Category: Leadership

 

The following represents my opinions as a former WGU employee. I
conducted over 150 interviews and hired at least 30 faculty in my role
as a Department Head or Program Manager. Specifically, I worked in the
General Education department but as you’ll see, the names for many
things at WGU are different; Gen Ed was never referred to much as a
department or quasi-college. While I would look for a specific type of
faculty member for General Education, I don’t feel as though the list of
qualifications would not apply to faculty within the four colleges as
well. I’m writing about the course faculty, course mentor, academic
mentor, or whatever title they give the people that work in the courses.
I’m not referring to student mentors, progress mentors, graders, or
assessment faculty.

As I used to say to my students who took online classes before; it’s also true for faculty:

you’ve never experienced anything like WGU before.

How WGU measures competency

The competency-based model
takes a little time to get used to and, as a concept, is foggy to
understand. My current best definition is that we taught to “first day
on the job” understanding. How this plays out for faculty is that
courses contain prescribed information for students to learn and there
isn’t much cognitive space for extra. You’ll teach what you are told to
teach, and nothing more.

Not In Control

The next item to learn is the disaggregated faculty model.
In a traditional university, one faculty member usually designs the
syllabus, teaches the course, and then makes and grades the assessments.
At WGU, those roles are split into 3 separate departments (ah, there’s
where the word ‘department’ is appropriately used). So there is a
product development department that designs what should be inside a
course (and a series of courses; a program aka a major), picks the learning resources aka textbooks, and creates the assessments aka
tests. Said another way, they make the syllabus. Mentoring is where the
faculty are; they teach the course. Mentoring is the face, voice, and
heart of the course. Course faculty write the emails, help struggling
students, call the students, form relationships, and become the
students’ greatest ally as they complete the course. The assessment
department creates, maintains, and grades the assessments whether they
be multiple-choice type exams, written papers, or portfolios. So if you
are considering being faculty, you will spend all your time teaching and
with students. For faculty that love teaching as the “best part of the
job”, you’ll be a good fit. However, if you have a hard time realizing
that you will have almost no voice in the design and creation of courses
(no, you will not eventually teach one section of your favorite niche
course) and if you resent not being able to give out points for effort
or resent not personally investigating plagiarism, you will not be a
good fit. Many would-be faculty members are sorted out right at this
early explanation of the disaggregated model because they don’t
understand how they would be faculty and not be in control of their
courses. So this leads us to the next concept– how time works at WGU.

Time

In
parallel with the understanding that semesters are called terms and are
6 months long, not 4 months, is the understanding that in
competency-based education, it does not matter when Day One of a course
is and when Day Final of a course is. Any student will be at any point of a course at all times. More
specifically, 1/6 of the students will be starting during any given
month, 1/6 will be finishing or trying to a course, and 4/6 or 2/3 will
be somewhere in the middle of their learning. So during any given day, a
faculty member could be welcoming new students, helping a student get
ready for the final, or encouraging students to continue their learning
path. If you are a faculty member that feels weak in an area of your own
content expertise (rare in Gen Ed, but it can happen), you will not
have the luxury of brushing up before you arrive at that point of the
semester. From the day you join a course, you could be expected to teach
any of the content from anywhere inside the course. It is very likely
that you will serve in several courses, too.

WGU operates as a business, not as a university

For faculty, that comes with some positives and negatives. Future
faculty should seriously contemplate these as often resignations within
the first year of employment come from these areas listed below.

