Driscoll Student Center will offer student employees the chance to earn additional work-study hours this fall for completing existing professional development curriculum, part of a pilot program for training student employees, which began development in February.
Students will get paid their hourly wage times the number of hours earned in the course.
According to Francisco Chacon, assistant director of Driscoll Student Center, the professional development curriculum in the program will incorporate several courses that will count for work-study hours, such as Rape Aggression Defense (RAD), offered by the Department of Campus Safety (DCS), and a rCB)sumCB)-building workshop, where students meet with Chacon as they draft and revise their rCB)sumCB)s.
If, for example, a student completes the RAD course, which is a four-hour class taken over three weeks, then they will earn 12 hours of wages for the time spent attending the class.
“The thought behind [the training program] is really developing employment opportunities to help our students to learn, but also to enhance the services that we provide to our customers in the community,” said Chacon.
Chacon said some of the courses are assigned a certain number of credit hours, but are self-directed, such as the rCB)sumCB)-building workshop. Students can complete these courses at their own pace.
Chacon said he started thinking about developing the program after several students approached him with concerns about finishing their work-study hours.
“This was just another opportunity for them to earn those hours while at the same time getting professional development and enhancing their skills,” said Chacon.
Chacon staged a series of meetings, which all Driscoll student employees, such as building or information desk managers, attended. He took suggestions for modules they might want to take. Chacon received suggestions for a self-defense course.
“I actually had two suggestions by some young ladies on our staff who, just given the climate and some incidents that have happened around campus recently, requested courses on self-defense,” said Chacon. “So there was a self-defense course that was available, and we are willing to offer that [as part of the new program].”
Chacon, who most recently served as director of the Student Union at Nichols University from May 2008-July 2010, said he would like to open the program up to additional students, including work-study employees or any member of the student body.
“That won’t be true for some of the things we have to pay for, like CPR training or Rape Aggression Defense, but if the course is general in nature and it doesn’t cost us that much more, we’ll open it up to the student community,” said Chacon. “It won’t take us any more resources, especially if it’s just a workshop.”
Chacon developed a student employee advisory team of six sophomores through seniors, who will help create additional policies for student employment next year, such as the employee reward and recognition program and updates to policies for employee work areas.
The Driscoll Student Center currently employs approximately 50 students.
“They’re going to help us develop a training schedule, and they’re also going to assist us in developing our student employee reward and recognition program,” said Chacon. “All of our student employees are aware of who these students are on the advisory team, and we’ve charged [the student employees] with going to [the advisory team] with any concerns that they have.”
Chacon said the program, which will be developed over the next two years, will need student and customer feedback.
Chacon’s ultimate goal for the program is to be able to go out and present in annual conferences like September’s Association of College Unions International (ACUI) Region 13 Conference in Salt Lake City.
“As our program grows, our hopes are to expand to allow opportunities at the International conference which takes place each year in the spring,” said Chacon.
Chacon said he hopes to draw from industry texts for guidance when developing the program.
“The first part of the plan was to conduct an assessment of our students to see what kind of areas they feel that they need training in, but then we were also going to look through industry research,” said Chacon. “If students don’t really know what they need to be trained upon, we have to rely on other sources.
Changes for the fall include new ticketing software for the Explore Denver desk, as well as First Aid, CPR and automatic external defibrilator (AED) training. AED is used to shock a heart back into a regular rhythm if a person has suffered a stroke or heart attack.
“[We’re] seeing if there are ways that we can get as many of our staff members trained in that,” said Chacon. “We do have two AED devices in this building. I would like to make that a mandatory professional development for our building managers at the very least.”
