graduate assistant

student worker

graduate researcher

research assistant

lecturer

Baylor University

I work remotely as a web programmer, but have to come onto campus once every 6 weeks for an in-person meeting. We have a coworker who works out of Houston who only comes to every other in-person meeting due to the distance.

I generally wake up, take care of my family, brew some coffee, get online in time for a 15-minute "Daily Scrum" meeting that is only Monday/Wednesday/Friday at 8:45am. Occasionally, there'll be one more short meeting, but other than that, it's just whatever impromptu collaborative calls I want to jump into while working on a problem or just getting focus time.

Other meetings include:
- Every other Monday, I have an extra planning meeting where we discuss long-term plans (months in advance).
- Tuesdays replace the Daily Scrum with a Backlog Grooming or Sprint Planning meeting (trade off every other week). We do 2-week sprints.

We have dedicated team members for peripheral tasks such as handling A) hardware/infrastructure setup, B) database servers/setup/stagedown, and C) user acceptance testing. I can therefore focus all my attention on *just* designing, writing, and debugging software. I'm encouraged to spend part of my work time researching/learning new technologies (so it's fully paid) and I'm given resources for LinkedIn Learning, Azure credits, Adobe/JetBrains licenses, and all sorts of other content, plus extremely powerful work laptops with whatever peripherals/monitors I want, more or less. I feel challenged, learn a lot on the job, and enjoy spending time with my teammates, even off-hours when we meet up as friends.

Everyone on the team is family-oriented, encouraging people to take the day off if they need rest, don't feel well, need to pick up a kid from school, or whatever else. You can make up the hours later if you like or use the plethora of conjoined vacation/sick hours that build up over time & carry over each year up to a huge maximum. I could easily take 3 straight weeks off if I wanted to and still have a little wiggle room.

One of my favorite things is how much focus my supervisor places on tracking not only the team's work progress but also our mental health. We regularly do a  team/leadership/psychological training to train ourselves to handle stress effectively, and my supervisor schedules in one-on-one private meetings with everyone where we can discuss whatever is on our mind (concerns, exciting developments, life events, anxieties, etc.). It has truly improved my outlook on life and the quality of my experience at Baylor.

While the pay is quite low in comparison to similar jobs elsewhere in the industry, the benefits are amazing: you get reduced pricing at the all-you-can-eat on-campus dining halls, unlimited free access to the Student Life Center (exercise facility, rock climbing, massages), and incredible health/dental/life insurance options for the whole family. Spouses and children attending Baylor can also get free course credits each semester.

I would highly recommend working in Baylor's ITS department for anyone who has the opportunity. You make enough money to live on, but don't suffer the stress and anxieties of more hectic industries; instead, you can immerse yourself in your home life, learn new things about the world, and meaningfully help others aiming to do the same.

A typical day on the job as a classroom technology assistant would take a preemptive approach. Every morning I would check the atrium printers to see if there was a jam/malfunction. Then I would proceed to refill the printers with paper to ensure peers would be able to print study guide/reading material/assignments for classes. Once that job was done, I would return to our tech office and await phone calls/text notifications of problems professors or students would have in the Baylor Science Building. While on standby, we were permitted to work on our personal class assignments and projects. When we aren't usually going around the building to fix certain classroom tech(printers, computer monitors, projectors, program crashes, etc.), CTAs would perform classroom checks.

Classroom checks involved monitoring, testing, and repairing any technology in the classroom that a problem could arise from. Once our checks were complete, we logged our findings in a database through a web portal for workers. This was a routine task for CTAs every other week. The hardest part of the job was having to learn a lot of new technologies that would come in each semester. The most enjoyable part of the job was learning exactly the right fix for every problem and seeing the joy on professors's faces whenever a problem was resolved quickly.

During my time at Baylor, I felt surrounded by talented, conscientious faculty, staff, and administrators. But as is so often the case for adjunct faculty, the workload was enormous for scant pay - especially as the cost of living rose rapidly in that region. It's really good that we normalize education becoming more customized for individual students with diverse needs. But it is past time to reckon with the casual assumption that teachers can always continue to keep track of a few more "small" tasks and expectations on top of their existing workloads, with diminishing resources and no admin support (specifically to help teachers, that is. Practically every admin/staffer I ever met at Baylor was excellent at managing their actual job responsibilities). It is also past time that it became a routine expectation of top administrators that they be in touch with the cost of living and the daily realities of their workers. I know universities are struggling with changing budget realities, but they've been relying on highly trained but underpaid labor for so long now, with no evident priority to find a way out of their exploitative practices. Faith-based universities like Baylor shouldn't just be trying to mimic whatever other universities can get away with. They should be setting an example of caring about the personhood of their employees and offering just compensation.