Negatives

1. No control over course content.
   It is true that at some point, you *may* be invited to be an SME in
   course development, but that is usually a set of duties ADDED to serving
   students first. Translation = more hours for difficult work. However,
   solving problems inside of courses is supremely satisfying because (in
   Gen Ed), when you solve a problem, you are literally helping thousands of students actively within the course. 
2. No faculty senate.
   As a matter of fact, no union support in any way. Faculty, as the human
   element within the system, are often blamed and are the easiest to
   change, so get ready to swim in policies.
3. No down time.
   With 6 month terms that run overlapping, the university never closes.
   There is no need to. If a student can learn (online), the university is
   open. Looking forward to one month off at Christmas and three months for
   summer? Not happening for these faculty. Faculty that have worked in
   both elementary and secondary school seem to have the hardest problem
   here. I’ve seen many resignations in May as faculty realize that they
   are not getting the summer off. (See positive #2, tho!)
4. You are responsible for your students and
   that means you will be rewarded or not for their behavior. Students are
   measured on their academic progress if you are course faculty. If your
   students struggle, that is considered to be on you for employment
   purposes. There is some limited acknowledgement that other departments
   carry some responsibility (rare to find at all in higher ed!) but for
   the most part, you will be measured in every way possible; phone time,
   amount of outreach, number of lectures given, quality lectures, etc. If
   you chafe at being held responsible for others, this is not the job for
   you. (See positive #3, tho!)
5. You will work a weekend day and weekday nights.
   Remember that if a student can learn, we need to be available to help.
   Most WGU students are full time employees, which means they are fitting
   college into *their* downtime, which becomes your on time (on shift). So
   be ready to work at least 6 hours on a Saturday or Sunday and then 2
   weekday evenings, which I defined as at least 3 hours after 7 p.m. local
   time zone per week. I was always amazed to hear stories of new faculty
   in the shuttle between the hotel and the campus on the first day of
   training hearing *for the first time* that working a full weekend day
   will be considered a standard expectation. I tried to filter out
   applicants that clearly want what I call “pick up/put down” work. Those
   are the faculty that have taught online classes before and just expect WGU to be “more” online classes– how wonderful! Full time! Not adjunct! I get it. I understand the attraction. 

   Those
   are the ones that tell me *with pride* that they give out their cell
   phone number to students and are happy to “take a call from a student, even on a Sunday!”
   Uhm. No. 

   I want you to work the shift I need (which might indeed be
   Sunday) and then not work when you are not on shift (i.e. Friday &
   Saturday, and don’t check your email). More from me on the negatives of
   overworking, but that’s for another day.

6. It’s shift work.
   This one is a good bridge over to the positives because what I mean is
   that your job will *look* like a regular job in terms of shift work. You
   are expected to be one time. You are expected to be working when you
   are at work. You are expected to get yourself out of work at the end of
   your shift. (Overworking is on you. This is salaried, you are not paid
   more for overworking; you are paid less, get that?) You will not appear
   to be “stirring coffee with little tiny spoons in little tiny cups while
   wearing your corduroy jacket with the leather elbow patches” as I once
   hilariously heard a description of traditional faculty. If you want to
   do that in your home office, though, have at it!

Positives

1. One of the strongest dedications to student learning you will ever find
   in higher education. WGU does a ‘best places to work’-type of
   measurement every year or so and consistently, the consultants say that
   WGU has one of the highest connections to mission from the faculty and
   staff ever measured within higher ed. I believe that. Faculty that want
   teaching to be their highest mission LOVE working here. They find
   freedom in not having to constantly tweak courses, no publishing
   pressure, and no grading any papers or exams. Not one. No grading AT
   ALL. I call it: “you play for the student’s team.”
2. The freedom to utilize leave at *any* time.
   This is magical. True, while traditional faculty may be involved in a
   binge-fest at the end of May (<-what’s up with that, trad higher ed?
   What are you doing to your faculty such that they must drink themselves
   into oblivion at the end of the semester?), you’ll be able to jet to
   Europe for 2 weeks in October. Or February. Or if your child is sick on
   any given Tuesday, you can ‘not work’. We’ll cover for you. Good
   managers create teamwork-based coverage. It’s gorgeous. At 5 years, you
   get 4 weeks of leave in addition to holidays (you do earn up to this
   along the way). Most consider that quite good. (Extra tip: Disney World
   in October is wonderful.)
3. You are responsible for your students.
   OK, so there are a lot of complaints thrown at higher education or
   education in general and a lack of tying teacher performance to
   employment is one of those complaints. At WGU, problem solved. You
   either help your students get to graduation or you find yourself invited
   to be happy working somewhere else. You are part of the larger solution
   on this one.
4. If your manager is good, your schedule won’t be onerous.
   I can’t comment more about this, because just like in all jobs, it
   really matters who you are working for. Some schedules can be very
   difficult (i.e. working until 12 a.m. (midnight) local time and then
   being back on shift by 8 a.m.). While you are expected to work fully
   when you are on shift, you are not expected to work all of the time. You
   are not a robot.
5. You’ll be part of a team.
   This one surprises some faculty that were used to being lone wolf
   teachers. And it dawns on faculty over their first 5 weeks. The best
   teams have been designed specifically by their managers to utilize the
   strengths and weaknesses of the team to survive. The pace of change is
   light-speed because there is little to no overhead of time (classes
   change overnight, not at semester breaks) or space (no buildings, no
   offices, no classrooms) to worry about. Just like Hogwarts, while you
   are at WGU, your team is your family. Teaching with colleagues right by
   your side has never been this good.

