Emergency Response Plan

The following was posted to the Student Assistant blog today.  I would encourage you all to review procedures as well.  (You can take the quiz if you'd like, but it's not required for you!)  We have added an Emergency Response Plan link on the ISD website as well so that you will always have quick and easy access to the information you may need.

In light of both local and national events in the past few weeks, we feel that it is an important time to review procedures that can help us deal with emergencies in an informed manner. The library student assistant website has a new link (left column) to Emergency Response Plan. The landing page from this link will lead you to both the North Central College Emergency Response Plan as well as information and quick tips pertinent to specific types of emergencies.

All student assistant are required to review all sections of the  North Central College Emergency Response Plan and our quick tips. Once you have finished this review, you must also complete a short quiz. This work can be done during your normal work hours, and the quiz should be submitted for our review no later than Sunday, October 18. Please do not hesitate to contact Heidi or me if you have any questions about these procedures.

Latest Assessment Activity post

Today I posted the following on the Student Assistant blog:

During the Assessment Activity at the Student Assistant Orientation, it was suggested that we should allow students to work in longer shifts during the academic term. Although I can respect that longer shifts may be appealing to some, I do not feel that it is feasible for us to offer this option.  Here are a few reasons why:

*Many of you have indicated that you like the fact that we don’t hassle you or expect you to get coverage for your shift when you are ill, have an emergency situation, etc. We try to respect your need for time off when we can, but the bottom line is that we need to make sure we have enough staff in the building to maintain normal operations. This is sometimes challenging for a 2-3 hour shift, but each hour added to that shift makes it increasingly difficult to cover your duties when you are unexpectedly absent.  

*Perhaps one of the most common responses we received during the assessment activity was that you like that we are flexible enough in our scheduling to accommodate most of your schedule preferences. And let’s face it, some of your schedules are pretty crazy! Assigning your work schedules for the term is a complicated process, and our ability to honor most of your schedule requests is very directly related to the length of our work shifts. Allowing longer work shifts would make this process even more challenging, and we would lose some of the options that accommodate busy schedules.

*We are legally required to give any staff member who works 4 consecutive hours a 15 minute unpaid break. If we were to allow 4 hour (or longer) shifts, we would need to plan for coverage during break times. This would add one more factor to that complex scheduling matrix, and flexible scheduling would again be at risk.

Always feel free to share ideas for improvement!  We can’t always act on those ideas, but every suggestion will be heard and considered.

Update on Assessment Activity from S.A. Orientation

Just FYI... I posted the following on the student assistant blog today:

Thanks to all of you who took a few minutes during the Student Assistant Orientation to give us some thoughtful comments and suggestions about how we are doing with the student assistant program and library services. While we may have spent the first few days chuckling over some of your humorous suggestions, we have since been contemplating ways we might incorporate or implement some of your great ideas. Throughout the next several weeks I will be using this blog to share with you both suggestions that we will be able to act on as well as explanations for why other great ideas are not feasible at this time. Please feel free to use the comment section to share other thoughts or ideas as appropriate.

To get us started, I want you to know that we are in the process of purchasing a number of wall chargers (both Apple and Android) and two power banks that will be available for loan for short term use. Patrons will be required to leave an ID at the desk while they have these items.

We appreciate the suggestion to add these items to our services. Once we have the items ready for use, we will need to get the word out to students to let them know they are available.  Please use the comments section below to give us ideas on how best to advertise this service!