National Student Employment Week: Celebrating Meadows’ Student Workers

Meadows wouldn’t be the same without our many dedicated student employees who help keep the school running smoothly on a daily basis. In honor of National Student Employment Week, we’re taking behind-the-scenes look at what some of our student workers handle on a regular basis for the recruitment team, ticketing office, and more. Explore the responsibilities and accomplishments of our valued student workers below.

RECRUITMENT

One of the most visible groups of student workers at SMU Meadows is the Meadows Admission Ambassadors. These students help give tours and talk about Meadows academic programs, opportunities, and outcomes to visiting prospective students and their families, high school groups, educators and college counselors, and more. They represent Meadows at college fairs and student panels, as well as handle administrative work in the Meadows Admission office and personal outreach to individual students.

Will Emmert (Voice, ’24), one of Meadows’ Lead Ambassadors who has been a member of the team since his sophomore year, has contributed to countless events and designed various projects for the team, including the slideshow currently running in the admission office. Emmert says, “I love how the Meadows community feels like a family with supportive faculty and the feeling of not being just another student, but rather a member of that family.”

Often, admitted students talk about the personal connection to the people in Meadows that convinced them to choose to attend SMU. Meadows Admission Ambassadors like Emmert help cultivate those connections and do a lot of work to help support the operation of recruitment events, and overall Meadows culture and enrollment.

TICKETING

Like the Admissions Office, the Meadows Box Office in many ways provides a first impression to students and families of SMU and to patrons in the community. Since the Box Office is centrally located, student workers often greet visiting students and their families and show them how to get around Owen Arts Center. The Box Office student workers provide the front of house staffing for all Meadows events, whether or not they are ticketed, and often staff over 200 events a year. In the month of April alone, student workers will cover over 25 events and have as many as three performances in a single day!

Ticketing student workers like Sophia Harris (Dance, ’25) says that the staffing a show includes a variety of responsibilities like ushering, taking tickets, running will call, working box office, and selling at the door tickets, and even says that experienced workers will also work with the stage manager of the event to ensure it runs smoothly.

During the daytime, the Meadows Box Office staff serves not only as ambassadors but also as marketers. Student workers populate community calendars across the Metroplex with our events as well as hanging posters and distributing flyers all over campus. As no two days are alike, and every opportunity is a learning opportunity, students are well-trained in customer service and develop great skills in interacting with the public.

DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION (DEI)

When Diversity Officer Karen Thomas was in need of a student worker to assist in her duties and tap into students to assess their needs, she was recommended graduate percussionist student Torrance Buntyn Jr (Music, ’24) to help out. According to Thomas, he has exceeded expectations and has been a great asset to the program. Together, they organized a meet-and-greet last spring for Black faculty and students, where Buntyn provided an ice-breaker exercise for the cross-discipline gathering, placing participants at ease. The evening resulted in flowing conversation and much needed connections.

Buntyn was also instrumental in helping Thomas plan Meadows’ very first “Together We Dine program” last fall. The program, started by SMU alum and Meadows board member Pastor Richie Butler, allows folks to have safe conversations about race and other issues while eating a shared meal. The event was paired to a current art exhibit by Advertising Professor Willie Baronet called We Are All Homeless. This semester, Buntyn is contributing to the DEI program by working on creating mini profiles of faculty, staff and students who represent the rich fabric of Meadows, which will be rolled out soon.

“The work he has done will continue to provide a roadmap for future events,” says Thomas.

DEAN’S OFFICE

Student workers assigned to the Dean’s Office are quite literally the first face Meadows visitors are greeted with when entering the school. They are stationed outside of the Dean’s Office in the Owen Arts Center, where their tasks include greeting visitors to the Dean’s Office, answering general questions through walk-ins or calls to the office, as well as sorting and distributing incoming mail to the Dean’s Office. They also support the Dean’s assistant with projects related to monthly mailings and preparations for larger events.

The two current student workers, Celia Handing (Dance, '24) and Will Schmitt (Theatre, '26), also support Meadows development office with donor relations needs such as preparing mailings, handwriting thank you notes, and deliveries across campus in addition to their duties to the main Dean’s Office.

MARKETING

Even Meadows’ Marketing team has a student worker! The team’s current employee, graduate student Angela Molinero (MADI, ’25), has prior professional experience as a Marketing Coordinator, and says that working for the Marketing team “offers opportunities to be creative, innovative and to have a significant impact on people's awareness.”

Utilizing her previously acquired skills, Molinero helps with digital projects like editing Meadows-related website pages and the layout design of the weekly newsletter, “This Week at Meadows.” She has also recently had the opportunity to spend time assisting with the complete redesign of SMU Data Arts website through a Human Centered Design (HCD) framework. As a Design and Innovation graduate student, Molinero’s HCD focus helps her come up with new ideas and problem solving in a discerning way by prioritizing the user’s experience.

Thank you to all of our Meadows student workers for your time, energy, and hard work that you contribute to the school on a regular basis!