<p>briguy–definitely email a professor or even the head of the dept. in your field.</p>
<p>My S, who will be a standout NMF at a large public, already contacted the head of the computer science dept. and found he could 1)have a two week summer job teaching Java at the computer science summer camp for high schoolers, and 2)work with another student, possibly a grad student, on research projects. All this because as an incoming freshman he has enough APs to have the qualifications of a rising sophomore. :)</p>
challenging, important material (primary sources, not text books)
an experienced mentor</p>
<p>I experienced all four of these in class after class in my college. The quality of discussion greatly improved from year 1 to year 4. The first year discussions did tend to be dominated by a few people, such as bloviating males who liked to grand stand and wander off-topic. The professor gave these kids enough rope to hang themselves for a few classes. By fourth year, participants had outgrown (or had been educated out of) that behavior, so the dialog was livelier but more focused.</p>
<p>The professor has to be able to assume that students have not only read the material, but thought about it. The class needs a guide who is reasonably mature, willing to direct but not dominate the talk. It is difficult to put all these elements together so I don’t think very many schools get it all right. Swarthmore seems to be one of them. I have no idea about the average state university honors program. My S visited our state’s public “honors college” last year, a small school with many features of a private LAC. From his description, it was not the same. 25 kids in chairs arranged rank-and-file (not in a circle) before a teacher who stood, talked a lot, and occasionally lobbed softball questions.</p>
<p>It’s human nature I know, but I think some of us (maybe even me) are showing a lot of bias here. Not all classes at Swat are perfect. And how can one possibly evaluate the honors or other classes at OSU unless you have sat through them? Private does not automatically equal better…although I think if you are the type of person who enjoys ALL small classes, SWAT is probably the better match. </p>
<p>My kids is in an honors program at a state flagship. Some absolutely terrific classes. Some stinkers. Some average. Not necessarily correlated to class size or even the honors options. Overall a good experience…and he does know some of his professors well. And that suits his personality…a mix of intensity is a better match. </p>
<p>Bottom line though, if I was a really felt a good fit at Swat, I would probably push to go there. It’s a fine school. And you don’t need to insult the other option to make it look better. It stands on its own.</p>
<p>Briguy, after D and I attended the honors open house at OSU 2 weeks ago, we broke off into groups based on major. Since my D will be an anthropology major, we were grouped with the future PolySci students (both are in the Social and Behavior Sciences college). Something I recall is that they stated that OSU has the #4 PolySci dept in the country. I don’t know their source for citing this, if it’s some minor categorical statistic that got generalized, but if you are already calling the PolySci department, you may want to ask about this as well. I recall they spoke at length about the accomplishments and professors in both the PolySci and Anthropology departments and where the honors students went afterwards (it was humorous in comparison to speaking about their Journalism and Economics departments, which they glossed over very quickly). </p>
<p>They also mentioned that OSU had the #5 Anthropology department. But what sold my D, and got her to choose OSU over the small LAC she was considering with it’s one Anthropology professor, was just that - one Anthropology professor in a field studying an extensive number of cultures. She wanted a department of 15 professors, not 1. Poly Sci might be similar; I don’t know.</p>
<p>Another comment is that their president E. Gordon Gee, spent time as Brown and Vanderbilt’s president, then came back to Ohio State, where he had served before (there was a recent article in Time Magazine about this). That doesn’t matter if a smaller school like Swarthmore is a better fit for you, but Ohio State has been better for their president’s past experiences at institutions better known for academics.</p>
In my class on James Joyce, one of the TAs probably knew more than the professor about Joyce.
Unfortunately, I was in the discussion section with the TA who was reading Ulysses for the first time.</p>
<p>He had visited every location in Ulysses, every pub, every street corner. He has researched the lore of each location, things that had happened there a century earlier.</p>
<p>I can also assure that both the lectures and discussions in his classes (or in real life) were seldom dull and boring. He once came to a house a number of us has rented – I can’t remember, probably for dinner or whatever – and saw the fireplace in his 200 year old farmhouse. He then proceeded to give us the fulll one hour lecture on the history and design of the [Rumford</a> Fireplace](<a href=“http://www.rumford.com/articleWhat.html]Rumford”>http://www.rumford.com/articleWhat.html), designed by Count Rumford in 1776.</p>
<p>Agreed. However, even defining the most meaningful characteristics of “quality” can sometimes be quite subjective uinless that definition is very narrow.</p>
Fair enough. I still think it’s a bit strange to consider “teaching ability” paramount while holding prof vs. TA as a brightline distinction, but perhaps we should agree to disagree.
This is subjective. I would guess that what you say is true for the majority of people, but it isn’t exactly an absolute rule.
I think mokusatsu’s point was that profs are not inherently more knowledgeable about certain material than TAs - in other words, it varies on a case by case basis.
