<p>I'm using the library's computer right now, and I saw a book called "Sovereignty: God, State, and Self." It was taught by a professor at UChicago. Then I wondered, okay, Freakonomics is written by a prof at UChicago. Jonathan Spence, the famous historian of Chinese history, teaches at Yale. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. teaches at Harvard. All universities. Why does it seem like no prominent professors teach at the big-name colleges but at universities instead? Conversely, not many of the profs at schools like Swarthmore are big-name professors. My guess is that it's because at the universities they get more money for research, but I'm just curious.</p>
<p>Most of these folks place are researchers and writers first and foremost. Teaching is a secondary thing. In order to do their research, they need graduate students to help them. There are no grad students at places like Swarthmore. At colleges, professors are expected to be good teachers first and research is secondary. Most of them pursue it at some level, but they don't have to get grant money or publish regularly in order to stay employed. At universities, it is just the opposite. Grant money and research are mandatory, and if you happen to be a good teacher, that's great, but if you aren't, that is OK, too.</p>
<p>HLG Jr! Yay!</p>
<p>By the way, Swattie professors might not be particularly <em>famous</em>, but that doesn't mean they're not amazing writers. A psychology prof at Swarthmore wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about a year or two ago-- I remember loving it, but I don't recall what it was about exactly. The writer struck me as exactly the kind of person I'd like to have as a teacher.</p>
<p>Interesteddad probably knows the op-ed I'm talking about and can provide a link to the article.</p>
<p>Oh and to answer the question directly, I think that for profs looking for <em>prestige</em> for themselves would probably prefer to associate themselves with a research powerhouse-- the Stanfords, the Berkeleys, the Harvards, the Michigans, the Yales, the Chicagos, the MITs, etc. all of these schools have University presses, a certain cache in the academic world, etc.</p>
<p>You wouldn't want a famous professor to teach you. Most of what they teach you would not be able to understand at the undergraduate level. If anything, the super famous Harvard professor I know that I did research under (MD/pHD, genius genetics researcher, summa cum laude Harvard med school, Oxford Rhodes Scholar, MIT graduate) teaches only one class at Harvard. <---It is an upper level class.</p>
<p><em>Some</em> are also horrible at teaching as well. Let the people who were hired to be lecturers, lecture. The very best teachers are the ones that i've met where visiting professors who are specialized at teaching at the undergraduate level vs. tenured professors which sucked ***</p>
<p>Famous professors are famous because of their work. Teaching is a secondary job, a neccessary evil for them to be on the faculty.</p>
<p>I work at one of the major universities mentioned above (not an academic) and I can attest to the fact that teaching skill - at least in the sciences - has very little weight in tenure decisions. Prof's here though have direct funding for there research and as mentioned before many grads and post docs. It is publish or perish so teaching isn't always the top priority. My d is looking at LAC for his very reason.</p>
<p>The idea that brilliant people make bad teachers is just a lame claim by LAC boosters who don't have any. The best genetics professor in the country for decades always taught into to genetics--for which he later also wrote the most widely used textbook based on his lectures. Many of the top (NAS grade) profs at UW also win teaching awards. In fact UW has hired some of them away from top LACs.</p>
<p>barrons, I don't think people are saying that brilliant researchers at universities are bad teachers. I think they're saying that the famous professors are famous for their research and not necessarily for their teaching skill. The teachers at the research universities are hired first for their researching and "teaching is a secondary thing." Doesn't mean that they're all bad at teaching.</p>
<p>So, why don't a lot of professors at the colleges do research? Or do they?</p>
