Professors and learning environment at BC

Colleges & Universities A-Z Boston College
1

<p>I am wondering how good the professors are at BC? Are they creative teachers? What makes them good? How well rounded are they? Do they inspire? Is there a “common thread” to them? I am wondering how BC creates a fabulous learning environment. After all is said and done, and kids are admitted, I am wondering how good the learning is and if it is special. Also, do the requirements make sense and do kids enjoy them.</p>

<p>With so much focus on trying to get in, I would like to learn more about the experience once you are there. Thanks.</p>

2

<p>I just returned from Boston College orientation, and the three professors featured were fantastic! They were incredibly dynamic and very well-spoken! After talking to upperclassmen, I believe that they have a passion for what they do and care about their students. </p>

<p>The learning environment from my limited vantage point also seems fantastic. Again, one of the professors at orientation said that the goal of this university is to create “intellectuals”. The core requirements seem reasonable, and there is an aspect of taking one’s passions, gifts, and interests and sharing them with those less fortunate.</p>

<p>Again, my perspective is quite limited, which I must emphasize. However, first impressions are important, and the learning environment and quality of education definitely appears to be a strength.</p>

3

<p>ajh:</p>

<p>good to hear that you had a great orientation experience. But understand, of course, that ALL colleges bring out their “star” professors for these things. (Makes the parents feel good about spending all the money…)</p>

4

<p>Like every school, BC has some true teaching “stars” and some teachers who are less than inspiring. On the whole, though, I think you’ll find that there are far more good/excellent teachers than there are bad ones.</p>

5

<p>Here’s my anecdote: One of the things that appealed to me about BC was that I had the opportunity to meet one-on-one with a few professors there prior to making my decision (they were very happy to sit and discuss their departments and the realities of the teaching environment). What stuck with me was the fact that two of the professors, one a dept chair, each mentioned that BC goes out of its way to hire professors who are teachers and educators first, and researchers second. They also make every attempt to hire professors who speak English clearly and have an engaging classroom style. The importance of this last statement should not be minimized; one may not hear such a statement from a prof at Columbia or at MIT (maybe you would, I dunno, but I think not) but it is apparently a concern when hiring at BC.</p>

<p>I have shared this with people on a few occassions, and the two contrary reactions take the forms of:</p>

<p>“Well, at <insert elite=”" college=“” here=“”> one of the advantages is that their faculty is deep into research and so you lose that if profs are hired primarily as teachers instead of researchers"</insert></p>

<p>OR</p>

<p>“Some very bright people have inscrutible accents and so you may be missing some genius educator due to this fact”.</p>

<p>My reply to both reactions is “Yes, you are correct. But I can live without cleaning beakers for Linus Pauling or getting a headache trying to decipher the wisom of Dr. Inscrutible if it means I have excellent classroom experiences.” </p>

<p>If this sounds like it makes sense to you, then you may likely belong at BC. </p>

<p>Again, just one man’s anecdote in a sea of them…</p>

6

<p>The majority of BC professors are there to teach. For some of them, their prime research years are over so they dedicate themselves to teaching. Most of my professors are very caring and great at their jobs. They encourage all their students to come to office hours. I have three professors who I would consider as my good friends, now that I graduated. Not all of them are great. I would say 10 percent of them shouldn’t be at any school. But you can easily avoid those 10 percent by using the PEPs system at UGBC.org. I also find that many professors are very flexible. They want to help you succeed so as long as you are not a jerk and treat them like they are your servants, then you can succeed in all your classes. </p>

<p>If you are a freshman, I recommend that you take as many professors as possible during your freshman year in order to experience a variety of professors. Beginning at the second semester of your sophomore year, you should narrow down a few (at least three) professors that you really like and start taking as many upper-elective classes as possible with them and go to their office hours to talk about class, about you and your interests. They will be crucial for recommendation letters and as possible senior thesis adviser.</p>

