Student Employment in Academic Libraries (SEAL) Symposium 2024

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https://hdl.handle.net/1805/43450

The Student Employment in Academic Libraries Virtual Symposium seeks to showcase educationally purposeful student employment. We're providing a space for colleagues who care deeply for the growth and success of students to share ideas about student employment, and connect with and learn from other practitioners. Our focus is on approaches to student employment that are compassionate, strive to be inclusive and equitable, and center learners and learning.

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Building Student Employees' Sense of Belonging and Community with Weekly Bulletins
(2024-10-24) Schipano, Kathleen; Hughes, Jennifer
This poster will provide specific details about how to develop weekly bulletins that engage student assistants! The weekly bulletin is an inclusive method of sharing timely updates to student workers, celebrating student successes, and providing ongoing training opportunities throughout the school year. This poster will provide tips on how to solicit content from all areas of the library as well as introduce MyEmma as one platform for creating the bulletins.
Checking In: Slowing Down and Doing Less to Empower Students
(2024-10-24) Gingerich, Monica
Penn State's President Bendapudi has said, "We can do anything, but we can't do everything." Taking this sentiment and a culture of care for our student employees in mind, I threw out my carefully curated training guide for the year in lieu of slowing down and checking in with my student employees to assess their capacity. This poster explores the power of developing training around “check-ins” with student employees at bi-weekly training meetings, and empowering students to choose future projects and training topics based on their interests and mental load availability. The results of this simple practice of “check-ins” helped build relationships and foster a supportive environment for library student employees to grow in their roles as Peer Research Consultants. How to build “check-ins” into your training, build a program based on student need and input, and reflections on the process will be discussed.
Combining Desks for Success
(2024-10-24) Fiser, Susan; Barth, Libby
At St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, we have two libraries that jointly employ around 40 student workers, a main academic library and a music library. Two years ago we switched from having these libraries work independently of each other to training the student workers to work at both libraries. This has helped ease the burden of finding substitutes for shifts, which has lessened students' anxieties around having to drop a shift. The larger worker pool means that the odds of a shift being picked up is much higher, particularly for music students, as many of them are in rehearsals or other music-related events at the same time. This also means that workers are also able to meet students they may not have interacted with before, which has helped us build a stronger overall community.
Cura Personalis: Caring for the Whole Student Employee
(2024-10-24) Vande Walle, Abby
College is stressful. And in addition to all the traditional pressures of higher education, student employees also have to navigate a job and the workplace, often for the very first time in their lives. The User Services Unit in the Hesburgh Libraries has embodied the ethics of care in our policies and culture by adopting the mindset of Cura Personalis (Latin for Care for the Whole Person). In this context, we think of it as care for the whole student employee: mind, body, and spirit. This poster will exhibit some of the ways in which our patron-facing Unit has embodied care in our practices with student workers, including study break events, mental health training, professional development sessions, social activities, and flex shifts. Our goal is to not only lessen the students’ overall stress, but demonstrate our support and care for their wellbeing both in and out of the library workplace.
Food for Thought: UNCG University Libraries' Student Worker Snack Pantry Project
(2024-10-24) Tiffany, Andrea; Vinson, Lois
The UNC Greensboro University Libraries (UL) participate in several programs fighting food insecurity, a serious issue affecting our campus community. Inspired by these public facing programs, library student supervisors identified a significant gap in the UL’s efforts: our own student workers. In fall 2023, supervisors and library administration developed a student worker snack pantry. Since then, we have provided over $800 worth of shelf-stable food, such as granola bars, trail mix, nuts, crackers, and fruit snacks. Students can visit the pantry and staff can pick up items to keep in their departments for easier student access. This poster will use the ethics of care as a framework to outline the project from idea to implementation.
I'm Not Crying, You're Crying, or, Student Exit Interviews as a High Impact Practice
(2024-10-24) Anderson, Robin
Graduating college can be a source of significant stress for students. To help students identify how they have grown personally and professionally from their college experiences, library staff conduct exit interviews with graduating student workers. The exit interviews give students space to reflect on challenges they have overcome and transferable skills they have gained, celebrating their achievements and preparing them for similar questions in job interviews. The exit interviews also benefit library staff by sharing student perceptions of work tasks and environment, areas for library improvement, and the positive impact that library work has had on students. Formally invited to reciprocate the care they have received as library employees, students leave their job empowered for the broader world.
International Student Library Employees as Affective-Service Providers
(2024-10-25) Wan, Shu
Reviewing my work experience at the University of Iowa Libraries, this essay aims to reflect on the significance of hiring international students as college librarians from the perspective of an "ethics of care" in the following three sections. The first section focuses on the urgent need for student employees of international backgrounds to fulfill librarian roles. An increasing number of international students', especially those of East Asian backgrounds, distinct needs for library services have been consistently overlooked in the recent past. However, strict budgeting in higher education prevents college libraries from hiring librarians with bi- or multi-lingual proficiency, which could be improved by instead hiring international student employees. The second section turns to my experience as an international student library employee. Enrolled as an MLIS student at the University of Iowa, I worked in the reference services in the university library between 2019 and 2020. When providing reference services to students originally coming from China, I used both the Chinese language and their familiar examples to help those international students in searching for resources. In addition, I also offered direction for those students who needed help with other library services provided entirely in English. The last section discusses the ethnic implications of international student employees in libraries from an "ethics of care" perspective. As shown in the second section, I also provided emotional support for international student patrons. This support fulfills the "affective" component of "ethics of care," which I argue should be integrated into the routine of reference services.
Mentoring Student Employees
(2024-10-24) Garcia, Julieta
At California State University, Northridge (CSUN), 70% of the total population of full-time students are first generation higher education students. As one of a few Archivists at CSUN, I process archival collections, however, most of my time is spent managing student employees in Special Collections and Archives (SC/A). Many colleagues believe that I solely hire history majors; to their surprise, I do not. Since becoming the Student Employee supervisor for the unit, I have used my own experience and campus resources to manage student employees. This includes, focusing on the individual and showing them how this temporary position can translate into their own careers by teaching them about being resourceful, applying to new positions and internships, and graduating or pursuing other careers that are better suited for them, even if it means transferring to another university.
Nurturing Professional Growth for Student Employees in Academic Libraries
(2024-10-25) Jackson, Lindsey
The Texas Tech University Architecture Library employs 7-8 student associates for daily operations, including circulation and customer service. In fall 2023, we launched a professional development component student associate job. This initiative requires them to pursue projects of their choice during work hours, aligned with their career goals. Students can use various resources, including the university's Udemy subscription, to enhance their skills. In addition to regular communication about their day-to-day work, the public services librarian conducts periodic check-ins throughout the semester to discuss students’ progress on their professional development projects. Creating space for the professional growth of student employees embodies an ethics of care. This approach creates a supportive workplace culture at a time when students are starting to envision their professional futures beyond their library roles. This practice goes beyond typical employment responsibilities, actively contributing to the holistic development of student workers.
Panel: Ask a Student!
(2024-10-25) LaPorte, Molly; Wan, Shu; Fiema, Madeline
Join us to hear our student employee panel and listen as they give their perspective on working in academic libraries. Four students from academic libraries across the United States are answering your questions about all things student employment. Want to know their thoughts on training? Professional development? Working late? Ask your questions and join us to hear their insights.

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