College Staff Taking Classes and Doing Research I presently work in a facilities-type role at a small Liberal Arts college.

One of the benefits of working at the college is the ability to take two classes per academic-year (not including summer or winter terms).

I have a BS in Economics from a larger university as well as a pretty broad quantitative background and I'm interested in taking classes in mathematics, statistics, and computer science (they have an MSCS program here).

What I'm wondering is this:

How likely would it be for me to become involved in research projects?

Would it be odd for a staff member taking a few classes to ask about doing research with a faculty member?

I'm hoping to pad my resume a bit for acceptance into a PhD or MS in Applied Math program down the line; but, I'm wondering if it's worth getting my hopes up about doing research even though I'm just a staff member taking classes.
Well, your request would certainly be unusual for most faculty members, but that also doesn't mean it wouldn't be accepted!

The main challenge would be if you were looking to be paid for the work. Under such circumstances, it might be much more challenging to get involved with projects, because the funding mechanisms (such as NSF REU grants, which fund many undergraduate research projects) would not be available to fund you (since you're not an undergraduate student!). 

However, if you're just looking to do it for the research experience, I think the biggest obstacle would be convincing a potential advisor that you're serious. I would recommend then that you make an in-person appointment, rather than trying to set something like this up via email.