faculty

tutor

police officer

office coordinator

professor

Northern Virginia Community College

I absolutely love my job as a Writing Consultant in the Academic Success Center at the Alexandria Campus. I have been doing it for 6 years and genuinely enjoy working with, helping, and supporting students to improve their English reading and writing skills. I go home every day feeling like what I do matters, makes a difference, and that I am making the world a better place one student at a time. 

I wish that I could actually reach my 29 hour cap like I used to do almost every week just 4 years ago. However, this is now impossible due to dramatic budget cuts that have reduced our funds for running the center by at least 75%. It is a miracle that we haven't been forced to lay people off or shut down entirely as a result. I miss working 9 am to 9 pm (with an hour-long lunch break) in order to accommodate working students who cannot get to campus until after 7 pm. I miss having students be able to email us their papers and have them read and critiqued and emailed back to them within 48 hours. I was the person who provided that service for nearly 2 years and I loved it because I could work from home while my child was an infant. Sadly, due to the budget cuts, we can no longer provide that service directly, so we contracted with an independent company to provide the service because it is probably cheaper. I am so sad to have lost this part of my job because it was fun for me.

Not having any leave of any kind means that I came to work sick on more than a few occasions unless I was contagious or miserable because I needed the money desperately. When I don't or can't work, I don't get paid and that is awful. I wish NVCC would take up the mantle of setting a precedent of treating part-time workers with the same care and respect as full-time employees and give everyone full benefits because we are all people who deserve to have quality of life. If there was something I could do to change and improve the working conditions, I certainly would.

Tutoring session took place mostly in afternoon from 3pm-10pm or in weekend from 10am-5pm. Tutoring students gave me the opportunities to better understand subjects I have taken before. I also understand how teaching methodology and the art of the communication are relevant in teaching profession. I discovered that the art of communication matter. I met different students who presented different kind of needs, and interacted with them accordingly. I found out how once's will, openness and perseverance help to overcome difficulty in learning. 
            Since we have limited time with each students, time management was key element to successfully assist and solve each student problems. Scheduling, punctuality, and strictness in time allocation have helped to serve each student. 
          The hardest part is to meet students who would not furnish any effort to understand the subject and would simply wait for you to solve the problems for them, but usually with motivational techniques I brought them to enjoy the subject. 
          The joy in tutoring is to be useful to others. It is a great joy to see the smile of students when they succeeded at the end of the semester. Also, by helping them you have the opportunity to help yourself.
      There was very interesting cooperation between tutors and professors who were our mentors as we communicated a lot and often shared concerns or problems during briefing, workshop or downtime. At the end of each semester, we gathered to have meal or cookout and shared students feedback. It was memorable and great souvenir time.

This is an excellent position for someone looking to get their foot in the door to teaching English full time at the college level, particularly for someone who's a self-starter who works well independently. The Manassas campus at NOVA has a mentor program to help newbies, but I don't recall if the Woodbridge campus has that (nor do I know if the other campuses have it). However, the other professors are helpful in providing samples of their own rubrics, classroom exercises, and anything else you may need. The hardest part of the job is creating your syllabi and lesson plans--they don't provide that for you. The most enjoyable part is working with the students--watching them grow and learn. Most of the students aren't interested in learning English composition, which is to be expected, so the goal is to make it interesting to them. The students are well-behaved and seem to enjoy group work the most. The pay at NOVA isn't so great for adjuncts, but that's true of adjunct positions anywhere. You won't be able to earn a living solely as an adjunct--you'll need to have another job as well. The more courses you teach the more you get paid, but it's still not enough to pay bills for this area, and you can spread yourself too thin by teaching too many. I taught one course while working a full time day job and it was time-intensive. I also taught two courses while working full time and that was just too much. I believe you are allowed benefits as an adjunct.

Working in tutoring is a really great job for students who are looking for a part time job for some supplementary income and work experience, the pay is okay and the hours are very good, they work around your schedule and are very lenient if you need to temporarily leave work for vacation or exams.

Your immediate supervisors are usually nice and well educated people (which is something you'll appreciate), you will enjoy working with them as it is similar to working with your professors.

The social life is great, sometimes students will talk to you about their careers and student life, making everything more fun and enjoyable. I met many people who come by the math center that we actually became really good friends.

Typically, you will be assisting students with homework problems. More often than not, they will ask you questions from take home tests and test corrections, you are not supposed to help them with those because it counts as cheating.

The job will really be stressful during midterms and finals weeks, as more students will be at the math center keeping you on your feet.

You will have to have a strong background in mathematics, most undergraduate students in STEM fields with a few math classes completed with A's or B's  are usually well fit for the job, but don't feel discouraged if you are not a STEM student but are passionate about tutoring and mathematics.

