When housing departments leverage specialized student workers, they do double duty by providing learning experiences while advancing department initiatives.
By Margaret Fogler and Michelle Sujka
Mention student workers to a campus housing professional, and odds are their mind will go to a resident assistant or maybe someone passing out pool cues and ping pong paddles at a hall desk. Increasingly, though, this opportunity is expanding to include students in more specialized positions that require leveraging the skills and knowledge they gain in their classes and will later flex in their post-graduation careers. Done well, these positions provide students with valuable experiences while also helping the department fill gaps in their services.
In recent years, the housing services department at the University of Cincinnati (UC) has aggressively hired talented students to augment its team. While the department was growing rapidly in terms of both employees and number of beds, more bodies and minds were needed, and staff were empowered to think outside the box to bring on additional help. One solution was to tap into the university’s prestigious co-op program.
The University of Cincinnati is known as the birthplace of the global co-op experience for student learning: a program started in 1906 by Herman Schneider, a civil engineering professor who believed that “if you want to educate a student to become an engineer, then you should provide that student with the opportunity to practice being an engineer.” Now, each year, students earn first-hand experience as they spend a semester working for more than 1,300 employers around the world.
For the last two years, that list of employers has included UC’s housing department, which offers co-op positions in facility operations and interior design. These part-time positions help with the work of managing furniture inventory, reviewing weekly residence hall common areas, and replacing, repairing, and designing resets for common area furniture. As a result, the department now moves projects more quickly through the queue. Based on student feedback and successful implementation, the program now has dual co-op students who serve two semester-long terms. This cohort model promotes a smooth transition of projects and the sharing of ideas. Emily Miklowski, an interior design student, recalls that her time in a co-op position was “an invaluable learning experience” that contributed to her growth as both a designer and a leader. “This co-op not only provided me with hands-on experience in an office setting but also taught lessons relevant to a career in interior design and project management.”
Along with the co-op positions, UC has hired students to be what they call lead operations assistants. This position, which carries the same authority and respect as a co-op position, provides additional support in managing the hours and workload of other student operations assistants; it also provides administrative support in data input, document creation, photo rosters of the facility operations team, and other tasks for housing professionals throughout the office. This role pulls in the skillsets of students who are working on their management skills for after graduation or for graduate program admission. The ability to manage peers, hold them accountable, and coordinate schedules is one that many students do not get in their typical student employment or leadership experience. Additionally, working on a larger project, such as designing common area furniture for residence hall floor lounges from start to finish, is a skillset that prepares them for future opportunities in their career field.
Raven Lyons has been an operations assistant for six semesters. As she studies fashion design, she has recognized that "as a student leader in housing, I'm immersed in experiences allowing growth and developmental opportunities that I can convey to my peers." Gurucharan Sanjeevkumar, a mechanical engineering technology and finance major, highlights the positive outcome of developing so many skills. “Being a lead housing operations assistant at UC has been an incredibly rewarding experience. It has helped me grow my leadership, decision-making, and multiple other skills while maintaining a great work/life balance, allowing me to focus on my studies while also earning to support my education. Beyond that, seeing my work directly improve students' living experiences and make their daily lives easier has been truly fulfilling.”
Student workers today can be found in almost every aspect of a campus housing department. Some of these positions will always be open to students regardless of their area of study, such as an “eco leader” peer educator role at Colorado State University, student inspectors who work with operations and maintenance departments, or housing ambassadors who liaise between the housing and admissions offices. But at a time when there is increased pressure to connect the dots between students’ educational experience and real-world professional results, utilizing students in these semi-professional roles is likely to be considered even more valuable. The lessons of various researchers support this. Psychologist David Kolb, for example, defined learning as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of the experience,” one of the tenets of experiential learning theory. Well-designed campus employment for students allows them to enhance critical workplace skills, including time management, communication, teamwork, and customer service. Students who serve in co-ops and other academic-related positions benefit by applying what they have learned in the classroom to real-life situations. The value that comes to students from workplace experiences such as internships or co-ops, as well as culminating experiences like capstone projects, is aptly described by George Kuh in his book High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter. These benefits justify the amount of time that must be invested to create these substantial interactions with faculty, staff, or peers.
In these high-impact practices, the supervising staff supplement the work the faculty does in the classroom, enabling skill development as well as factors like deadline management and professional expectations. Elon University, for example, has hosted video production and marketing intern positions. The job descriptions for these read like the entry-level positions these students will one day apply for, asking them to “generate, edit, publish, and share daily content that builds meaningful connections and encourages the target market to take action.” Kirsten Carrier, the assistant dean of campus life and director of residence life, explains that the students work directly with the housing coordinator to set and review priorities and projects. “They use our important dates calendars to update content and schedule posts to go out in the same cadence they went out the previous year. We’ve brought the interns into our divisional training on social media, coordinated by the student life communications manager. They have also attended our Elon brand training, so they know how to use the Elon brand guide.” A professional staff member then reviews the material before it is scheduled for posting.
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo also employs a student marketing team. A graphic designer position there has become so integrated into the day-to-day operations that later this year, the designer will actually cover for a professional staff person on maternity leave, picking up additional responsibilities and work hours. In addition, even those students in more generalist positions, such as staffing the housing department’s front desk, are given tasks related to their majors. An event management student, for example, will help arrange open houses, or a graphic design student will create t-shirts and other graphic materials.
