research assistant

postdoctoral fellow

graduate researcher

research program coordinator

technologist

Johns Hopkins University

JHU takes regular surveys to assess climate and problems at the school. During this process many people provide feedback on problems and ways to address them. The university leadership often downplays the problems then compounds the stressors will unproductive “solutions” that worsen the situations. In the last few years race has been brought up very often in reference to hiring and admittance. This happens during meetings consistently and stated by the top leadership at the school. They see no wrong and HR doesn’t step up to address this. The university also pushes for fair pay around the country. We have many employees with college degrees making little to no more than student workers. There is a great disparity between leadership and the average employee at the school yet they tell the employees they need to improve. Leadership only involves themselves with non-administrative employees, to tell them what they can do for the administrators and there is no plan to work to address the employees concerns. Many students have the same problems and consistently provide the same feedback. The administration takes efforts to bandaid over and provide “support” for the problems instead of addressing the problems directly. 

The university offers good benefits to its employees, but that feels to be the extent of the reward of working for the university. The culture is spread people thin and work them out of the job, while preaching that they want to be a great employer. People cycle in and out rapidly. It’s sad that what should be an ideal job at well-known institution is somewhere that is just a short term stop for most employees careers. Maybe one day the administration will address the flaws of the university, but until then people will come and go every couple years because they can’t find happiness and fruitful employment in the current culture. 

So this isn't my first summer camp job which is why I am pretty critical. I was in their UC Santa Cruz camp site. The amount of supervision was insane. You have to make the kids eat with your group only, can not let them get food on their own or throw out their trash in the dining hall, you have to be present with them. You could not leave your floor after 9:30PM or so for the whole night. You can not have your doors closed at all during floor time it feels like you are living for the students here with little to no personal time except to sleep. The kids themselves were incredibly spoiled, entitled, but not really disrespectful for sure, its not typical public school kids in this program. 

 Morning meetings constantly take 1+ hour because of the activity planning, which just feels tiring through and through. Rules kept being changed during the camp, for example they changed off days from 30+ hours to just a firm 24 hour window so you essentially are working on the evening of your off day. Nights out were finally implemented late into the program towards the middle of second session. 

Most of my coworkers were pretty nice but there was definitely problematic colleagues as our team was pretty large.

 Santa Cruz itself is a beautiful place with lots of nature and scenery, but I found myself getting bored of the small town by second week. There just is not much culture there, its more of a beach town with a massive university campus at the end of the day. Do note that the bathrooms are shared and you may end up sharing the bathrooms with students, we were housed in Porter College. 

•	Responsible for supporting all elements of training, planning, design, development, and implementation for designated application(s) in the EHR program
•	Assists training manager with training strategy for designated application(s)
•	Participates in the development of training policies and requirements for designated application(s)
•	Complete the training tasks outlined in the training project plan
•	Responsible for development of detailed, workflow based curriculum for designated application(s)
•	Responsible for building, testing, and maintaining the training environment for designated application(s)
•	Develops appropriate level of proficiency measures for training
•	Deploys instructional methods based on type of learning, learner needs/preferences, and available resources
•	Trains end users, super users, and additional classroom trainers on assigned applications
•	Champions the project
•	Provide post go-live coaching and support.
•	Completes required status reports and attends required meetings
•	Achieves and maintains application certification in accordance with departmental and organizational standards
•	Maintains confidentiality with regards to information being processed, stored or accessed by the system. 
•	Designs, develops, tests and evaluates educational courseware for clinical information systems training. 
•	Develops and authors e-learning and blended learning programs, web-based training and asynchronous learning content. 
•	Develops instructional material; coordinates, writes, and edits educational content; and incorporates current technology for educators developing specific curricula.

Since JHU is a teaching organization, their focus is on teaching, and therefore lacks success in patient satisfaction, and ultimately employee satisfaction. Although they are the "leading hospital" in the nation, and they are able to offer amazing learning opportunities for all disciplines, they overwork and underpay their employees. As a dedicated employee, I did not feel a sense of appreciation from the attending physicians for all of my hard work and effort. Furthermore, the administrative side of the facility is completely focused on productivity and do not demonstrate respect for the personal lives of their employees. It is an extremely difficult and competitive environment and is structured for rotating resident physicians. Due to this set-up, there is an enormous amount of pressure on the mid-level providers to facilitate the smooth operation of patient care. On many occasions, I was put in the position where I was expected to fulfill duties that were out of my scope of practice as a primary care certified NP. At JHU, they are not mindful of the certification limitations that exist among primary care mid-levels and thus expect the work to get done, regardless of how it is completed. In summary, my rationale for leaving was for all of these reasons: the lack of appreciation and support from the providers, the long work hours and low pay, the poor communication among the medical teams that often compromised patient care, and for the protection of my license.