<p>LAC alumni commonly move on to research universities as graduate students, and are routinely shocked by the low standards for undergraduate teaching there. Find some and ask them.</p>
<p>Professors at LACs typically do less research than those at universities, but sometimes LAC professors develop strong research reputations. In such cases, they are often hired away by research universities. Typically, the universities will offer the LAC professor a reduced teaching load, with grad students to take over the intro courses. </p>
<p>Profs move in the other direction as well. Research universities often deny tenure to professors who are outstanding teachers, and popular with their students, because their research isn't deemed significant enough. In this case, the university student's loss can be the LAC student's gain.</p>
<p>When I visited a top LAC, a professor told me it was easier for her to get tenure-track position at LACs than at research universities. She taught at some top 20 universities for years but it just wouldn't happen.<br>
Famous profs are famous because they're brilliant researchers. There are smart professors, and there are super smart professors. Most super smart are at top research universities.</p>
<p>I basically agree with what the others have said. A famous professor would have no incentive to go to a LAC. I guess you could say it's simply not a fit!</p>
<p>It's also a numbers game. Sure, you can name a dozen famous university professors. But, think how many university professors there are in the country -- professors that range from horrid to superb, obscure to famous.</p>
<p>There are also pretty famous professors at LACs.</p>
<p>James Kurth:
James</a> Kurth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>
<p>An English Professor I had at Williams, Don Gifford, wrote the annotated Ulysses, still considered to be the gold standard in figuring out the Joyce Novel forty years later.</p>
<p>Amazon.com:</a> Ulysses Annotated: Don Gifford: Books</p>
<p>
[quote]
Typically, the universities will offer the LAC professor a reduced teaching load, with grad students to take over the intro courses.
[/quote]
This is just another of those myths floating around CC-land. Please tell, aside from Calculus, which are these "intro courses" grad students taka over at research universities?</p>
<p>Grad students teaching intro classes or not, I'd rather go to Yale or Harvard than Swarthmore or Beloit. And so would most professors. Especially if Yale or Harvard were to hand them thousands of dollars and tell them to pursue your interests and write about it.</p>
<p>At MIT, all professors are required to teach one semester a year. Combine that with the fact that famous professors here don't only teach the most advanced classes and what you have is no shortage of famous professors you could potentially be taking a class with.</p>
<p>
Heh, you're just unlucky. :p</p>
<p>ferryboat10: Why? I've heard of professors at Yale and Harvard and Princeton sending their kids to schools like Kenyon. One of the Swarthmore professors of psychology mentioned that he taught at Harvard and Stanford and UCLA, and he went to Harvard, but he'd much prefer to send his kids to a school like Swarthmore. So I don't see what evidence you have to support the statement that most professors would rather teach at the Ivies than the top liberal arts schools. Have you surveyed every professor to reach that conclusion? And tell me, ferryboat10: what is it about Yale and Harvard that make it better?</p>
<p>UC Berkeley sent a book "More than a century on Interconnections" to my house this week. Here are some of the highlights of the professors that taught either my sister or my cousin. I just picked each professor's earliest work. They are the dinosaurs in the industry, and yet they've taught both my sister and cousin. Now, do you think the Engineering department at Swarthmore can come up with something as remotely innovative as something Richard White came up with in 1965? I highly doubt it.</p>
<p>1965: Richard M. White publish a seminal paper on interdigital transducers for surface elastic waves on piezoelectric crystals, a technology still in use today in TV sets and other communications equipment.
1976-1978: Robert W. Brodersen, Paul Gray, and David A. Hodges lead a team that invents mixed-signal MOS integrated circuits, which combine precision analog-digital conversion and switched-C filters with high-density digital circuits.
