What We’re About

The Owls Nest Crew keeps the campus community caffeinated and fed while maintaining one of the most popular places to study, meet, and work on campus. As an Owls Nest Crew member, you’ll have the opportunity to create new menu drinks and have input on new items to keep in stock as well! A day on the crew might look like making and serving beverages such as coffee and espresso, tea, and specialty beverages; taking customer orders and payments; and cleaning and sanitizing work areas, seating areas, and equipment / tools.

Student Leadership Opportunities

• Owls Nest Crew Leader: The Owls Nest crew leader takes the student beyond being just a barista. They will learn scheduling, hiring, firing, discipline, training, ordering, receiving, register balancing, inventory and much more.

What You’ll Learn

You’ll spend years working alongside your peers with the mentorship of your supervisors.  Part of the experience of work at Warren Wilson is guided critical reflection, which helps ensure that you achieve both your own educational goals as well as our Common Learning Outcomes. These intentional learning outcomes distinguish our Work Program, giving it focus and relevancy that set it apart from a federal work-study or your average part-time job. 

Our Common Learning Outcomes:

• Professionalism & Work Ethic: accountability, effective work habits, punctuality, dependability, time management, integrity, and commitment to the well-being of the community.
• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving: working with available resources to creatively address issues and solve problems, and gaining confidence to make decisions.
• Communication: the ability to convey and receive information effectively with intentionality, honesty, and confidence in both speech and writing.
• Collaboration & Teamwork: actively collaborate with peers to achieve common goals, Distribute labor fairly, and hold each other accountable as committed members of a group.
• Civic Identity: understanding your active influence within the community and how your decisions directly impact the work around you.

In addition to our Common Learning Outcomes, each crew in the Work Program identifies crew-specific goals for learning and performance. These are reviewed with you each semester. Your crew-specific learning goals outline skills and abilities your supervisor will teach you during the semester. 

Some of our Owls Nest Crew learning goals include:

• Customer Service
• Inventory management & product ordering
• Opening / closing barista duties
• Professionalism