I occasionally glanced over to watch the school’s food service lady smile and laugh by herself, off to the side, throughout my Dance Floor Theory training at Queensborough Community College. Her smile and laugh both seemed so genuine. It almost felt like I was secretly looking into a moment she was having with her best friend over a glass of wine. Each time I saw her, it made my soul smile, but not for the obvious reason you might think.
Campus food service people are present at almost every campus event. Where there are student events, there is free food. As the servers of this free food, the food service people get to, for better or worse, see a ton of guest speakers. Too much of any one thing diminishes the value. At some point, I assume these service people get sick of the idea of yet another speaker they have to sit through because they’ve seen it all.
As I glanced over each time and saw her smiling and laughing, I felt a higher level of joy within myself, because not only was I making an impact on the students, I was making an impact on her as well.
Making an impact on campus staff can be difficult for the aforementioned reasons. But campus staff engagement is important to student retention rates because a typical staff member might interact with a dozen students throughout a single day. Each interaction will either increase our decrease a students sense of campus belonging.
Campus staff personnel are the bus drivers on campus. Change their attitude, and you change the attitude of everyone on the bus.
So next time you walk past a campus staff member, take a moment to connect with them, because by connecting with them, you are really connecting with a dozen students they will end up interacting with throughout the day.
