adjunct faculty

administrative assistant

associate professor

assistant professor

tutor

College of DuPage

I would describe myself as more of a facilitator in the role of Nursing Educator or Professor.  My typical work day consists of arriving on the unit at least one hour early to view all the patients on the unit and locate patients that will be a challenge for my students to care for and administer medications to.  I assign some students to shadow Registered Nurses (RN) who are good role models and are student friendly.  After the students arrive we start with a quick review of the patient if they are rendering care or for others, the RN they are assigned to work with for their clinical day. 
      As the day unfolds, complete nursing care is rendered with students that I supervise one on one with, as other students work with the RN they are assigned to shadow.  Clinical is always followed up by a post-clinical conference where we discuss events of the day that were  new as well as my presentations, usually accompanied with handouts followed by a short quiz of the material or a demonstration of a skill. 
      Sometimes I am able to include other disciplines within the hospital like Respiratory Therapy to come and demonstrate the different devices used to oxygenate patients with varying conditions.  In addition,  I am able to rotate students out to different specialty units in the hospital.  
     Students always have paper work to complete after clinical which gets turned in and graded the following week.  Students also have a major paper due at the end of the clinical rotation and a midterm and final evaluation.  In addition to these two forms of feedback, students receive an email from me about their performance in clinical after I work with them on the unit for their day of total patient care-including the medication administration. 
     The most enjoyable part of the day is the post-conference.  I enjoy this time the most because I realize what we have accomplished in our short, busy day and I get a better chance to observe students' critical thinking and progress.  I do not waste this time with superficial discussions, but rather, as a time to learn new material that I present that is crucial for success.  I usually try to make it stick by discussing some past experience that is related to the material.  
    As for my co-workers, they are usually young nurses on the unit.  I usually find them very helpful and sometimes sense a little intimidation on their part because I am a nursing instructor.  I guess I understand that because they were students not too long ago.
     All in all, it is a privilege teaching nursing and most gratifying when I hear students tell me they learned so much from me.  I love talking pharmacology!

College of DuPage is a large and mostly siloed institution. It has many of the same issues as other community colleges (bad internal communication, mediocre management). COD attracts great talent due to the reputation it earned for being a top community college. Most of the hype around the "biggest and the best is part of the past", yet their fantastic public relations and marketing department helps the institution sweep up a lot of their low performance issues under the rug with pretty pictures and campaigns.  It hasn't been that long that the college returned to good standing with their HLC accreditation, but no one would have though their accreditation was in trouble due to the positive PR always surrounding the college. Or that the faculty almost went on strike due to the college deciding to eliminate all PT mental health counselor roles. Currently, COD has less than average student outcomes (retention, graduation, employment placement). The college has fantastic students and faculty but it being lead by egotistical administrators lacking ethics. It could really be as good as it's PR paints it but "leaders" are just there to build their resumes and bounce to the next place. Employees are coming and going left and right, mediocre people get promoted while strong performers leave the organization.  Too much money is spent on useless things like field trips to other colleges while salaries remain stagnant. The technology available is truly terrible, what company these days is not yet on the cloud?
COD is an okay place to work. Some of the roles pay better than other community  colleges. However, be prepared to work work with terrible tech, no onboarding, and lots of egos in lots of meetings. 

This is a stressful, emotionally and physically taxing job. The administrative structure sometimes feels more dictated by financial needs than student needs, though I can tell the people in the office are definitely overworked. Teachers are asked to keep track of student records (physical paper records, not digital), to call students when they stop attending class, administer pre and post tests, to manage extremely multilevel classrooms (upwards of 4 competencies levels in one class), input records into a state database, all on top of normal pedagogical aspects of the job like teaching, lesson planning, etc. The communication is very vague and often accusatory in tone, and the department culture is practically non-existent. There is no work space for the adjuncts from the department to congregate, only the one huge COD adjunct office. It feels more like a contractor position than a faculty employee position. I personally find working here very lonely and exhausting. I'm sure there's a community there somewhere, but it's not easy to find. Generally being an adjunct is not easy, with pay being by credit hour and work life balance being blurred, but it's particularly difficult when there are so many extra-curricular expectations on the teachers. But obviously, the students are great, and having all of the resources to teach them is nice if you teach on-campus.

I worked on the staff side, not faculty (which seemed to me to be a much better place to be at the time).  

Extremely political workplace with managers actively looking to prohibit growth for non-bootlickers, while only promoting brown nosers, even if completely incompetent at their jobs.  Graft and nepotism commonplace, very unethical workplace due to large amounts of financial aid from unsuspecting students and little oversight about how it is spent.  

At this time I worked at COD, the institution and several of its senior management staff were under investigation for separate criminal offenses, of course everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but come on!  High turnover even among senior management who did not appear to want to own their responsibilities.

Some very genuine, nice and friendly people on staff, but mostly in non-management roles.  Faculty seemed extremely nice and very supportive, if you are lucky enough to interact with them.

Nice facilities and work environment, but rotten management.  Extremely low pay for staff roles, nowhere near the salary levels of private industry.  My boss was paid over $100k (publically posted) and had no job duties at all, and sat in his office all day listening to music and posting to Facebook.  He didn't report to anyone, so he just got away with it, I guess.  Sad day for taxpayers.

Great school for any student, not a bad place for faculty, but on the staff side I would avoid for the reasons above.

See Edgar County Watchdogs or national news for stories about ongoing investigations at COD.

