UW-Madison Student Employment Award Recipients

Hometown: Madison, WI

Major: Psychology and Chicana/o/e and Latina/o/e Studies

Graduation: May 2024

Other campus involvement: Isa is a Mercile J. Lee Scholar at UW-Madison and an undergraduate researcher in the Preventing Interpersonal Violence and Overcoming Trauma Lab. She also is involved in the Evaluation Clinic at the Wisconsin Center for Educational Research as a clinic fellow. Previously, she has been involved in Amnesty International, the Latine Student Union, and is looking forward to taking a dance class this semester.

What is your favorite part of your job?  Originally from Madison, Isa enjoys facilitating relationships between community members, students, and professors. It can be difficult for communities and institutions to operate within silos and so she is grateful to help dismantle them.

What is the most important thing you’ve learned in your job? Isa has learned how to effectively collaborate with others and become an intentional listener. She has found this pair to assist in the creativity she finds in Madison community-based learning practices.

Hometown: Brookfield, WI

Major: Psychology and Education Studies

Graduation: May 2024

Other campus involvement: Mahika is involved in Mann Mukti, an organization that raises awareness for South Asian mental health, and She’s the First, advocating for female education. She also runs UW-Madison’s Advocates for Alzheimer’s and volunteers with the Dane County Walk Planning Committee. One of her favorite activities on campus is playing the saxophone in the University Band.

What is your favorite part of your job? Mahika’s favorite part of her job is the work environment and the people. Nowhere else will you find such a supportive and encouraging team of both full-time and student employees, all with unique interests and stories. She feels extremely lucky to be able to work alongside such wonderful people and knows that these connections will last a lifetime. She also highlights that being able to problem solve in order to help others, especially with such a great team, makes the job even better.

What is the most important thing you’ve learned in your job? Working in the Office of the Registrar has demonstrated the importance of communication within a large team. Everyone in the office has different specialties but the same goal, and Mahika values the collaboration and teamwork skills she has learned specific to such a setting.

Hometown: Suamico, WI

Major: Botany, Environmental Science, and Conservation Biology

Graduation: May 2023

After the completion of her undergrad, Cecilia plans to pursue a master’s degree related to forest science with an emphasis in tree ecophysiology. This degree will aid Cecilia in a research related job or continuing her education and pursuing a PhD.

Other campus involvement: Cecilia is the food coordinator for Hoofers Ski and Snowboard Nordic Ski team. She also plays viola in the All University Strings Orchestra and is a board member for the botany club on campus.

What is your favorite part of your job? Cecilia’s favorite part of her job is all of her coworkers. Long field days have allowed her to get to know her coworkers very well and create lifelong friendships. All of her coworkers bring unique perspectives and abilities to create an excellent lab team.

What is the most important thing you’ve learned in your job? The different sampling and processing methods are an important part of what she has learned in her position. With the variety of projects she has been a part of, she has gotten to see the different ways researchers can achieve their project’s goals. This will be highly beneficial for her future career as a researcher.

Hometown: Fuzhou, China

Major: Communication Arts-Radio/TV/Film, Japanese

Graduation: August 2023

After graduation, Joy will pursue a Master’s degree in intercultural communication studies or a career in the film/television industry.

Other campus involvement: Joy is a member of the Intervarsity Undergraduate Chapter

What is your favorite part of your job? Joy loves that she has the opportunity to work with students from different cultural backgrounds. Joy also enjoys talking to other international students at their events. One of her favorite events is PEACE (Practicing English and Cultural Exchange) because not only does she get to help new international students adapt to a new environment, she also learns many different things from them about their culture or language.

What is the most important thing you’ve learned in your job? Joy learned to be more open-minded and appreciate and respect voices from other cultures. Joy’s job at ISS often allows her to view things from another perspective, which has been extremely beneficial to her own growth as a member of the multicultural/multiethnic community we live in right now.

Hometown: Germantown, WI

Major: Finance and Economics

Graduation: May 2023

After graduation, Ethen is looking forward to joining Wabtec as a member of their Finance Leadership, Expertise, and Accelerated Development program.

Other campus involvement: Ethen is President of Collegiate DECA, a student organization focused on competing in business case study scenarios.

What is your favorite part of your job? Being able to meet and help out a wide range of students from every type of background.

What is the most important thing you’ve learned in your job? Ethen has learned a lot about how to support others and find creative solutions to whatever problems come up.

Mina House is currently working as a Peer Advising Coordinator for International Student Services (ISS). In her role she supports office management and processes immigration paperwork, while supervising 8 to 11 graduate student workers. She proactively works to improve the efficiency and accuracy of information flowing to and from the office. A large portion of her role is to recruit, hire, train, and supervise a team of graduate students called Peer Advisors.

Mina currently serves as a steering committee member with WiGROW to enhance the student and supervisor relationship on campus. Within this role she has learned from other departments the best strategies when supporting students as they work and study at UW-Madison. In addition to this, Mina is also a member of NAFSA: Association of International Educators and Wisconsin Association of International Educators (WAIE) national and regional associations that encourage and support the growth of international students as they study and work in the US. Lastly, Mina is also a liaison for several departments on and off campus to provide the best support to international students.

Mina has learned so much in her role over the past 4 years supporting and supervising students at ISS. Student employees continue to bring new inquiries and experiences that can challenge their supervisor. It has been rewarding to support these students through these challenges and see them grow within their role at ISS. Mina’s favorite thing to do when working with students is to have each student employee do a reflection exercise to think more about their time at ISS, and what skills can be gained when working in this office. Student employees begin to realize how many skills they have gained as time goes on, and how it can be used in their future careers.

To current and former Badgers, keep challenging yourself and strive to achieve all of your goals, because you never know where it might take you!