The International Program at Colorado Mesa University brings in international students from all over the place to receive an education here. There’s one large stipulation, though.
International students are here on student visas and cannot go out and get jobs locally. They can, however, work on campus, and Custodial Services is a big contributor in providing jobs to the foreign students.
“A lot of them are not able to work off campus, so we try to work with them and try to hire as many of them as we can,” Custodial Supervisor Shari Burkhalter said. “A lot of them stay on and work for us during the summer, too. We hire students to work for us full time during the summer months and a lot of our international students stay on and do that.”
Burkhalter estimated that Custodial has about 15-20 international students working for them right now across the day and night shifts.
Since most international students can’t get jobs outside of the CMU campus, several of them stick with Custodial throughout college, according to Burkhalter.
“We have some that work for us from the time they’re first starting as freshmen, and they work for us until they graduate,” Burkhalter said.
According to Burkhalter, all students start out at minimum wage with Custodial jobs but are given raises over time, based off of performance. Burkhalter said that the majority of the foreign students who work for Custodial are on work study programs. She didn’t know for certain whether work study was required for them, but she didn’t think it was.
“We hire as many of them as we can,” Burkhalter said. “A lot of them, it’s hard to work their schedules with their class schedules, but as many of them as we can hire, we do.”
