Pros
Some of the people at the organization buy into the vision statement, others have lost sight.
Cons
Unfortunately, there is a lot here to unwrap. It is important for all businesses profit or non-profit to be profitable and provide a stable environment for their employees. EAW has a broken model that I don't think will be able to that. They claim that they want to provide career pathing opportunities for their employees (who are referred to as students), but in reality, once you are hired for a position you are stuck there until you graduate from school. When plans or suggestions to help create student leadership roles are brought up the Executive team will quickly shoot them down and refuse to entertain them because "it has never worked in the past..." Those that were given the opportunity to help in a leadership role were not paid what their peers were. "Student Supervisors" and "Team Leads" are paid $16/hr while their "peers" are paid a salary starting at $40,000/year. They even advertise the role on Indeed or LinkedIn starting at $40,000/year. When HR and the Executive team are approached about making it fair the response is that "they are students and don't know as much as our professional staff..." However, in many cases, the Student leaders were outperforming the professional staff. Lastly, they promise tuition assistance of up to $5280 per year paid directly to the University on behalf of the student. Every year the requirements to get this tuition assistance change and become more difficult till now less than one-third of the students qualify for the assistance. That saved money just goes back into their pockets and provides no new learning opportunity for the students. Incidentally, $5280 is also the same amount any other employer can provide in tuition reimbursement, and many times there is no qualifying performance to receive the funds. The funds are paid directly to the student to use for living expenses or to pay back loans. As an employee, you can make more per hour in other places and still get the same amount of tuition assistance.