Let’s hope he hasn’t been giving the same lecture for 50 years. There have been advances in orgo along the way and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he was up to date ; ).
The students seemed to have highlighted deficiencies related to online learning. That is a different skill set. Some professors adapted very well to moving their courses online/hybrid, others did not.
As was highlighted in another thread, Covid is not over, and classes may move back to online periodically indefinitely. It’s not a stretch that professors and students alike need to be comfortable with that format.
Age alone shouldn’t be the determinant for retirement of professors or teachers because humans are different, but anyone denying that advanced age can be a factor in performance for some is astounding.
My MIL passed away due to Alzheimers at age 88, and it didn’t hit all at once. There were signs at least a decade earlier. My dad passed away due to a heart attack at age 76, but in his last decade or so he really declined mentally too.
My FIL is still well with it mentally at age 94, able to play strategy games and still win without a “senior discount.” He’s also the one you’d want supervising building any number of projects. He’s extremely talented, having built many things over his lifetime including houses, machines, etc. Physically he can’t do as much (still does some - like fixing his lawn mowers), but mentally he’s as sharp as ever.
Humans differ.
None of us on here have any idea if it’s an issue with this prof, but it could be. NYU would know. Reviews declining over the years could provide a clue, but we don’t know them by year (at least I don’t).
I don’t recall any of the complaints having much to do with age. Seemed more like “this is a hard class/too much work” and “he’s not accommodating” type stuff.
And btw we need MORE hard classes, MORE people failing, and MORE professors who are not accommodating. Medicine is hard, patients can be difficult. Insurance companies dismissive.
One would presume you’d want a more rigorous treatment of the subject to clear the MCAT well. Certainly in industries where the interview matters significantly (after a gpa threshold of, say, 3.7 or above) kids care a lot about course rigor. This is what is going to stay with you for the next 10 - 20 years. Not the gpa.
Not necessarily. For those who find O-Chem difficult, the difficult part is all the “make this molecule from these components” problems. It’s a knack that involves some 3-D thinking and a love of puzzles. More rigorous courses involve many of these problems and more difficult ones. Less rigorous courses involve fewer, and perhaps substitute more straightforward elements such as naming conventions. I do not remember the MCAT containing a single “make this” problem. Nor have I ever had to do a “make this” problem as a doctor.
I have read the list posted. Unfortunately, I don’t think the list reflects well on the students.
Apparently these students have never been taught to be concise and relevant.
Had they just focused on the legitimate complaints of lack of transparency, clarity and lack of communication I could get more behind them.
Unfortunately, the complaints veered off into what I perceive as “whining”
Too much work, tests too hard, wanting time for social life and with family on weekends. They don’t want quizzes and homework. Sorry, doesn’t fly for me.
Additional stress due to BLM……
Fear of radical trump supporters…
Trying to weed out marginalized communities out of medicine……
proof please.
Focusing on these issues does nothing to sway the argument for me. Sorry, it just clouds the issue and comes off (to me) as whining.
This definitely appears to be a two sided issue and can be the fault of both sides but as I said, had the complaints been concise, well presented and relevant I could get more behind the students.
I have been in education for over 30 years both in teaching and administration. There have always been entitled students and parents and there have always been grade grubbers. I always went by the motto that teachers don’t give grades, students earn them. And there have always been bad teachers who clearly don’t know how to teach. And there have always been kids that aren’t well prepared for certain classes. It’s not a new thing. One teacher at the school where I teach was very loved by the students because he showed movies all day, instead of teaching. When I taught, I made it very clear of what was expected of my students. I also encouraged students to come to me if they needed extra help. I also explained in the syllabus how students would be graded.
Once again, you are erroneously representing that this issue only involved “this year’s batch of sophomores.” It did not. See for example, the 2020 issue outline created by the students who had this professor the Fall 2020. (Previously you erroneously insisted this was the “petition” and concerned only “Spring 2022.”)
If one gives the students’ 2020 Issues Outline more than a superficial reading, one can see that many of the issues regarded the professors inability to adapt to teaching in the age of Covid. And the article itself suggests couldn’t even figure out how to teach on Zoom.
It may be that previously giving “the same lecture to 20k undergraduates” proved more of a hindrance than a help when came to adapting his long worn methods.
The lectures were recorded; I am not sure what other covid accommodations would be possible, except for making the class pass/fail, which is usually a department-wide decision. At many universities the administration provided technical specialists to professors to help them with the online challenges; I wonder if NYU did that. Perhaps not if the professor spent 5k dollars of his own money on doing so.
I acknowledge the prior post should have specified “sophomores from 2020 through 2022” rather than the current batch.
My kids found that the ability to adapt to the zoom environment depended far more on the subject matter and the professor, regardless of age. The comp sci professors were uniformly great; the young humanties post-doc was awful.
It may not have been the post-docs fault, by the way. A 3 hour zoom anthropology seminar may just not work but that was the class he was assigned to teach.
I assume you are referring to the document has been repeatedly mischaracterized as the student “petition”?
Because that outline was NOT “the petition” and was obviously not intended to be “concise, relevant, well presented” or even persuasive. It is a collection of the concerns presented by various students, organized by general category. The heading of the document indicates the information was used to create a “Response,” which is presumably a persuasive document provided to the administration.
It is unfortunate that posters continue to malign these students as a result of the misrepresentation about the nature of this document. Not sure why the those responsible for the misrepresentation haven’t corrected the false information in their original posts.
Recording lectures then distributing them on Friday night, days after the scheduled lecture, is not an adequate accommodation during Covid.
His other “accommodation” seems to be that he switched his tests to multiple choice from free answer. This “accommodation” is anything but, unless it was a well designed multiple choice test. We don’t know his process, but when the students don’t even understand the questions and when class average is 20% after the crossover, that strongly suggests that the tests were not well designed. The students weren’t suddenly less capable. The test changed.
How do you know that these students were not less capable than others? Perhaps some had not attended in person school for a year or two. That would likely diminish anyone’s ability to study rigorously.
The universities my children attended during covid merely recorded lectures as their accomodation. It was sufficient for those schools, apparently. Or at least there were no formalized complaints of which I am aware. Perhaps if other classes had other specific accommodations, students could have specifically suggested those at the time the class was in session.
There are plenty of STEM classes today at my kid’s Ivy where the median score is below 50%. Once students understand the median, it is not a problem for them. Some are highly rated, some poorly rated, but students can adapt. I believe several well-known foreign schools use a similar grading system for STEM.
Heard the below in a talk the other day. Seems to fit this situation a little bit.
"University of Notre Dame sociologist of religion Christian Smith found in his study of adults [ages] 18 to 23 that most of them believe society is nothing more than ‘a collection of autonomous individuals out to enjoy life.’‘’
By this philosophy, anything that one finds difficult “is a form of oppression.”
Saying someone is lazy is not necessarily maligning anyone. Of course it depends on the context. What is wrong with saying that this particular group of students is lazy or maybe unprepared? Maybe they are maybe they aren’t…no one is trying to be rude here.
And I have seen a lot more entitlement and selfishness in people of all ages these days…
I see that there are some comments here that are distinctly political in nature. I’d like to remind you all that we have a separate forum for political debate. In order to participate, you must join the Politics Forum group. Of course, we do ask that everyone maintain a respectful attitude to others even (and especially!) when they disagree.
In addition, I see that some participants in this thread are reading what other people write in the least generous way possible. That may be how you see the situation, but it’s not helping us to have a productive discussion. Part of being respectful is allowing other people to clarify what they mean rather than assuming something worse.