graduate researcher

graduate assistant

research assistant

assistant professor

postdoctoral research associate

University of Connecticut

The UConn School of Business IT team was a great place to work.  I got to practice and refine many lessons from my Business classes, especially my professional and interpersonal communication, operations scheduling, multitasking under deadlines, and best practices for training new employees.  


A typical workday involved multiple calls from all over the building, most requiring me to respond to them in person and use my critical thinking to fix both software and hardware problems.  Professional in-person and through email communications occurred frequently.  I often handled irate individuals who were upset with the situation I would be called in to fix and who often required a respectful and delicate touch to calm them down, however they always saw me off with a smile.  

The workplace culture was great, with regular check-ins from management (when we had a manager) allowing us the freedom to perform duties as we saw fit as long as the issues were completely resolved.  Such a culture encouraged the individual development of the employees and gave us a sense of pride and accomplishment.  Casual professional attire was expected, for example a simple (no graphics) collared shirt with buttons, pressed beige slacks, and belt.  Interactions were respectful but jovial, leading to high moral for the employees and service with a smile.

Easily the most difficult part of the job was the extended disruption in the chain of management, with the management position responsible for our day to day oversight being vacant for 6 months, right up until I graduated.  This required me to step up (as the team member with the most experience in a supervisory position) and informally lead and motivate our IT team to continue to operate at maximum efficiency while maintaining workplace values, best practices, workplace policies, and culture.  I had to assess and delegate the workload to those most suitable for certain situations, maintain communications with clients, customers, and associates to prevent missteps and keep on top of ongoing problems to prevent them from being forgotten.  While this was a difficult task given the number of people our office supported and breadth of issues that could arise, it was also the most fulfilling time of my employment.  I got a chance to hone my managerial skills, operations management, train new employees, and learn a lot about management roles and duties that I look forward to carrying into new management oriented roles in the future.

The elderly employees who can't even walk have to retire, that said, instead of taking care of the patients they keep talking about their family stories on and on.  The new hire ends doing all the drawing while they sit down and do nothing. If they were to pay me a million dollars I would not work for them, the manager does not care as she makes the big gig. And you be all over the state of Connecticut. The department treats the new hire so poorly having no respect. Do not ever work for them will regret later. You will be happy being a Janitor than working for them. No teamwork and very few really work on any given shift, so if you join Uconn Lab (phlebotomist) and if you are a hard worker end up doing all the work. Just to let you know all the newly hired employees keep leaving due to the above reason. If you are lazy and this job is a good fit. The existing 60 plus years old employees want you to quit so they could get the overtime. The meanest employees that you will ever see. All who work there as a phlebotomist are fake except a hand full. The managers do not care for a person as you are just a number, no matter what happens to you or your family they don't care, do you really want to work for them. Someone needs to report them to the CEO so there will be a change. This is a workplace bully and abuse. The HR says they give you tuition reimbursement it takes 2 to 3 years to get it reimbursed. So what goes in Vegas stays in Vegas. So no one ever came forward to say to the higher management and the money hiring and training a new employee costs so much invested and the employee leaves the job. The state is losing money because of these rotten old employees who should be working in Dunkin donuts at a minimum wage. It is so sad that some of them though they like the benefits and are very good workers forcefully leave. The people at the lab (phleb) are atrocious. I really want all to know what kind of environment you will be in when you leave a good position, please think over before joining the crooks. They stroll away from their desk and take breaks as and when they want, no time constraint for the lunch break. It so pathetic how the manager poorly handles the department cause her paycheck is huge and that's all that matters. I had worked in other places but never came across one like this. The coordinator favors her friends on what shift they want to work hours and the location. This will never change at all.

This is not an institution of higher education focused on research  This is a basket ball factory.  Here, research faculty exist to provide undergraduates with research opportunities  There is no commitment to research beyond this level.  The stipend is extremely low in comparison to peer institutions and neither the school nor the state deems it necessary to pay graduate students during the summer months, regardless of your department.  Fees are unreasonably high, $1,110/semester.  Yes.  That's per semester.  You will owe the school $2,200 for the privilege of attending and using none of their resources.  This is of course owed after taxes are taken out of your $20,000/9 months.  So that you cannot burden the state by collecting welfare or receiving food stamps since you before tax income is technically slightly above poverty.  You will get no research done because your advisor will choose to keep you as a teaching assistant because it's free to them to do so.  This will monopolize time that could be spent toward your research on the demands from course coordinators and needy students.  Even if your advisor has gran money there is no incentive for them to put you on an assistance-ship since making you teach is free.  The school further disincentivizes GAs by requiring any advisor who wishes to place their student on a grant to pay tuition to the school (which is normally waived when the student is on a TA) in addition to covering the students stipend.  

