administrative assistant

senior administrative assistant

student assistant

academic advisor

exercise specialist

MacEwan University

I do not recommend working here, especially on the Admissions Team. Incredibly high turnover rate. Toxic management. A high degree of favouritism and nepotism. Leaders who have a complete lack of basic human decency and concern. New management and leadership are miles worse than the people previously in place. Tendency to string people along like puppets. You will never be asked for input on things that directly relate to your work. All decisions about your job are made by people who do not do your job. However, you will be asked to provide "feedback" to management, just to be shunned or ignored if you disagree with their take on things. The result is a vacuum, where leadership and management exist in a silo of their own opinions and push their own agenda/view of progress under the guise of having consulted the Team or there being "consensus."

The only way up is if you have friends in high places or know someone. Hiring and new positions are created with people in mind. It's a sham of a process for optics to make it seem like hiring is fair. 

Everything MacEwan does to improve their reputation and their student experience is single-handedly undone by the toxic, awful new management. 

A very top-heavy, protectionist organizational culture with myriad, redundant levels of upper management, few of which seem to take an active role in implementing recommendations, changes or suggestions. Upper management/leadership also seem reluctant to become involved with performance management, coaching or helping subordinates develop a clear career path. Divergent views, organizational change and conflicting messages create ambiguity and a culture of fear and uncertainty among low- and mid-level employees. This could be minimized were leadership to take a proactive approach to employee engagement, employee recognition, and internal communications

Great benefits but, depending on the manager, difficult to determine the correct or appropriate paths to professional development. HORRIBLE disability management and support for/accommodation of employee with disabilities/impairments.

A typical day for staff includes doing more than one full time job and wondering when your position might be abolished.
MacEwan values people in this order: Faculty, Students, Staff. 

The Provost rules with an iron fist. Staff are disposable, and many staff jobs have been cut in the last 2 years, despite huge surpluses, while faculty numbers continue to grow. Faculty are like gods and no matter how many complaints or allegations are made against them they will keep their jobs. 

Rather than performance manage staff, management and HR just abolish positions. Why deal with the problem in a human focused way when it's easier to just get rid of it?

HR does absolutely nothing. They do not participate in interviews, they would rather lay people off than performance manage anyone, they even make you fill out your own direct deposit information when you start (no blank cheques here). 

Overall, the staff who work here are not valued at all by management. I would not recommend working here to anyone unless you are faculty and don't care how staff are treated.


I worked at MacEwan for a number of years, and what stands out to me about this organization is both its profound ability to exploit teachers with sessional contracts and no guarantees of regular employment, as well as their abysmal teacher support. If you are looking for a place where you can grow as an instructor and be supported in your work, look elsewhere. This institution provides no support for instructors. Worse still, instructors can be expected to have to answer to unfounded, anonymous complaints from students, and there is absolutely no support for them from the union, despite the regular union dues that instructors must pay. I'm grateful that I'm no longer working there and that I've been able to find better employment elsewhere. I would highly recommend anyone considering working for MacEwan to look around. I promise you, there are better opportunities elsewhere.

MacEwan University was a great place to work where making friends was part of the package. It is highly collaborative, open to change and improving processes, and where there was clear direction about university priorities. People took pride in working there and were very proud of the student experience offered through faculty and staff. The institution went through a lot of change while I was there and continues to do so as it works with shrinking government budgets.

Working as a Causal Educational Assistant has been very rewarding. I was able to work one on one with students that needed assistance in their classes whether it was taking notes or tutoring. As a Causal position I did not have one set spot and travelled between the three campuses. I was able meet most of the staff and was welcome by each one. It was a pleasurable work environment.
The hardest part of the job was the random hours each week. The secruity was not there.
I learned more about relating to people and helping others face their challenges. I also had the opportunity to work with a variety of people and be able communicate in a positive manner.

As a professor at MacEwan I interact with people from all over the university and have found that they are very interesting, welcome and helpful people, whether I have a question about teaching, research, or administration.

I am constantly challenged in work with my students.

I have got a lot of ideas about improving my teaching from my colleagues, and my experience at MacEwan has helped to make me a better prof. 

This was a fairly informal job position. Essentially I had to directly work for a professor, recruit summer students for interviews, then conduct, record, and transcribe the interviews.
There were other students also working, but we rarely needed to interact, and when we did it was usually via email.
Hardest part was time management as I had a high level of discretion with this job. Another difficult aspect was learning to transcribe interviews quickly, but it was a VERY good experience.
Most enjoyable personally was being able to work from home (when transcribing) and working with students in a face-to-face context.

The saving grace is it is unionized.  In 2 yrs of employment I went to the union at least ten times.  The do not address mistakes or performance correction effectively.  Rather they talk about it behind closed doors and you never know what happened, what is being said or even what mistake you made.  I had complaints from my team members go straight to Management and not address the issues with me.  These were small issues, difference of procedure, but could have been cleared up the first time it was an issue.  I found out six months later that it was an issue.

A typical day at work, was when I was asked to do a public speaking without pre- notice. It was a challenging, but I nailed it by rendering a powerful and educative speech. I learned to be always prepared, know much about your job and be willing to uphold your company at any time any day. The hardest part of the job, was the time management. I was a full time student with full school work load. It is not easy to manage the both. The most enjoyable part of the job was the 5 mintues impromptu speech with your colleagues.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Administrative assistant 9 salaries reported	$28.90 per hour
Senior administrative assistant 4 salaries reported	$28.90 per hour
Student assistant 11 salaries reported	$19.89 per hour
Academic advisor 2 salaries reported	$70,145 per year
Exercise specialist 6 salaries reported	$62,522 per year

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