By Marette Hahn
GCU Career Services
When you sit down with Autumn Gilchriest and Stephen Crane, this month's Student Workers of the Month, you immediately feel at ease. They exude hard work, customer service, strategic thinking and a true enjoyment of working with others.
Gilchriest and Crane both started their student worker experience at the ITS Staff Help Desk. However, with their exemplary work ethics and service-oriented dispositions, it’s not a surprise that they were promoted to even bigger responsibilities.
Gilchriest, a senior Forensic Sciences major, now works as a Network Operations Center (NOC) Technician, where she gets to try her hand with servers on a much larger scale. Crane, a junior Entrepreneurial Studies major, is now with End Point, which requires a higher level of technology software understanding and supports full-time staffers.
Gilchriest initially applied for the NOC full-time position just to practice interviewing, and they were so impressed with her and her potential, they brought her on as a student worker so she could start learning earlier.
When she’s not busy taking care of our servers, she is out enjoying her classwork, which includes learning about instrumental analysis, toxicology, blood spatter and DNA testing. As if that wasn’t enough, she’s also in a band (name yet to be determined) and sings on the weekends.
Crane also started his student worker career at the IT Help Desk before working his way up to End Point, where he ensures that staff is equipped and prepared to use the equipment and we have the technology we need to be successful.
When he’s not working, you can find him in his early Colangelo College of Business classes, at Chapel on Mondays, playing Ultimate Frisbee or basketball, at youth group, or hiking. He’s excited to apply his entrepreneurial education to wherever his career path takes him.
Both Gilchriest and Crane were nominated for Student Worker of the Month by Bree Speed and Shareka Purnell. Robert Knowlton also nominated Gilchriest.
They wrote about Gilchriest: “She … upholds the values of the mission by celebrating community. She has brought a vibrant energy dedicated to building relationships across multiple teams that provides compassionate support to our internal customers.”
About Crane, they wrote: “Stephen stepped up when an opportunity to work in another location presented itself. In doing so, he showed his overall job knowledge and that we could trust him to be a self-starter and get work done.”
In their presence, it’s obvious that Gilchriest and Crane work hard and are well-rounded with customer service focuses. Gilchriest shared that her desire to work in forensics, and eventually computer forensics, began with former teachers Mr. Semenjuk and Mr. Johnson when they fueled her passion for the sciences. Crane shared his appreciation for his coworkers and wanted to give a shout-out to his “P-Town boys.”
It’s evident these two have bright futures ahead of them and will make GCU proud no matter where they go.
