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Sep. 12th, 2003 11:15 amWe are never letting Rob teach, especially underclassmen.
In my Thermal Physics class, our professor has us working problems. Whenever a few of us got one, he would pick someone to explain the problem on the board (or he would do it himself). So, for the final one today, he picked Rob, as only Rob and I had it finished. Rob wrote a few equations on the board and seemed to consider it done. When our professor asked him to explain what he did, he basically went through the equations quickly. When the profesor asked us what we thought of Rob's teaching style, Rob answered first: "I can't teach."
Which brings me to an observation. There are two types of faculty. There are the tenured faculty and the lecturers. The tenured faculty may be good teachers or they may be awful, but they aren't selected for tenure on teaching. It's mostly on how many grants they can pull in. The lecturers DO have to be good teachers though, or they lose their position (read; job). Yet the lecturers get paid peanuts next to the tenured faculty. Shows where the University systems priorities lie. While research may help students like me by giving us job experience and resume padding, Joe and Jane student don't care if their professor studies quasars, RR Lyrae stars or nothing at all, as long as they can pass astronomy 103 and maybe learn something. And that, my friends, depends on the teaching abilities of the profesor.
I know I'd like tenure, if only for the job security. But I intend to be a good teacher. I see the job of the teacher is as important as that of researcher.
In my Thermal Physics class, our professor has us working problems. Whenever a few of us got one, he would pick someone to explain the problem on the board (or he would do it himself). So, for the final one today, he picked Rob, as only Rob and I had it finished. Rob wrote a few equations on the board and seemed to consider it done. When our professor asked him to explain what he did, he basically went through the equations quickly. When the profesor asked us what we thought of Rob's teaching style, Rob answered first: "I can't teach."
Which brings me to an observation. There are two types of faculty. There are the tenured faculty and the lecturers. The tenured faculty may be good teachers or they may be awful, but they aren't selected for tenure on teaching. It's mostly on how many grants they can pull in. The lecturers DO have to be good teachers though, or they lose their position (read; job). Yet the lecturers get paid peanuts next to the tenured faculty. Shows where the University systems priorities lie. While research may help students like me by giving us job experience and resume padding, Joe and Jane student don't care if their professor studies quasars, RR Lyrae stars or nothing at all, as long as they can pass astronomy 103 and maybe learn something. And that, my friends, depends on the teaching abilities of the profesor.
I know I'd like tenure, if only for the job security. But I intend to be a good teacher. I see the job of the teacher is as important as that of researcher.
