For many students balancing work and school is a struggle. For some, being employed at the university makes things a little easier.

For Angela Sylvester, a fourth-year English student, this is certainly the case.

“I think being a student and working at the university is better than being a student and working elsewhere,” she said.

For the past two years, Sylvester has been employed as a tutor in the Department of Rhetoric, Writing and Communications tutoring centre. She said that both working and studying at the university is convenient.

“It is a lot less stressful trying to get from school to work because work is right there,” she said, adding that she is able to adjust her hours to accommodate her class schedule.

Laurel Repski, vice-president of human resources, audit and sustainability at the U of W, explained that the university offers a variety of jobs to accommodate students’ busy schedules.

“Typically, because students are often taking a very heavy course load, as well as trying to work, those hours vary and the types of positions vary,” she said.

Approximately 1,000 students are employed on campus each year.

There are several types of jobs available to students. Repski explained that student jobs fall under three categories. Positions like student assistants, events assistants and faculty attendants are all considered support staff positions and are hired by their respective departments. These positions fall under a collective agreement, meaning the jobs are unionized.

Job postings for these positions appear on the human resources website and bulletin board in MacNamara Hall, as well as on job boards on the main floor of Centennial Hall and in the basement of the Duckworth Centre.

 

“ Approximately 1,000 students are employed on campus each year.

Positions such as markers, research assistants and teaching assistants are not unionized. These jobs are typically posted within the given department and professors do the hiring.

Third-party services on campus, like the bookstore, also provide student jobs. These companies recruit students independently, but Repski said they are “very positive when it comes to hiring students.”

Kim Quarrie, regional manager for Follett of Canada, the company behind the new campus bookstore, said that Follett benefits greatly from employing students, just as students benefit from working for Follett.

“They are great bookstore ambassadors,” she said. “They have all the same misconceptions about our operation as the general student population, but by working with us, they learn what’s real, what’s not, and they pass that experience on to their peers and faculty.”

Quarrie also explained that many of Follett’s student employees find full-time jobs with the company.

“We often find after graduation, students choose Follett as a career choice,” she said.

Sylvester also feels that her tutoring job is aiding her in her career goals.

“I eventually want to become a university professor,” she said. “So I feel like [my job] is pertinent to what I want to be doing later in life.”

Published in Volume 64, Number 2 of The Uniter (September 10, 2009)