Sign of the Times [NYU organic chemistry course]

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In what ways? If Covid and the lockdowns had never happened would people still be viewing this controversy in the same way? Would it even have been happened in the first place? Professor Jones taught at NYU for last 15 years and this year his teaching method and interpersonal skills are now subpar?

The 2020 list of grievances and the 2022 petition (from what limited information is available as quoted in the NYT article……it’s interesting that the full petition has not been released) seems to stem from what happened in 2020, the necessity of remote learning and the accompanying regression in study/learning which affected some students coupled with a generational subset with study/life balance views that most posters here find perhaps incompatible with what medical school, residency and the life of a physician ultimately requires in terms of resilience, commitment, sacrifice and maturity. In any given OChem class a certain percentage will not get a good grade. The petition was signed by ~23% of the class. Might that be the usual percentage that would struggle with OChem in any given year? It’s certainly not a majority of the students in Jones’ class.

I’m not saying that medical schools shouldn’t consider reevaluating their admissions process but is it germane to this particular situation since most of this seems attributable to what transpired during the pandemic and the fact that we do have a certain percentage of current students (and parents) that expects a bit more coddling/accommodation in the education arena that those prior?

ETA: I’m also curious about the connection between the 11 page 2020 grievance list and the 2022 petition….different classes, different years, old class brought the petition even though they aren’t current students, new class brought the petition and they’re unrelated but show continuity of behavior? Just wondering.

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They have everything to do with it. NYU claims publicly they fired him for cause, and that his teaching was inadequate. His defamation claim is well-grounded. He will not seek specific performance (return of the job). Just monetary damages, but substantial.
Whether NYU followed its procedures for grievance resolution and whether the procedure even applied is interesting, but not the basis for the major legal claim; It probably does bolster the intent element in a defamation charge though.

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I suggest that one important way is that we as a society have begun grappling with how inequities are damaging, not only to marginalized communities but to our society as a whole. The article posted above (and reposted below) describes the effect of those long-standing inequities, and how they were amplified by the pandemic but not attributable to it.

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Yes, lots of inequities. Important to address. Not sure why sub-par doctors are the answer. How about more clinics in poor areas? More med scholarships for low-income BIPOC ? Medical mentoring programs for certain students? Shadowing opportunities?

Not sure why dropping standards at an extremely expensive private school is the answer.

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Engineers don’t use differential equations in their everyday work. But the course work prepares them for problem solving and understanding techniques.

My way of thinking is that physicians don’t use OChem everyday but learning it prepares them for other aspects of their work.

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I find this statement to be the most interesting part of this conversation since it pushes beyond a bickering back and forth about details that we don’t know about this professor, his contract, or NYU’s decision making process. The controversy over his firing seems sensationalized to me.

For me, I think the interesting questions raised by this article are the following:

  1. Are the current generation of college students at a particular university (NYU in this case) much different than previous generations and if so, do the professors at that university have a responsibility or obligation to adapt their teaching style to the current generation rather than sticking with their old methods? Even if they don’t have an obligation to change their teaching style, would it be in the best interest of the university, its students, or society as a whole for 'professors these days" to adapt to “kids these days”?
  2. Do gate-keeping or weed-out courses actually serve a useful purpose in educational institutions? Or are they merely a relic of a different time? Or are such courses a tool used to maintain the status quo or a hierarchy that is more about power relations than about successfully educating and training students? In this specific case, does doing well in organic chemistry as it is usually taught actually predict who will be a good doctor? Or are we just assuming success in that course is important? I truly don’t know the answers to these questions, but I feel skeptical with the level of certainty expressed by people who are dug into their opinions on these questions. I think the answers are likely far grayer and more complicated than have been discussed here.
  3. Are there ways to change these large weed-out courses that might actually result in more students learning the material well or are these currently courses being taught in the best possible way? I suspect courses could be taught better without somehow watering down content or making the material less rigorous. But I also suspect that professors and TAs don’t always know how to help struggling students and I am very very nervous when I see educators try to make material accessible by making it easy. I don’t think educators should equate the two. In my experience, the best taught courses are both accessible AND rigorous.

While I think these are crucial questions, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for either the professor or the students in this case. This professor is likely just fine between his years teaching at Princeton and NYU. Perhaps he is aggrieved or maybe his ego is bruised, but while the experience may have meant that he ended his last year of teaching on a sour note, it sounds like he is still revered by former students & colleagues not to mention a whole bunch of random people who had never heard of him before but are now on his side based on a few articles. I find it difficult to worry too much for him.

Furthermore, if the students really want to learn organic chemistry then maybe they should just retake the class in another semester or over the summer. I don’t think one poor grade during one semester or one difficult and unresponsive professor has to be the end of the world or even the end of medical school dreams. I do think resiliency is important and sometimes being resilient means taking another stab at material that was difficult on your first try. Or go back and retake a prerequisite so that your foundation is stronger (my own experience of organic chemistry was a complete disaster, I suspect becuase I had not studied chemistry at all in high school nor did I take the recommended prerequisite in college before trying organic chem. That was on me not on the tough professor or the difficult material or my well-intentioned, long-suffering TA). None of this is the end of the world for either professors or students. It all seems like just fuel for the outrage news cycle.

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Please do not create an outrageous straw man here. Under absolutely NO CIRCUMSTANCES am I suggesting the creation of a cohort of sub-par physicians. Please point me to where I suggested that, and I will openly edit and apologize for misspeaking so egregiously.

I’ll repeat my point again to prevent further misinterpretation. Knowledge transfer should be the focus of education, the goal. An objective toward that goal is effective teaching of key subjects. (Another objective might be the review of what should be key subjects, but that’s not my particular point here). I’m suggesting that there are older methods of teaching currently in practice that are not as effective as they could be in current circumstances, and that some methods of measuring knowledge transfer are not as accurate in current circumstances as they might have been in the past.

