For many College at Brockport students, the transition to remote learning also meant working from home. Some on-campus jobs have become obsolete for the time being, but others have been a matter of learning how to work remotely.
Brittney Goss, a graduate student who has worked in Career Services for two years, said the department is “conquering the issue of students working on campus.”
Goss is currently assisting with student employment and employer relations. Goss said one of Career Services’ priorities is ensuring student employees get paid.
“Gov. Cuomo and SUNY have actually mandated that all student employees will get paid during this time,” Goss said. “It’s reassessed every two weeks. So as of right now, students are able to either work from home or if their supervisor has said they cannot work from home due to a job that requires them to work with confidential information or if they work in admissions and they’re a tour guide, they obviously can’t do that job from their home.”
Goss said students who are working from home will simply put in the hours they would normally work, stating “your schedule is whatever you make it.” For those who cannot work remotely, you would also put the hours you would normally be working. For students without a consistent schedule, Goss said pay periods will be averaged.
“We’re doing our best to make sure this is happening,” Goss said. “This is a collaborative effort between financial aid, who helps with the work study money, student employment, who obviously helps with students finding jobs and all of that, and then on top of that, it also involves payroll, who pays the students. So it’s a big collaborative effort.”
Like many other employees, Goss has had to adjust to working remotely.
“Honestly for me, it’s fine; it’s definitely an adjustment because my job requires me to work with employers, work with on campus departments, so there’s not as much interaction,” Goss said. “A lot of our events are now virtual. So thankfully, employers have been very flexible when working with us to do virtual series on zoom so students can still get that same employer interaction but just in a different format.”
Goss said she and her coworkers are working to make the same services available to students, such as the virtual series with employers and being able to make appointments to discuss their futures.
“We’re trying to be flexible and help students during this time because we know it’s stressful,” Goss said. “I mean, I’m a student, so I know what it’s like; it’s not fun. But like I said, we’re doing our best to make it work.”
Clare Winchell, a marketing assistant for the Student Union, said she was given the option to continue to work following the news of classes moving remotely.
“They sent out an email kind of in the middle of everything and gave us the option if we wanted to come back and said they would be making it work if we wanted to do it and that if we weren’t able to, there was no pressure at all, they understood,” Winchell said. “But if we wanted to work, they would find something for us to do, which was really awesome.”
Winchell was concerned she would see a cut in her pay, but those worries were eased after working remotely.
“I was worried that we’d have a huge cut in hours that we’d maybe be only paid for one hour, or however much we did, but luckily, we’re still — obviously not doing as much — but we’re still doing a lot surprisingly,” Winchell said. “So I’m able to reach my hours a week, which I think is awesome.”
It has been a bit of an adjustment for Winchell, who runs the social media accounts for the Student Union, creates flyers for and pushes events. Meetings with her team, which includes marketing and promotions, now take place via video conference and programs to create flyers and posts were no longer readily available, but Winchell has made do.
“With my job specifically, I use photoshop a lot, which is given to you by the school,” Winchell said. “Right now fortunately, Adobe is having a special where the program is much cheaper. So I’m most likely going to purchase it on my own because honestly it isn’t that expensive right now, but I’ve found different sites online to like Canva, which isn’t exactly Photoshop but still does the same work. And luckily, I was familiar with those options, so there really was no difference for me.”
Winchell said she is “very fortunate” that her team is so close. If she has any questions, she can call her advisor, Ryan Giglia, or their graduate assistant for programming, Chitsatt Myothant, or anyone on staff, really.
“They’re always just a phone call away,” Winchell said.
A silver lining Winchell has seen throughout this is the collaboration between departments.
“It’s kind of amazing that while we’ve been away, I think that there’s been a lot of collaboration between different departments now,” Winchell said. “Because we’re all kind of like, ‘oh, how do we reach everybody?’ So we’ve just been coming together. And I know that I’ve been talking to Career Services, Campus Rec, BSG so much more than before.”
Winchell said she is “incredibly fortunate” and that it is “amazing to see what everyone’s doing” and their reaction to this situation.
“When we get on a call every week, everyone brings their positive vibes,” Winchell said. “You feel like we are there together, like just making the most of what we have is really making a difference.”
Nicole Zhe also works on-campus and has been affected by the COVID-19 situation. Zhe works as a math and physics tutor, a physics lab assistant and a campus ambassador. Zhe said the only job she has been able to continue at the moment is her tutoring, which she does through Blackboard Collaborate, but she has still been getting paid for her other jobs through the reassessment period.
“I don’t quite remember when we got the official confirmation we would be moving to tutoring in an online format,” Zhe said. “It was a relief, actually. It was nice knowing that despite all of the confusion and uncertainty I would still be able to help fellow students. I love my jobs, and to be able to continue with at least one of them was exciting.”
Zhe said she was originally concerned with how classes would continue when she heard rumors of SUNY moving remotely. She heard the news while in lab for chemistry and was concerned about her living situation. It wasn’t until later when she was talking to her peers and a professor that she realized her campus jobs would be affected.
“I enjoy helping people; as a tutor and lab assistant I connect with students who come to me and work with them to grasp concepts they never thought they’d be able to understand,” Zhe said. “As an ambassador, I speak with so many different families every week and meet incredibly unique people. And whether the students end up choosing Brockport or not, getting to be a part of their journey into this exciting time in their lives and showing them all of the amazing things Brockport has to offer was a highlight of my week. It was hard to think that some of my favorite parts of my college experience would be gone, even just temporarily.”
Zhe said the transition was eased by the Academic Success Center setting the tutors up with the proper resources to continue their jobs.
“I appreciate all the time everyone put in to helping make the adjustment easier,” Zhe said. “We had to go through a training, which included watching a video and then partnering up with another tutor to practice in and become familiar with Blackboard Collaborate. They are still updating us, giving us documents describing how to fix issues we’ve come across as we’ve actually started to use the application.”
Zhe made sure to reach out to students she had been tutoring before and asked the professors teaching introductory physics to get the word out. As for her math sessions, she has yet to see a student, which could be for a variety of reasons.
“I have had people join my physics tutoring session. I reached out to those who had been coming to me consistently before the transition and made sure they each knew how to access the collaborate room,” Zhe said. “However, no one has joined my math tutoring session. My best guess as to why this is would be that with physics, we tutor specific hours for specific classes. The math tutoring center was walk-in based, so anyone could just come in and any free tutor would come over and help you. Now that we’re each in separate ‘rooms,’ this changes how people are used to using the tutoring center. I think it’s either a little more confusing for students or now they are able to choose the tutor who specializes in the area they need.”
While Goss, Winchell and Zhe, along with countless others, have had to adjust to remote learning and working, they all have taken the transition in stride.
Originally published as an online exclusive for The Stylus.
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