Ken Belcher, the director for facilities and operations at Virginia Tech University, has a number of student positions that, while not limited to students in a particular major, definitely leverage specific classroom knowledge. Students in the school of construction management, for example, learn the ins and outs of design choices, deferred maintenance, and building operations in real-world situations while they serve as on-call maintenance assistants. Architeture, engineering, and construction students are deeply involved in construction processes and the planning team while working as project management interns. And the department’s cabinetry shop helps students develop mechanical aptitudes and hands-on skills development as they participate in furniture assembly and fabrication, projects such as vanity and drawer replacements, and furniture installation logistics.
Students fresh out of the classroom can prove to be particularly valuable in emerging or quickly evolving fields. At the University of Maryland, the Department of Resident Life employs student information technology programmers. These students work with the information technology team on a variety of projects, including a nutrition module that will be integrated into the campus-wide app. Their work features a dynamic menu for each dining hall, complete with nutritional information and the ability for students to highlight their favorite meals. The students are also helping to redesign the housing department’s section in the university’s app to include a more engaging interface. Yet another student programmer has been working to implement a new barcode system for the package logging software that is used by the administrative operations staff at the residence hall service desks to log packages as they arrive and to notify the recipients. When complete, the resource will make inventory tracking easier and more efficient for the desk staff.
Similar work is happening at the University of Michigan, where students from its School of Information are helping to optimize the housing website as part of their capstone work. Michael Zabriskie, the associate director of communication, assessment, and support, explains that four students and several housing staff will work on this project over two semesters. “The students have outlined the skills they plan to utilize, their milestones for project completion, and a list of items we are collaborating on,” says Zabriskie. “This is truly a win-win for all parties; the students are getting real-world experience in an area that will benefit us.”
Student workers also help support business and finance operations. At Clemson University, Steve Hulme, the director of auxiliary finance, notes that his department employed two finance interns to work specifically within auxiliaries. “The goal was to create a mutually beneficial experience by giving the interns practical experience within their profession while they delivered value-added work to our team,” says Hulme. “The interns worked across various functions in finance, including budgeting, financial reporting, variance analysis, and developing standard operating procedures. Our most recent intern completed an in-depth analysis of off-campus student housing, which we used to support our on-campus pricing strategy along with gaining insight into current housing trends.” Loyola University Chicago also reported having business or accounting majors who, over the years, have served as student budget managers and work directly with their professional counterparts.
Closing the student worker loop, the University of Cincinnati also created a student hiring coordinator position to help hire other student and professional workers. In this role, graduate students studying human resources are hired to help screen student applications, interview students, analyze data, create onboarding and training materials, and liaise between the housing office and the campus human resources office. These coordinators have used these responsibilities as part of their capstone projects, where they have drawn upon their experiences and observations to lead discussions about possible inefficiencies in policy or practice. “I gained knowledge about processes like hiring and separations as well as the importance of doing these tasks correctly and in a timely manner,” says Devine Anderson, who recently completed her term as a student hiring coordinator. “I have felt like I am an integral part of the housing services team. People treat me like I am important, and they consult with me. I saw some interesting team dynamics and how growth impacts a large team. It’s exciting to see the amount of organizational change over time and to be a part of it.”
Even resident assistants, those longstanding student positions, are being reimagined on some campuses to better leverage students’ studies and experiences. Mark Jestel, the associate director of housing operations at Clemson, has been benchmarking RA responsibilities on several campuses for his dissertation research as well as part of efforts to reimagine Clemson’s structure. He notes that as campuses consider breaking down the more general RA responsibilities into smaller components, it increases opportunities for specialization. For example, undergraduate and graduate students studying counseling can be hired as peer health advocates who are better prepared to offer mental health support and programming. Graduate students who are pursuing social work can be hired as incident response administrators. Plus, there are opportunities for marketing and management students. All of these can be beneficial as they allow RAs to focus on more foundational aspects such as student interactions, community building, and educational programming, while reducing the burnout and fatigue that could come with crisis response and other responsibilities.
Students recognize the value of these positions and the doors that they open, preparing them for professional life after graduation. Hulme recounts the discussions he has had with student interns over the years where they valued being able to articulate work experience within their profession during job interviews, the mentorship and support they received from other employees as they were graduating, and the ability to have professional references for their résumé and job applications. As Humnah Ibrahim, a Maryland student, says, "As an immersive media design student, my work as a graphic designer with resident life allows me to apply my creativity and skills to real-world projects and gain hands-on experience in design. I love collaborating with the team to bring ideas to life and create designs that are functional, engaging, and inspiring."
Housing departments should also remember that they receive practical and holistic benefits from this arrangement. Along with the pure amount of work that students can complete for a department, they also help the professional staff stay current or even ahead of the field. They can provide a greater understanding of current trends or evolving best practices while also creating a sense of legacy. By determining what needs student workers can help meet, forging relationships with academic partners, recruiting talented and motivated workers, and then nurturing their development, housing departments can make the student worker experience succeed on a higher level.
Margaret Fogler is the assistant director for housing operations, and Michelle Sujka is the associate director of housing facility operations, both at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio.
