<p>When looking into majors at LACs I have been looking at both courses offered and the # of professors in trying to determine some quality baseline for various majors. My subjective ranking system.
I would like some feedback on the value of each position- Professors, Associate professors, Assistant Professors-is there a difference? Also lecturers, instructors and visiting instructors- what value do they add?</p>
<p>Do the more courses and the # of professors etc equate to the quality of the major at that particular school?</p>
<p>Tough questions. Obviously the quality of the faculty is important, but often hard to judge. On the surface it might appear that an assistant or associate would not be as experienced. They can still be better teachers especially for undergrads. They can be working really hard to establish themselves and win tenure. I am always concerned about adjuncts and part time faculty. Often this is just a way to save money. There can be a high turnover and lack of commitment.</p>
<p>When comparing programs, also consider the students. A much more selective college or program is likely to have smarter, more dedicated students with better backgrounds and the courses can be taught at a more demanding level.</p>
<p>Prof, Associate Profs, Assistant Profs, lecturers, instructors: These are ranks to be determined by length of teaching, publishing record and, depending on the institution, quality of teaching. Even at an institution that emphasizes teaching, publications are still needed to gain tenure.</p>
<p>The length of an instructor's service has little to do with the level of excellence this instructor brings to teaching. Some profs are actually worse than their own graduate students teaching assistants. So I would not look at the different ranks of the faculty as a gauge of teaching excellence.</p>
<p>The number of profs in a department correlates strongly with the number of offerings in that department and has a direct impact on teaching. If a prof goes on leave--which happens every 6 or 7 years, or more frequently if the prof receives outside funding, the number of offerings will be reduced, and a student's ability to complete requirements or merely to take courses of interests will be significantly affected in a small department, but not in a larger department that can deploy its resources more flexibly.</p>
<p>My S looked into math department at some LACs and found that many courses were taught only in alternate years. This made for a wider ranage of courses than would be possible if courses were taught every year; but it made course planning more difficult.</p>
<p>Visiting profs are a great way to make up for profs going on leave, or slots not being filled. Sometimes, visiting profs are invited to teach courses not normally offered. The downside is that they are at the school for only one year or less, so students cannot ask them to guide them further in their studies, for example when writing a senior thesis. That is partly why visiting profs do not get so many students (another reason is that their visit is poorly advertised and they are not written up in students' evaluation guides).</p>
<p>colleges deal with the assistant/associate/full professor names differently, so theres really very little to be gained by looking at the numbers. however, as edad pointed out, schools with lots of lecturers/instructors/adjunct profs should probably cause a small amount of caution. visiting profs can be there for lots of different reasons, so i wouldnt worry about that.</p>
<p>my addition to the conversation would to not be ultimately concerned about the size of a program unless its really, really small. i did a summer program at a liberal arts college that averaged about two graduates in mathematics per year, probably not a good place to attend as a prospective mathematics major. that said, i would put in a little more time looking at schools with large programs... some of them are likely to be very good.</p>
<ul>
<li>department accreditation by a professional association related to the subject, </li>
<li>faculty size compared to the number of graduating majors in the department </li>
<li>where grads of the department go on to graduate school or employment</li>
<li>any recent or pending changes in funding for the department (search the school's press releases, and the student newspaper archives), </li>
<li>special facilities or capabilities of the department (department library, research facilities, special equipment, etc.)</li>
<li>how many prof's in the department are tenured, how many are full-time, how many are just visiting or are not tenured. </li>
<li>the philosophy or subject approach of the department. This can take some digging, and you may have to put some divergent pieces together to see if the department's goals/philosophies are a fit with yours. Two equally sized departments at different schools can have very different approaches.</li>
<li>I also like to get a hold of the actual course schedules (not the catalog which merely lists courses that may or may not be offered on a regular basis) for a few semesters and see how many classes the department typically offers, how large or small they are, and whether they fill up quickly or are over-subscribed. A department is only good if you can get into classes without too much trouble. </li>
</ul>
<p>Another piece of advice that I also find helpful came from the Philosophical Gourmet site, which ranks Philosophy graduate programs but also has a section discussing how to evaluate undergrad programs, is to (1) find the rankings for top graduate level programs (these are usually more readily available) and then (2) look at the faculty bio's and see how many received their doctorates from the top grad programs. Of course, at large universities, you'll also need to find out how many of those faculty actually teach undergraduates.