Day to day basis, we talked to user VIA chat, emails and telephone. We have to have high Customer Service skills because usually people who call always have problems about any IT or non-IT related issue. What we do the most in here is Password Reset (Students, Faculty/Staff)I, we also help Students and Faculty/Staff how to set up their blackboards, how to connect their devices to the wireless, how to sync their email to their devices, etc.

In this department we are always learn new system, information and we will keep growing in the IT field. If one has a new information, we shared among each other and keep everybody up to date. When we have free time, we use it to do some research about how to improve our work flow.

The hardest part of the job is if a user doesn't know how use a computer and they are really angry because they think all the technology is too complicated or not user friendly. In this part, First what I do, I calm them down by listening to their problems and once I have my turn to explain to the user I have to show them baby steps, walk them through everything will details using words that they could understand and I have to be really patient with this type of user.

Most enjoyable part of the job, the team work, and we feel like a big family.

A typical day for me is in the mornings I come and manage the ticketing system. Make sure all the tickets are assigned to the right department. If it is something we can do locally to fix, I go and troubleshoot the issue. Otherwise, send the ticket to our central IT to fix the issue from their end. Throughout the day if there are projects that we are working on, we split into teams and tackle each project. Otherwise, I mainly work on troubleshooting tickets from faculty/staff/students. 
I have learned a lot as far as working in teams with dead line pressure. Working under no supervision at all on projects as well as troubleshooting calls. Learned to work with different types of faculty/staff/student requests. 
Management culture is relaxed. Management encourages employees to work hard and to meet deadlines for projects. 
Co-workers are great and helpful. Very team work oriented. 
The hardest and most motivational part of the job is to communicate to different personnel with IT needs with little or no experience with IT technology.
What I enjoy mostly about this job is that this is what I love to do. I love to be around technology and at the same time be able to teach it to others. 

First, let it be said, I loved working at NOVA. My immediate supervisor, the lab manager, and the dean were all very supportive, in every way that counted.

That was my experience. Beware, though. That was before Covid, and during that crisis, everyone I worked with left for other jobs.

I would still be there myself, but I moved from Virginia to Maryland.

I will say that I witnessed my supervisors being overworked and burdened by too many responsibilities. Apparently, they once had more deans and supervisors, but reduced the number to half. Effectively, this means everyone there suddenly had to do twice as much work (acting in the capacity of two jobs at once).

An example of this condensation is my division, which should have been Physical Sciences, but was crunched down into the chimeric form of "Must Be" (MSTB), or Mathematics, Sciences, Technology, and Business.

Business. Really.  In there with calculus and organic chemistry. Well how about that.

Reminds me of that old SNL skit about the Metric Alphabet, where LMNO was a single letter, as in "LMNOpen the door".

1.  Taught College students the importance of business via through black board and utilizing the students business book to teach methods of business based on college material provided by college
2.  I learned what the students I taught needed to be successful for advanced classes
3.  I prepared and management school work material daily to teach several chapters in the Intro to Business book the students were assigned.  Also I keep record of student attendance, homework assignments and exams through Blackboard system.
4.  My co workers were friendly, supportive and team players
5. The hardest part of the job was influencing students not to be negative and they can succeed in any major they pick to prepare them for work in the future.  However, I was able to provide methods to students to overcome their uncertainty and how to achieve success in business.
6. The most enjoyable part of the job was seeing how students progressed through exams and having a positive outlook to establish success in future advanced classes.

Prepare for classroom material to teach students business ethics,
how to manage a team in a corporation and to provide to the basic understanding of how majors corporations operate and function

I learned from this job the many international corporations we have worldwide and how they have many different strategies to operate internationally vs in the USA, which was intriguing.

My co-workers are the best in support, team playing and expressed a great attitude towards higher education.

The hardest part of the job was to influence some students who did not have positive support from parents, but as a Professor I provided the consistent positive feedback to their learning skills.  I recognized students for the different projects they present, enforcing constant encouragement to doing a great job on projects, homework assignments and tests.

The most enjoyable part of the job was recognizing students for the great efforts and performances they achieved in my college course.

At NOVA, I can make a real difference in the quality of life of the people I work with as an Academic Advisor.

A typical day involves working with students individually and in groups to help them learn NOVA's policies and how to do the research necessary to choose their major and coursework effectively. About 15% of the day involves paperwork (keeping notes of interactions with students), 70% in direct contact hours with students, and 15% in proactive outreach and program planning and evaluation.

NOVA is currently (Spring 2018) in the middle of introducing 5 new initiatives at once, and is therefore experiencing the natural sorts of stresses and frustrations involved in that kind of process.  It could be a very difficult environment for someone who struggles with change or who lacks patience with uncertainty.  The workplace culture is currently to much in flux to be able to define effectively.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Faculty 13 salaries reported	$92,308 per year
Tutor 5 salaries reported	$18.00 per hour
Police officer 7 salaries reported	$47.00 per hour
Office coordinator 5 salaries reported	$25.00 per hour
Professor 3 salaries reported	$91,467 per year

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