instructor

career coach

registrar service specialist

administrative assistant

project officer

Bow Valley College

At Bowvalley college, I am an instructor of Human Resources and have the opportunity to utilize skills garnered from years of experience in various industry sectors; Banking, Insurance, Not-for-profit; as well as my skills as an expert HR Professional; people's person, dynamic leader; facilitator and trainer, to add value both face-to-face in a traditional environment and online. I have garnered multiple skills being  a part of a rich faculty where change is constant, learning is a continuum, and personal development is given priority.

A typical day at work starts with checking my emails for various messages from various contacts which may include; the Dean, Program coordinator, Lead HR Instructor, other faculty members, and students.

Thereafter, if  I have a faculty meeting, team meeting or event on my calendar, I attend, and add value. I also have time scheduled for preparation and research. Very importantly, I have time for delivering lectures to students as an instructor. I also evaluate student performance, respond to their enquiries and help with coaching, mentoring, problem solving; providing reasonable accommodation to those with learning or physical disabilities. My goal is to ensure success of the learners; so I have to constantly think outside the box; provide variety of content; PowerPoint presentations, case scenarios, quizzes, text book cases, websites, videos, discussions, learner participation, group discussions, assignments, mid-terms, exams, ; and also get learners to participate and give their feedback.

What I have learned is that learning is a continuum; change is constant; and very importantly, technology is an important tool for learning and work place success in a digital world.

Workplace culture is focused on respect, values, team work, and learner success.

The hardest part of the job is being firm with deadlines and deliverables; and giving feedback to learners who are performing below capacity. Despite being a caring and compassionate person, leadership involves also being able to provide fair and reasonable feedback to those I am leading; with the ultimate aim of helping them improve and succeed. I do that because that is the right thing to do; but more importantly, I provide ongoing coaching, mentoring, and opportunity for learners to improve. 

The most enjoyable part of the job is the success of those I am responsible for leading; the feedback I receive for a job well done and the overall success of my team and indeed the organization.

I spent my time here on a part-time contract. My co-workers and management were incredibly supportive and actively made an effort to help me grow professionally and listened to me whenever I had any concerns about projects or the work environment.

They were very welcoming and gave me the opportunity to take on new responsibilities without it becoming overwhelming, including allowing me to say no to projects that did not meet certain criteria (such as a reasonable expected turnaround date and a locked down scope of work.)

I was also allowed a VERY flexible schedule, allowing me to switch days or hours as often as needed as long as I provided reasonable notice, and they trusted me to get the work done on my own schedule without making me feel pressured. The result of this was that even in the busiest periods, I felt confident in being able to complete the work on time (often well before the deadline) without feeling stressed out.

Regular meetings were also scheduled twice monthly to ensure that I felt I was getting everything I needed to do my job, that I wasn't overburdened or did not have enough to do, and any suggestions to what could be done better. I was even given the opportunity to make my own proposals for adding to the department or the school in general.

The hardest part of this job was honestly leaving. I was lucky enough to have my contract extended and even received a promotion during my short tenure as a media developer. They unfortunately did not have the budget at the time to renew my contract, but I'd be happy to return in the future if the opportunity arises.

I still keep in touch with my former co-workers as well. If you have the opportunity to work here, I can't recommend it enough, this was an incredibly pleasant experience and I very quickly grew my own skills outside of my normal comfort zone thanks to some amazing guidance from empathetic and genuine co-workers and management.

The most enjoyable part of the job was the personal face to face interaction with the instructors as they requested the production of their daily learning materials.
A typical day at work involved the aforementioned learning materials, curriculum production for certain departments and the BVC Bookstore.
The hardest part of the job was finding solutions and negotiating compromises in situations where the workload and deadlines were above our production capabilities.
My co-workers were generally very good people to work with and the atmosphere was generally congenial.
Over the course of my 11 years there I learned that the people who are the functional core of the education system (instructors, admin., admin. support, shippers/receivers) share the common thread of existing for the purpose of educating the students.
Management probably has good intentions, but may have displaced the core values of the secondary education system for other priorities. That is a perception that each individual must reflect upon relative to their own personal situation in the context of working in a secondary educational institution.
 

Love working here, very rewarding and the administration is supportive and encouraging.  Internal processes could be more fair and transparent.  They hire casual instructors then when courses to teach become available you sometimes do not get assigned a course due to recent education cutbacks yet they are still hiring casual instructors, that does not make sense when you do not have enough courses for your existing staff.  The same thing for full time positions, they state preference is given to current employees but then will mostly hire external.  It just seems like some current employees are often left with no choice but to leave if they are often overlooked or not offered opportunities for advancement.

I work in the Global Access program area that focuses on helping people enter and re-enter the labour market. Work is based on government contracts. BVC is the best employer in Calgary in this area of work. You work with progressive management and the top professionals in the field. This makes it difficult to get into the organization because of the competition over positions, but very worthwhile once you are successful.

Academic qualifications, sector specific qualifications, foreign country experience, a second language and a recommendation from within the Global Access Department will help you to be successful in your application.

Bow Valley College was a wonderful place to work.
The people there were fantastic and most of the management team is incredibly approachable.
Many members of the management trust you to get your job done and trust that you are capable of completing work with little or no supervision. 
The most frustrating part of working at the college is its downtown location.  Calgary transit can be incredibly unreliable and shuts down more than is acceptable for a large city.  Parking is very expensive and the traffic is ridiculous.  
The people that you work with and the students make up for this.  The students are incredibly appreciative and hard working. Bow Valley College has a high standard and demands excellence from its students.

I really enjoyed being an employee at Bow Valley College the staff was amazing very friendly and easy to work with, my typical day would be dealing with students and booking appointments for the Student funding advisors as well as enter and map IPL's (individual learning plans) for the students, I learnt numerous items Office tracker which was for the advisors for there appointment, Agresso which is a student data base. the hardest part of my job was sometimes dealing with angry students when they couldn't get what they wanted. the most enjoyable part of my job was interacting with the students and the staff being able to help people and using my problem solving skills when needed.

What is the best part of working at the company?
My team were amazing, we had a common goal, a great culture and truly wanted to make a difference. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The leaderships lack of communication. And not wanting to try new approaches in an evolving world. Government cutbacks also made the organisation stressful as many people lost their jobs. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
The culture of my team was fantastic. But the culture of the organization was not. Senior figures had no idea what the staff were dealing with on a regular basis.

I have an incompetent director, who also bullies people. There have been at least 10 departures from one department in as many months. HR is absolutely useless. Their hires continue to be questionable and they will not remove the incompetent director. I've worked for a number of different organizations in Calgary. Different sizes, different challenges and in different sectors. However, this is the LEAST cooperative organization that I've worked for in almost two decades in this city.

Work was manageable but very stressful due to the department being short-staffed. Co-workers are all very experienced, friendly and willing to assist/teach others. I learned many things while working here, including SCCM and application deployment. The most enjoyable part of the job is the friendly atmosphere and team building - we really were a team, everyone supported each other which made handling the work much, much easier. The hardest part of the job was the short-staff/budget cuts, so many of us were overloaded and overworked.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Instructor 6 salaries reported	$80,250 per year
Career coach 1 salary reported	$60,612 per year
Registrar service specialist 1 salary reported	$53,448 per year
Administrative assistant 3 salaries reported	$50,221 per year
Project officer 3 salaries reported	$64,567 per year

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