Part of my job as the Graduate Assistant for the CMU Student Food Pantry is working with a team of Student Coordinators and Student Board. The Student Coordinators are students who working in the Volunteer Center as the Student Food Pantry coordinators. They help organize volunteers, run distributions, and much more. The Student Board is comprised of students who were interested in getting more involved with the Student Food Pantry and they volunteer, help with volunteer trainings, and inform what we are doing in the pantry overall.
This year brought it extra challenges because I had to figure out how to keep them all engaged and invested in the Student Food Pantry virtually. As the new Graduate Assistant this was a daunting task because I was learning an entirely new role while also navigating the changes in the pantry due to COVID-19 and working with my students online.
Student Coordinators were the students I was in the most contact with. To keep us all safe I separated us into two teams and we had set times we were each in the pantry and they were never together. That meant I saw the two students on my team but only saw the other team virtually. To keep us all on the same page I began to send weekly updates to all my student coordinators. These emails sometimes had a fun thing for them to do such as send me a meme and then reminders about the week, what was going on, and anything else I needed them to know. These emails were extremely helpful in keeping us all connected during this wild semester and making sure they all knew what was happening in the pantry. Additionally, I set up weekly meetings with each of my student coordinators to talk about what they were doing in the pantry, what was going well, and their goals for the week. The meetings were nice because it was time I could learn more about each of my students and still be there as a supervisor for them.
Student Board did not begin until later in the semester but we started with having the three of them be the only volunteers in the pantry and help out with distributions. This worked out extremely well that we will be continuing it after COVID-19. Having them in the pantry once a week was helpful with packing bags and stocking shelves and they were key to the pantries success this semester. Besides them coming into the pantry, I sent regular emails to the board about what was going on to keep them updated.
Additionally, we started monthly full board meetings with myself, the board, and the coordinators that were all done virtually. At these we did different team building activities, discussed what was and was not working in the pantry, and even played Among Us for some fun! Our board meetings were absolutely the most helpful for keeping everyone engaged because it gave us all a chance to get to know on another. I will be continuing these meetings into the Spring Semester and keep adding some fun aspects into them because it is truly how my team has connected.
Overall, while this semester was definitely crazy in my new role as a supervisor, but I am proud of the ways I helped keep my students engaged throughout the semester. Now, I am excited to start planning new ways to continue this during next semester!
Abbey Claes 