By Chelsea Reese
Hard work can pay off in the form of a scholarship that will be awarded in April to the top three student employees at CSU-Pueblo.
The competition was designed by the Western Association of Student Employment Administrators to recognize outstanding student employees. Greg Thorsten, a counselor for Student Financial Aid Services and a head of the Student Employee of the Year Committee, made the competition possible because of his membership with WASEA.
“I know that, over the years I’ve been managing the Student Employment Program, a lot of supervisors have asked me for different ways that they could recognize or acknowledge their student employee’s hard work,” Thorsten said. “This could be something they could do. As a campus, we rely very heavily on our student employees.”
The winners will be handpicked by members of SEYC, he said. The winner will receive a $1,000 scholarship, first runner up will receive a $750 scholarship and second runner up will receive a $500 scholarship, which will apply to this year’s tuition costs, Thorsten said.
Winning students will also be able to compete at state, regional and national levels for Student Employee of the Year, Thorsten said, and have the chance to win more scholarship money. However, the best benefit of this opportunity is the award-winning student employee can list this achievement on their resume, he said.
“That would be impressive when viewed by potential employers,” he said.
To compete in this competition, students must be nominated by their supervisors, have a scholarship application on file, be enrolled in 12 credit hours, and complete at least three months of full-time or six months of part-time work during this academic year, according to the nomination form.
Student must also meet Satisfactory Academic Progress requirements, a policy that measures minimum acceptable progress for financial aid.
A narrative essay is not required by students, but by their nominators. This narrative should describe the accomplishments of the student in at least one of the areas of reliability, initiative, the uniqueness of contribution, quality of work, professionalism or community and campus service, according to the form.
The nomination form and the narrative essay are officially due by Monday, Feb. 28, but Thorsten said he would like to have everything turned in by Friday, Feb. 25.
This is the second attempt at having this competition available at CSU-Pueblo, Thorsten said, because in the first attempt there was not enough support and interest by the campus.
“Just for now, we are kind of starting small and see what happens. If we can garner the continued support for it, then we should be able to grow it a little bit each year. That’s our hope,” Thorsten said. “It should be pretty neat and I think the winner will be really excited because I think it will show them that through their hard work there is some good that can come from it.”
