Hey Prof, Learn to Teach!
It is fair to say that teaching undergraduate students is not a top priority for most professors or administrators at the University. I am consistently baffled at the poor teaching skills that I, and everyone else, run into in the university system. You would think that an entity supporting higher education would attempt to better the educating process of the fee-paying students. What we often get for our money, however, are intelligent professors who are too rapt up in their own research to really give a damn about being benevolent teachers.
I talked to Georgeanne Cooper, the program director for the Teaching Effectiveness Program (TEP), briefly this morning. The program’s largest project is an annual workshop before the fall school term for around 300 first-time teachers and GTFs, many of whom are “scared” about having to teach. Other than that, the program works with about 10 to 25 tenured faculty in various teaching items like teaching with technology. Cooper said the TEP deals with “practical” problems and is here to evaluate individual performances. She agreed with me that most professors in a “research institution” are tied down to their own studies and put being a good teacher lower on their list of goals.
Now compare this to Center For Teaching at Vanderbilt, which combines the intellectual art of teaching with higher education research. It believes “that teaching and learning as intellectual invention differ from research only in kind, not in degree and importance.” In 2004, CFT director said, “Teaching without learning is just talking … the real focus needs to be on helping students figures out what makes them learn best.”
Wow, a university that uses experimentation and inquiry to discovering what makes students the best possible scholars. What a freaking radical idea! God for bid the UO supported such thinking. Oh well, I guess having crappy teachers gives us one more thing to gripe and moan about.
So let’s hear it, who are the worst teachers in this place? I would say former Poly Sci prof Jerry Medler, but luckily he moved his socialt behind up to Canada.
do not take jean meeks’ classes which are management 321 and sometimes BA453. she is unfair especially to minority students.
the only thing she did is to brag about herself in the class.
so guys, if you might have such classes. take an alternative one.
stay away from the “plague”
I enjoyed the one Cramer class that I took.
Most all of the professors I had in the History Department were great, even the ones I wasn’t really looking forward to. Dracobly is outstanding, and a nice guy to boot.
Had some fairly rotten philosophy professors, though
Some of us take teaching seriously, and put a great deal of work into our students. But not many.
William H. Baugh in the political science department was my least favorite, by far. The best was Lars Skalnes, though I think he’s department head now and isn’t teaching. The man is a genius.
How about Jason Hartwig in the Poly Sci department? He’s a gtf, but man he can pit out a wool Christmas sweater and slurp Mountain Dew from a 2 liter like it’s nobody’s business.
I actually had a Chuck Hunt class once, and he wasn’t bad. He was biased as fuck, but very clearly stated his biases at the start of the term so we could take them into account. By far the best teachers I’ve had have all been grad students or grad students who just graduated.
Carl Bybee, hands down, worst professor ever.
I nominate Baumgold and her pet Eric.
Chuck is an interesting dude. He’s pretty pro-gun; if memory serves me, he even used to make his own guns. He might be an interesting dude to profile.
Spoken like someone who just wrote for the Hate Issue!
I prefer not to remember the bad things, but only focus on the positive and what good the University has done for me.
I can’t believe we haven’t heard Chuck Hunt’s name yet.
Some folks have pretty poor learning skills, to be fair.
Cramer isn’t that bad. She’s pretty vocal about her kooky views, but I thought she was a relatively fair teacher. The Poli-Sci GTFs are pretty fucking insufferable and bad, however.
I’ve taken classes in pretty much every single department at this University and I’d have to say that the worst professors tend to be the writing GTFs. The worst classes I took tended to have political overtones, like “The Working Class Experience in 20th Cent. America”, which was one big circle jerk for unions. Journalism professors run the gamut in my opinion: There are some really great profs in that department, like Tom Wheeler and Bish Sen (you all should definitely take a Com. Studies class from Bish if you can
Medler is in Canada now? I didn’t know that.
Has to be Cramer. She does nothing.
That was DeBevoises’ great redeeming quality… he didn’t want tenure, because he thought that publishing gets in the way of teaching in public universities. As far as a worst professor… I’ve mostly taken polisci since transfering here, but Ron Mitchell didn’t really do it for me, and Dylan Bennet was impossible to sit through (although he’s a GTF, not a prof). On the whole, the professors here are good, but you can tell who enjoys teaching and who doesn’t.