Student Employees and Student Supervisors Honored

More than 80 people gathered in Roski Dining Hall on Friday, April 17, 2026, to honor student employees and student employee supervisors at the annual Loyola Marymount University Student Employees and Supervisor of the Year Award Ceremony, which also concluded the festivities for Student Employee Appreciation Week.

Andreas Infante '28, an undergraduate student who works in the Academic Resource Center, and Wilson Chatham '26, a graduate student who works with Enrollment Management, were each named Student Employee of the Year, and Bernadette Crawford, executive assistant to the Senior Vice President of Student Affairs, was named Student Employee Supervisor of the Year.

This year Student Employment Services (SES) hosted the annual Student Employees and Supervisor of the Year Award Ceremony which honored the work of students who were nominated by their supervisors. SES received 46 nominations for undergraduate student employees and 12 nominations for graduate student employees across LMU. Student employees also had the opportunity to nominate their supervisors, and SES received 22 nominations for student supervisors.

Infante is an undergraduate majoring in entrepreneurship who works in the Academic Resource Center as an academic coach and was described by his supervisors as an exceptional communicator, motivator, and wonderful presence in Daum Hall across all units. There is no unit that Infante does not assist, navigating and anticipating the needs of five different directors is no small task, yet he does so with ease and a positive attitude. The successful centralization of training and communication across all units is a direct result of his thoughtful and reliable work. Infante meets weekly with the receptionist team to focus on professional development planning and the creation of academic goals, reflecting the trust they place in his guidance. Infante also serves as a mentor to junior staff, who regularly look to him for support, training, and advice on maintaining balance in their roles.

For Infante, working as an academic coach also helped keep them accountable and helped him stay on top of his own academics. "Working as an Academic Coach taught me that most people don't struggle with ability, they struggle with structure, once you give them a system, everything changes," said Infante. "It's also sharpened my ability to actively listen and ask the right questions in real time, so I'm not just hearing students, I'm actually understanding what they need and how to help them move forward. At the same time, having access to resources and even my own office has made me more efficient and intentional with how I approach my academics." He describes his work at the ARC as being an orchestrator, because he's learned that everyone has the ability. "It's just about figuring out how you work best, and that takes trial and error until a system clicks," said Infante. "My role is to help orchestrate that process, guiding students to find what actually works for them and helping everything come together in a way that feels natural and effective."

Chatham is a graduate student pursuing a master's degree in business analytics and works as a data analyst in the Enrollment Management vice president's office as a graduate assistant. "I work a lot with my supervisor, Peter Breslin, and we work together on a wide range of analytics projects for enrollment research, which really depend on what is needed at the time," said Chatham. "Our work includes ongoing, rolling projects. I've done everything from building Tableau dashboards around registration and registration holds to applying machine learning models for retention. More recently, I've been focused on natural language processing to analyze students' written responses. to, like, why they transferred out of LMU … and try to figure out how we can boost applicants, people coming in, and the caliber, and then also keep people at LMU."

And it was Chatham's work, going above and beyond, on a natural language processing-based program to analyze large amounts of unstructured data that was part of his nomination for graduate student employee of the year. In his nomination, Breslin shared, "He recognized an opportunity to extract deeper insights from our existing datasets, and he designed and implemented a solution that significantly improved both the speed and accuracy of our analysis," said Breslin. "This initiative was not part of their required duties, yet it became an invaluable tool for us and will be used regularly."

For Chatham, the work is also very personal. As an undergraduate student and player on the men's rugby club team, many of his friends were transfer students, and some ended up leaving LMU. "I just really love LMU. My first year as a student was challenging, but I came back my sophomore year and just joined as many things as I possibly could," said Chatham. "I joined the rugby team, and it opened my eyes to LMU, and I've never looked back, and so I really try to think about how LMU has given me way more opportunities than anything I could have ever done. It's probably one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life."

Crawford is also a graduate student in LMU's School of Education pursuing a master's degree in guidance and counseling. During the day, she works as an executive assistant to Kawanna Leggett, Ed.D., senior vice president for Student Affairs, and in that work, she supervises a student employee team who helps manage the front desk and day-to-day operations of the Senior Vice President's office. Nominated by four of her student employees for Student Supervisor of the Year, Crawford was described by students who work in the office as caring, considerate, and thoughtful.

As a supervisor, Crawford provided consistent opportunities for skill development, relationship-building across Student Affairs, and increased professionalism in the workplace. She fostered confidence by trusting student employees with important responsibilities while remaining present, dependable, and supportive whenever guidance was needed. Through mentorship, she also shared campus-wide resources, scholarship opportunities, and professional insights that helped students better support others and prepare for life after graduation. One student employee shared, "She has helped me grow, fostering connections with staff in other departments, becoming familiar with campus-wide resources, and giving me lots of information and preparation to help students."

Beyond her supervisory role, Crawford was honored for her work in creating a welcoming and affirming environment where students felt genuinely valued and respected. She made time to listen, offered thoughtful encouragement during periods of stress or transition, and demonstrated care through meaningful gestures such as appreciation notes, care packages, and personalized support. Her commitment to belonging extended to the broader LMU community through her leadership of major initiatives such as Family Weekend and the inaugural Hometown Pride events, both of which fostered connection and celebration among students and families. Crawford's compassion, dedication, and leadership have left a lasting impression, inspiring those she mentored to carry forward the same sense of care, balance, and intentionality in their own lives and work.