<p>xiggi was suggesting 24 hours a week of actual in-class teaching (6 courses). That doesn’t include all the activities associated with teaching. Many Universities would consider half of that to be a full time teaching load. </p>
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This is why I suspect some departments of putting the weak teachers in charge of intro classes aimed at non-majors. There probably weren’t many (if any) potential math majors in my intro calculus course, even decades ago. It was full of people who needed to take some math to meet distributional requirements.</p>
<p>Perhaps the frequency of this problem is not all that great–I only had one unacceptable teacher (for this reason, anyway)–but if you’re a full pay, one unacceptable teacher for one semester is a waste of five grand. I think students should complain about this. Perhaps one reason they don’t is that they’re afraid of being labeled as insensitive or racist–so they work around it, or try to get into another section.</p>
<p>Hunt: I understand where you are coming from, but in reality it doesn’t work that way for a few reasons. 1. Departments see these introductory courses with high enrollment of non-majors as the “recruiting grounds”. This is discussed internally in our own unit and we want the students to become so interested in this area that they want to change majors or recruit the undecided. We make sure good teachers instruct these courses. 2. In the vast majority of the cases, the number of non-major students a department teaches far outnumbers those who are in their majors. Since tuition dollars returned to units is linked to class enrollment, academic units are under pressure to keep non-majors satisfied so that their own major department continues to require these courses. 3. the perception of the overall quality of the teaching by an academic unit is based on student evaluations. No department would deliberately “tank” a course because of low enrollment by their majors. We just don’t think that way.</p>
<p>As for reluctance to complain. Student evaluations are anonymous. Even if they don’t approach a Department head or Dean, this is the place for that. FYI: we have web-based student evaluations. Students can fill them out ANYTIME during a two week period at the end of the semester. Know what the response rate in our dept is for most classes of 50 students or more? 35-50%. The same goes for other classes in different depts. in my college. What does that say about the role students play in assuring good instruction. I guess since they’re done with the course it can’t help them, right!</p>
<p>For those of you who belong to “I’m paying and this is what I deserve” mentality and take every word from you kiddies as gold, look at it this way. A class is a lot like signing up for a gym membership or a session with a private trainer. If you show up just having put down a hot fudge sundae, don’t do your exercises at home or don’t use the equipment during the sessions but then complain you lose no weight, well….</p>
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<p>It probably depends on which non-major course. Some non-major courses can be recruiting grounds for potential majors (e.g. [CS</a> 10](<a href=“http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs10/sp14/]CS”>CS10 : BJC | Spring 2014 | UC Berkeley EECS) at Berkeley, although recruiting CS majors is probably no longer “needed” as the department is now at capacity due to exploding CS interest there and everywhere else). But other courses, like the pre-med / biology-major versions of math, physics, and chemistry courses, are unlikely to be recruiting grounds, since the students taking them would have to go back and retake the versions for majors if they decide to switch majors.</p>
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<p>Yes, sometimes one may be skeptical of taking some student complaints at face value.</p>
<p>I asked my son about this last night. He is finishing his second year at a major research university. He is pursuing a double major in two STEM fields (math and biochem). He is also doing undergraduate research in a lab with many foreign post-docs. He has had several foreign professors and graduate teaching assistants. Countries of origin have included Taiwan, Russia, Kashmir, Spain, South Africa, China and Turkey. He said some are hard to understand, but none have been impossible to understand. He feels his college experience has been enhanced by foreign teachers, not diminished. </p>
<p>I think this thread shows a difference in philosophy that also shows up when people talk about their preference between LACs and research universities. The two have different functions and they are going to offer a different product. When you are looking for fit, it’s certainly something to consider. I don’t think you can avoid foreign instructors at a research university, especially in STEM fields. </p>
<p>I do agree that teachers need a certain level of English proficiency to teach, and if they are truly impossible to understand, that is an issue. </p>
<p>luvthej: Thanks for those posts. If you have the time, could you please address Xiggi’s assertions about professorial working hours? I don’t think he is alone on this thread in not understanding what it is tenured faculty do with their time.</p>