A typical day at work for me would start at 8 am. The first thing I would do is to check if the major lab equipment was working properly. Afterwards I would start my kinetic experiments by first calibrating the instrument and then preparing the solutions required for the experiments. The work day for me would end at 7 pm.
I have learned how to use various analytical instrumentation, as well as how to analyze, and interpret results that I obtained from these analytical experiments. During my typical work day I had to read primary research and apply or modify procedures found in these publications in order to satisfy the goals for my experiments. I learned how to design experiments.
The most enjoyable part of my job were the scientific discussions I had with my co-workers. I absolutely enjoyed working as a part of a team. I gained a lot of knowledge from these interactions. I had a lot of positive, very informative and educational interactions with staff members who were responsible for the different analytical instruments in the Department of Chemistry.
The hardest part of the job was the communication with management, and to be more specific, I was not satisfied with the level of mentorship that was required for scientists who just begin their professional development.
Overall the culture and values of the university are on the highest level.

I worked for a program called TRANSITIONS TO YOUNG ADULTHOOD and with this program, it was my responsibility to contact individuals who were a part of the longitudinal study (over twenty years prior) and set up computerized interviews to see how the program had effected them over the years.

When reading the mission statement of the program and in interviewing the individuals, many of the findings were quite interesting.

Management was pretty understanding and I didn't have any co-workers. I was the only interviewer during my time with the program.

There were a few difficult parts of this job. I had difficulty finding or contacting the individuals. Several of them were imprisoned, deceased, or they had relocated. I had contact information for relatives and friends, but some of them were skeptical, so it really became a true chore trying to locate people. Another difficult part of the job was trying to get the individuals to consent to the interview. I was successful with many, but several were not interested.

The most enjoyable part of the job was meeting the many people and hearing their stories. Once I met them, they were very comfortable with me. I'm glad to know that I have that affect on others.

For laboratory research, hours are flexible, lots of core facilities to make high tech stuff accessible to your studies.  Campus is safe and secured by tons of security guards; parking is expensive and tough to come by and campus is accessible by metro subway. Connected to Homewood area and Bayview by shuttle buses (though latter stops at 7pm). International staff and employees at all levels. Pay raises are very individual by laboratory and not often by the University at my level (junior faculty).  Note that Hospital areas are run completely separate from University areas so you may be in buildings and inter-connected areas used by Research doctors (alot of MDs do at least some form of research apart from direct patient care and so are both hospital and University employees) but hospital patient care is a separate entity.  Basic science research not connected to MDs on this same campus is also a separate unit.  The scientific community is large so you can always find an expert on some topic to further the research you are doing and core facilities help add functions to your research that in the past you would have had to have been an expert in, yourself (sequencing, mass ,spec, etc).

I have nothing to complain about Johns Hopkins University. 

I enjoyed every minute I worked there and wish I have never left. I left only because I have to move to Brazil due my husband job  he got there.  

I learned so much that is hard to say it all. I learned how important is give and to have support; management in theory, but most of all by practice and having fantastic management that did not take anything personal while being supportive and humanizing in helping me finding the best ways to solve problems. 

The workplace culture is fantastic with no competitiveness but doing the best possible in everything without any type of violence. The sense of community is very strong. You you don't have, you will not survive there. 

The hardest part but not really, was the challenge  of being on the top of the content and much more of nursing. The school has great students eager to learn and excel, so you have to be ready to give them what they deserve, the best!

I did enjoy most everything in the job, but relating to the colleagues and students  and the methodologies used to teach were the best. 

In my job as Administrator of the JHU Department of Biomedical Engineering I manage the resources of the department across boundaries of the University.  My department sits within two schools of the University, which creates interesting synergy, but can be an impediment and challenge when the strategic goals of the schools are not in concert.

I currently report to the Department Chair and two sets of senior managers at JHU, one in each school.  Every day of my job is different.  But commonly on a daily basis, I meet with several of my employees on current projects, assist department faculty and students on various special issues, and work on my own projects in coordination with the Chair.  I am a very hands-on manager and I enjoy working alongside my staff on executing the mission of my department.

The work environment is friendly and collegial.  There is a good work/life balance with work from home/work remotely opportunities.  The University is improving in providing opportunities for employees to explore professional and personal development opportunities through training.

Johns Hopkins University, especially their School of Medicine, is an exceptional institution. There is a level of prestige attached to that name that not many institutions can surpass. There are boundless opportunities to interact and collaborate with experts in their fields. There is no shortage of brilliance. However, management is completely detached from the actual operations of the institution. It is an incredibly decentralized place, and while that provides a great level of autonomy to those who thrive in that environment, good work and great employees are rarely recognized. The only reward for hard work is more work, usually the work that should be done by one's superiors. Delegation is one thing, dumping on the employees is quite another. More must be done to identify and reward high achieving employees. Additionally, the culture of "passing the buck" has certainly become overwhelming. Management must be held accountable for the performance of the divisions, departments and teams.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Research assistant 107 salaries reported	$22.11 per hour
Postdoctoral fellow 37 salaries reported	$89,344 per year
Graduate researcher 4 salaries reported	$47,750 per year
Research program coordinator 28 salaries reported	$55,764 per year
Technologist 71 salaries reported	$20.80 per hour

Working at Johns Hopkins University: Company Overview and Reviews

Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University Ratings

Popular jobs at Johns Hopkins University

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected