<p>Anyone know some of the good physics/math professors. I am planning on taking honors sessions of both if that makes a difference.</p>
<p>Thanks for your help.</p>
<p>For the Honors sections, since there's only one of them, you really don't have much of a choice, and it's just hit or miss. That being said...</p>
<p>If you're doing Honors math 295, then you're going to have Spatzier, and nobody I've talked to knows much about him as a teacher, since nobody I know has really done classes in his specialty. He's the main advisor for international students, and he does a good job as far as that's concerned. Other math teachers I've had that were very good were Debacker, Conrad, and Soundararajan, though I don't know if you can get classes with them. If you're interested in going into math or think you might be, talk to Debacker... he's the one that has the most interest in helping out undergrads.</p>
<p>As far as physics, I haven't had as many profesors, and haven't been nearly as impressed as I have been with math. I had James Allen as my lecturer for Physics 240, and he was a really upbeat, entertaining teacher. He usually teaches the physics of music classes, which I'd be interested in taking if I had any clue about music. If you're doing physics 160 (mechanics), you'll have Zorn, and I'm pretty sure my friend had him for 390 and thought he was good. If you're doing physics 260 (E&M), you'll have Gidley, who I know nothing about.</p>
<p>D. Burns is solid. Just ask chibears ;)</p>
<p>(Though you may hear other "well respected" professors saying snide remarks about his classes, or even calling them disastorous. They're simply jealous I tell you.)</p>
<p>Does UofM survey each class in regard to rating the teacher and student satisfaction? Is this information available on line to students to help them pick classes & teachers?</p>
<p>[This is done at my daughter's college and it is amazingly accurate, and helpful.]</p>
<p>Yes, at the end of each course, the students all have to take a survey evaluating the instructor (and the class as a whole) for Michigan's benefit. However, I'm not sure if this infornation in published. </p>
<p>However, you could always check out ratemyprofessors.com.</p>
<p>This information has been published for the Winter 2004, Fall 2004, Winter 2005, and Fall 2005 semesters. Winter 2006 (January - April '06) are not yet released.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.msa.umich.edu/advice/index.php%5B/url%5D">https://www.msa.umich.edu/advice/index.php</a></p>
<p>Thaaaat's where that stuff is. Too bad you can't read student comments...one of my teachers encouraged us to have fun with them. Three such examples are:</p>
<p>"In Africa, they have a saying: 'The elephant can kill you, the leopard can kill you, and Stephen DeBacker can kill you. But only with Stephen DeBacker is death certain.'" - 295 student</p>
<p>"The dastardly devil Dr. DeBacker dared delve into the deepest depths and didn't dwindle while differentiating." - 296 student</p>
<p>"Stephen taught Calc III.
Took me two tries to pass it.
But I'm finally done." - 216 student</p>
<p>But yeah, it's fun to be able to look back at how your peers ranked the class.</p>
<p>[Note: Things are generally on a 5=good to 1=bad scale]
As far as the teachers I mentioned, Conrad got a 4.8 or higher from both classes in Fall 2005 for quality of class and quality of teacher. Debacker's rankings aren't as good for 216 and 295, but once you get to 296 where it's nothing but kids who are capable and interested, he has 4.8's or higher across the board (except for 1.05 in course difficulty). Sound got slightly above-average scores from the lower classes he taught, but almost nothing but 5's in the graduate courses he taught.</p>
<p>does the 216 student think "finally" is only two syllables? Oh silly students.</p>
<p>isnt ratemyprofessor.com a pretty reliable source?</p>
<p>Ratemyprofessors is good to use but be cautious of putting so much weight on what one or two students say. That's why the link I gave higher up (AdviceOnline) is so useful: because you have the entire class rating the professor. The disadvantage of that system is Ratemyprofessor's strongpoint: you get to read student's comments and judge for yourself.</p>
<p>I guess if you pronounce it like "finely", it would work.</p>
<p>Ratemyprofessor is pretty good, but like most opinion-based things it tends to only draw comments from the extremists, so take everything with a grain of salt. I've also found that it's not very helpful for my upper level math classes, since most comments are from non-math people complaining that so and so wasn't able to make them understand calc III.</p>