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<p>One thing to realize is that, even in small LACs, faculty are working with research students. Those research supervision hours are part of their contract, along with teaching hours. For some research is hands-off, but the faculty I know spend a great deal of time with their research students. Most faculty are also responsible for advising students. The bulk of advising hours occur during scheduling, but there are many other times students contact professors for academic advice. They are also writing LORs for jobs and graduate school and assisting with/editing grad school applications. So add in prep, grading (and with the new push to incorporate more writing in the sciences, this takes longer than it used to), development of new courses, professional development, mentoring of junior faculty, and then routine stuff that all faculty are expected to do (apply for grants, publish and present, serve on committees and do other service to the school), it does add up to a lot of hours.</p>
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<p>Parts of Kashmir are managed by 3 different countries but Kashmir by itself is not a country…</p>
<p>STEM is dominated by foreign born professors. It is simply not possible to be a STEM major if one does not make the effort.</p>
<p>OTOH, I work for a multinational and am on conference calls all day (night) long on calls where the employees are speaking from pretty much every part of the world. We are all forced to try to understand everyone’s accent which means our kids are getting a head start. There are good teachers and bad teachers but accents can be overcome with good teachers.</p>
<p>What do those lazy professors do? </p>
<p>Well, this morning I wrote a conference proposal that required some background reading; met separately with 3 students, a clinical assistant professor, and an administrator; finished up a positive letter of review for the clinical assistant professor; answered about 10 emails on research and administrative matters; and made a phone call to a librarian to make sure the right books are ordered and available for my students. This noon I had hoped to re-read a chapter of my current book project, I haven’t worked on it in a month or more, and I am to present on it in 3 weeks. I need to get the material firmly in mind and expand what I had written, but it won’t happen today. I just received a letter from a UG student from 2 years ago who wants and deserves a great letter for graduate school. I asked her to send me more materials so that I can help her write a great personal statement to go with my letter. I hope to get a draft of the recommendation done before a academic resource planning meeting (yes, I have a report to read before the meeting). . . </p>
<p>Lately I have been working a 50 hour week, which is the low end of my spectrum. I have been slacking a bit on research because I find it hard to be at my best when I am doing so much multitasking. Things will settle a bit in a week or two, and I can focus better on thinking and creating. </p>
<p>alh,</p>
<p>As an anecdotal answer to the “what do tenured faculty do with their time,” I will describe the situation at my large research university with my PI. My advisor currently teaches maybe 5 hours per week. The flip side of this is a lot of his salary is not actually paid by the university. His salary costs for time that he is not teaching are billed directly against the various grants that have been awarded to the lab. Every term he has to adjust and declare how much support he is drawing from his various sources.</p>
<p>Besides teaching your PI runs the lab, right? How many hours per week does he spend running the lab? Isn’t what happens when the PI “runs the lab” really “teaching”, even though not logging classroom teaching hours?</p>
<p>Yes, it is teaching. But the university is not paying him for it, in fact it is something of a detriment to him since, in research universities, advisors are often responsible for paying the tuition of their funded grad students. He would be better off from a financial standpoint to have a lab full of postdocs :P.</p>
<p>Also, I am pretty sure that xiggi’s 24 teaching hours referred to in-class teaching. </p>
<p>Running a lab includes time spent on budgeting, making sure the right supplies are ordered and that vendor contracts are in compliance, hiring/training the non- academic staff (admins, lab assistants), etc. When the PI “runs the lab” it’s more than supervising students.</p>
<p>@alh, here are a few things that a STEM professor at a research University might be doing when not involved in activities directly related to undergraduate education:</p>
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<li><p>Helping to run the scientific enterprise and organizations in this country and around the world. That might include such things as: Serving on committees in Washington to evaluate the grant proposals submitted to the NIH, NSF, DOE, etc. Peer reviewing scientific papers for professional journals. Organizing conferences. Delivering lectures or other presentations at conferences. Organizing special “summer school” events for graduate students. Instructing at such summer schools. Serving a function in a professional society. Advising entities such as the World Heath Organization. Figuring out why the space shuttle blew up.</p></li>
<li><p>Running a laboratory. This probably involves interviewing and hiring professional staff, training graduate students and postdocs as well as providing undergraduates and even high school students with an opportunity to perform research. Writing grants to fund all of this. That is huge. Purchasing equipment and supplies, managing the budget. Complying with all regulations whether it be sexual harassment training, lab safety, or ensuring that animal protocols are approved. Writing and publishing papers. This enterprise is a little like running a small business and at research institutes which lack students, running a laboratory is considered a full time job on its own.</p></li>