That’s a very fair post that I agree with completely.</p>
<p>^To clarify, I hold teaching ability paramount but recognize and accept that it’s impossible to go to a school where every professor is a good teacher. I believe that the best way to increase the probability of a given professor being a good teacher is to attend a school where teaching ability is given some weight in tenure review and where every teacher is at least minimally qualified wrt to experience (I don’t know of any PhD programs that don’t require TAing to some degree).</p>
<a href=“http://trustees.osu.edu/rules6/ru6-02.php:[/url]”>http://trustees.osu.edu/rules6/ru6-02.php:</a>
“The awarding of tenure and promotion to the rank of associate professor must be based on convincing evidence that the faculty member has achieved excellence as a teacher, as a scholar, and as one who provides effective service; and can be expected to continue a program of high quality teaching, scholarship, and service relevant to the mission of the academic unit(s) to which the faculty member is assigned and to the university. Promotion to the rank of professor must be based on convincing evidence that the faculty member has a sustained record of excellence in teaching; has produced a significant body of scholarship that is recognized nationally or internationally; and has demonstrated leadership in service.”
From what I understand, most top-notch graduate departments (ie Wisconsin sociology) have pretty rigorous admissions standards for grad students, especially when it comes to getting a paid TA gig.</p>
<p>It’s one thing to state that “a sustained record of excellence in teaching” is a requirement for tenure; it’s another thing to actually follow up on the principle. I have heard many anecdotes about teaching evaluations mattering much less than research production in tenure reviews, mostly at universities (including elite private universities). Do you have likewise anecdotal evidence to share as counterexample? Forgive me for disbelieving that the official tenure criteria are rigorously adhered to; if that were true, it would be strange to see so many a professor’s “sustained record of excellence in teaching” suddenly becoming a terrible record.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what you mean by citing rigorous admissions standards. No one said that the TAship has to be a cushy paid fellowship, and I had understood that research assistantships were more coveted than teaching assistantships. But since I really know nothing about grad school degree requirements, I defer to your knowledge and will alter my statement to say that I trust in (top) LACs to not hire professors with zero teaching experience. In the humanities and social sciences at least, I further understood that the oversupply of PhDs means that professors at even lower-ranked schools have excellent credentials, and presumably LACs would care about teaching experience. I have also heard reputable anecdotes about LAC professors who left for research universities because they felt that too much of their time was expected to be allocated towards teaching vs. research.</p>
No, I don’t disagree at all. But I think this is going to differ on an individual, case-by-case basis and can’t be used as a brightline test.
I don’t disagree, and your knowledge is probably just as good as mine. What I’m saying is that grad students at top departments are probably pretty competent in their fields and individual areas of expertise are not necessarily going to be inferior in a TA than in a full prof. Once this baseline of quality is set, it comes down to individual compatibility with the instructors in question.</p>
<p>EDIT: For intro-level material (which is where TAs are most prevalent), it could be argued that the grad student is actually superior because they may have seen the material more recently. Whether TAs or profs at research Us actually care about teaching is an entirely different matter, but I don’t think it’s safe to make blanket statements of any kind.</p>
<p>I don’t know about other LACs, but at Swarthmore when a professor is up for promotion, a number of students are asked to write an evaluation for him/her, and these evaluations are taken very seriously.</p>
<p>Likewise, when new faculty members are hired, current students play an active and significant role in the decision making process.</p>
I try to avoid leaving criteria that matter to me as “an individual, case-by-case basis” because it is totally unhelpful. One can’t generalize about a particular university any more than about universities vs. LACs, so one is then limited to discussing individual professors–utterly impractical for purposes of choosing a school with the highest probability of strong teaching (versus strong research; the two certainly can coexist, but college searchers usually prioritize one over the other).</p>
<p>One major issue with TAs versus profs is that you can’t choose your TA, and the quality varies as widely as does prof quality; but in many circumstances, through the miracle of online course guides and word-of-mouth recommendations, you can be very selective about which professors you take courses from (easier in a major with flexible requirements, obviously). Moreover, I’ve noticed that elite private universities like to “hide” their TAs by having them only “lead” discussion sections rather than “teaching” (defined as lecturing); reasonable minds can disagree about whether discussion leading counts as teaching, but it does for me.</p>
<p>For intro-level material, I would prefer to have a professor who has both in-depth knowledge of his/her field (not necessarily cutting-edge knowledge, to satisfy me) and the teaching ability to craft an accessible introductory taste of what s/he is so passionate about that sustains an academic career. A rare combination that, again, I believe is more likely at an LAC than at a research university.</p>
<p>
On the contrary–because the chance of a given teacher actually caring about teaching is more or less equal across the board, and impossible to predict from an outside POV, we can only make blanket generalizations based on institutional culture and hiring policies.</p>
We just decided that the official policy at OSU lists teaching as an important criterion for tenure selection. You’ve expressed doubts as to whether the official policy is really followed, and I don’t disagree. But I don’t think we can infer anything from the policies without a great deal of speculation as to what happens at each individual institution.
That’s an interesting criticism.
Well, the point is that you at least have some instruction from the professor and then have lab sections with the TA. That may not be sufficient in your case, although I still question whether the TA inherently lacks the experience to teach a lab section.</p>
<p>My son had a TA (in his honors class at top 4 research U) who was a brilliant mathematician, but could not speak English at all. This was a very frustrating experience, and could never happen at LAC.</p>
One of my D’s LAC’s first semester intro courses had a discussion section…her particular section was taught by the department chair. I was impressed.</p>
![http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41uosf2H2JL._SS500_.jpg]Don](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41uosf2H2JL._SS500_.jpg%5DDon){kind=link}
