by Emily Bowling, representative from the SEE YOUR GROWTH workgroup

Summary

Student Experiences & Engagement (SEE) believes in the power of leadership development via student employment and creating quality student employment experiences. Student employment represents one of our largest investments as an organization, both financially and in terms of professional faculty time invested in hiring, training, and providing ongoing supervision, mentoring, coaching, and support. SEE has created a process called SEE YOUR GROWTH to embody our goals, values, and investment in student employment. The SEE YOUR GROWTH process is an annual reflective, meaning making process for student employees to synthesize, summarize, and celebrate accomplishments, skills, growth, and lessons learned from their year of student employment. SEE YOUR GROWTH is an approach that has evolved over time and has shown effectiveness at scale across departments and diverse supervisors and advisors while centering the individual student employee’s development over the course of their employment with us. This piece summarizes this initiative as a model that has potential to be adapted to other areas of OSU employing students. 

SEE, established in 2019, is composed of four departments: Experiential Learning & Activities, Craft Center, Diversity & Cultural Engagement, and Community Engagement & Leadership. In 2020, representatives from each department came together with a desire to create some organizational cohesion and consistency to how we support student employee leadership development in alignment with our protocols and values. Now this group is called the SEE YOUR GROWTH workgroup. We also had an interest in how we could iteratively improve and tell the collective story of student employment across our organization. The annual SEE YOUR GROWTH process was created through that collective work and was born in Spring 2021. 

This process is the manifestation of a belief in utilizing critical reflection as a tool for personal and professional growth. Each spring term, student employees reflect in writing on their growth and learning in the areas of wellbeing (personal and collective), social justice, community and belonging, leadership, and career and beyond SEE; they then deepen and expand upon their answers in dialogue and conversation with their supervisor and often their peers as well. These categories were created to align with SEE’s values and protocols, shared learning outcomes and goals for the student employment programs across SEE, and annual and ongoing training and professional development opportunities. You can view the 2024 student reflection questions in pdf format here:  SEE YOUR GROWTH Student Reflection TEMPLATE Form.

Additionally, our workgroup annually updates a SEE Your Growth Supervisor/Adviser Companion Guide – 2023-2024 to support supervisor and advisor preparation for the process. We have over 20 different supervisors each year engaging in this process, and this helps establish shared language and a common entry point regarding the importance and goals of the process, role of supervisors and advisors, and tips and guidance for implementation and success with students. 

Process Overview

The SEE YOUR GROWTH process occurs throughout the year:

Spring Term

• Supervisors and advisors distribute SEE YOUR GROWTH reflection forms to student employees
• Supervisors and advisors meet 1:1 and in groups to discuss responses with student employees
• Supervisors and advisors complete a Supervisor/Advisor Reflection Form to identify themes in each category of student responses, pride points, and growth opportunities for student employment. 

Summer Term

• Supervisors and advisors engage in department and unit level meaning making from the SEE YOUR GROWTH process.
• With unit leadership, supervisors and advisors update learning outcomes and goals for student employment.

Fall Term

• Supervisors and advisors implement updated student employment strategies.
• Supervisors and advisors deliver fall training and student employees set goals for their positions and learning for the year. 

Winter Term

• SEE YOU GROWTH workgroup iterates and updates materials for the next cycle.

Ongoing: Supervisor/advisor coaching and developing of student employees and continued learning and development for supervisors/advisors and student employees. 

Lessons Learned and Next Steps

We are entering our fourth cycle of SEE YOUR GROWTH. Annually, SEE has approximately 200 student employees participate in the SEE YOUR GROWTH process. We have tweaked the student reflection questions each year to narrow in on questions that work best in an individual reflection process. There are strengths to both 1:1 supervisor conversations and group or peer to peer conversations on the reflection questions; students benefit from practicing sharing their learning and growth out loud and hearing about the growth and changes others have observed in them. 

We have found that students tend to undersell or describe their accomplishments more narrowly in relationship to the actual impact and scope of their work. Therefore, we have found significant benefit to providing space for students to practice telling the story of the impact of their student employment and the skills they have gained and strengthened with a supervisor they have worked with for 9 months or longer as well as with peers they have worked with for an academic year. These conversations are also a time for supervisors to reflect back to students the learning and growth they have observed.  

Student responses help inform adjustments to fall training topics and ongoing coaching and training during the year if student responses are less robust or deep in particular categories. Students in their last year at OSU especially appreciate the opportunity to draw connections between their student employment experiences and their future goals and plans, to practice identifying the transferability of their skills to new contexts and applications. Students across the board have appreciated the opportunity to update their resume with the student employment highlights and practice speaking out loud about their growth in their student employment role. 

We are starting to see more consistent themes in student responses. Past response themes can be viewed here: SEE YOUR GROWTH Reflection Summary Slides. Here is a sample student quote from the process: “My employment in SEE has taught me incredibly valuable facilitation and public speaking skills. These are skills that I had very limited opportunity to explore and develop before my time in SEE, and I’m very excited that I know I have them moving forward in my professional career.” 

The Supervisor/Advisor Reflection Form was added in our second year as a way to engage supervisors and advisors after the process, support assessment and theming skill practice for supervisors, and also  identify topics for supervisor professional development; it’s been hugely effective at achieving these goals. It also allows each supervisor to assume greater responsibility over the student employee experience in their area. We are hoping to grow more annual skill building and shared learning sessions for supervisors across SEE as we move forward into 2024 and beyond. SEE YOUR GROWTH has been one way to build organizational buy-in to the importance of yearlong student employee development and training as well as celebrating our collective impact as an organization. It’s been a labor of love supported across SEE and it is becoming a tradition to celebrate our growth — of our student employees, of our supervisors, and of our organization as a whole.

If you’re interested in learning more or adapting SEE YOUR GROWTH for your unit or organization, please contact Emily Bowling, emily.bowling@oregonstate.edu.  

SEE YOUR GROWTH workgroup:

• Whitney Archer, Diversity & Cultural Engagement
• Ange Purviance, Craft Center
• Velyn Scarborough, Experiential Learning & Activities
• Emily Bowling, Community Engagement & Leadership