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<p>3, Running the University and department. Serving on committees such as Promotion and Tenure, Teaching, Faculty search, etc. Most of this work is done by professors.</p>
<p>Those are just a few thoughts off the top of my head. I’m sure there is much more.</p>
<p>So a professor is teaching two classes one term, a graduate class and an undergraduate class. </p>
<p>Each student in the graduate class writes a paper using previously unpublished primary sources. The professor organizes a conference where the students present their research, then edits a volume of the papers and has it published by a university press. Several of the students find themselves with projects that have the potential to become articles or books with the help of a mentor (the professor) The professor is still reading and commenting on research resulting from this ONE class a decade later. </p>
<p>The undergraduate class is on poetry. The students can’t get enough. They ask if they can meet outside of class and the professor agrees. The professor chooses additional readings and meets with the students one evening a week for a couple of hours. This is great fun. Students not in the class participate. The poetry reading evening continues for years long after the original students involved have graduated. It never shows up in any official record of what the department does.</p>
<p>If this is how you teach every semester, you end up doing a lot of teaching out of the classroom.</p>
<p>I notice xiggi hasn’t accounted for directing senior theses, MA theses, or directing dissertations. A popular professor will spend a lot of time in this way and some projects will be more time consuming than others. And for the students who continue in the field, this professor may be a first reader of their work until he/she dies. This can become a lot of reading. And it is teaching. Because it is teaching those who teach the next generation.</p>
<p>And as mathyone points out there is committee work. It may not be teaching but it is necessary for the teaching to take place imho.</p>
<p>So does everybody agree that if a teacher’s ability to communicate in English is so poor that (many? most?) of the students cannot understand what he says, that this is a problem that should be addressed by the university? I’m always frustrated when this topic is discussed, because there are so many people who just don’t seem to believe that this happens. OK, so it doesn’t happen all that much, and some people exaggerate, etc., etc. But it does happen.</p>
<p>I should add that there can be other teachers who don’t give students their money’s worth. I had one professor in law school (a top law school, too) who simply read out of a binder at his lectures. No discussion, no elaboration. Just reading–and a super dry topic, commercial transactions. He could have saved us a lot of time by giving us copies of that binder. In my opinion, that guy was stealing whatever part of his salary related to teaching, because he didn’t teach. I guess he’d change his binder if the law changed. But nobody made a stink about that (as far as I know)–maybe students would be more bold today.</p>
<p>I had a chinese prof. for Calc 2 in undergrad with a pretty bad accent. He had enough experience with the math terminology that we could make out most of what he was saying. However, for reasons unknown, he insisted on handing back tests/homeworks himself at the end of class, calling out each student’s name to come get their papers. Roughly 2/3s of the names came out completely incomprehenisble, and he never seemed to get that, even when reading off 5 names in a row and no one stands up. We would have to wait until he left to go rifle through the stack to get our work.</p>
<p>I do agree with you, Hunt. </p>
<p>How many professors did you have during undergraduate studies and law school where you didn’t get your money’s worth? And was there ever an option for you to switch sections or just take another class once you figured this out?</p>
<p>Was the “not worth it” professor the only choice?</p>
<p>I think, too, some the best mentors and researchers can also be among the worst teachers for lower-level undergraduates. My own dissertation advisor was a superb mentor—she pushed me hard but also gave a lot of herself to her graduate students and was a prolific writer and researcher. But she was an abysmal professor for undergraduates. Her Polish accent was the least of her problems; she simply wasn’t that interested in teaching beginning social theory to 18 year olds…and it showed.</p>
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I remember one when I was a freshman–the mumbling math guy–I probably could have gotten into another section–I don’t remember the scheduling details. I would certainly tell any student with this problem to do something about it, and not emulate me.</p>
<p>In law school, if you wanted to take Commercial Transactions, my recollection is that you had to take it from “Stern Vern.” The common wisdom was that you should take it for the sake of the bar exam, even though it was well known that he was not a good teacher. In retrospect, it was unacceptable, and I wish I had complained. But people didn’t really make a stink about faculty back then–I don’t know if they do now or not.</p>