The cost of living is high, especially for living in the exact middle of nowhere.  There is no accessibility here.  No public transportation to connect you to civilization, no food stores within walking distance, no entertainment that is not run afoul with college children.  Without personal transportation, you are stranded, relying on the university for basic necessities, which of course are limited and overpriced.  But you can afford a sweet ride on that 18k they let you keep, right?  Do not consider applying here for graduate school.  It is an extremely sober and austere existence, even for a grad student.

The catering staff would walk in the door and immediately our day began. We prepared our pre-ordered deliveries for the day by making sure we had all of the necessary utensils, food, and items needed to consume the food we would be delivering. We double checked with the chefs and made sure their food requirements matched ours as the delivery person. Since the customers were pre-ordering our services we needed to make sure that whatever it was they wanted, we matched it exactly. Mistakes were not tolerated, and at times made the day much more stressful. Once our orders were prepared and ready to go we loaded them onto one of the many delivery vans and set out to deliver the food. Sometimes vans were filled with four and five deliveries at a time. It was imperitive that we maintained a keen eye for detail to make sure no mistakes were made. When we reached the destination for the order we had to set up the area and make it look 100% professional. Even for a quaint continental breakfast it still had to look as professional with small linens and fanned out paper napkins. The client always let us know when they wanted the food picked up by, so after a day of delivering it was time to clear tables, and retrieve our linens. Management was always on their toes. They knew what they needed, when they needed, and exactly how they needed it. They were consistent in their demands, and expectations. The hardest part of the job was rarely knowing what our schedules were going to be week to week. Orders were always changing and rescheduling. The best part of the job was how fast paced it was. The co-workers were great. Because there were so many of us, if one person was not performing to their best ability, the rest did our best to pull them up and jump start their performance.

Everyday would vary from busy days of nonstop tutoring math to new freshmen students in college to some slower days where students finished exams and did not need help. 

I learned how to not only manage big classrooms with 30+ students, but I also learned how to be the leader in the room. I would make sure students were always studying since they only had six weeks to pass two college courses. 

Both of my bosses were great. I had worked for them for many years and now that I had moved up to professional tutor, they trusted me with my decisions on how to manage the classroom; it also helped that I had my masters in Curriculum and Instruction. 

The culture was quick paced at times since I had to keep track of attendance of 30+ classes for three periods, make sure that each student visited their adviser every week, keep in touch with professors and their lessons so my tutoring could compliment their teaching method, and give verbal reports to by bosses about any updates with the students (good or bad). 

The hardest part of the job was saying goodbye to the students since it was my last time tutoring at UCONN.

The best part of the job were the students. They came in everyday with great energy. Some students who did not come in with the mindset of studying were the most fun because I was able to push them to work harder. It was a "boot camp" in a sense because they had fast paced college work to complete in six weeks only a week or two after leaving high school. Seeing them work hard to enter UCONN for the fall is always the most enjoyable.

Typical work day starts off with driving and circling parking lot for a space. Get there an hour early to ensure you punch in on time.
Make sure you stretch, because you’re going to average 16,000 steps per shift.
If you’re hired as a kitchen assistant, don’t be surprised when you are thrown in the dish  pit scraping plates, moving trash barrels full to the brim of food waste, and cleaning the dish machine. You aren’t really a kitchen assistant, but a glorified dish washer in all actuality. You’ll spend more time sweating it out in a steaming dish room than actually assisting anything in the kitchen.
There’s a lot of call outs, so they pull the kitchen assistants to the dish room for coverage.
The other thing you’ll be expected to do is scrub pots and pans that the chefs pile up then decide to bring you, with food hardened and adhered to the pots and pans. You’ll be alone, no one helps. You’re there all day 8 hours scrubbing and scrubbing and soaked from head to toe. This happened to me often. 
I think out of a 5 day work week I was actually  kitchen assistant 1 or 2 days tops. The rest of the week I was banished to pots by myself or in the dish room dying of heat stroke.
It’s a hard job. It’s not worth the pay that’s for sure. But if you’re determined to get in on a chefs assistant role or better you need the fortitude to stick it out and suffer. 
The management is decent, they’ll talk you up while you’re bent over a sink scrubbing pots for 8 hours, because well, they don’t want to fill in and do it!