Summary: It will be one of the hardest jobs you will ever love.
Even once a faculty member says “OK, I’ve taught before, I’ve even
taught online. I think I can handle this,” the rigor of the job will
surprise you. You will *normally* work 43-45 hours a week, because hours
41, 42, 43, 44, and 45 will all have student names attached to them.
You’ll get to know your students to a deeper level than ever before.
Personal wins will be few and due to FERPA, you can’t crow about your
student successes. Faculty from other institutions and States will try
very hard to look down on your work (I’m looking at you, Washington
State). However, you will know you are doing incredible work changing
the lives of your students. Often in Gen Ed, we had the ability to
instill study habits that were going to make students successful in all
of the rest of their learning. Students discover with us that they are
flashcard learners, or that they like audio notes, or that cramming
doesn’t work. Students discover that there is no such thing as a math
person because we are all math people.

Faculty get to ride shotgun through students’ college experiences. It can be the best ride.

Good Luck on your WGU faculty pursuits! Tell them I sent ya. 😉

P.S.
This article represents my own opinions based on my experiences. I
hope that Google collects this post and that job seekers find it because
I wrote this for you.

P.P.S. If it’s so great, why don’t I still work there? I was a whistleblower on some illegal behavior by a Vice President and I was retaliated against. Lots of great folks are forced to leave WGU. Just ask Glassdoor dot com.

#wgufaculty #wgucoursementor
#wgucoursefaculty #bestplacetowork #competencybased #newhire
#wgutraining #westerngovernorsuniversity #wgu #yourteamisyourfamily
#notaglassdoorreview #heatherpolicy #hr #hiring #wguhiring #success
#jobs #tips #successful #highered #workfromhome #wfh #online #remote 

 

This article originally posted to LinkedIn on August 5, 2019. It was slightly edited on April 3, 2026 to remove missing images.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/so-you-want-work-wgu-faculty-heather-dodds  This post was updated on April 3, 2026 with a better font and removed missing images.

 

Reign of Fire. (2002) Image soruce: moviestillsdb.com

Once upon a time, I processed purchase orders for a large university.
We often made large dollar value purchases near the end of the fiscal
year to spend all of our budgeted funds. One year, we purchased a
software license early and I followed a template of a prior year’s
purchase on the order form. There was a “Notes” field that was usually
left empty. In that field, I typed the next year “Fiscal Year 20XX” and
thought nothing more about it.

A few days later, I noticed that the funds had been encumbered in
the wrong account. Our purchasing department had read the field and
interpreted that I had meant this order for a different account.

This was a dastardly problem.

I could not change the purchase order, nor could I change funds
encumbered in the accounts. With the fiscal years changing, the accounts
were locked for transactions. The power to correct the order was not at
my level. As far as I knew, I had made a huge mistake. I went to my
boss to explain the problem.