<p>P.S. Whatever you do, DON’T (p i s s )off senior professors (professors with the rank of full professor or higher, or who have been there more than ten years). Don’t bad mouth them to other professors or grad students and don’t make them hate you. Senior professors can wield incredible power and whether you get that study grant, a job in the department, or get your Scholar of College proposal accepted, they can have a very serious influence, whether positively or negatively. Every academic department has at most 20 - 30 professors, including support staff and excluding grad students. It’s highly political. Most professors try to stay on the good side of each other because when tenureship or promotion comes up, their colleagues are the first who will judge them. Furthermore, professors don’t usually change institutions much because the market for academics isn’t exactly expanding. They tend to work together with the same group of people for decades. No one wants grudges with their colleagues when they are staying at a department that long. They would rather anger one disappointed students who will be graduating in a few years, then a colleagues who will be with them for many. So if you aggravated a senior professors, at any school, you might turn off many others as well. This advice doesn’t apply to just BC, but any school you might matriculate.</p>

7

<p>As this is an anonymous forum I feel no compunction in correcting a spelling mistake that is all too common these days.</p>

<p>Here it is: THEN does not equal THAN!</p>

<p>Those of you who do not know the difference, or even that they are two distinct words, look them up in a real dictionary, not in streettalk.com or whatever they have dreamed up on the web!!!</p>

<p>When you know the difference THEN you can spell/use them correctly. Believe me, it makes you sound just a little bit more intelligent THAN you would if you didn’t know the difference.</p>

<p>Okay, carry on…</p>

8

<p>^I’m presuming you are referring to my sentence: “They would rather anger one disappointed students who will be graduating in a few years, then a colleagues who will be with them for many.” I agree it was a mistake and it should have been “than,” without the comma. But people make little mistakes all the times when they type fast, especially in an informal setting. For example, many of my professors do not capitalize in their emails, which technically is a grammatical error, in order to type faster. </p>

<p>As this is an anonymous forum I also feel no compunction in telling you that you look like a stuck up grammar Nazi–the kind that peers avoid and teachers pity. THEN again, is there any other kind? I don’t jump to judge people’s intelligence because of some writing mistakes they made on the web. English conventions are ever changing and evolving. It is a shame that online communications have diminished our ability to write; however, people might respect or appreciate your advice more if you try to be helpful rather THAN being condescending and attack their intelligence. Believe me, it makes you sound like just a little better as a human being THAN you would be otherwise.</p>

<p>Here’s a helpful link:
<a href=“http://www.albion.com/netiquette/[/url]”>http://www.albion.com/netiquette/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

9

<p>Nice comeback Reddune, but I was merely indicating how one might LOOK more intelligent, not BE more intelligent. There is a difference. The former implies that intelligence is there and that it just needs a gentle reminder to show it, whereas the latter obviously assumes less intelligence.</p>

<p>When we have only written words by which to judge our fellow cyber-cruisers (if you will) then it is all the more important to present those words as flawlessly as possible. Anonymous or not, we have our reputations to consider – especially to ourselves!</p>

<p>I do enjoy your posts as they are informative. I also agree that English evolves, just as any language does. Much of that evolving happens on the street, however, and is really not worth following.</p>

<p>Last, I don’t understand why when facing criticsm (mine, I believe was constructive) people resort to name-calling. I assure you I am not a Nazi (grammarian or otherwise). This rebelling against authority (as Nazi’s surely were), an unfortunate holdover from the 1960’s when it was all the rage, is getting passe.</p>

10

<p>^After a restful sleep, I feel less grouchy than I was last night (for reason which I won’t go into). I also want to apologize to leanid for being a little mean spirited in my previous post. I understand where you are coming from, but in my fouled mood, I took your post a little too personally and reacted too defensively. You’re a BC alum, I’m a (newly minted) BC alum. We should save all fights for the BU folks (God knows they are not leaving us live down last year hockey season).</p>

