administrative assistant

associate professor

faculty

utility worker

medical assistant

Western Michigan University

The department as a whole needs updating regarding what is truly expected of school/district based administrators and the tools they need to be successful. The University's Educational Leadership Department Failed their last 2 CAEP Accreditations. They finally, on their last attempt, with my input passed their CAEP Accreditation as long as they supplied data to support their app.
The professor who had been responsible for accumulating the data over the last five years had nothing to show for his work. He did not have any data. He was given one less class every semester to perform this expectation over the last 5 years.
The main prof I worked with was extremely concerned about being the best of all of us. He felt threatened and intimidated by anyone who showed effective leadership. He had to be the center of attention if not he would become angry or make up falsehoods about your efforts to the Chair. 
The Chairperson of the Department gave him free reign since she had never taught or lead in a school setting. The Chair is open about this fact. She also admits that since she has no school experience she relies on this prof. In fact she just gave him tenure. This prof harassed me throughout my experience and when I went to the Chair about my concerns the harassment just got worse. 
Most of the students and other adults I came into contact with were extremely helpful and great to work with during my tenure. Any one outside my department, such as trainers/payroll were pleasant and wanted to make sure I received what was expected from the beginning.

No one holds anyone accountable. No follow through, no strong leadership. They have left individuals in management roles who are not qualified and have done no good for the company, but because they don’t follow through or have any accountability they turn a blind eye at the real issues at hand. 

They do not operate like a real institution should, it’s all about who likes you, and if HR does not like you they won’t have your back. HR will also not follow through with the true consequences that are needed if deans are not on board with holding their own staff accountable. Staff are left to suffer, hourly staff are severely underpaid and not compensated for overtime often because they’ll always say “flat budget” year, no more overtime, but yet expect you to still do the work. 

There is a bad culture created that if you do not hold a MD or PHD, you are not worthy. MD and PHD’s walk around as if they are above you and will not give you time of day at first. 

Associate deans who oversee your department won’t even say hello to you or make eye contact in the hall as you pass them. This is the work environment that has been created and continues, this is why staff do not trust or appreciate who they work for, as they are not even treated like a human being that deserves a simple hello. 

Would not recommend working here if you are not an MD or PHD. Save yourself the stress and anxiety and find somewhere else that had a good culture. This place had a long way to go to get there. 

I am a student employee in Valley Dining Center. I have 3 permanant shifts (10 hrs total) in a week, each shift is 2-4 hours. Every week I may pick up shifts, but the limit for international students are 20 hours per week. Each shift covers different scope, but I typically make customers their meals, restock ingredients, wash the pans, sanitize the place and close the station. 

Through this job at the dining center, I have learned to be patient and thankful. It gets tiring during the long hours when there is no one to serve, I have no choice but to brace myself until shift ends. 

I love it that my workplace welcomes people with disabilities (visual and hearing). Although most employees are international students, I have met a few unique students. They shared that the managers and supervisors would often check on them during shifts and even communicated with them on normal days.

The hardest part of this job is working a shift alone. All classes have been moved online hence, the dining center has cut down on its employees. I get incredibly restless without talking to anyone, it is hard to take a break when no one can cover for me.

I realized how much I like working! It may be tiring having to complete assignments after hours of work but it is rewarding knowing that I served many people. 

Currently appointed at WMU Homer Stryker MD School of Medicine. This is a medical school which formed and evolved by absorbing a humble community based residency training initiative that previously was a family friendly, supportive, enriching environment to work. Unfortunately this is no longer the case. The current milieu of faculty is ripe with inflated egos, toxic narcissism and unwarranted entitlement. Their mission statement is idealistic and boisterous. The community hospitals and populations we serve are humble yet many faculty here are righteous and egocentric. Little to no transparency exists in salary parity. Subjective favoritism by management and the promotion of select faculty members agendas is the norm. Objectivity is at times minimized. Students and residents routinely speak of time here as a “means to an end”. Previous reviews have noted a culture of fear, retaliation and general paranoia that is frankly exhausting. Sweeping changes are necessary in leadership or we risk losing competent employees. I myself will not stay in good faith, without compromising my own integrity, unless things soon change. To be fair many dedicated ancillary support staff continue to do great work here in spite of the challenges. I also have made friends with a few colleagues. Good luck to all of those that apply.

I was a graduate student in the History department for the past two years, and took the assignment because of the department's funding offer for me: two years guaranteed, including tuition and a stipend. As a freshly graduated undergrad from the same institution from a different program, I was eager to be offered ANY funding, let alone a full ride with a stipend. Ultimately, I am grateful for this position. The department's disorganization and mismanagement aside, as well as my tumultuous first year assignment (not being a TA), being a teaching assistant at this university is a mixed bag. It depends on who you are assigned for workload, responsibilities, etc., but as a whole, WMU is one of the most notorious for underfunding graduate students. This is partially due to the administration not giving a hoot about their graduate students, as well as being intentionally harmful via union contract negotiations. 

