VCU news

By Dina Weinstein

Virginia Commonwealth University has launched a new Rams at Work website that emphasizes how student employment is about more than filling a work-related need: It’s about high-impact learning opportunities.

Geared toward students as well as their faculty and staff supervisors, the Rams at Work website is a collaboration by Human Resources, Strategic Enrollment Management and Student Success and the Division of Student Affairs. It refers to the thousands of student employees on campus – whether they answer office phones or clean lab equipment – as “working learners,” acknowledging that their jobs are paths to growth.

“Working on campus and serving in a working-learner capacity can be so transforming,” said Justin Tarbell, assistant director for selection and development at Residential Life and Housing, which is part of Student Affairs. “A lot of us working on the Rams at Work website behind the scenes, we can all link back to experiences that we had as working learners that were really transformational in our career paths.”

VCU employs more than 4,000 working learners annually across roughly 50 major business units. Several hundred faculty and staff serve as their supervisors.

Tarbell is part of the team that brought VCU into the Work+Collective, a national initiative focused on enhancing the on-campus student employee experience. For the new Rams and Work website, members of the VCU Work+ team and other VCU officials leveraged the collective’s rich online content, which supports students as well as supervisors.

The website also complements Handshake, the online career platform hosted by VCU that connects students and alumni to employers and opportunities, along with career advisors and related events and workshops.

Jonathan Fuller, director of the First and Second Year Experiences program in SEMSS, said the Work+ framework emphasizes student employment as a meaningful learning practice.

“These are opportunities – right alongside more traditional internships, study abroad and undergraduate research – that we think can be some of the most impactful experiences that students have during their college career,” he said. “Unfortunately, student employment isn’t always treated that way. It’s often seen as a way to meet a need in an office, usually an administrative need. Quite frankly, it’s often just viewed as an opportunity for cost considerations and bringing in additional staff on a team.”

Fuller said student employment can be so much more.

“That’s where that language of ‘working learner’ comes from. We want to elevate that. These just aren’t students filling a particular job,” Fuller said, noting that these roles “prepare them for their career in the long term.”

The Rams at Work website offers different pathways for engagement – from a student seeking a job, or a student currently in a position, to a VCU faculty or staff member looking to hire for a working-learner position. The site also offers information about working on campus as well as resources that promote strong supervisory practices, such as how to facilitate meaningful conversations. This past summer, a visiting expert from the firm of Barry Wehmiller, in partnership with VCU’s Institute for Transformative Leadership in the School of Business, presented a training seminar for supervisors of working learners.

“One of the major facets of Rams at Work is to serve people who maybe don’t manage professional staff but do manage student employees who might not have had access to management resources in the same way,” said Rebecca Aldridge, HR strategic communications manager, who led development of the website structure. “It was important to share with them information and this compilation of resources,” which touch on topics such as the Federal Work Study program, HR policies and career development.

Tarbell added that in many cases, “initiatives are put into play that are supportive of either the working learners or the supervisors, but the fact that this website will have resources for both will encourage an overall holistic experience for working learners to have that transformational experience.”

So for students getting a first job or gaining experience in a career field – and a manager looking to support them – Rams at Work becomes a foundation for success.

“It’s a valuable experience for everybody involved,” Aldridge said. “The impact the site will make is to bring more prominence to that and provide resources so that everyone who wants to can learn more and grow stronger.”