Student Feature: YSU employment opportunities give real-world experience and enhance career readiness in students
FEATURE STORY
Story by: Hannah Werle, Journalism major
Photography by: Omar Frazier, Multimedia Communication major
For many Youngstown State University students, college is about more than just taking classes, professional experiences are a vital part of their academic journey. At YSU, students don’t have to look farther than their own campus to find jobs and gain valuable career experience.
For years, students have been using student-employment opportunities to gain career experience, make money and balance their academic and professional lives. These three students are just a few examples of the many ways students are finding career preparation at YSU.
Jordyn Juillerat, a junior Astronomy and Physics major, found a career opportunity within the Ward Beecher Planetarium where she assists and speaks at planetarium shows. As an Astronomy and Physics major, her job is incredibly relevant to her schooling and future career.
“I never really studied the nighttime sky as much as I should have being an astronomy major, but now that I listen to these shows, I’ve learned so much,” Juillerat said. “While our shows are more centered to general audiences, I still learn things from them.”
Juillerat’s role at the planetarium is also helping her prepare for the future. She said she’d one day like to do what she’s doing full time, and lead planetarium shows at a science center or another planetarium. By gaining experience at the planetarium now, she’s developing valuable skills and tools that she can use in her career.
Juillerat has been working at the planetarium since fall 2022, which has given her a unique perspective on handling work emergencies. Just one semester after Juillerat started, the planetarium fire and subsequent repairs forced shows to move online for over a year.
“It definitely was a huge learning experience, because I went from doing normal shows to, just like that, doing shows online through Facebook Live,” Juillerat said.
She explained that although it had its ups and downs, doing the planetarium’s star talks online helped her become comfortable and made it easier to speak at shows once the planetarium reopened.
Another student gaining valuable work experience at her YSU job is MiaCarmela Barber, a junior Human Resource Management major who works at the Penguin Service Center.
Her role at the service center is to help students find online resources and troubleshoot issues with their Penguin Portal. These experiences, she said, have helped her gain worthwhile tools for her professional career.
“I’m working with people, it's customer service, so helping people like that definitely applies to the professional skills I might need in a future career. I’m developing my communication skills — that’s a big thing I’m learning with this job,” Barber said.
Since starting in May, Barber said, working at the Penguin Service Center has helped her develop more soft skills, such as problem-solving and communication skills.
“I really do need to be able to have a student tell me something, and even though I may not understand what they need, I have to figure it out and help them through it,” Barber said. “With HR, I need to be able to communicate, problem solve and I need to be able to deal with different types of situations. I do that — and every day here is different, so I think that’ll help me in my field.”
Barber said working at the Penguin Service Center has been one of the best working experiences she’s ever had.
“This job, it’s the best job I’ve had by far. I’m so happy to be working here, it's a great job. I love working here, I have an amazing boss and it's given me a lot of skills,” Barber said.
Barber isn’t the only student who spoke about the supportive environment she’s found in her YSU position. Rochelle Barone-Maldonado became a student employee when she started in YSU’s IT Tech Academy program three years ago.
The Tech Academy is a program that allows Information Technology students to further enhance their career-readiness by giving students high-impact practical experiences and application on what they learn in the classroom. Students in the program spend their first year gaining experience in customer service and support at the Service Desk, their second year in Field Services, and their third and fourth years in their chosen specialty.
One beneficial part of the Tech Academy program, Barone-Maldonado said, is her supportive leadership and the environment she was given to learn and fail forward.
“I feel like this is a good environment to learn all these things, because when you're in a business, corporation or something larger, I feel like you're not quite allowed to mess up and not know things. That is, versus here, where they're more than willing to teach you how it works.” Barone-Maldonado said. “So it's been a really good learning opportunity, which I appreciate. I don't know if it would have been quite as nice somewhere else.”
Barone-Maldonado is a senior working out of the IT Infrastructure Services department, helping with systems management. She said the opportunity to work in this program has given her a lot of experiences that she can use in her career.
“I’m learning a lot of the mechanics of how things work and what the systems are, what they’re used for — all that translates to any career I’ll have going forward,” Barone-Maldonado said.
Barone-Maldonado said this job has also taught her skills like troubleshooting and helped her understand how systems operate.
“I’m gaining a lot of soft skills, and more than that, I’m learning and starting to understand how everything is interconnected — it’s like a well-oiled machine, with all the different parts working in tandem,” Barone-Maldonado explained.
For all of these students, their campus employment provided an opportunity to expand their career without leaving the limits of home. Whether it's soft skills or field-related knowledge, working in a student-employment position allows students to learn — and take that knowledge into their future.