Princeton Review's Best Professors List

Colleges and Universities A-Z Colgate University
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<p>Today the Princeton Review released a "Best Professors" list of the top 300 in the country, as based on student reviews on Rate My Professor. 10 Colgate faculty made the list:</p>

<p>R. M. Douglas - History
Karen Harpp - Geology
Doug Johnson - Psychology
Spencer Kelly - Psychology
Nina Moore - Political Science
Paul R. Pinet - Geology
Dan Saracino - Mathematics
Rebecca Shiner - Psychology
Allen R. Strand - Mathematics
Ephraim Woods, III - Chemistry</p>

<p>I've taken courses with Profs. Strand, Johnson and Shiner, seen a talk by Prof. Kelly and heard really great things about most of the rest. For reference, Harvard and Yale each only had 2 professors make the list, and only 3 other schools had the same or more professors than Colgate (College of William and Mary (10), James Madison University (11) and Mount Holyoke College (14)).</p>

<p>What does everyone else think? Is this a valuable list? I think it speaks to Colgate's emphasis on excellence in teaching undergrads rather than solely focusing on research.</p>

<p>I do have an issue with the methodology though - some schools (Yale for instance) have an internal course evaluation system that undergrads can use to learn about professors. Colgate also has the same type of course evaluations that go to professors/tenure committees, but students can't view them. They are theoretically anonymous, but professors do see them, so students may hesitate to be completely honest if they have negative opinions. My guess is that at schools with the internal systems, all the good things are on the official evaluations and only the bad things end up on Rate My Professors, skewing the results.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://www.princetonreview.com/uploadedFiles/Sitemap/Home_Page/Rankings/Best_Professors/BestProfessors_schools.pdf[/url]”>http://www.princetonreview.com/uploadedFiles/Sitemap/Home_Page/Rankings/Best_Professors/BestProfessors_schools.pdf&lt;/a&gt; is the direct link to the full list as a pdf, for reference.</p>

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<p>As a fellow alumnus I was very pleased to read your thread about Colgate faculty accolades.</p>

<p>And relating to the point you made about the quality of instruction, I would emphasize the importance Colgate’s administrators attach to access of professors by students. This year Colgate added 19 faculty positions which has delivered a 9:1 student/faculty ratio. I expect this improvement to be reflected in other rankings going forward.</p>

<p>Cheers!</p>

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<p>As a student, there are some things I wish could change about Colgate, but I have to admit, they do have some great professors. All of the professors I have come in contact with love to teach. While they do do research on campus, their main passion is for teaching.</p>

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<p>It’s really wonderful that these professors have been recognized and rated well on RateMyProfessors.com. It’s so subjective on that site though and tends to draw the extremes of the spectrum- the extremely unhappy student and the effusive ones. Middle ground students, even if they had positive experiences, tend not to post on that site.</p>

<p>So in my opinion, the whole is methodological flawed.</p>