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Student Affairs Positions Provide Real-Life Experience

Peer Educators (shown with Linda LaSalle, far left) are one group of the large number of students employed by Student Affairs each year.

By Andy Elder, Student Affairs Writer

Wanted: Responsible, mature, motivated students. Good interpersonal skills a must. Interest in counseling and marketing helpful. Web experience a plus. For more information, contact Penn State Student Affairs.

While this isn’t an actual ad, with a little editing it could be. Each year, Student Affairs uses hundreds of students in a wide variety of positions. From Pulse workers to peer educators to LateNight interns to residence assistants, Student Affairs offers job opportunities that provide practical, real-life experience.

Some provide a paycheck. Others earn credits. And some offer neither. But they all have one thing in common – every one teaches life skills that are transferable to virtually any career path.

Finding willing students to fill those positions is, most times, the easy part. The more difficult challenge is whittling that list down to those most compatible with the unique requirements related to each position. And even that varies from position to position.

Christine Wilson supervises the Pulse students for Student Affairs Research and Assessment. Loosely defined, Penn State Pulse performs student surveys on a number of topics and issues. So, the 25-33 Pulse workers are closely involved with gathering that information by administering the surveys by phone. For the Fall, they will be hiring at least 20 students.

“There are a couple avenues we use. We receive referrals from other student workers and we send out e-mails to directors in Student Affairs. We want to hire a representative group of students,” Wilson said of her selection process. Students working for Pulse need to have excellent communication skills and a strong command of the English language. “We have them do a test reading of a sample Pulse survey as part of the interview,” Wilson reported. In order to recruit survey respondents, Pulse workers must be able to engage students by phone. In addition, they have to be reliable, show up for work on a consistent basis, and be in good standing with the University.

In University Health Service’s Office of Health Promotion and Education, Linda LaSalle and her fellow community health educators provide a wide range of services. Some of those include HIV testing, counseling about the dangers of smoking cigarettes, alcohol abuse and unprotected sex, and advocating smoke-free bars, to name a few. The 70-80 peer educators the office oversees are strictly volunteers, but they receive rigorous training.

“In most cases, the jobs they do are related their studies. But we have some highly motivated students who want an extracurricular activity they know will make an impact,” LaSalle said.

Diana Ramos, who works with LaSalle, helps select some of peer educators. She said they look for a unique subset of students.

“We believe exposure to the human dynamic is an experience all students should engage in. So, we look for interpersonal development. We’re not recruiting freshmen, but rather sophomores and juniors. Sometimes seniors. It is mandated they serve up to a year, but some have been committed up to three years. We’re looking for maturity and academic experience … in related fields. We want to provide a level of counseling so it usually blends with their areas of studies,” Ramos said.

“They don’t get paid and they don’t get credits; they’re strictly volunteers. They work three hours a week and attend two one-hour monthly meetings. They receive up to 18 hours of training for HIV testing and from 6 to 12 for alcohol and tobacco training. If they do both they could receive up to 30 hours of training.”

Josh Durbin, one of the coordinators of LateNight Penn State, has just two intern positions to fill. But that means the competition for those spots is even more keen.

“Our jobs are quite specified. We have two interns. One is a marketing intern. They do anything from promoting to marketing. The LateNight web intern is the webmaster for LateNight Penn State and is responsible for the general management of the LateNight Penn State web site,” Durbin said.

“We normally gear it toward a sophomore, junior or senior. When they’re that far along, they’re usually looking for more concentrated areas of work. We post the position on the Smeal (College of Business) intern web search. From there we look through the candidates and pull those who I think would be a good fit. We look at GPA, experience and year. Then we have them come in for an on-site interview. We have them do a presentation highlighting their past experiences, broadly defined.”

For both positions, Durbin said, the job can entail 15 to 20 hours of work a week.

Whether it’s Pulse workers, peer educators or LateNight interns, everyone agreed that the students who are selected provide an invaluable service.

“Overall, the students provide an incredible amount of service to this office and do things our very limited staff aren’t able to do,” LaSalle said. “They are a tremendous help.”

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