Myself and another graduate student facilitated students in the English departments Writing Lab for 4-5 hours every day and alternting Saturdays. My extra responsibilities were: keeping records of attendees and sending that documentation to professors, as well as creating and maintaining a request schedule so that students could have a set time and consistency with a specific tutor. The program grew so eventually I had three more tutors to facilitate 2 hours a day. We could not write their papers or tell students exactly how to correct; we discussed areas needed for improvement and gave "mini-lessons" - instruction about grammar and effective writing which they applied to the weak areas of their compositions. We could confirm when improvement was accomlished. I created mini-lessons on grammar and aspects of writing and copied them for notebooks that students could use in the lab. It was beneficial for all of us to prevent student faiures and to create independent writers.

Baylor has good benefits.  I have many good hardworking co-workers.  I've met many fine people while working at Baylor.
 
I'm usually at my desk before 8 am.  If I have a reason to "bank" hours, I can eat in 30 minutes.  I leave campus at 5 pm.  I sometimes give makeup exams or show videos for our Art Historians. By  4 most academic activities, and student assistants,  are over and gone. I do not work over 40 hours/week without supervisors approval. 

I keep supplies stocked, machines backed up and maintenance and software for the 9 MAC computers that we use in the Art Department Resource Center. Computers are updated regularly and we do not have many problems with the Macintosh computers. Allbritton Art Institute is very generous.  I attend Visual Resources Association national conference every year.

I've enjoyed Karaoke, Bar-B-Qs, Christmas parties and lunches with all the Department. I attend plays put on by the theatre department and concerts put on by the music department. They are always very good.

Baylor is a very pleasant place to work.

I think the chance to take courses outside my field of formal education.

A typical day of work starts at 7:30 in the morning. After the work manager assigns us our workload for the day we load up material from the company shop and head out to the job site. Most days I would be working in newly constructed houses that have been freshly painted installing the alarm system and phone panel on the inside of the house. Other days I may be assigned to run wire for newly constructed houses before the walls and insulation are in. Occasionally I would have to install a home theater system along with a coworker. All the jobs require physical labor, good teamwork and concentration to fulfill your day in a timely manner. The hardest part of the job was the physical aspect because some days the physical demands were high, almost like working out at a gym, where your body is sore the next morning. The most enjoyable part of the job is seeing how happy customers are after installing a home theater system.

Every day I worked, I would meet with my student athlete in a private study room with or in the study commons. We would go over any lectures that had been taught or specific questions that the student had. This job taught me how to think quickly, organize information clearly for others, and listen to my students' needs. I did not work closely with other tutors, and I communicated with management via email and scheduled meetings. The management was very flexible with meeting time and was willing to provide any materials I felt necessary. The hardest part of my job was preparing for sessions because I needed to go over a large amount of information to make sure I was prepared for any question the student might offer. The most enjoyable part of my job was to see the progress my students made in their classes.

A typical day at work in the LiveBrave Program consisted of working with students of a high school in Bellmead, TX to prepare them for the TAKS and STAAR tests. I learned how to be adaptable to each student's style of learning and to motivate them to prepare accordingly for their test. There was little over sight in this program with a supervisor present only sporadically. Co-workers were fellow students of varying undergraduate majors. The hardest part of the job was when there were no students to tutor because of absences from a class. The most enjoyable part of the job was the flexibility of the work hours. If I had too much homework or a major test to study for, I was only required to notify a supervisor.

Worked as a temporary contact tracer during COVID. There were a lot of changes made as the program developed and the position required a lot of independence because the practical training didn't really cover everything. Overall though, it was an interesting experience that paid well and let me help the community stay healthy (and the school stay open) during the worst periods of the pandemic. 
I'm not sure if we just did HIPAA training as a formality/to learn best practices, but it was a bit confusing to complete that training then be required to use systems that did not attempt to keep data off of personal devices.

The school has many great students and teachers, but some administrative staff members were toxic--and no one, including HR, would stand up to them. Expectations were not communicated, but you'd get your feet cut out from under you if you accidentally overstepped a line. This was not a good culture for self-starters and high achievers. Those skills were considered a threat to those in cushy administrative roles above you. Also, don't expect a second chance with another department if you get a poor first manager.  

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Graduate assistant 4 salaries reported	$16.25 per hour
Student worker 11 salaries reported	$10.18 per hour
Graduate researcher 4 salaries reported	$30,000 per year
Research assistant 3 salaries reported	$37,667 per year
Lecturer 6 salaries reported	$46,000 per year

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