What is the best part of working at the company?
The benefits, not the pay but the benefits.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Finding parking in the morning or during the day. The main campus in Farmington is congested, really bad. There's more employees than there is parking and you are scrutinized to the level of termination for being even 2 minutes late, there's no grace period. You circle and circle to find parking and there isn't any. The shuttle system is unclear so parking in a far lot isnt smart unless you want to walk 15-20 minutes. The work load, the disorganization from management & the work place environment were unnecessary stressors as well.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Toxic, disorganized, they try to make it better however management is a level of catty that doesn't allow for improvement. Management has favorite employees that they paint to be trustworthy, honest people however the people are just bitter humans who will lie on people they don't like. Huge brown nosing energy. You just don't feel comfortable enough to work and let your shoulders down even a little. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Arrive, look for parking in hopes you find one in time for your shift. Clock in , open up all systems, look over your assignment for the day, log into your phones to accept calls, do your assignment in between calls, lunch, go home

I would come into work and greet any students that came to the Q-Center and ask what classes they needed help in. If I could help them in a math course, then I would work with them. If I could not help them with a math course or a science course, I would either direct to a tutor in the room who could help them or set up an appointment with someone who can for another day. 

Over my many years of tutoring, this job taught me the most about how to help others in math. I gave people straight forward help in their classes and broke down the math to it's core foundation so they could understand the concepts. 

My bosses were usually never in the Q-Center, but they would make an appearance once a week to check up on things. They had a lot of faith and trust in my work ethic. 

The hardest part of the job was relearning old math courses that I had not used in years. Going from Number Theory to Algebra 1 was difficult at first, but they reinforced each other. 

The most enjoyable part of the job was a selfish one, but it had to be when students would thank me and tell me that I was the reason that they passed their class. I would always tell them that I did nothing and they did all the hard work by coming in for tutoring and taking the exams. It always made me happy knowing I made a difference somehow.

Overworked doing more than even a 2 person job. Management is awful and HR all looking out for management not for employees at all.  There are unions and the professional union is worthless they are on Management and HR side and dont help employees out at all. They rarely win grievances or arbitration. The advancement at UConn Farmington is all if you are in the click or a freind of management. Dont value years of service, knowledge, type of work you doing (mostly out of classification) dont respect confidentiality .  So newer employees, whom dont have knowledge or work ethic skills are fine  but once you hit over 20 yrs +. All you get is harassed to leave. But the older outdated physicians and researchers length of yrs and age dont matter will pay them forever even if not there you get nice office that you might come in only once a month, once every three months to use computer for an hour a waste of state money also waste way too much for travel and food for upper management and professionals wasting state money.

I was initially intimidated to enter a new profession of teaching for a university. I had been presented with the job opportunity soon after graduating with my Masters in Nursing and was drawn to the travel-aspect of the job as well. 

As the Resident Director, I was solely responsible for the students studying abroad in Puerto Rico. I was leading lecture two days a week in the classroom setting, and leading them in the clinical setting two days a week.I was also responsible for organizing off-unit student rotations throughout the hospital in settings such as the Operating Room, Emergency Room, Intensive Care Unit and Cardiac Catheterization Lab. In order to ensure a rich cultural experience, I was also responsible for taking the students on various cultural excursions throughout Puerto Rico. 

As any new career, the new role of professor was a challenge initially, but I quickly became confident and was ever-professional. By the time my semester was complete, I heard extremely positive feedback in the student's reviews, as well as from the VA hospital and University of Connecticut staff. I am now hired for my second semester teaching abroad, which will conclude for the term in May 2015.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Graduate researcher 10 salaries reported	$32,415 per year
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Assistant professor 8 salaries reported	$99,145 per year
Postdoctoral research associate 1 salary reported	$52,500 per year

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