Abilene Christian University Reviews

Pros

This job is fantastic! My boss is great and the work is very reasonable for a student worker position. The pay is phenomenal.

Cons

Sometimes the callers are ridiculous. You will get complaints that are not really your department. People will also distract you by coming by to chat.

Pros

Very friendly and helpful colleges and supervisors.

Cons

The salary is a little bit low.

Pros

ACU was innovative for about 4 years beginning in 2007 when it jumped into using mobile/tablets for learning and worked at being leaders in the field of higher education.
People are friendly and helpful on campus.
Complete change over of upper administration in the last few years (Provost position has changed twice). Waiting to see if it will be good or bad.

Cons

Pay is about 20% below other universities for similar positions (cost of living in Abilene isn't 20% cheaper).
In three of the last five years junior faculty and staff have been not renewed due to financial problems.
If you're not part of the in-crowd or go to the right church, your voice will not be heard.
Abilene is 2 1/2 hours from any other major city. Very isolated in culture and activities.
Plan to give a yearly summary of your church activities (yes, they want to know what your doing at church. It is part of T&P requirements).
Brain drain continues (as noted by an earlier post).
English faculty have an unusual amount of say in campus direction and activities.
Very inbred faculty. Majority of faculty and administration graduated from ACU.

Advice to Senior Management

The burden of years of poor financial planning is being laid on junior faculty and staff; those who can least afford it and are the most vulnerable.
Stop the inbreeding! Hire more faculty and administrators who never attended ACU.

Pros

The mission and institutional culture are very good. It's an entrepreneurial environment.

Cons

It's in Abilene, great if you like West Texas.

Pros

Great students, staff/faculty, alumni; superb flexibility, support, Good parking, weather, minimal traffic, very good/inexpensive local and campus activities;

Cons

always windy; speed bumps are more like berms; far from larger metroplex areas;

Pros

Christian community, with qualified people at the highest levels. The students are of very high quality, and were responsible, caring, and friendly.

Cons

About the only downside for me was the pay. Some departments paid much higher because it was hard to get top people from banking, business, etc. without paying well. I taught in a department where it was easier to get qualified people for less money.

Pros

Tuition benefits for family at a quality educational institution are good. It is also a very good place for work-family balance. If you are looking for a place where co-workers genuinely care about each other, this is the place to be. For the Abilene area, salaries are very good if you are management or a professional. Coupled with the tuition benefits, compensation is above average in the area.

Cons

While your direct supervisor will probably be a caring individual, don't expect middle or upper management to particularly care about you beyond the philosophical. In most areas, your manager will put off or ignore performance reviews. You are on your own in figuring out how to make yourself better at your job, prepare for advancement. On the operations side, there is a disturbing trend where lower/middle managers are all friends and seem to be in the business of running out long-time managers to bring in more of their friends. They are good at going to lunch together and attending meetings where they will tell managers outside their circle what they need to do to improve, while providing very little production/output from their own departments. Their departments seem to be comprised of male managers who do little productive work with many female employees that do all the work. Unless you are on the faculty side, if you are a woman your chances of career advancement are practically zero.

Advice to Senior Management

Notice the brain drain, particularly of women leaders, going on for the past year (2008). Is it too much to ask that managers be reviewed on important metrics, rather than how they can blow smoke in meetings?