Faces of UWM: The Working Student, Jenna Stathus

Working at Cousin Subs wasn’t senior Jenna Stathus’ only job while studying at UW-Milwaukee. In just three years, Stathus has also been employed as a Domino’s delivery driver, a nanny, a computer lab supervisor at Enderis Hall, a marketing and communications intern at Froedert Hospital and as intern at Johnson Controls.

While it may seem as though Stathus lives for the paycheck, her grades and extracurricular activities will prove you wrong.

While balancing two jobs each semester, Stathus is a full-time student. She’s maintained a 3.8 GPA her junior and senior years, while also participating in extracurricular activities such as Big Brothers Big Sisters, Alpha Kappa Psi, Logistics Operations Management and Information Systems (LOMIS) and American Marketing Association.

“Hardest worker I know, male or female,” Reed Martin, procurement intern at Johnson Controls, said when asked what he thought of Stathus’ work ethic.

For many college students, juggling the stresses of finals is difficult, but add a few work shifts into the equation and the once eight hours of sleep our parents told us to get, are nonexistent. Stathus’ story is indicative of a broader trend at UWM: Most students work.

According to a 2011 National Survey of Student Engagement, 38 percent of freshman and 64 percent of seniors at UW-Milwaukee worked 20 or more hours per week.

While some use attending college and working as a free pass to complain about their busy schedules, others such as Senior Jenna Stathus, view going to school and working as a way to stay on track.

“Working so much makes me manage my time better and delegate certain hours of my day to things that make me stay motivated,” said Stathus.

Stathus falls into the 64 percent of UW- Milwaukee seniors working 20 or more hours per week. Come May, Stathus will be graduating with a degree in Marketing and Supply Chain Management. After graduation, she has accepted a position at number 68 on U.S. Fortune’s Top 500 companies, Johnson Controls.

The 22-year-old accepted a position as a program operations leadership development Associate, which is a two-year position that will rotate Stathus every four to six months to various cities across the United States. However, job positions like this do not simply fall into the hands of college graduates. One must have the drive and work ethic long before graduation approaches.

“Ever since Jenna got her first job at Cousin Subs and started getting money in her wallet, it gave her a sense of independence that she liked,” Dawn Stathus, mother of Stathus, said.

Stathus did not always look to corporate America when seeking a job. The Sussex native began working at Cousin Subs in high school as a way to save money for gas. But like most high school students, working to save money for college is a common occurrence.

Stathus chose UW-Milwaukee over UW-Whitewater because of the opportunities she could pursue in the city rather than in a small rural area. Unlike most college freshman who scrape away at their bank accounts the first couple weeks of college, Stathus was on the hunt for a job from the start, or it was back to Sussex she goes.

“My parents said I would have to drive home every weekend to work, so within the first couple days of college I walked passed Cousin Subs and asked if they were hiring,” Stathus said. “And I was hired.”

Although it may seem as though Stathus has not a brick out of place, she has had to struggle with Attention Deficit Order (ADD) since the age of 15.

“Because of her ADD she needs to stay busy, if she has too much free time or “idle time,” as my dad always said, she becomes distracted and unorganized,” Dawn Stathus said.

However, Stathus’ busy schedule has kept her focused and allowed her to not only graduate in four years, but also to spend her last semester studying abroad. She will embark on a four-month journey at sea where she will travel to 15 cities and 12 countries, some, which include China, Singapore and Morocco. Stathus has taken advantage of every college opportunity given to her and she will tell other’s to do the same.

“College is a failure free-zone,” Stathus said. “If by chance you mess up at least you tried. If you’re going to be afraid to challenge yourself in college, you’re not going to challenge yourself in the real world.”