Health coverage changes new student orientation, FYE

In accordance with the Affordable Care Act, orientation leaders’ schedules have undergone some changes.

Orientation leaders have been limited to working 29 hours or less per week so that IU is not legally required to offer more benefits.

Jessa Trimble, assistant director of the Office of First Year Experience Programs, said the greatest challenge was gaining an initial understanding of how IU interpreted the Affordable Care Act.

“We worked really closely with human resources representatives to gain that understanding, and then we were able to calculate how many students we would need to hire to ensure that we maintained the quality of our program,” Trimble said.

Melanie Payne, New Student Orientation director and Office of First Year Experience senior associate director, said that no programs during New Student Orientation were removed because they did not want to shortchange students and parents involved in the orientation events.

“It was hard because we are not a nine-to-five operation,” Payne said. “Students work weekends and late at night for orientation activities.”

To prevent the cancellation of essential orientation programming, Payne said the Office of First Year Experience hired more people this year than in years past.

“This year we have 30 orientation leaders, 20 programming assistants and eight student coordinators, totaling to 58 student workers,” she said. “Last year we only had 46 workers.”

“To maintain the quality of our program, we chose to hire more student staff to adjust for the fact that they could only work a limited number of hours,” Trimble said.

Though the student workers cannot work more than 29 hours a week, Payne said some of the hours cannot be quantified.

“Orientation leaders sometimes have good conversations with parents or answer questions for students when they are off duty, but this does not factor into the 29 hours they work,” Payne said.

Payne said the Office of First Year Experience had to change how it managed the staff, and that it is very challenging for the orientation leaders to only work 29 hours.

Additionally, Payne said many students who work as orientation leaders, program assistants or student coordinators want to save up for college, and with the hour restrictions, some have taken on other jobs to make more money.

However, Payne said that despite the changes, the Orientation Leaders are still very committed to their jobs and happy to be around the new students.

Daniel Chang, a sophomore majoring in accounting and finance, said being an orientation leader is one of the best experiences he has had while at IU.

“I have the ability to impact so many people in a positive way, and I’m meeting so many new students, which only makes me even more excited for the upcoming year,” he said.

Chang, like Payne, said he is excited to see what the class of 2018 has to offer IU.