student assistant

assistant director

tutor

student worker

research assistant

DePaul University

•	Financial Management: Manage operational budget, including general accounting AP/AR, daily transactions, cost control, payroll, reimbursements purchase requisitions & orders, travel and entertainment expenses, contracts with external clients, professional services, and events.
•	Prepare for internal audits & ensure financial compliance
•	Develop annual/quarterly budgets for department staffing including, Student Employees, Graduate Assistants and Part-time faculty
•	Provide budget direction/advice to chair and department faculty
•	Administration: Assist chair in day-to-day operational decision-making and problem-solving for staffing, payroll, office policies and procedures, & processes and guidelines aimed to improve the quality and productivity of the department
•	Hire, train, mentor, and coach six to ten student employees and six Graduate Assistants as needed in the dept. 
•	Plan, generate and manage annual department undergraduate and graduate course catalog; planning of roughly 260 classes   each year taught by about 60-70 full-time and part-time faculty
•	Promote classes, workshops, & programs to increase awareness and class enrollment
•	Event planning and coordination of special events, workshops, seminars, and quarterly meetings
•	Point of contact for adjunct faculty- coordinate annual orientation and quarterly class evaluations & screen potential candidates
•	Manage & update department’s website, software licensing, and contracts with Market Research companies

I learned a lot about the tenure process, academic policy, the career of professors and teaching and many other areas of academia which I learned to admire and now I respect a lot everyone in the teaching profession. The hardest part of the job was to try to please everyone, which is almost impossible. I also enjoyed working with everyone in this profession because teaching is one of the most beautiful and hardest professions.

DePaul University gave me the opportunity to learn and implement laboratory procedures that have important real life application value.  For example, I concentrate on extracting heavy metals, such as lead, from soils.  I followed the example of my research adviser and various literature reviews on how to implement a Physiologically Based Extraction Test (PEBT), an Acid Digestion technique, as well as a variety of other Soil Quality Indicator (SQI) tests in order to measure the quantity or quality of the respective analyte in soil.  I published and presented my findings at the annual Science Symposium in June of 2016 - where I was awarded with the Outstanding Environmental Science Award for my thesis work - and now I will continue to run the same tests I did for my undergraduate research on other student's and faculty's soil samples until September.  I work independently in the lab, but frequently consult with faculty members about various matters such as brainstorming future research routes, placing orders to restock my supplies, and obtaining access to the cold storage room and the teaching lab, as necessary.  The hardest part of my job is sharing laboratory tools with other students and researchers - at times, I have to spend time locating supplies that other people have relocated, but it is not a nuisance to me.  I enjoy implementing the procedures, and conducting inferential and statistical analysis on the samples' analytes; I take pride in what I do.

Depaul is a mission driven higher education institution, however it is being crippled by severe annual budget cuts and the elimination of hundreds of staff positions.  The mission is supposed to drive the culture and strategic operations, but the mission has taken a back seat to the financial/business focus since 2012. The management is not concerned with the limitations and overworked staff.  Staff are being driven to seek opportunities elsewhere because the pay is low and they are given additional responsibilities with no pay increases.  There are good benefits such as tuition reimbursement, SDA benefits, paternity/maternity leave, 403b employer match.  The culture has shifted due to the budget cuts.  Due to budget cuts it is limited opportunities for travel, professional development, work/life balance, flex scheduling. Depaul has seen major shifts in university leadership over the last seven years. The staff have been suffering several years of low morale. Due to budget cuts many of the long term and seasoned institutional leaders and staff have left or been laid off, leaving voids in the institution. Coupled by missteps and poor decision making occurring by many executives and administrative leaders.

In the past four years of working with DePaul University, my personal growth and skill set has been strengthened exponentially. Serving as administrative assistant, I have had the opportunity to work alongside student assistants, office staff, and various admission directors for the the Office of Undergraduate Admission. My daily task include: preparing office for staff and visitors (this includes perspective students and their families, as well as current students and general visitors of the university), maintain excel documents for mail tracking, donation coordinating, and tracking of visitors, update student profiles to ensure accurate and effective communication throughout the admission process, provide a friendly and helpful atmosphere at the front desk of the Lincoln Park Campus Welcome Center, as well as field important inquiries in regards to university policies and procedures, and student life. The most challenging part of my day is receiving a question I've never been asked before and experiencing difficulty locating the right contact to answer said question; at the same time, it brings me much joy to locate the answer and to be able to provide timely and accurate information to any and all visitors for the university.

PROS: DePaul, at its core, has admirable values as an institution. That's what drew me there, and without a doubt, DePaul has amazing students who will inspire you. From a logistical standpoint, the 403(b) retirement match is amazing (10% match from DePaul - unheard of), and overall really solid PTO benefits. If you don't work in student affairs, chances are pretty good that you'll have decent work/life balance. If you're looking to get an advanced degree, like an MA, DePaul also offers a great tuition discount benefit.