<p>If I can give a little heads up here, because I remember this same discussion not only here, but in our household as well a few years ago. When trying to determine the strength of a program, first and foremost, talk to people in the industry. The professors at school "Y" may be top notch in your book, but if nobody's hiring these grads, there may be a problem. If school "X" has a lot of hirings and a good industry reputation you need to do a little more digging. Also, talk to people associated laterally with the industry. If your child is looking into say Marine Science, talk not only to Woods Hole, but talk to a marine policy attorney. These kids will find out that a major in one area will probably open doors in a lot of different directions. (Mine's finding that out now!! And he still doesn't know which way to go!)</p>
<p>Also....make sure they do not limit themselves to that one option. If school "Y" has an excellent, say political science department, but their physical science's department is less than ideal then there may be trouble down the road. Son ultimately choose his school over another, for just this reason. And thankfully he did. Six months in and he changed majors. Had he gone to school "Y" for his original program I'm sure he'd have done just fine, but they don't have the quality of program in his chosen major now, so make sure they also have "choices" of good programs not only accross one area, but that they have choices across several different kinds of programs. Best Wishes!</p>
<p>Carolyn's advice re-posted by kmet is terrific. We are both academics and my husband and I used faculty degrees as a major factor (along with obvious others like academic quality of student body) in evaluating LACS. Of course that is an external standard which says nothing about good teaching, although we saw it as a crude indication of likely general intelligence and good training. It also would play an important role in determining how helpful your professors letters of recommendation might be in helping you get into strong graduate programs. I think you should consider such external indicators and also internal ones such as departmental resources, student evaluations of teachers etc. You presumably want to be taught well by informed profesors who will help guide you into your own career.</p>
<p>One piece of advice I got recently from the president of a LAC with whom I'm acquainted suggested looking at the number of Goldwater Fellowships won by students. The Goldwater Fellowships are awards given to undergraduates for graduate work in math and the sciences. The advice we got was that a college that produces Goldwater Fellows clearly has a very good math / science program. I don't know if the converse is true -- if a college does not produce Goldwater Fellows, does that necessarily mean that its math / science program is not so hot?</p>
<p>Well, I googled Goldwater Fellows and came upon an article from Tulsa University which claimed that only Cornell and Harvard had had more Goldwater Fellows than Tulsa. Now, that is impressive; but I would rank the math departments of several schools (MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, Chicago, Duke and others--the list is fairly long) a fair bit above Tulsa!</p>
<p>It is also worth noting the number of majors, especially if it is a school without distributional requirements (or even with). Small numbers of majors can mean a lack of a good peer group. Some schools may have more profs because of distibutional requirements, but very few upper-level offerings. (This can be especially true in foreign languages.) A department with 4 or fewer profs, even wonderful ones, even of high rank, leaves one open to the possibility that a sabbatical or illness can play havoc with offerings, mentoring, research assistance, and sometimes even future recommendations.</p>
<p>Within the LACs, even the top 50 ones, department by department, the differences among them can vary very, very widely, with the top ones in certain areas barely making the top 50, if that.</p>
<p>I checked the Goldwater Fellowship website, and indeed the University of Tulsa has produced a good number of Goldwater fellows. I counted 7 in the past 3 years. (None in math, though). This is still less than the 10 that Pomona produced, with about 1/2 the students at University of Tulsa.</p>
<p>My college president friend didn't say that Goldwater Fellowship production was the way to rank science programs, just that producing Goldwater Fellows was a good indication that the college had a very good undergraduate science program. I don't know how the University of Tulsa would stand in a ranking of undergraduate science and math programs, but they seem to be doing a pretty good job based on the number of their undergraduates who are winning Goldwater Fellowships in recent years.</p>
<p>The University of Tulsa has produced 8 Goldwater scholars in the past 3 years (36 in the past 10 years): 1 computer science/math double major, 1 chemistry/math double major, 1 physics/electrical engineering double major, 1 computer science major, 1 geosciences major, 1 chemistry major, and 2 biochemistry majors. </p>
<p>The most important aspect to keep in mind when adding up Goldwater scholars from different schools is that the scholarship is given to students who plan to pursue graduate study in their field and as a result research experience plays a significant role in the application process of the scholarship. </p>
<p>The University of Tulsa is a small, private institution (undergraduate enrollment of 2,796) with small graduate programs (especially in engineering and natural sciences). In order for the faculty to make progress in their research, they provide opportunities to all undergraduate students. For example, in the chemistry department there are 3 paid summer positions available in research labs in the department for students who are enrolled as freshmen for the fall session. Therefore, 3 of the 20 incoming freshmen (15%) in the department will already have 3 months of research experience before they take a single class at TU and will be expected to submit a proposal to the American Chemical Society to present their research at the undergraduate poster session of the national meeting in March of the next year. </p>
<p>In addition, all students in the department are expected to begin research during their sophomore year beginning the process that results in their senior thesis, a requirement within the department. These opportunities are not available for undergraduate students until they reach upperclassmen status at schools such as Berkeley and understandably so as the size of their student body relative to faculty would not be conducive to providing every student with a research position.</p>
<p>Another useful resource (especially if you are interested in graduate school) is the number of NSF graduate research fellows a university receives each year. This fellowship is also highly competitive (approximately 1,000 are awarded per year amongst nearly 10,000 applicants) and provides funding for 3 years of a student's graduate career. Unlike the Goldwater scholarship, which caps the number of applicants from a school at 4 per year, the NSF-GRF does not put a limit on the number of fellows that may apply from a single university each year and so the number of fellows relative to the size of the student body must be taken into consideration. The fellowship also provides an idea of where graduates of a school are headed for their postgraduate study.</p>
<p>As with any factor, the number of fellows at a university will not tell the entire story about any single department, but it is certainly a useful resource. Hopefully I provided some insight on the subject and good luck with the decision at hand.</p>
<p>Wow, ctt8410, that's a very complete and detailed answer. I'll have to look into the NSF fellowships as well. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.</p>
<p>No problem at all. I peek at these message boards every so often and this subject just happened to catch my attention as both my experiences with TU and nationally competitive scholarships could provide useful information for inquiring minds. In case you find yourself interested in looking at NSF statistics, I'll provide the link as the NSF website is notoriously difficult to navigate:</p>