Tag: Willie Smoker

By Nick Stern, Senior Reporter | Photo by Nick Stern

This year the Student Employee Appreciation and Recognition Committee has once again hosted a luncheon, of the same name, in honor of the exemplary performance seen from student employees all over CNM, said Administrative Technical Assistant for TRIO Student Support Services, Willie Smoker.

The luncheon invited about 370 different student work-study employees and the Committee showed its appreciation and recognition by awarding one person with the Outstanding Student Employee Award and scholarship along with three honorable mentions, he said.

“We just want to show the stu­dent employees here how important they are, and to kind of let them know that all of their hard work is being recognized by ourselves and their supervisors and even administration here at CNM,” Smoker said.

Psychology major and student employee, Kallie Gibson, who won the Outstanding Student Employee Award, said she really loved what her supervisor had to say about her, and that she feels she has gotten really close to her supervisor explaining she became her go to person in their office.

“I feel very honored. It’s hard for me to accept a lot of recognition and acknowledgement from a large party, and to also be placed at all the cam­puses of CNM,” Gibson said.

The winner of the award was chosen by a nomination form that goes out to all student employee supervisors which they use to nomi­nate the students in their depart­ments who they think has earned it the most, Smoker said.

The nominations are then voted for by the committee in a blind panel and then the winner is declared and presented with the reward during the annual luncheon, he said.

“Kallie Gibson, who is a stu­dent employee at Montoya campus Student Services, gets the reward and scholarship for Outstanding Student Employee this year and we are all very proud,” Smoker said.

There was also a large amount of door prizes given out to all the people who attended the luncheon, so every­one who left did so with something in hand to go with the recognition they received, he said.

The luncheon was held on Friday, April 11 at the Student Services Center Cafeteria at Main campus and there were more than 210 RSVPs for the event, he said.

Smoker said that the student employees benefit greatly from the event because he believes that many of the working stu­dents go above and beyond their job descriptions, and that a lot of the different departments at school eventually come to rely on the hard work that is done by those students, he said.

Smoker said that many of these employees do not realize how important they are to the community and how much their hard work has a hand in the smooth operations of the school’s different departments, he said.

“We need to show them that is the case and that student employ­ment is actually a really important job to have, because it helps you grow personally and profession­ally,” he said.

The Student Employee Appreciation and Recognition Committee at CNM actu­ally follows suit with National Student Employment Appreciation, which is the association that first began the Student Employment Appreciation and Recognition week, Smoker said.

Student Employment Appreciation and Recognition week is offi­cially held this year from April 13 until April 19 and CNM does plan to keep celebrating the week with their annual luncheon in the future for as many years as possible, Smoker said.

Students who are either employed or seek­ing student employment need to remember that it is a real job that they are getting themselves into and that means it is just as important that they take pride in it as they would anything else while also taking it easy on them­selves, Smoker said.

“Just treat your job like a real job and do not over­commit yourself. Make sure that the department is a good fit for you and you might want to seek some­thing you can get real-world experience on top of that,” Smoker said.

The SEAR committee is a very hard-working com­munity that picks up the task of hosting the luncheon every year and it is such a big event that it takes the entire com­mittee to run properly and feed more than 200 people, but the SEAR committee and its purpose are absolutely necessary to the community, Smoker said.