Graduate Student Employee of the Year 2020

Congratulations to McKayla 'Mickey' Menzel

Department: Student Engagement and Success

Supervisor: Emily Guetzoian

McKayla Menzel is a student in the MA TESOL program and will be graduating in July. Working as a Writing Consultant at PGBS has given her experience that is directly related to her studies, helped her grow as an educator and tutor, and more importantly, created opportunities to connect with the awesome students at Pepperdine and learn from them. After she graduates, McKayla hopes to continue teaching English language learners.

"Our student employee has exemplary oral and written communication skills, which is what makes her such a strong writing tutor. She has presented at new student orientation to our students, articulating the services that she provides and how she can best support new students. She has also developed and presented a workshop for our students on writing skills, and how to infuse creativity into the writing process. She is skilled at conducting virtual appointments with students who are unable to come to campus for their writing appointment.

She personalizes her support for each student that she works with. Oftentimes she has little information about a student's assignment in advance, but she knows just the right questions to ask the student in order to understand their goals for the writing session and for their paper. She appropriately adjusts her level of support to meet the student where they are at, which demonstrates effective usage of the situational leadership style.

This student's professionalism and work ethic is in the top 1% of all students that I have ever supervised (out of 300+). She is wonderful at developing content that the other writing consultants can use, such as a citation guide. She also likes to learn what the other consultants do in their appointments in order to make her own skills stronger. She is great at thinking strategically about what would be the best for our department in the future."

~ Emily Guetzoian, Supervisor