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https://cen.acs.org/education/Chemistry-professors-decry-firing-colleague/100/i36

The NYU Chemistry Department apparently supported Jones’ reappointment, per the above article. Remarkable for the deans to overrule that based on student complaints.

I am glad the Chemistry dept clarified that it was not responsible for, nor supported, this decision.

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Interesting article. It brings up a point I hadn’t considered before (apologies if it’s been posted before- there’s a lot in this thread!).
“[Jacobsen] and others also note that Jones’s dismissal highlights a common—and some say problematic—system of [teaching organic chemistry] in which chemistry majors and nonmajors take separate classes. The latter group, often heavily populated by premed students who are required to take the course, is seen as focused primarily on grades. Many who signed the petition at NYU were premed students.”

My own experience with orgo did not differentiate between pre-med/non-pre-med. Sounds like there is a potential culture issue there to be addressed.

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As a trained physicist (but not a practicing one), I’ve always thought that there’s too much memorization in chemistry (I’m biased, of course). I was proud of myself that I could often derive a substance’s chemical properties (e.g. whether it would react with another substance) by understanding its quantum mechanical properties.

I’d assume so, especially if the courses are designed for premed students (rather than chemistry majors). It’s probably a necessity.

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Deleted, because while my post was accurate, it is none of your or anyone else’s business.

My posts speak for themselves, and they are well grounded. Unlike some, I’ve no need to bluster on the internet about my qualifications.

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Am I misreading something here? It seems clear from some of the more recent posts that Dr. Jones has sued NYU. Is that correct?

If so, I would assume the complaint is publicly available.

Apologies if I misunderstood.

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I do not think he has filed yet. No hurry.

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I believe some posters are suggesting he should (not that he reads CC), but I have not read that he has. Not yet, anyway.

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Ok. Thanks.

That this is even a possibility for a school like NYU and a Professor like Dr. Jones is terrible. I hope when I am 84 that something like this doesn’t happen to me if I continue to work/consult at that age (heaven forbid!).

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I wonder if NYU deans regularly overrule academic department’s recommendations.

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From my perspective as a doctor, I just don’t think that it did. The skills I learned in O-Chem remind me more of the skills needed for Tetris, or chess (or for an imaginary game half way between Tetris and chess.)

Here are some classes that I think would be useful prerequisites for medical school, but were not required at all for me:

  1. Psychology. Boy oh boy do I use psychology as a doctor! (I was not pre-med in college, and I just happened to take 2 psychology courses, and I am sure glad I did.)
  2. Ethics. Never took it. A huge hole in my education.
  3. A second language. I started studying Spanish all on my own at age 40. Learning this language to the point that I can comfortably use it at my job took a LOT of work, persistence, memorization, flexibility, humility, resilience, and willingness to ask for help. This skill has made a huge difference in my ability as a doctor. The way I approach patients from different cultures (not just Spanish speaking ones) was really enriched by the process of becoming bilingual.

These are just a few.

ETA: 4. Statistics! Medical school prerequisites required Calculus, but not Stats. I took calculus (a course devoted almost entirely to proofs as my college has a strong tradition of preparing students for math PhD programs) for fun, so don’t really regret it, but I never use it as a doctor. On the other hand, Statistics I use all the time (I happened to take a graduate student intro course in stats for fun one summer so I ended up having done it after all, and it has for sure made me a better doctor.)

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I did read that article as it was posted upthread. My response to the general sentiment in the article is that the answer is not to make challenging classes easier because certain students come to the table less prepared. I think universities and colleges need to do a better job in selecting and admitting students who can reasonably be expected to do the work at the level presented at each specific school. And that being said, there’s still the practical reality that not everyone will get an A or B in OChem regardless of their HS prep. That’s why it’s a weed-out class. If the kids petitioning are the ones with single digit or zero scores that a bigger problem than the professor’s teaching style. They may think those scores don’t reflect their effort but it does say something about their mastery of the information. And there are students who do understand the material. The entire class isn’t scoring in the single digits.

According to the original NYT article there was a downward slide in student performance even before the pandemic hit and afterwards students who complained were not availing themselves of the additional resources provided. Lastly, I’d second another poster who mentioned that if a student is unsatisfied with their OChem grade they could retake the class or take it over the summer; aligns with the resiliency and problem solving attributes that benefit all students.

“Students were misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate,” he wrote in a grievance to the university, protesting his termination. Grades fell even as he reduced the difficulty of his exams.”

“The problem was exacerbated by the pandemic, he said. “In the last two years, they fell off a cliff,” he wrote. “We now see single digit scores and even zeros.”

After several years of Covid learning loss, the students not only didn’t study, they didn’t seem to know how to study, Dr. Jones said.”

“To ease pandemic stress, Dr. Jones and two other professors taped 52 organic chemistry lectures. Dr. Jones said that he personally paid more than $5,000 for the videos and that they are still used by the university.”

“By spring 2022, the university was returning with fewer Covid restrictions, but the anxiety continued and students seemed disengaged.”

“They weren’t coming to class, that’s for sure, because I can count the house,” Dr. Jones said in an interview. “They weren’t watching the videos, and they weren’t able to answer the questions.”

Zacharia Benslimane, a teaching assistant in the problem-solving section of the course, defended Dr. Jones in an email to university officials.

“I think this petition was written more out of unhappiness with exam scores than an actual feeling of being treated unfairly,” wrote Mr. Benslimane, now a Ph.D. student at Harvard. “I have noticed that many of the students who consistently complained about the class did not use the resources we afforded to them.”

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