you’re a visual learner like I am, that’s why I go wall. That’s why I do a giant wall calendar.

Crystal Lay:
I love that. I love that. All right, we are getting down to, well, actually before we get to this last question, I want to know, how did you become involved in providing academic support for college students? How did you say I want to be an academic advisor?

Kathryn Palmieri:
I didn’t actually start saying I wanted to be an academic advisor, but let me tell you how this happened. This is funny. So as with most things, you don’t ever plan for this, right? I went to college with the intention of being an advertising artist. I went to San Jose State because they had an advertising major. I quickly found out I did not want to sell people things they don’t need. So I switched over to education and was a child development major, and that’s how I ended up in elementary school. When elementary school turned out to be not exactly the fun times I thought it was going to be … we still need teachers, please, if you’re going into teaching, please do … I left and went and got a master’s at Miami of Ohio. And Miami University of Ohio happened to, at the time, have a residential advising program where I could be a hall director or assistant hall director and an academic advisor at the same time.
And so for me, I was like, well, I’ve been an RA for three years. I really want to live on campus. That provided me with room and board. I was coming from out of state, so that was a really good deal for me. So I could do my graduate work, I could be an assistant hall director and I could be an academic advisor. I only had a caseload of 80 students, but they all lived in my hall. So at that point in time, we could do advising on my couch at 11:00 PM in our pajamas, and it was still academic advising, but it was a different vibe. So that actually was while I was in graduate school, and it got me really excited about advising. I loved helping students one-on-one. It was so much better than dealing with 32 fifth graders in the classroom.

Crystal Lay:
They had a pretty, Miami had a pretty fantastic program with that so thanks for sharing your journey. All right, so for student staff members or RA’s who are watching and they want to learn more, how can I be a role model for academic success, or how can I provide academic resources? Where can they learn more?

Kathryn Palmieri:
There are so many places, I’m always going to say, please visit your first and foremost, which is your campus advising center. I know that all advising is different. Different campuses do it differently, and so I don’t want you to go out there and try and recreate what’s happening when there’s something happening on your campus. So always start with your campus. There is a professional resource that the academic advisors use. It’s called NACADA N-A-C-A-D-A. And NACADA is the National Academic Advising Professional Organization. They have a bunch of resources that are available if you want to get reading or if for some reason you decide this is a career you want to pursue, you’ll get yourself in a lot of articles. There’s so many … One of the things, you can also look up things like “Living learning communities.” Sometimes in the housing world, living learning communities are a good way to talk about advising and academics within the residence halls.
And you can get those resources also on professional orgs through ACPA, which is something Crystal knows a lot about, maybe could attach or NASPA, which are two professional organizations that a lot of housing folks participate in. Not to mention ACUHO-I, which this is another professional organization. So we’ll have some of those available to you if you’d like to go digging

Crystal Lay:
KP, this was such a delightful conversation.

Kathryn Palmieri:
It’s so great. It’s so great to be able to provide people with a window into how they can be successful. I cannot remember, I remember back 30 years I’ve been doing this work and it just feels like yesterday. So it is fun. It brings a lot of joy to people, and even though you have hard days and you will struggle as an RA, as a student, as a human, you all come out in the end and we help each other. So ultimately, I know Crystal and I have helped each other on our professional journeys and our personal journeys, and I know that you as RAs will help each other as well. So thanks for your service.

Crystal Lay:
Thank you for saying that. And the academic advisors, I think, is such a special job. I still remember mine from 23 years ago. Name and everything. He was wonderful. So I know you have shared some fantastic advice that folks will be using. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Kathryn Palmieri:
It’s been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Crystal Lay:
Of course. And for all of you all listening or watching, thanks for joining us on this episode of Res Ed Chat. If you have an idea of a topic or person that you’ll like us to have on the show, please let us know by reaching out to Roompact. Take care.