By Briahnna Brown
From her first day to her last day as an undergraduate student at the George Washington University, Valerie Nauman, now a graduate student, said being a student employee was very much ingrained in her GW experience.
"I like to joke that my coworkers gave me more care packages than my mom did,” Ms. Nauman said. “You get to develop relationships with people in the administration here, which is really special.”
While she was working as a student employment aide at the Center for Career Services, she was also a dual-degree student studying for her bachelor’s in political science, which she earned in December. She worked on projects like the student employee and employer newsletter as well as the event planning for National Student Employment Week.
Universities and colleges across the country show appreciation for the work that students contribute to universities and their surrounding communities during National Student Employment Week, which runs this week from Monday through Friday.
To celebrate National Student Employment Week at GW, there will be a door decorating contest where the winning department will win two dozen cookies from Captain Cookie. The celebration will end with a student employee appreciation breakfast from 9:30 a.m. – 11 a.m. on Friday in Marvin Center room 405. At the breakfast, the “Supervisor of the Year” will receive an award.
"You get to recognize outstanding supervisors who have invested time in their student employees, made them feel welcome and made them feel like they can develop professionally in that role," Ms. Nauman said.
Student employees work in many roles at GW, filling jobs in the libraries, administrative offices and the Smithsonian museums and other off-campus employers in a symbiotic relationship that helps students pay for their tuition, Ms. Nauman explained. Numerous studies have shown a positive relationship between academic performance and progress toward degree completion and student employment.
Ms. Nauman said that she learned necessary time management skills while she was a student employee, which she noted is one of many applicable professional skills that benefitted her in her post-graduate career search. Now, Ms. Nauman is working toward earning her master’s in legislative affairs from the Graduate School of Political Management, and she recently accepted a job offer working as a youth advocacy coordinator for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
She added that she thoroughly enjoyed her job because she helped students understand tax-related paperwork for their jobs and still had free time on the weekends to do class assignments. Her mentors in the Center for Career Services were always supportive of her work outside of their office, Ms. Nauman said, like her second job running the administration operation for the Roosevelt Institute’s Mid-Atlantic region. She said their support helped her develop both professionally and personally.
"If I had a question like, 'Oh, I need to find an apartment to rent, how do I sign a lease?' I knew I could go to my supervisor and say, 'Hey, how do you adult?'" Ms. Nauman said. "They were always willing to help with that, so it was kind of like a family away from home, and that's really why I valued my time in my federal work-study position."
