In a small office tucked away on Bellarmine Hall’s ground floor on the Hawk Hill campus, a former St. Joe’s student, Jill O’Neill ’19, now guides current students through some of the toughest moments of their careers.

O’Neill was hired last summer as a student success specialist. In her role, she is responsible for providing a helping hand for students who need to be pointed in the right direction. 

“A lot of times, Student Success is that center point where a student will come when they’re struggling, they’re not sure what they need,” said Daniel McDevitt, Ed.D., director of Student Success and Student Life Systems. “They’ll come to us and we can refer them out to the appropriate resources.”

That might mean connecting students with the Office of Learning Resources if they are in need of tutoring or with the Office Undergraduate Advising Support if they need registration advice, McDevitt said.

Each year, the Student Success office assists hundreds of students. In the fall 2022 semester, 397 appointments were recorded in Starfish, a student success software platform that the university utilizes. Those appointments were handled by O’Neill, McDevitt and Kim Allen-Stuck, assistant vice president for Student Success and Educational Support. In the fall of 2021, when it was just McDevitt and Allen-Stuck, there were 262 appointments, according to O’Neill.

Allen-Stuck attributed the increase to the addition of students at the University City campus.

O’Neill, who is from Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, knows the office well from her own time at St. Joe’s. After spending her first semester at LaSalle University and then attending community college for a year, she finally settled at St. Joe’s.

“When I was a student here, I was actually a frequent flier, because the people in the Office of Student Success were just people I gravitated to as just friendly, welcoming human beings that I would just come and say hi to,” O’Neill said. 

This positive experience with the office led O’Neill to pursue a communication studies major, so she could help people the way the St. Joe’s faculty had helped her.

“The more I came down here, the more information I found out,” O’Neill said. “I started to explore higher education later on. I really started to think about careers, and higher education eventually became my career goal. That’s how I ended up here.”

As it so happened, O’Neill already had a connection to her dream job. As a transfer student, O’Neill had been paired with a mentor, Allen-Stuck.

This connection, along with her existing knowledge of St. Joe’s, made O’Neill an attractive candidate when a position became available as a St. Joe’s contact tracer in July 2021. She was hired by the Office of Student Success in July 2022.  

“We found hiring St. Joe’s alums really shortens the onboarding process because you already know where things are,” Allen-Stuck said. “So she just was able to hit the ground running when she started in the summer. And she has really made an impact on a lot of students this semester, the first semester where she’s meeting with students directly.”

In addition to general knowledge about St. Joe’s, however, O’Neill’s time as a student on Hawk Hill gave her additional advantages for her current job.

“I did an independent study on communications and disabilities and how we can bring in different technologies to help students with different disabilities and create different ways for them to interact within the campus or within classrooms,” O’Neill said. “I use that every day.”

These skills make her a valuable member of the Office of Student Success, according to McDevitt.

“She’s eager to learn, eager to jump in and help, wants to be involved and continue to grow as she’s forming into her career,” McDevitt said. “She’s been a great addition to the team and [brings] positive energy and [is] a really hard working individual.”

St. Joe’s plan to bring all first-year students to the Hawk Hill campus in the fall of 2023 means that the Office of Student Success will have many more students to assist on the Hawk Hill campus. However, O’Neill’s journey has prepared her to welcome these new students into the St. Joe’s community.

“It’s home,” O’Neill said. “It’s home from the second I stepped back on campus. It was the best feeling, and not much has changed in the most positive way. It’s great, the community’s just so inviting, and I’m so happy to be back.”