faculty

office assistant

environmental services technician

assistant director

adjunct instructor

Howard Community College

I loved HCC when I started. The community of staff and students is strong and deeply caring. But I would run out of characters if I wanted to type up every reason I would recommend job seekers to stay FAR away from this place. 
Upper management is selfish and superficial. As long as HCC looks polished on social media and gets its grants and awards, the staff and student experience doesn’t matter.
Everything feels like an emergency because there are not enough resources to do what the bigwigs want us to do. Hundreds of students come in every day for academic advising and admissions help from a tiny team of overworked, exhausted staff, some of which feel forced to work overtime/through lunch with no extra pay because the bottom lines are too demanding. The “self service” course registration is confusing and inaccessible to students and there is virtually no tech support. Busy students have to wait hours in crowded rooms to meet with advisors for two minutes because if they try to register themselves, they could pick the wrong courses and delay their graduation. Staff had been telling upper management about all these problems AND pitching solutions for years prior to me working there, and after significant staff turnover, the problems still persist. Staff quit constantly because we are given no room for growth, virtually no reward or respite, and way too little pay for what we are expected to do. A colleague died and we got a brief, dry email from the (now fired) VP letting us know, and then we were expected to keep working. The only thing that kept me there was my desire to support my colleagues and the students. I felt a sense that if I left, I’d contribute to our lack of staff, and I’d be letting my team down. There were many instances of positions being removed rather than refilled after staff left, making the remaining team even more stressed. I’ve never worked in a more exhausting and draining environment. That school is barely holding it together and until there is a MAJOR change in the culture, I would never recommend anyone work there. 

It was an honor to work alongside great cast of teachers. We've taught privileged high school students Mandarin Chinese in a short but very intense duration of 4-5 weeks.

I've learned lots of skills that puts lots of new perspective in my life such as a teacher's responsibility, knowledge of teaching people of different backgrounds, and how to lead people to work together and how to lead for success. 

I've also learned how to manage everything: time, lessons, and events to be held. Because how things can go wrong at any moment, I've learned this the hard way and it has benefitted my life ever since. 

My coworkers were also a huge part of my experience because we are all like a family in Startalk. This job is always stressful because how intense and short it was, but we always had eachother for support.

I've found one thing about myself from working in this field: I loved working under this type of stress and it helped me in my time while I currently study at UMBC.

HCC offers good benefits and a high pay rate but they don't value their employees. They mainly hire from within and only woman that fall in line with their outdated ways. They will create positions with certain people in mind regardless of their qualifications.  The training staff goes through when they are first hired is non existent. They will briefly go over the processes that they barely know how to do themselves and then hope you figure it out. I have seen many employees go to management with ideas to improve enrollment or streamline processes but they are always turned down or told it isn't helpful. Community and teamwork is mentioned a lot through out the college but is the last thing practiced. The part time staff get more work added to their plates that are not in their job role but fall under their superiors. I have seen many employees work outside of their scheduled hours and not get compensated for that but instead get more work thrown on them. During meetings with my supervisor they would often try and add things to my job description but with no increase in pay or hours as a part time employee. I am thankful I left before they did change everything. 

In a typical day, the records and registration office serves students from various walks of life seeking educational benefits for a multitude of reasons. The front counter personnel assist students in registering for classes, provide transcripts, and other important paperwork. The job is my introduction to the civilian world, having served 21+ years in the U.S. Navy and the lessons I have learned with regard to customer service and listening to students is invaluable. The management addresses complex employee and student issues and handles them with fairness and a high level of professionalism. The job presents some complexities, however, the team manages to pull together and produce solutions to complex problems in an effort to help the students and associated offices within the college. The most enjoyable and gratifying part of the job is knowing that I have provided the best customer service and assisted students with their registration needs.

If you enjoy teaching it's interesting to work in your trained profession as an adjunct faculty member. The pay and benefits, however, are very low to non-existent with little chance for a full-time benefitted position. One can choose their own hours but you will spend many additional hours that are basically unpaid, planning lectures, grading papers, and maintaining administrative functions. Management is very knowledgeable and supportive but strict with strong oversight. Ancillary training is excellent and the Development staff are extremely supportive with help in technical and teaching aspects. The hardest part of the job are preparing class lectures since it's very time-consuming without  appropriate pay. The most enjoyable part are working in ones field, even with low pay, and teaching students. The students range from low academic preparedness to very high college level preparation with the college serving as a stepping-stone to a university transfer. 

I worked as an adjunct for one term. I was required to invest a great deal of my time into developing my course, setting up my website, creating and grading exams and homework assignments, and assistimg students. Per hour, I wound up making less than the minimum wage, and was not contacted about continuing teaching the course again, so my investment was lost. To make matters worse, my teaching was observed one evening by a supervising professor without any prior warning; although I was completely prepared, I was taken by surprise. I received no feedback. I am quite dissapointed with my experience, and would advise anyone considering this that, the full-time professors only teach three courses per semester (often the on-line ones), will offer minimal help and have unusually high expectations of adjuncts; you will be "used" to the max.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The benefits are good. PTO is generous and health insurance is very good. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The new administration is destroying the longstanding virtuous reputation HCC represented since the beginning. Employees are being fired and humiliated based on false accusations. The environment is terrible, toxic, and a shame. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
The environment is toxic and has become racist. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Employee morale is lowest I have ever seen it in my 20+ years of working at HCC. It is shocking what the day to day is now like. It literally feels like a dictatorship regime.

Howard Community College has provided a great atmosphere for learning and applying the learned methods through additional experiences. Professors find great joy in teaching and value their students learning efforts. 

Howard Community College has provided me with great work opportunities, which consisted of learning, and assisting students as I learned. With my job status, I was able to accomplish and apply my efforts into helping other students understand the subject and assignments with ease. The hardest part about this position to me was, I felt that there was a lot more that I am capable of doing, and such little time to accomplish these many tasks.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Contributing to student success and co-workers are really special people. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The college’s president is over her head and a very bad leader. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Very bad under current leadership.  Culture is one of mistrust, lack of communication, intimidation, and fear.  

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
No vision for how to execute strategic goals or what it takes to implement changes.  Leadership excuses all negative feedback by saying that employees can’t handle changes—this is not true.

The staff are all friendly and work with you to help you in areas that you are proficient. A typical workday is getting a few questions from a student or two about where something is or what they should do, while also working on a side assignment. Side assignments could be making a table or a new sign for the engineering lab. I learned how to use different tools, such as the band saw and the laser cutter. The hardest part of the job for me was getting to know everything. I was not too experienced going in, but the staff was really helpful in my learning process. The most enjoyable part of the job was working at different events. For example, there was a Halloween event that we participated in and we made a haunted lab.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Faculty 32 salaries reported	$70,063 per year
Office assistant 6 salaries reported	$18.67 per hour
Environmental services technician 4 salaries reported	$18.71 per hour
Assistant director 1 salary reported	$73,766 per year
Adjunct instructor 2 salaries reported	$48.75 per hour

Working at Howard Community College: Company Overview and Reviews

Howard Community College

Howard Community College Ratings

Popular jobs at Howard Community College

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected