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Undergraduate Student Employee of the Year 2008

Gary L. Belleville
Student Employee Appreciation Week
Undergraduate Student Employee of the Year, 2007/08

Christopher Broomell

Winning Nomination:

My nominee for student employee of the year has influenced and guided thousands of new students this year with the knowledge and expertise that he gained through his coursework and employment at Western Michigan University.

This is just one of the quantifiable attributes by which he, as a student employee can be measured and the quality of this work can only be measured by the satisfied students that don't even know his name.

This student came into our department and we were immediately impressed. He started work at our Cable and Telephone Customer Service desk and after making the decision to take on a technical study in the field of Computer Information Systems he came to me and said “I want a challenge, and I want experience” For a student employee that is a rare desire and as a student he couldn't have made a better decision.

At the OIT Help Desk he became acclimated within weeks and before we could blink our eyes he virtually promoted himself into the role of Student Lead* with his fast-paced learning ability and quick reflex to step up to the plate and lend a hand. Immediately upon his promotion he began advanced work to program new systems in for the Help Desk that would increase the productivity of its staff, provide management with priceless information, and revolutionize the way in which students prepare their computers to connect to the internet here at WMU with the Webkit CD.

Students today are bombarded with technology from all angles and computers have become the core backbone of our academic, professional, and social lives. Almost every student who comes to Western will bring a computer and run the Webkit to get connected the internet. Each and every student who ran the Webkit this year was successful and problem free because this student did all of the hard work for them, months earlier. Because of the new features that he added to the Webkit the Help Desk received less calls and students where able to get connected to MySpace and Facebook in record time, oh, and of course to goWMU .

It has been my pleasure to work with this student as he represents to me the ideal student employee who learns from his coursework and at the same time directly transfers his knowledge back to his fellow students to better their experience. He should be the student employee of the year because he is the most valuable, the most desirable, and with all his knowledge and technical expertise, the most humble and easy to talk to.

Although we are sad to see him leave, we know that whatever he chooses to pursue, he will continue to make this looming mist of technology around us easier air to breath.

*Help Desk Student Lead
Leads the Help Desk student staff in their every day work. Co-manages the operations of the Help Desk. Develops documentation, web pages, self-help resources, troubleshooting methods and training for Help Desk student staff and WMU public. He has been employed at the Help Desk for the past two years.