Mondo Monday

August is here! Which means your students will be here soon. And there are a lot of things to do between now and their arrival. Since we are covering a lot today, I am calling it Mondo Monday 🙂

First up today, a reminder of our student health insurance requirement. This applies to all families. Your student’s Health Insurance Enrollment/Waiver is due today, August 1.

All students are charged the student health insurance premium ($1,417) on their student account. If your student has insurance that meets the University’s criteria at shi.wfu.edu, please apply for a waiver (if you have not already done so). Once the waiver is received, the premium will be removed in 2-3 business days. If your student needs health insurance, or if your current plan does not meet the University’s criteria, please enroll them (if you have not already done so). See details or complete the enrollment or waiver process.

Important notes: while the Student Blue website says it is open through August 31, August 1st is Wake Forest’s deadline to enroll or waive coverage. If you do not complete a waiver or enroll, you will ultimately be billed and default enrolled into WFU’s student health insurance plan. 

This next item is one I hope you will consider talking about with your students: getting an on-campus job. A couple of years ago, I ran a Daily Deac that talked about students having part-time jobs while in college. One of the prevailing assumptions is that having a part-time job might detract from one’s studies or hurt one’s GPA, and yet the research says otherwise. My campus colleagues who work with student employment tell me:

• Studies from the Bureau of Statistics have shown that undergraduate students who work part-time in college (up to 20 hours per week) have higher GPAs than students who don’t work at all. Students attributed this to learning to become more organized and manage their time.
  
• There was also a study from Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations that found that students who work a part-time job while in college earn higher salaries afterwards. Their findings suggest that employers pay a wage premium for three things: earning college credits; completing a degree; and a record of sustained work experience while in college. Undergraduates who both work during college and complete a degree gain the most in terms of a post-college earnings advantage.

As an educational institution, we strive to foster substantive employment opportunities that provide students transferable life skills and personal and career development to better prepare them for their calling or chosen career following graduation. In other words, the paycheck our student employees receive from campus employment isn’t the primary goal – it’s part of a broader package of personal and career preparation. 

Campus Recreation is our largest student employer on campus, and the need has never been greater for student employees. So many of our students use our the Wellbeing Center to work out, and/or they participate in Club or Intramural sports or other Campus Rec offerings like Outdoor Pursuits. It takes a lot of student workers to help staff the gym, referee games, and plan/host those events. We hope you will encourage your student to get involved in Campus Rec employment!

An important part of becoming employed is bringing the correct documentation with you to college needed for I9 verification. Campus Rec regularly has students who have applied, interviewed, and been offered campus employment but they do not have their needed I9 documents from home. Students whose documents arrive weeks after the school year begins risk missing out on student employment training at the start of the semester and building connections with other student coworkers. Please send your students with the appropriate documents at the start of school. (You can always have your student mail them back to you once their employment is cleared).

And that is another reason to consider getting a job with Campus Rec – you become part of a team. You automatically build a personal network that will include staff members (who can be very helpful when a student needs a mentor or an adult’s assistance) as well as other students who can form part of your social network. This can be especially beneficial for incoming first-year students and transfer students who are looking to make friends and find their niche on campus. 

Even if they don’t need the money, or if the job is not directly related to their intended major or desired career path, nearly every job can provide students with transferable skills. These skills and experiences can be highlighted on resumes and in interviews to demonstrate to future employers their breadth of experience, reliability, teamwork, and more.

We have a Student Employment page with lots of resources, and students can also check in Handshake to see the available on-campus job offerings. 

All of our students love using our amazing Wellbeing Center, the gym, and its many programs. Please encourage your Deac to consider being a Campus Rec student employee so that we can continue to offer the wide range of programs and services our students want.

I also wanted to mention another student entrepreneurship venture that has been in place for many years: Wake Wash. This is a business borne by students and run by students (and alumni). It is a laundry service.

Here’s what one of our Wake Wash students asked to share with the Daily Deacdom:

“We are Wake Wash, Wake Forest’s exclusively licensed alumni-owned and student-operated laundry delivery service. We provide laundry bags for students; they leave their dirty clothes outside their dorm room, which we then pick up and return – washed and folded! – two days later. In addition, we offer a full pick-up and drop-off dry cleaning service.

Please visit our website for sign-up and more information, or contact us directly at bryanp@wakewashwfu.com with any questions. Go Deacs!” 

Finally today, two important updates for incoming families:

Our Weekly Update for Incoming Families was sent out; read it here.

Some of you have emailed me asking what the location is for the What to Know Before You Go program on 8/18. Because students will be in an Orientation program in Wait Chapel at that same time as What to Know Before You Go, we do not have another campus venue large enough to accommodate all families. Therefore, we will be seating families in several smaller spaces and livestreaming the program. As such, we need an accurate count of attendees so we know how to assign viewing locations. Once we have an accurate count of families attending, we will begin to assign viewing locations. Those locations will be shared with registered guests via email a day or two before the event. Thanks for your patience until then.

–– by Betsy Chapman, Ph.D. (’92, MA ’94)

August 1, 2022