After a two-year vacancy, Student Involvement filled its Director position with Jessica Murphy who previously worked at the University of Georgia as director of student activities along with other positions. Two weeks after starting her new job as NC State’s University Director of Student Involvement, Murphy sat down with Technician to discuss her new role and outlook.
What are your duties as the Student Involvement director? What’s a day in the life like?
My duties as director are basically to create a vision inside the office or the center of Student Involvement for the team and to champion student involvement on campus. That involves meeting with partners around campus that serve students, meeting with students to facilitate that process and sort of a conduit of student involvement.
What was your background like before coming to NC State?
Before NC State, I was at the University of Georgia, and I was the director of the Center for Student Activities and Involvement. I would say I’m in probably year 14 of my career, and I would say probably the large part of it could be characterized as working in experiential learning, curricular and non-curricular experiential learning. So my very furthest back background involves a lot of service learning, local and international service learning. At the University of Georgia, I worked to get students involved on campus, communicate policy to students and help them understand it and led a team of people who worked on that as well.
What is your outlook towards Student Involvement and what are you hoping to accomplish?
I would say Student Involvement is essentially civic engagement while at university, whether it’s on campus or in the wider community or in the larger global community. It can look like a lot of different things. It can be participating in civic opportunities or doing research. It can be helping teach classes. It’s something that undergraduate and graduate students alike look for the opportunity to have. The goal that I carry as director is to make that the most positive experience that students can have, understanding the university and the policies that govern us.
Do you have any projects you’re currently working on?
Because it’s so early on, I would say a big focus area would be supporting student organizations on campus in terms of organization management. That’s a very large component of the work the office does. Since this is only my eighth day in the desk with the weather, I really don’t have those things set out yet.
How big is the office or how many employees are in Student Involvement?
I would say there’s a team of around seven full time professional staff members and around a dozen student staff members.We have two graduate students working in the office. I guess you could say we have nine professional staff members since we count them as professional staff members.
Do you interact with students on a daily basis?
That’s the goal! I’ll be meeting with more students as time goes on, and I’ve met a lot of friendly faces. Most of the students that I’ve met are involved in student organizations on campus either because I’ve gone to their meetings or they’ve stopped by to introduce themselves. I have a foot in both worlds with meeting with students and then working with campus partners and other department heads.
What’s your favorite thing about NC State so far?
I would say the diversity. There’s a lot of different kinds of people here, people with different kinds of identities, I like that a lot. I think Student Involvement has a really special place at every institution, and it’s an office for every student to connect with so we want our office to be accessible and welcoming and inclusive to all students.
