Student Worker Profile: Radhika Ramnani

In this issue, we are profiling Radhika Ramnani, student worker in Collection Management. Radhika hails from Columbia, MD, and chose Salisbury University “for its size, the staff-to-student ratio and its art program.”

A sophomore art major, Radhika is working on a B.F.A., focusing on graphic design. Graphic design, she observed, allows “her to be creative within criteria.” She was not, she explained, “the kind of artistic person who could create something from scratch, but I always enjoyed making things that served a specific purpose and had set rules.” Unlike many of her peers, who hate “the lack of freedom assignments in art classes had,” she loves “working within a rubric.”

Radhika appreciates SU’s community. She noted, “I was not able to fully appreciate it my freshman year, but now as a sophomore, as an RA, being farther along in the art program and having worked at the library for the past year, I can confidently say I am making the most of the community that SU has to offer. I cannot imagine going to school anywhere else.”

As a student worker in Collection Management, Radhika handles a variety of tasks, many of them behind the scenes. She enjoys “the routine of it: shelving the serials every day to packing bindery shipments every month.” She also loves knowing that she is part of “the vast and careful task of maintaining our library.”

The Collection Management staff conferred to offer this opinion about Radhika: “Radhika is an outstanding student worker. She functions autonomously, capably managing her portfolio of responsibilities without direct or everyday supervision. She is also flexible, adept at taking on numerous and complicated assignments as office needs evolve due to understaffing. Lastly, she is intellectually curious, always seeking to better understand the work we do here in Collection Management and how it contributes to the university library’s greater goals.”

Radhika believes working at the SU Libraries has benefited her academically. She is “more familiar with the library’s resources” than most of her peers. But, she added, “Working at the library has also helped me schedule my life. I have learned just how much work I can do in a block of a few hours, and I have become much more efficient at planning and completing my schoolwork because of it.”

We are very happy to have Radhika at the SU Libraries and are delighted she is only a sophomore. We hope to have her working here for the rest of her undergraduate career!