Train Student Technologists--and Get Tech Support
The ever-growing demand for technology services on college campuses has strained
budgets to the breaking point. Limited resources collide with increasing student
enrollments. Busy information technology staff members struggle to address the
needs of tech-savvy faculty clamoring for tools and training. Trained technology
specialists are hard to find and expensive to hire.
One solution that some campuses have used: Hire students to supplement the
IT staff. At the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, they’ve taken this
one step further, developing a department composed solely of student employees
and student managers. The department, Student Technology Services, received
an Educause Exemplary Practices Award in 2001.
UWM’s work-based learning environment provides on-the-job training while
performing a desperately needed campus service. The Student Technology Services
group employs about 300 students who deliver technology services in more than
20 functional areas, including lab, classroom, and desk support, help desk,
network services, training, and audiovisual services. These functional work
groups parallel associated groups of full-time staff.
Staffed and managed entirely by students, the STS program develops both technology
and workplace skills. The organization treats the student employees as empowered
decision-makers, service providers, managers, and paraprofessionals. Interestingly,
STS draws its student staff from all over campus, with more than half of its
hires coming from majors not usually associated with technology.
Mentors drawn from the full-time IT staff advise student supervisors, although
students have an incredible amount of autonomy. According to Beth Schaeffer,
Student Technology Services external program manager, student human resource
managers do their own hiring and personnel management. They manage their own
budgets and make more decisions. Schaeffer and her co-manager, Dean Holschbach,
manage internal and external issues and act as overall supervisors for the STS
group.
The benefits to the university are obvious and quantifiable. UWM estimates
that it has added 85 full-time equivalent positions to its technology support
staff at 40 percent of the cost of a permanent, nonstudent staff. Across the
campus, service levels and user satisfaction have improved. Full-time IT staff
members are free to focus on complex priorities, and the university has actually
been able to add technology services.
In the three years since its inception, STS has grown into a successful venture
that last year spun itself off into comparable programs at Milwaukee public
schools and the Milwaukee Area Technical College. Says Schaeffer, “We worked
with the public schools and MATC to help them develop their own STS programs.
Our STS staff has worked with several high schools that have Cisco Network Academy
classes, and we have been helping with the training and development of student
staff.” They’ve also been developing a database that will track student
experience and participation in the STS program from high school on up, so that
incoming college students can build on their past successes and find appropriate-level
placements at MATC or UWM.
The local business community and the state government collaborate with STS
through the Business Partners program, providing additional opportunities for
students to develop professional experience during the summer. These summer
assignments benefit both students and employers.
Says Schaeffer, “At the end of the summer, the employer writes an evaluation
that the student and UWM can use to develop a training program to fill in any
gaps in the student’s skill base. At the same time, these employers build
relationships with future valuable employees.”
For more information, contact Beth Schaeffer at beths@uwm.edu.