News

Talking Mentorship and Recruitment in Arkansas

Posted December 2023

On October 24, ITLC’s Research Assistant Michaela Boneva and Research Associate Shayna Gleason traveled to Eureka Springs, Arkansas for the 2023 Arkansas Public Transportation Conference, where they staffed an exhibit booth, and Shayna jointly presented a session with Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District’s (MTD) Mentor Program Coordinator Valerie Campo on “Attracting and Retaining a Strong and Stable Workforce.” Shayna provided an overview of successful transit recruitment strategies used across the industry, and Valerie focused on the bus operator mentor program she worked on developing, describing how it works and the significant and positive impact it has had generally, as well as specifically on MTD’s operator retention rate. Discussion with the audience after the presentations included a number of questions about how agencies can kickstart an operator mentorship program of their own.