Ivy Tech Community College reviews

Can be very fast paced. Not in touch with what staff needs to be successful. Very few long term staff due to job demands and low pay

*Incredibly rocky leadership and staffing in department since I started in late 2022 -- my direct supervisor changed about 4-5 times in nearly 1.5 years; I believe this affected staff morale and made it very challenging for our department to follow a shared and united vision; In my work experience, this was the most staff and leadership turnover I have ever seen *Structure for staff retention, in my opinion, and at the time of this review, is not developed for the college to the degree that it's in place for students. I observed far too many coworkers being escorted out by security, and instances of coming in on a Monday only to fins XYZ staff are no longer with the college; *Past executive leadership in my department taking on too many initiatives and grants too fast -- pushing for the funds and programs without the staffing for it. *Past executive leadership in my department also showing, over observations over about 6 months -- a long time -- character issues and leadership issues that left staff to the point that they did not trust them or believed they would do what they would do. * In my opinion, this role did not provide a clear pathway for someone to stay in a career-coaching-focused role working with adult learners as a sweet spot and move into a higher-pay scale. This was a stark contrast to more workforce and employer-focused roles in our dept., who were revenue generating and I am aware had more earning potential while not being in senior leader or director roles. *Structure for working remotely is lacking -- It got to be challenging to only have x2 remote days per week, while from trends of working with students and alumni, a majority of them would access our services or prefer them to be entirely virtually. I.e. a lot of days physically in office to be on video calls. From my tracking, I had about 40-50% of my coaching appointments that were virtual per month for more than 6 months of my employment. *At the writing of this review, the college has far too many tech. systems that do not speak to one another, but I am aware this is being remedied by them training staff on Salesforce-related apps. Here's a snapshot of the tech programs I used... --email and calendar platform --student info. platform where also documentation for sessions was stored --job board platform, which included tracking for student internships (this was not connected to any student info. platform, meaning double-entering of data) --career assessment platform --interview prep platform --among others... *The challenge of navigating many tech. platforms in a high. metrics-based environment *Some departments had little / no desire for our career services, which made serving their students challenging in that some majors would wait until their last few months to cram in a host of career skills; This often left students and coaching staff overwhelmed, and adult learners impatient in thier responses or expectations *Challenges of students / alumni believing our office was a staffing agency, and not an office designed to teach and help students build professional skills *Senior office staff that was not student facing -- very challenging for a few reasons... --I observed staff in those roles not make eye contact with pretty much any employee or even to be friendly in general to others during my employment there; I observed these staff were siloed off on a floor of a building that someone can only get to if they have a swipe card --this seemed to portray a spirit of "we are better than you" ; In my opinion, from what i understand on good leadership, servant leadership, and healthy organizations, this may be divisive in the long term --very much a top-down, do-what-we-say idea on programs and initiatives with true little room for feedback from staff who work with learners day-to-day *Awareness of this -- the strategies that work at a smaller campus with only (1) coach do not necessarily fit with a larger campus with multiple coaching staff who have over 500 students on a case load with metrics to meet. *Adjunct faculty who would ask for class presentations in less than 1 week notice; This was something I think was being worked on, as our department worked to guide folks to fill out an online form for class presentation events so we could manage them well and not miss anything. *It was really tough to meet, observe, and watch the following... --Meeting remote only consultants the college hired, while staff worked in the office primarily to be on video calls --Following executive leaders being let go, it was hard to see job postings for their roles via job search firm sites where their salaries were listed in six figure salaries, while staff I knew (and me) were making far less than that, aware there wasn't really a path to stay in our role and move to make more of an income aside from being a director or adjunct teaching. --I learned by the end of my time there from colleagues that adjunct faculty were going 6 months without being paid for courses due to bad processes; As a Master's candidate, this made me not want to consider adjunct teaching here at this point