CONS: The administration is less inspiring. Unfortunately, as a day-to-day employee who really saw the behind-the-scenes of DePaul, my overall experience working there was disappointing. Virtually zero opportunity for growth/career laddering (amid constant university-wide conversations about cutting costs), little professional support, and uninspiring leadership. Make sure you negotiate your salary during the offer stage because, aside from the occasional 2% "cost of living raise", you won't really see much salary growth unless you change positions, which is a huge disadvantage.

OVERALL: This is a great place to work for a few years, get some experience, and then get out. You won't be able to grow your salary by staying here, so if that's your goal, it won't be sustainable. But I could see DePaul being a great career choice for people who are more focused on the PTO/leave benefits, work/life balance, tuition benefit, etc.

Accomplishments: Contributed to the success of the annual Group Facilitation Symposium by creating and preparing program materials as well as managing the registration process. Developed and structured new process for obtaining payments on outstanding accounts that generated over $122k of revenue within three months in 2013.
 Contribute to the maintenance of Continuity software by keeping all records and course information up-to-date
 Manage LinkedIn/Slide Share Presentation group and interact with its members
 Register students by processing checks and/or electronic transactions in Continuity
 Reconcile department's aging reports by following up with delinquent accounts
 Process account adjustments and payment deferrals by invoicing students and/or third parties
 Maintain practices consistent with University policies and implement departmental policies to ensure accountability and financial transparency
 Develop and update procedures that contribute to the productivity of the department
 Assist with the hiring and training process of three student employees that conduct front line registrations.
 Provide general administrative support such as front desk reception, data entry, filing, updating documents, classroom maintenance, prepare course materials, etc.

Outside of looking like Chicago PD...the job is easy but can be dangerous because the campus is wide open to the public, not a contained property. It makes DePauls finest look like targets at time. There are many instances when you could be sent to calls that should be handled by the police so exercising slund judgement is a must. Big on customer service and being highly visible to the university community. Not an armed position. Training is yearly only and its the same tactics on handcuffing and OC spray. Most units work on foot at Lincoln Park but there are vehicle patrols. Job stresses their escort service to the students which is done by their officers. DePaul is behind the times relative to what other universities pay their cops and security and it'll take awhile working here just to get above 15 an hour. Huge turnover here. People get themselves fired by not acting within the department guidelines. Once you get written up its a process that gets most people out of work. Great place for law enforcement stepping stone and if you want free school other than that steer clear there are better opportunities.

A typical day consists of processing research protocol reviews and approvals. Often, answering emails and phone calls to provide additional help with protocol revisions and/or development. 

Additional regulations concerning social-behavioral research have been learned and applied to protocol reviews. Workshop development and implementation and research training skills have been learned.

Management is very absent and rigid to change. An overall picture of the importance of the department is missed and minor details are constantly scrutinized. Micromanagement is the best way to describe the culture. There is little to no room for advancement. 

Co-workers are often out for themselves and provide little assistance with other departments. 

The hardest part of the job is learning how to accommodate to the rigidity, lack of enthusiasm, no desire to change or improve, and loneliness of the job. The culture at DePaul University is very difficult to adjust to.

The best part of the job is the faculty and additional staff that I had the opportunity to work with.

I still think DePaul is a good place to work despite the serious strain put on staff with the current budget/enrollment crisis. Many long-serving staff took a buyout recently, and they took a great deal of institutional knowledge with them. Those of us still here were left to pick up the pieces. We are often asked to do an impossible amount of work for pay that is not really competitive. Turnover is high, making long-term projects really difficult to execute. But the benefits are great, and as long as you set boundaries with management about realistic expectations, appropriate work life balance is still possible. There has been some signaling that they are looking into the benefits now to find more savings. If that turns out to be the case, I don’t see how they can expect to keep talent on staff here. But there are still a lot of great people working for DePaul who are trying to rebuild community in this post-pandemic remote work era. With the imminent enrollment cliff, I’m not sure what the answer is to DePaul’s financial woes. But I hope they don’t give up on the people making this place function every day. 

The environment is highly dysfunctional and does not contribute to supporting the faculty.  Despite its Vincentian values as a Catholic University, the culture of the university leaves much to be desired and has left a bitter after taste.  Very discriminatory and only goes through the motions of equity, equality and fairness just to show they've adhered to the policies when in fact, the culture is a toxic, dysfunctional and ego-driven environment where everyone is out for themselves.  No academic support, no personal support and no real opportunity grow in a program.  The institute suffers from too much growth, too fast and is at the mercy of personal agendas and power-hungry people who don't deserve to be called, teachers.  Very corporate masked as a safe, learning environment.  

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Student assistant 5 salaries reported	$16.80 per hour
Assistant director 9 salaries reported	$56,889 per year
Tutor 5 salaries reported	$16.40 per hour
Student worker 4 salaries reported	$17.25 per hour
Research assistant 3 salaries reported	$17.00 per hour

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