ACM SIGUCCS 2025 Conference

Student employees are vital to IT organizations in higher education. While some may devalue the contributions from student members of our work communities, the fact is that in the big picture, students are the reason we’re all employed. Part of our responsibility as fellow educators is to ensure they gain the skills required to succeed once they matriculate. Specific needs vary among institutions, but some basic practices can be widely applied. Our approach treats student employees with the same level of respect we’d give a full-time employee, including investment in their development through experiential learning.
The acronym CARE (Collaboration, Appreciation, Respect, Empathy) forms the basis of tangible practices that elevate student employees as members of the team. Investing in our students leads to a fundamental change in the way our organizations function for the betterment and benefit of both our clients and the students themselves. For instance, a focus on collaboration leads to coaching and championing our student employees, appreciation leads to the practice of acknowledgement, respect leads to improved retention, and empathy leads to excellence.
This panel will focus on how institutions of differing sizes and structures allow each of us to achieve success using this approach. We’ll discuss each of our varying approaches as well as the experiences and results we’ve seen by utilizing our own methods. The examples listed in the previous paragraph are just a teaser of the CARE approach - join us to get the full spectrum of our approach.
The foundation of our approach is simple: happy people are productive people - we take care of the employee; they’ll take care of the work.