Typical day at work includes: reviewing lesson plan, checking emails, writing notes, improving your course and researching. Ive learned how to work without supervision and maintain and organize my own schedule and work structure. The culture of the school as well as my department are excellent. Plenty of  free sources for instructors to improve their teaching facilitation. Higher pay than most community colleges in IL. Most instructors are great and actually care about their students by putting in a strong effort. Students are pretty awesome, overall. I wish I had more time to take classes at this school. The ones I've taken are great. You get free classes as an employee and the instructors are excellent. For some of the hardest parts of my job: I don't have strong connections with my peers. There are opportunities to do so but would require working for free for 10+ hours a week (committees, projects, course reviews) for at least a semester. While pay is on the high end for IL, it isn't enough. No benefits provided and opportunities to become tenured are almost non-existent. PHDs won't guarantee a full-time offer. College of DuPage talks a big game on equity for all and actually delivers for everyone else (the community, students, social programs) except for adjunct instructors. College of DuPage exists because of the excellent commitment of its adjunct instructors.

Like with any job, the manager can make it great or not so great.  Faculty and Administrators are treated very well and of course faculty get tenure after 3 years.  Tuition for your kids is a bonus as 2/3 of their tuition is paid for by the college when you are a full time employee.  Depending on your department, you can actually get up to $1850 in professional development but it is not an easy process to get approval or reimbursed for your expenses.  

New Hires get 10 days of vacation which is less than other community colleges and there is a 6 month probationary period -
for staff positions; which I found astonishing.  Additionally, you may use your vacation until after your probationary period is over.

The culture used to be wonderful I have been told by multiple potential retirees as they were preparing to retire from the college. However, things changed dramatically with the previous president and it is terribly difficult to replicate the wonderful comradely of the past.

The hardest part of the job is having to do everything by committee.  I guess that is a higher education thing but if you come from corporate where you are expected to be a self starter and get things done, you may have a hard time being successful.  

The most enjoyable thing about the job is that you get to interact with students in the halls which is certainly a great experience

What is the best part of working at the company?
 I really enjoyed working with Doctor Lisa Higgins because she was consistently good at communicating what expectations that she required of me; I immensely enjoyed promoting the Honor's Program during the College of DuPage tabling events and she always allowed me to be myself to pursue my college education while I was working as a part-time Clerical Assistant in a federal work-study job.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
My vehicle doesn't have air conditioning during the hot summer drives to and from work/school.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Professional, reliable and dedicated to assisting students, faculty and staff with informing them about the benefits of being in the COD Honor's Program.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Answering questions about the Honor's Program with a diverse population of students in-person and over-the-phone teaching them on how to access the Honor's Program website for more detailed information.  Interacting with the Honors Student Advisory Committee (HSAC) students handing out the director's business cards, and I hand-delivered program flyers to fellow honor's program professors on a weekly basis.

It's been fifteen years since I worked at the college so I will try to remember as much as possible.   
A typical day at work included getting ready for the day prior to the children entering.  Greeting and welcoming them into the classroom and if they are having any separation issues, help them get settled with an activity or book.
I learned that college students see you differently than you see yourself.  Sometimes good, sometimes not so good.
The culture was warm and fuzzy.  The children were well tended to the environment was well supplied to the needs of the students.
Management was kind, but firm.  They never hesitated to voice their opinion on things they felt were not going so well. 
The workplace culture was fine.  Happy and warm and very one on one with the children.
Hardest part of the job is when a parent is in denial about a problem that teachers may see.  We would just keep working with the child and parent and many times they would come around and ask for help.
The most enjoyable part of the job is seeing the children each day.  Knowing that you are going to make a difference in their lives.

I enjoyed working here because everyone was very friendly and laid back. For a typical day at work I would come in and say hi to my co-workers working in the same area and get on my work computer. Afterwards I would check my e-mails and respond to the ones that are priority, and then I would get straight into organizing my paperwork. For the financial aid documents, I would have to first alphabetize each set of documents a student submits. After alphabetizing, I would go through each students' documents one by one and organize them in the order that is needed. By doing so I would use special coded paper to separate each document. Once all of the documents are alphabetized and organized in the correct order, I would put small batches of the papers into the scanner till all of the papers are scanned and then go through each document on the computer to check if everything looks ok. If not, I would re-scan the documents to make them eligible to read. The hardest part of the job would be the heavy amounts of paper we would get at peak time. The most enjoyable part of the job is being able to listen to music while working.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Benefits, they off very high quality health benefits 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Supervisors and managers. They all treat the place like a personal fiefdom. No one works together and staff are treated like servants. Truly an awful place to be a worker in the trades area. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Employees are servants, laws don’t apply, can’t keep people on staff, no concern for personal time, or staff mental health. Blame is always directed down the chain of command. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Hate going to work, once you get there, you hate being there. Then you can’t wait to go home. In the winter,for some staff you are waiting on call with no pay to go do work,if it snows or gets slick. You are directed on your way home to stay close and not go any where because you might get called in, oh but you are not paid during your call in period but you must be available. You can also be required to come in to clean up areas designated for snow, just in case it might snow again. Awful disrespectful and demeaning

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Adjunct faculty 9 salaries reported	$21,097 per year
Administrative assistant 8 salaries reported	$18.31 per hour
Associate professor 4 salaries reported	$78,496 per year
Assistant professor 4 salaries reported	$78,096 per year
Tutor 3 salaries reported	$20.00 per hour

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