By Victoria Durgin, Staff Writer
Susquehanna’s Department of Human Resources (HR) will conduct a comprehensive review of student employment wages and procedures this summer, with changes to the structure planned for as early as August.
This comes after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic altering the landscape of employment on campus and amidst national trends toward higher wages and more resignations.
Senior Director of HR Grace Lowry said Susquehanna knows students are frustrated with pay rates and the goal of the review is to establish more accurate rates for the quality of work done by students on campus.
“This campus relies on students, and we all appreciate the hard work our student employees do in their roles to aid services and departments,” Lowry said.
According to Lowry and the student employment handbook, which is available on mySU, approximately half of all students currently hold or held at least one position on campus, with many of those workers taking on multiple roles at a time.
“We haven’t heard from anyone that students are performing less, and our student workers are some of the highest-performing academically around campus,” Lowry said.
The current pay rate for students begins at the state minimum wage of $7.25 and caps at $10. The exception to this rate is those classified as interns within a department, who may receive higher wages based on their individual agreements with management.
The student employment handbook outlines the four titles students can hold across campus. According to Lowry, these levels are referenced when deciding pay rates and qualifications by HR officials and hiring managers in most offices.
The handbook lists the positions in the following order with the corresponding description and pay rate as outlined below:
Lowry said HR understands that the wage rates need to be revisited to match off-campus employment trends which have increased rates far beyond the $10 cap at Susquehanna.
Students are paid by Susquehanna directly or by funding received from the government through the Federal Work-Study (FWS) program.
Students are employed by various offices and academic departments on campus, all of which are encouraged to post open positions for students to view on Handshake, a job and career-building platform utilized by many universities.
While Handshake is “strongly encouraged” as the sole hiring platform on campus, Grill, Marsh and Lowry all said they recognize not every hiring manager uses the site and that some positions are not able to be seen by all students efficiently.
“The Career Development Center (CDC) in collaboration with the Student Employment Team offer annual trainings and on-going support and coaching for on-campus employers to fully leverage Handshake,” Grill said, because “departments sometimes post announcements on mySU or highlight student employment opportunities in other campus newsletters, email campaigns and social media channels” instead of Handshake.
The last two years have shifted conversations around employment not just at Susquehanna but on a national level.
The COVID-19 pandemic did decrease the number of students seeking employment, according to Lowry. Some students, though, have expressed they felt more work placed on their shoulders than ever before.
Respondents to a survey conducted by The Quill expressed they felt “overworked” and that their roles seemed “more than a student” could adequately handle while also completing their coursework.
Part of this stress is linked to the understaffing of many offices and departments not in student roles but in full-time, professional staff positions. Some students feel they have taken on that work in the staff’s absence, though Lowry stressed student employee roles are not meant to replace or cover for work designed for a full-time staff member.
There is also an ongoing review of staff salaries to improve how competitive Susquehanna is in the labor market against other universities and companies.
Lowry said this review fits in tandem with the student wage review because of concerns about what she called “pay equity” between students and staff if student wages are raised beyond the $10 an hour figure.
As those reviews are ongoing, Lowry said she always welcomes student feedback, as do others at several campus offices who work on student employment.
Feedback on the student employment experience can be sent to Grace Lowry via email at lowry@susqu.edu. Student Financial Services and CDC staff are also available to students who have questions or concerns about finding employment at Susquehanna.
