Spotlight
Student Success: Working to Learn
| USF News
USF student interns Jenna Withrow (left) and Nick Trobiano gain real-world, career-focused experience working with Kathleen Long, director of information technology.
Photo by Joe Gaylor | FJ Gaylor Photography
For Jenna Withrow, working on campus has provided more than a paycheck. It's provided real-world experience and the opportunity to discover a passion.
Withrow, a senior mass communications major, is a social media intern in the Office of University Communications & Marketing. She's one of about 3,000 USF students who work on campus and the experience she is having is the kind of experience the Division of Human Resources is working to create campus-wide.
Why? Because research shows that students who work on campus are more engaged and more likely to be successful in their academic pursuits.
Last year, as part of the USF Student Success Movement, the Division of Human Resources began working to centralize, enhance and increase on-campus student employment opportunities. In May, the division launched a series of workshops to train USF employers in recruitment and selection and making jobs meaningful and related to students' career goals.
Students like Withrow. Each day Withrow updates and monitors USF's social network sites including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. She just helped launch the university's first Tumblr blog, LinkedIn profile and Foursquare page.
"Working in University Communications & Marketing has helped me discover a passion for social marketing and technology I didn't know I had," she says. "I'm not just doing random special projects. I'm getting real-world experience that is meaningful and has an impact."
It's not just the students who benefit, according to Student Success Recruiter Cynthia Bacheller, who is helping lead the student employment initiative. "When students are used to their full potential, the department gets a lot more value."
As part of the initiative, leaders are working to centralize all on-campus job postings. By May 2012, they hope to have all temporary positions for undergraduate and graduate students, including Federal Work Study positions and on campus, non-USF jobs, such as bookstore and dining positions, posted to a single site, employment.usf.edu. The site is a joint initiative between the USF Career Center and the Division of Human Resources. There's even a Facebook page, a job search Web page and student employee orientations.
It's an initiative, Bacheller says, that's catching on campus-wide and making a difference for students.
"I'm getting experience I can't get in the classroom," Withrow says. "Working on campus has been so beneficial to my classes. My bosses have been so flexible with my schedule. They understand we are students first and employees second."