Overall, I learned a lot and gained a lot of valuable teaching experience being a TA for the history department. My professors were wonderful in their own ways, and it was not a ton of work in actuality. That being said, I had massive trouble living on my wages by themselves, and had to take on a second job in order to stay afloat--not something you should have to do while trying to survive graduate school in one piece.

I worked as a Resident Assistant for 2 years at WMU. The compensation was great! The college had added free WiFi for the whole school year when I started on top of free room and board. It was really great. 

Sometimes it was really hard to balance working, social and academic lives. When you had to be on duty for the crazy weekends it was hard to find time to get things done for class. I learned after my first year to try and get things done ASAP if I was scheduled to work one of those weekends.

The management and support I received from WMU was great. The staff was really helpful and supportive to help make us successful to then in turn have happy and healthy residents. There was also a great network between the Resident Assistants, the Hall Directors, Graduate Assistants and the Office of Residence Life to help all of us find work or further studies after undergrad. We all helped each other out. It was really great.

As for advancement there really was not a plan for that unless you became a Graduate Assistant but really that is a whole other job. As you gained experience as a Resident Assistant people looked to you for advise and guidance, but there was no formal outline for job advancement.

A typical day of work was meeting in the morning and the unionized people complaining in order to make the meeting longer and unproductive. After the meeting ended employees split off to receive their assigned vehicles and start on daily tasks such as weed whipping and edging (students only) while the unionized people went to their break rooms and ate breakfast and drank coffee until approximately 8:00 am (we started at 6:00 am).
What I learned was a great deal from my supervisor who taught me about invasive species and trail management in the Natural Areas and Preserves (donated to the Board of Education by various people). My supervisor also taught me about different species of birds and plant life natural to Michigan and how to promote their growth.
I liked the management of Western Michigan University however the unionized employees of the AFSCME union did not like to work and constantly complained that students where trying to take there jobs that they refused to do.
The Management constantly had to take unionized employees into meetings with their union representative for not working and complaining about the student employees, by the way, who are limited in the number of hours they could work and the rate of pay the was considerably less than what the unionized people where paid.

I would sit down at the large desk in the center of the room, boot up the office laptop, compare our website to the websites of other college LBGT offices, brainstorm ideas for how we could improve our pages, do research to make sure I had the correct information, and create typically one or two new pages every day, send them to my boss in an email, detail what I accomplished that day, power down the laptop, put it back in its drawer, and say good-bye to my co-workers.
I learned a lot from my research, but I also learned very basic things about having a job, like what not to wear, and basic office etiquette.
My boss was very personable and balanced a command for respect with a casual ease that made them very approachable. I was never afraid to ask questions.
My co-workers were all very friendly and eager to talk to me whenever they had free time. Near the end of my internship, my co-workers had learned that I was very creative and would often ask my input on creative endeavors.
The hardest part of the job was balancing it with my packed schedule. Sometimes I felt I would be more productive if I was not there, because of the sheer amount of homework.
The most enjoyable part of the job was connecting with other like-minded people who were interested in gender and sexuality.

Treated staff like second-class citizens. Human Resources functioned as a strong-arm to support bad leadership policies, rather than a department to serve the employees' best interests. The pay at all levels was abysmal, and budget failures from leadership were passed on to staff through hiring freezes, doubling of job duties, denial of annual merit raises, cutting benefit programs, and slashing department budgets while still expecting consistent results. Doctors were treated like royalty, only they were not paid well. Positions were left open for years while an exorbitant amount of money was spent on attempting to recruit high-level positions that ultimately went unfilled because compensation was at an industry low. Company culture was a facade designed to keep medical students happy and unaware of company budget crises. Departments were pitted against each other for money in a cut throat manner rather than a friendly competition to encourage excellence. Satellite office locations were often neglected or mistreated by leadership. 

•Lead and manage the US HR budget, holding regular reviews with each budget owner within this area, providing the forecasts and be the one contact point for Finance
 •Drive and develop through consultation with  stakeholders, effective business facing metrics & ad-hoc reporting (via a dashboard approach) that aligns and supports the HR strategy for the different business units & functions 
•Develop and deliver HRSS internal metrics, identifying trends and insights for improvement of operational efficiency 
•Leverage our full systems capability to create impactful visual representations of metrics to aid understanding enabling customers unfamiliar with data analysis and technology to easily interpret insights and determine strategic decisions
 •Partner with IT on identifying and suggesting areas of improvement on technology to support analysis objectives
 •Develop and deliver HR metrics training to HR staff across the Americas as appropriate
 •Participate in external policy forums/groups to benchmark, identify and keep abreast of industry best practice and to highlight areas of shortfall to the business in relation to metrics and

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Administrative assistant 4 salaries reported	$17.12 per hour
Associate professor 32 salaries reported	$77,297 per year
Faculty 1 salary reported	$251,500 per year
Utility worker 20 salaries reported	$16.39 per hour
Medical assistant 6 salaries reported	$19.07 per hour

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