11

<p>I hope you are still in a good mood.</p>

<p>You may call yourself a BC “alum” but I prefer ‘alumnus’. Alum is what my styptic pencil is made of, and it stings a little… ;)</p>

<p>As for BU – B who?!</p>

12

<p>Any possibility that you two can wage war elsewhere? There are a few of us genuinely interested in the topic at hand, and I find that your sniping (however good-natured) is quite counter-productive. Would either of you consider returning to the topic at hand, or is it your intention to portray BC students as grammar-obsessed?</p>

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<p>^ roamingcooks: I think counterproductive is one word. ;-)</p>

<p>/ sorry couldn’t resist</p>

14

<p>Make use of PEPs. They’re pretty accurate as far as I’ve found. Anyhow, I’m going to speak a little from my experience.</p>

<p>All of my professors were at least decent at teaching, the only two I have a grudge against were one was a complete scatterbrain who forgot to show up for the class’ review session for midterms, and another that was thoroughly conservative and mouthed off about it in class–I actually consider myself a very mild person (to the point that in high school I managed to earn the superlative of biggest stoner despite never touching drugs), but each class of hers was an exercise in self-control for me, because I regularly felt a very serious urge for physical violence. In any case, I dropped the former class for RL reasons, and I got an A in the latter, so trust me when I say that on the whole, their teaching was fine. I believe both were tenured.</p>

<p>As for the bigger named professors, I took my micro/macroeconomics class with Tresch, who I believe ranks amongst the highest paid professors in BC. He was okay, and he would’ve been excellent if the class size weren’t gimongous. His style really suits a smaller seminar class. Unfortunately, his TAs, or at least the ones I had (both of which barely spoke English and rarely made any effort to actually teach a little), were epic useless, and you had more interaction with his TAs than him. The TAs grade your exam, if that’s any measure. I also had my intro politics class with the dean of the grad school, and she was excellent, entertaining, and very open to having students visit and talk to her.</p>

<p>In any case, not all TAs are bad. Excluding my econ classes, all of mine were great, sometimes even better than the professor when looking for help, and I don’t say that as any criticism of the professors but only as praise for the TAs. My other professors were universally talented, excellent teachers. One or two were very dull, but I learned the material with their help and got the grade to prove it, so I can’t rightfully say anything negative. From my conversations with some others, I found that I complained a lot less than most other students, but then again, as I said, I’m very mild.</p>

<p>Advising is what you make of it, btw. Mine checked up on me a couple times each semester, but my friends’ all basically disappeared only to reappear for a second for spring semester’s class registrations. When I wanted to transfer, I found out that your adviser is not actually the guy that writes your adviser rec letter, but instead refers you to academic advising, which my adviser did readily. In contrast, one of my friends who also wanted to transfer, and her adviser was essentially a useless lump. She ended up getting the phone numbers from me, but only after I told her about them.</p>

<p>To specifically answer your questions: 1) The professors’ skill in teaching rank from acceptable to excellent, and by acceptable I mean that with the occasional visit to their office, you have no massive problems learning the content. 2) What exactly constitutes a ‘creative’ professor? 3) You’re going to have to define ‘good’ here, because imo, if I learn the stuff, and they’re there to help me if I need them, that’s good enough. And in that case, they are almost all good enough. 4) Personally, I see how well-rounded is a useful trait in a professor. I want one that knows whatever the class teaches like the back of their hands; I don’t care what they know of everything else. In any case, yeah, most of them are pretty well-rounded. They’re intellectuals, after all. 5) My professor for my literature core course chose to focus on plays, and he inspired me so much that I transferred to become a theater major. How’s that for you? 6) No “common thread” that I noticed. 7) Requirements are fine (imo, they ask a bit too much, but no big deal), and most core classes aren’t painful. You’re likely to enjoy the core classes that you’re interested in, and all the others will probably bore you.</p>