[CAUT] student assistants

[reggaepass at aol.com]

Hope that helps. There is a lot I could write…





Jim,



That helps a lot!  Please, do write more (if I can twist your arm to do so).  One  of the reasons for this inquiry is research for the article I am writing about student assistants.


Thanks (to you, and to everyone else that has taken the time to respond),


Alan E.



-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Busby <jim_busby at byu.edu>
To: caut at ptg.org <caut at ptg.org>
Sent: Thu, Dec 17, 2009 9:40 am
Subject: Re: [CAUT] student assistants



Alan,
 
430 pianos
140 school of music pianos
                2major concert halls, 4 (or so) minor venues
                34practice rooms, 18 grands, the rest uprights
                Alldorms have pianos
                Nearlyevery building has pianos for church services
4 student assistants (They mainly tune “church pianos”across campus and practice rooms, and “shop work” )
2 fulltime technicians (Faculty pianos, concert halls,classrooms, others, training and supervision of students)
1 part time contract technician (Tunes dorm pianos)
 
Our program has developed into a great program for training RPTs.We try to hire one new Freshman every year with the agreement that;
1.      They will stay with us for at least 3 years (After a probationary,or trial period)
2.      They will work 20 hours per week
3.      They will not do “outside work” until and unless wegive them permission
4.      They will follow a learning track to become RPTs
 
By the end of the second year they should be RPTs or close toit. We start them out sweeping the floors, key bushings, repinning, etc. andtuning unisons on practice room uprights with supervision from advancedstudents and/or us. We “tutor” each student one hour per week, andhave a training session for one hour. The first year (or 6 months, depending onability) they are more of a liability than an asset. After that, they arereally productive and actually pay for themselves because we bill otherdepartments, so it comes back to the shop. This funds the student program,essentially.
 
At first it’s hard to get such a program going, because ofall the training, etc. but after students are trained and start teaching newstudents it really pays off. Students learn more by teaching, as they have tocodify and understand things at a high level. We supervise all this, but forthe most part it all runs well as long as we can keep the “higher level”students employed and not off tuning pianos on their own. (A couple times ithas happened) Students who stay and do well are rewarded with pay increaseswhich make their pay higher than most other “on campus” jobs. So far,6 have graduated with degrees (not all have been music majors) AND as RPTs! Win/winall around. They will have tuned (in 2 years) about 500 or more pianos,repinned about 20 – 30 actions, rebushed about 20 sets of keys, regulateddozens of grands and uprights, and done many other things. We generally sendout belly work, but they will have replaced a pinblock or two, etc.
 
Hope that helps. There is a lot I could write…
 
Jim Busby BYU
 
 

From:caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of reggaepass at aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2009 4:50 AM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: [CAUT] student assistants

 

I would like to get a "show of hands" of all the CAUTswho utilize student assistants in some capacity or other.  Please indicatewhether your CAUT position is full-time or part-time, and the kind of tasks youhave been able to train your assistants for.  

 

Many thanks,

 

Alan Eder

 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091217/7da84f64/attachment-0001.htm>