Edward Raimundi was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Arlington, Texas. When he left for college at the University of Louisiana Monroe (ULM), no one in his family had done it before him. He did not know the people, did not have the connections, and did not have anyone to tell him how any of it worked. He was, in his own words, lost.

Moving away from home was a major adjustment, and like many first-generation students he had no roadmap for the academics, the leadership opportunities, or the resources that were supposedly there for him. He learned most of it by trial and error. What he did next led to what he does now: he started helping the people around him who were as lost as he was.

“I love being able to help people, because I was ‘first-gen,’” Raimundi said. “Just being that light and being that guide for others, that’s important to me. I love creating that environment and hope to bring that here.”

Raimundi, recently appointed director of student services at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, has spent more than a decade learning to spot the student who needs help before that student knows how to ask for it.

Teaching resiliency

Before the veterinary college, Raimundi spent years in college athletics, most recently running the academic side of high-performing teams. The students were elite. They were also, for the first time in their lives, sometimes not the best in the room. He sees the same thing waiting for him at the veterinary college.

Veterinary school compresses an enormous volume of science into a few years and tests students in ways most of them have never faced, and the first failing grade can land hard on someone who has never seen one. Imposter syndrome is real.

“Everybody here was pretty much the top dog at their school, top dog in their region, or at their college,” Raimundi said. “Helping them mitigate that, like, OK, maybe you’re not going to be the number one person in the class, taking your first F on a test, or a C, that’s very important to be able to have that resiliency to bounce back.” 

The skill Raimundi spent a career teaching in athletics, how to take the loss and keep going, is essential for veterinary students, also.

He brings two qualifications to that work that rarely come together. He has spent his career pulling people through their worst moments, and he has just lived something similar to what he is now coaching. He finished his own doctorate the year before he arrived.

“I just finished my grad school just last year, so I’m still very fresh to it,” Raimundi said. “That’s a good advantage that I have, stepping into this role, helping grad students who are currently going through this.”

From the brink to the classroom

The path to this office ran through some of the heaviest rooms in the helping professions. Raimundi chose ULM for its kinesiology program and a pre-physical-therapy track, but the work that energized him turned out to be with people, not muscles. The more time he spent in student leadership, the more the plan shifted toward education and development.

It shifted in large part because of one person. Nick Bruno, then the president of ULM, took an interest in students like Raimundi, and showed him what it looked like when someone in charge was visible, approachable, and genuinely invested in whether students made it. Bruno became the guide Raimundi had not had when he arrived. Years later, that is the job Raimundi has built his career around.

He earned a master’s in criminal justice because he wanted to work with people the system had written off.

“I wanted to get something that could help people who need a second chance in life,” Raimundi said. 

The degree took him into crisis intervention, the kind of work that asks a person to show up for someone on the hardest day of their life.

“You’re meeting people at sometimes their lowest, and you’re trying to instill new values, or different skills that we maybe take for granted, you and me, every day,” Raimundi said.

The work was both draining and deeply rewarding, but Raimundi kept being pulled back toward education and teaching. A single moment with a student gave him the key.

“The part for me was the education aspect, and seeing them get that ‘Aha, like, I understand that,’ or ‘I retain that strategy that you provided for me,’ and actually seeing them apply it and use it,” Raimundi said. “That was a big thing for me.”

He moved into K-12, then into higher education, and there he stopped. “Once I got into higher education, I stayed because I knew this was the population that I’m meant for,” Raimundi said.

Coaching champions and report cards

The clearest test of his approach came in Pittsburgh, at Duquesne University, where Raimundi ran academics for athletics programs.

“A lot of people don’t know this, but I worked in athletics,” Raimundi said. “His high school coach was like my supervisor, because he’s the head coach of the basketball team.” 

The coach was Keith Dambrot, who led Duquesne’s men’s basketball program and, years earlier, had coached a young LeBron James in high school in Akron, Ohio. That history kept James a loud and public supporter of the team long afterward. Raimundi’s job was the part of the operation the cameras never find.

Star athletes still have to pass their classes to stay on the team. Raimundi built the study halls, set the academic strategy, and mentored players through the parts of college that have nothing to do with a scoreboard. The programs he oversaw finished among the top academic performers in their athletic department.

Champions, it turned out, needed a guide too.

A scholar who trusts the numbers

Raimundi chose a Doctor of Education, with a minor in positive leadership, because he saw himself guiding and mentoring students. What the degree sharpened most was his instinct to let data tell him where students are hurting before they say so.

“Data tells you a lot. It may not tell you exactly why, but it tells you what is going on,” Raimundi said. “Leaning more into the data, and really figuring out the ‘why’ as you have those conversations.”

His dissertation drew on advising-appointment records from his previous role with Virginia Tech Career and Professional Development, where he served as assistant director of career pathways and college relations, and it turned a pattern into a plan. Students were booking resume reviews in October, long before graduation, because the hiring cycle now starts early. Instead of meeting that wave one half-hour appointment at a time, he built programming to match it.

“Why stretch myself thin when I can have a bigger program?” Raimundi said. “I can serve 50 students at once.” 

A new side of a familiar place

Raimundi already knew Virginia Tech. Before this role opened, he had spent two years just down the street, taking ownership of programs, using data to improve student outcomes, sharpening a strengths-based approach to advising, and figuring out what it meant to be a Hokie. The veterinary college still feels like a different country inside a place he thought he knew. He is treating his first year as a year to learn it: the programs, the terminology, the traditions.

“I’m excited about just learning,” Raimundi said. “Getting to know the different programs. What sets us apart? What traditions happen every year? What traditions can we add on to?”

The daily work is practical and constant: scholarship reviews, the college’s food pantry, the student leaders in every cohort. Underneath all of it is the same job he gave himself as a lost freshman with no one to ask, now with a title attached.

“If they need help getting connected with financial aid, or if they have food insecurity, or if they need someone to talk to,” Raimundi said, “being that front line and helping them make sure that they’re OK and have everything they need.”

He brought someone else to Blacksburg, a 5-year-old corgi named Barkley, which makes him a fitting hire for a place full of animal people.

But the reason he took the job is still the same: he once walked onto a campus with no one to show him the way, and he has spent a career making sure other students do not have to.

“I think it puts all my career experiences together,” Raimundi said. “When I saw it on the Virginia Tech jobs page, I thought this was a home run.” 

Contact:

Tags

Share this story