Student Employees-More Diversity

The vast majority of UNI student employment positions involve interactions with other students, faculty, and staff as they carry out their responsibilities. By increasing the number of UNI multi-cultural students who have on-campus jobs, we are also increasing the opportunity for students to:

• have meaningful interactions with people from backgrounds different from their own

• broaden their intercultural knowledge and competence

• participate in diverse cultural experiences as a result of new friendships that may develop

Another side benefit of employing more multi-cultural students on campus relates to increasing their academic success because research shows that UNI students who have on-campus jobs do better academically than students who have off-campus jobs.

The goal is to increase the number of multi-cultural students who are employed on campus each year with focus on several departments who employ the largest number of student employees such as the Department of Residence, Library, Wellness and Recreation Services, Physical Plant, and Maucker Union.

Results

• Determined with UNI Student Employment Office who will be counted as “multi-cultural” student employees.

• Identified departments who employ UNI students and key student supervisor in each

• Communicated with departmental contacts about the plan

• Established source (Student Employment Office) of collecting data annually in September

Used the departments of University Health Services to create a set of strategies that any campus department with student employees might borrow to further this goal: 

• developed a network of campus colleagues and students to help in raising awareness of multicultural students to our student positions,

• participated in broader University diversity and recruitment events and activities, visiting directly with individuals about our student jobs,

• hosted groups of multicultural students at the Wellness/Recreation Center, who were visiting campus, providing them activities and interactions with current student employees who could talk about their jobs and majors,

• communicated and became involved with multicultural student organizations and attended their events,

• developed recruitment materials with information about student jobs

 Next Steps:  Continue planned activities, monitor progress annually in September, reassess.