Most academic libraries rely on student employees to interface with patrons and keep the library functioning. Student supervisors are often tasked with training and managing numerous students, with varying levels of support and guidance from their institutions. 

In 2025-26 the Student Employment Project Group created four documents to begin compiling resources to support student employee supervisors and those who manage the work of student employees at member institutions.These documents are a first pass at compiling resources and are not comprehensive or extensive. They are, however, a good place to start!

In May of 2026, the group hosted a Zoom session to summarize their work, highlight wellness for student supervisors as a priority, and gather information about the needs of student supervisors in the Alliance. Presentation portions of this session were recorded and are available here (link coming soon!).

Customer Service Skills for Student Employees

Student employees who staff service points are given the important responsibility of being the ‘face’ of the library. This document explores some concepts in customer service to help supervisors train their student employees to be prepared to do this work.

Labor Laws for Student Employees

This document summarizes information about how labor laws in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho apply to student employees. It covers and links to resources about minimum wage, break time laws, and which workplace posters are required in each state.

Individual institutions may have specific requirements that aren’t listed in this document. Don’t forget to check with your institution’s Human Resources or Student Employment Office for further guidance.

Teaching the Basics in a Not-Basic Environment

Student employee supervisors are often tasked with training and managing people who have never had a job before, or are returning to the workforce and school after a long period away from those environments. This presents unique challenges in teaching skills that feel basic or implicitly understood, but are not basic or implicit for everyone.

This document defines and explores skills that are considered basic in the wider workforce and offers resources which might help library student employee supervisors identify and teach those skills in the library context.

Wellness and Support for Student Supervisors

Though each institution is unique, many student employee supervisors are tasked with overseeing many student employees, sometimes as an add-on to an otherwise full job. Student employees are sometimes viewed as a resource by other library staff, but are less often viewed as a large, emotionally complex workload for the supervisor. The work of managing the student employees often falls on paraprofessional staff, who increasingly experience job creep and additional work as staff and budgets are cut. These factors make student employee supervisors susceptible to burnout and other challenges around wellbeing. 

This document offers a starting point for finding resources to support your wellbeing as a student supervisor.