SIGUCCS 2016

"The opportunity to work directly with students – to help them develop a set of practical professional skills to supplement their academic skills – is a wonderful prospect and would be a genuine privilege."

This closing line on my application to Carleton College over a decade ago still represents one of my driving goals when I come to work at the Helpdesk each day. We want to provide more than just a paycheck to our student staff; we want to provide opportunities and incentives for them to develop and grow. But there are limitations, including a fixed pay rate and limited hours.

One approach has been to develop various Specialty Roles, which address genuine needs of the organization while offering developmental opportunities to our student staff. We have Drop-Off Consultants, LabRats, AzTechs and more. The focus of each role is different, as are the types and levels of responsibility. But it still seemed like we could be doing more.

Then, an opportunity arose when the college developed a strategic plan tasking us to “prepare students more robustly for fulfilling post-graduation lives and careers”. With this mandate, we are now expanding these specialty roles to assist other teams within our own organization, and to partner with other support organizations on campus.

Join us as we talk about each of these specialty roles: how they developed, why they developed, and the expectations of each. We’ll discuss the new, bigger picture framework in which these roles exist with a view to meeting the goals of the strategic plan and providing more interesting opportunities for the growth and development of our student staff.