1979: Richard J. Fateman leads the Berkeley development of the VAX version of the Macsyma Computer Algebra System.<br>
1980: David A. Patterson and Carlo Sequin pioneer simple architectures for VLSI in their RISC-I Project. They coin the term Reduced Instruction Set Computer, which is the generic name for this style of computers. RISCs are popular today in embedded devices, such as cell phones. (Wii, Sony PSP are some products that has RISC chip)
1987: Shankar Sastry and Ronald Fearing intorduce biomimetic mlti-fingered robotic hands with novel tactile sensing.<br>
1987: Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli co-founded logic-synthesis company Synopsys that single-handedly serves the entire Silicon Valley.</p>
<p>Understanding a college’s commitment to Teaching Excellence should be a critical variable in any student’s college search. IMO, a college’s culture is reflected in how committed the school and its professorial staff are to its undergraduate students. There is certainly nothing wrong with the college that prioritizes great research achievement, but the student seeking a great classroom experience may be sorely disappointed when he/she arrives on campus and finds a less than stellar product being delivered in the classroom. </p>
<p>As barrons points out, some professors are able to achieve at both research and teaching, although it is pretty widely accepted that tenure decisions at national universities more heavily weight the research contribution. For some students, the ideal environment will be where students can find both great researchers and great teachers, others might require great teachers only (and I would guess that this is the case for the great majority of students at America’s colleges, elite or not), and still others will prefer those settings with great research commitment and less so to the classroom experience (think technical sciences). </p>
<p>So, in making a college search, try to understand what is in a college’s DNA and try to match their culture with what you are prioritizing in making your own college selection. </p>
<p>To assist students in making this judgment, consider the following results from USNWR of their Teaching Excellence Rankings and their 2008 Peer Assessment scores. The Teaching Excellence Rankings speak for themselves while the PA scores are probably a good proxy for a college’s commitment to/emphasis on research. </p>
<p>(Note: the Teaching Rankings are now more than a decade old and students should investigate whether this reputation remains today.)</p>
<p>PA Score , LACs ranked for Teaching Excellence</p>
<p>4.7 , Amherst
4.0 , Bates
4.3 , Bowdoin
4.1 , Bryn Mawr
4.4 , Carleton
3.8 , Colorado College
4.2 , Davidson
3.5 , Earlham
4.3 , Grinnell
4.1 , Haverford
4.1 , Macalester
4.2 , Middlebury
4.2 , Oberlin
4.2 , Pomona
3.9 , Reed
3.0 , St. John's
3.6 , St. Olaf
4.6 , Swarthmore
4.5 , Wellesley
4.7 , Williams
3.8 , Kenyon
3.4 , Spelman
4.3 , Smith
3.6 , Sewanee
3.4 , Centre</p>
<p>PA Score NATIONAL UNIVERSITIES ranked for Teaching Excellence</p>
<p>3.6 , Boston College
4.4 , Brown
4.7 , Caltech
4.3 , Dartmouth
4.4 , Duke
4.0 , Emory
4.9 , Harvard
3.3 , Miami U (OH)
4.3 , Northwestern
3.9 , Notre Dame
4.9 , Princeton
4.0 , Rice
4.9 , Stanford
4.6 , U Chicago
4.2 , U North Carolina
4.3 , U Virginia
3.2 , UC Santa Cruz
4.0 , Vanderbilt
3.7 , W&M
3.5 , Wake Forest
4.8 , Yale
2.9 , BYU
4.1 , Wash U
4.0 , Georgetown
3.6 , Tufts</p>
<p>PA Score , Highly ranked colleges that did NOT make the Teaching Excellence Top 25</p>
<p>4.2 , Carnegie Mellon
4.6 , Columbia
4.6 , Cornell
4.6 , J Hopkins
4.9 , MIT
4.5 , U Michigan
4.5 , U Penn
4.8 , UC Berkeley
4.2 , UCLA</p>
<p>I recently met a former professor of mine who has risen very high at an ivy university. The conversation came around to college for my son, and he asked if we were considering this ivy. Eventually he spoke freely, and he suggested that we should look at Amherst where he went. He felt that the LAC experience, especially at Amherst, was superior because the focus was on undergraduate education.</p>
<p>This thread is a great idea. (Is it featured?)</p>
<p>GoBlues, I hope you see that as you bash 'LAC boosters', you are a 'booster' for something yourself. That does not mak your words anymore true, but takes away the importance whatever valid points you are making.</p>