The evolution of student employment at ASU
The Work+ story
The evolution of Work+
Work+ began with a question: how do students build valuable, professional skills through student employment and learn how to articulate those skills post-graduation? At ASU, student employment is an integrated working and learning experience, driven by ASU’s Charter and designed to impact student success. Work+ brings that vision to life by creating opportunities for students to build career readiness through the work they are already doing.
Work+ was created with the intention to support the following three core outcomes:
Increasing career readiness.
Enriching supervisor and student employee relationships.
Helping students build confidence in articulating their transferable skills and future career goals.
The evolution of Work+ reflects ASU’s ongoing effort to better support both students and supervisors in achieving those outcomes.
Phase 1
Recognizing student employment as a learning experience
From what if to how can we.
From the initial question, Work+ set out with a big idea: to create a student employment model that became the learning experience. The first iteration, named the Working Learners Program (WLP), sought to make student employment intentional. By embedding professional development into the job itself and creating reflection-based modules grounded in competency standards, we affirmed that student employment could be a learning experience.
As the pilot progressed, however, we discovered an important insight: the day-to-day student experience was heavily shaped by supervisors. While student-facing content was valuable, supervisors needed to be active partners in student reflection.
Phase 2
Investing in supervisors as learning partners
Based on feedback from students and supervisors, the Working Learners Program evolved into Work+.
Based on feedback from students and supervisors, the Working Learners Program evolved into Work+. This next phase represented a major shift in philosophy. Rather than focusing primarily on student completion of modules, Work+ began emphasizing the role supervisors play in creating developmental employment experiences.
This was a fundamental shift in how we approached redesigning the student employment experience. Work+ began to center supervisor relationships as the driver of learning. The framework also expanded to include structured opportunities for students to build career readiness, reflect on their experiences, develop a professional story, and connect on-campus work to future careers.
As adoption expanded across ASU, a key lesson emerged. Calling Work+ a “program” created barriers. Departments viewed it as an additional requirement rather than a framework designed to enhance the work they were already doing. Reframing Work+ from a program to a framework was essential to institutional adoption.
Phase 3
Work+ as a framework for the student employee experience
From supporting individual supervisors to building the institutional model
The third evolution of Work+ focuses on scale. Work+ is no longer a standalone initiative, but a framework that shapes the student employment experience across ASU. Rather than a program to implement, it provides a shared approach that can be adapted across roles, teams, and contexts.
At the center of this evolution is a shift from viewing student employment as transactional to recognizing it as an intentional working and learning experience. Supervisors are essential partners in that experience. Work+ provides shared language, tools, and resources that help supervisors build on what they may already be doing well and more intentionally connect students’ work, learning, and career growth.
The latest iteration of Work+ helps students recognize the skills they are building through their work, connect those skills to their career goals, and articulate the value of their student employment experience.