His job as a caretaker at Nichols Arboretum includes use of a cottage on the grounds of the popular University of Michigan nature area. He shares the residence with a fellow graduate student, and together they help maintain the Arb while working on their academic degrees. Two other graduate students live in another house on the grounds, also helping with maintenance while going about their degrees.
White and his colleagues are like thousands of other U-M students who for a multitude of reasons - they need the money for tuition, they want job experience, they lust after spending money - have part-time jobs.
Complete numbers are hard to come by because students work both on and off campus. But according to the U-M Office of Financial Aid, 6,900 students worked on campus during the 2003-04 academic year, earning nearly $61 million.
That amount has been increasing steadily in recent years. For example, in 1997-98, work-study aid was about $40 million.
The vast majority goes to graduate student work. Of the $61 million paid out in 2003-04, $57 million went to graduate students and $4 million to undergraduates.
White, 35, who's working on a doctorate in the School of Natural Resources, spends 10 hours a week helping maintain the arboretum's open areas - prairies, wetlands, wooded areas - as well as more formal areas such as its rose garden. He also helps with special tasks such as collecting seeds from native plants that are replanted to encourage various species.
White and his co-worker live rent-free in the early 20th-century caretaker's cottage. "I live in an urban area, Ann Arbor, but also in a 123-acre wooded arboretum,'' said White. "It's the best of both worlds.''
Bethany Erhardt, a senior in the U-M School of Music, is like White in bringing academic learning to her student job.
An intern for worship at Campus Chapel, a center for Christian Reformed students located off Washtenaw Avenue near South University Avenue, Erhardt serves with a team of liturgy planners. She's a cellist, her job partner a violinist. Several years ago, Calvin College awarded Campus Chapel a grant for worship renewal that included money for student interns.
The job's a practical way to apply learning - improvisation, music arranging, working with teams, said Erhardt. "I'm doing something I like and growing, all for $10 an hour.''
While White and Erhardt have jobs off the beaten path, many other students have to join the legions of college students who have traditionally worked as waiters and waitresses, store clerks or other lower-paying jobs.
Finding students for those more run-of-the-mill jobs can be difficult, employers say, especially when they attend an academically demanding school like U-M - or simply don't have a serious need for money.
Ed Davidson, owner of the Bivouac clothing and outdoor equipment store on South State Street across from U-M Central Campus, has had trouble getting reliable workers since the late 1970s.
He has found that students can be picky about hours and sometimes agree to work for a set period of time, say the summer, then quit before the period's completed. "It's hard to find someone with a good work ethic,'' Davidson said.
For students who obtain work through work-study programs on campus, there is a limit to how much they can work, said Pamela Fowler, director of the Office of Financial Aid.
"When we make work-study awards, they're based on 15 hours of work per week,'' she said. "We don't like seeing students going beyond that. Studies have shown that when they go beyond 20, it begins having a negative effect on academic performance.''
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