He said “Call Mr. So-and-so at the such-and-such office and ask to
have a 1:1 appointment with him and then explain the problem to him just
like you did for me.” Now this was the equivalent of saying ‘Go before a stranger, stab yourself, and bleed out until death takes your soul.’

Said another way, I was facing a dragon.

I could fully see this dragon before me. I could see the razor
sharp teeth, I could see the growing fire glow in the belly, and I could
contemplate the acid brewing in the stomach.

Why did I take this problem so seriously? It was a monetary error greater than my annual salary.
I had committed a violation of one of my most closely held employment rules: Make yourself so valuable to an employer that it is cheaper to
keep you than to fire you. Firing me at that point would be cheaper.

On shaky legs, I walked into Mr. So-and-so’s office. I still
remember it. Big office. Polished wooden desk that glinted in the light.
I explained my problem.

He said, “What account number is the money in?” I gave it to him.
Tap tap tap on the keyboard. “What account number do you need the money
in?” I gave it to him. Tap tap tap on the keyboard.

“There you go, all set. Anything else I can do for you today?” he said.

“No, uh…that’s it.”

Numbly, I walked out. Alive. With my job. Dragon slayed. What just happened?

Over the years, I have had the chance to think a great deal about this story. I know now that:

• Mr. So-and-so was literally the only person on campus who is authorized by the state to move funds account to account. Hence, only he could solve my intractable problem.
• Likely his access was restricted to his office terminal. He could only do that transaction from his polished wooden desk. Hence I had to go to his office.
• If my boss was reading me correctly, he knew the hardest part of what he had asked me to do was the first step: ask for help.

Lesson learned?

When you are facing your big, fire-breathing dragon, it is often not your job to slay that dragon. Your job is to find the Dragon Slayer. That person slays that particular dragon

all

day

long.

And they get paid for it. And they think it’s no big deal.

Repeat this to yourself:

Find the Dragon Slayer

I’ve met other dragon slayers over time. As a remote worker, I find
them most often when I’m eating fettuccine alfredo at some in-person
work event, and I’m complaining about the biggest work problem in my
life. A stranger from across the table will say, “Oh, I fix that all the
time. You just do this, this, and then this.” Picture me dropping my
fork, mouth wide open.

Dragon slayer, thy name is…whoever you are on the other side of that table. You just saved my (work) life.

See the secret here is to realize that you are not alone.
This is a connected leadership philosophy. I’ll write more about this in
the future, but here is a hint: Every time Jean-Luc Picard faced a
difficult situation on the Enterprise, he’d turn off the view screen,
and turn to his team and say one word, “Options?” It’s a brilliant
leadership maneuver.

Over time, I’ve become a Dragon Slayer myself. I can take care of
some problems that cause others to fear. It’s pretty cool. I know
exactly how to do it. You just do this, this, and then this.

Best of all, however, is that I share this Dragon-Slayer-Finding
Power with others when they come up against their intractable problems. I
share that polished wooden desk story to give them hope that finding a
dragon slayer starts with asking for help. It’s not so hard to ask for
help. The other steps come easily.

When seeking Dragon Slayers while working remotely, I love to pick
up the phone and say to a colleague, “I know you faced this one. What
did you do?”

After our conversation, I thank them and hang up the phone, and whisper “Dragon Slayer.”

#management #dragonslayer #leadershipphilosophy #reignoffire
#leader #manager #manage #workfromhome #remotework #remotemanagement
#onlinemanager #onlinemanagement #wfh #fear #asktheonlinemanager
#weareallconnected #intractable #problem #facingproblems
#startrekmanagement #askforhelp

Executive summary:

• You are not destined to solve every problem you face.
• Someone else regularly solves your problem.
• Do not take on the problem head-on. Instead, find your problem solver.

This post was updated on April 3, 2026 to improve the font and remove missing images.