Student Employment

Teaching and graduate assistantships may be available to master’s students through various offices or departments on campus. It is the student’s responsibility to explore employment opportunities on campus. The School Counseling program is challenging, and since maintaining a half-time assistantship as a full-time student may be difficult at times, discussing the requirements of such an assistantship with both employer and academic advisor may be important. Some students are employed on an hourly basis through the funded ON TRACK project. Approximately half of School Counseling students have an assistantship on campus, which they secure independently.

ON TRACK: An Employment Opportunity

Since spring of 2006, approximately 8 first- and second-year School Counseling students have been employed each academic year in ON TRACK, a locally gift-funded (banks, corporations) project that offers small-group guidance to students in the Lafayette School Corporation at one or both middle schools, Jefferson High School, AIM (alternative high school), LEAP (alternative middle school), and sometimes the Lyn Treece Boys and Girls Club. Supervision is provided by a faculty member in School Counseling, and weekly debriefing involves guidance and trouble-shooting.  The small-group work involves semi-structured, focused discussion of development-oriented topics, using Jean Peterson’s The Essential Guide To Talking With Teens.

With a relatively generous hourly pay rate, a chance to gain valuable experience in small-group work, and a small group of program peers involved concurrently, ON TRACK offers a rare training and service opportunity for anyone interested and available,  especially for students without assistantships. The project normally is organized in late August, with weekly training meetings and with groups actually beginning in mid-October. Group facilitators typically lead 2-6 groups each.  Facilitators are paid for both the weekly debriefing hour and one hour of preparation each week. Dr. Peterson directs the project. Contact her if you are interested in participating. Students in the School Counseling program are given preference for employment, although Counseling Psychology students sometimes are also employed at times.