Johns Hopkins students work in university labs. They build websites for university projects. They work in Hopkins clinics. And during National Student Employment Week, which takes place April 3–7, Student Employment Services is encouraging faculty and staff to let their student workers know how much they're appreciated. If you're short on ideas, the office has some suggestions and even gifts you can order to say thanks to those working alongside you.
Roughly 4,000 students are employed around Johns Hopkins' various Baltimore campuses and in the surrounding communities, nearly 2,000 of them undergraduates. "They work for the schools of Medicine and Public Health. We have students who work at Green Spring Station and at the Bond Street Wharf," says [D. Lynn O'Neil](http://studentaffairs.jhu.edu/studentemployment/staff/d-lynn-oneil/ the director of Student Employment Services. "They're bilingual translators, they're building monitors, they're cataloging for the library. The Hopkins Symphony [Orchestra] hires box office managers and stage managers. We have clinical assistants, lab assistants, research assistants. We have students doing desktop publishing, digital communications, and graphic design.
"Really, if you can think of it, we've had it as a job posting," O'Neil adds. "They work all over, and our office pretty much serves as their human resource needs."
Student Employment Services, a division of Homewood Student Affairs, maintains a database where employers post openings that students can search. Along with each job description, O'Neil says, the office requires that employers include the learning component associated with the position. She refers to a recent post looking for a student to help organize and work a summer conference on campus. "OK, so they're going to learn communication, problem solving, critical thinking, team dynamics. We make [employers] tell us what the takeaway is for the student," she says. "Here's one for a research assistant, and it says students in this position can expect to learn basic principles in clinical research ethics."
O'Neil adds that during National Student Employment Week, the office recognizes Johns Hopkins' Student Employee of the Year, and "when you read the nominations and see what these students are doing, it's really amazing," she says. "We say all the time, student employment is far more than a paycheck. Student employment allows the students to explore different career options, develop transferrable work and life skills, and also to integrate their classroom and working experiences. Students may come here and think, I'm premed; but when you get a job in the Department of Oncology as a student, you see all the different types of jobs that are available within the medical field."
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