Posted on 10/07/2022 2:42:29 PM PDT by Twotone
New York University fired Maitland Jones Jr. because his organic chemistry course was “too hard.” The man wrote the textbook on the subject, now in its fifth edition, and had been a star teacher at Princeton. He went out of his way to tape his lectures, at his own cost, to mitigate some of the attendance problems attributed to the pandemic.
Yet students revolted because they feared, according to the New York Times, that “they were not given the grades that would allow them to get into medical school.”
The professor, meanwhile, saw a different problem: “They weren’t coming to class. … They weren’t watching the videos, and they weren’t able to answer the questions.” But the school terminated his employment rather than the students, who are on track to become physicians despite struggling to get into med school.
Every American should be worried because this kind of standard-lowering is becoming commonplace in medical school.
Organic chemistry is a very difficult subject. Doing well in the course in college has been a litmus test for medical-school suitability. It demands discipline, ability to think in three dimensions, memorizing complex structures, managing a series of chemical rules and solving intricate problems. Its intellectual demands and need for disciplined study are surrogates for the discipline and problem-solving physicians must demonstrate throughout their careers.
Jones could not be more correct in his judgment that his organic chemistry course should be tough. Entry into medical school these days is almost a guarantee that a student will one day have a medical degree and a license to practice medicine. Even struggling students are coached through to graduation. I know this as I was the associate dean for curriculum at Penn’s medical school.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
It’s not just about patterns. It’s about how things work (e.g, how chemical reactions go one way rather than another)!!!!
The new Nobel Prizes in Chemistry are just the latest example of this!
https://www.reuters.com/world/bertozzi-meldal-sharpless-win-2022-nobel-prize-chemistry-2022-10-05/
Ok so you include kinetics\thermodynamics!
...”Do not let any MD under the age of 40 years old near me....”
I’m thinking that way too, but my initial thought about a bar to clear was 50 years.
“...Linus Pauling who won Chemistry and Peace ...”
The Piece Prize comes from the Norwegian politicians.
He had an accident as a kid.
Nearly paraplegic.
Got me through Engineering Chemistry, Trigonometry and Calculus. I didn’t fare as well in the latter two but I at least passed. Hadn’t kept up on my mathematics.
Died of medical complications in 2007.
My Zoology and later Biology classes (not in that order were even tougher).
My professor taught med students.
A in both but I worked like a horse - labs too with separate exams (lab final and class final in each)
“benzene” is NOT your friend.
When the series “Emergency” ended, Mantooth was asked to become a real paramedic. He had gone thru the actual training to make the show look reasonably real. All he needed was a refresher and the test. He decided to stay with acting.
Good job, and may your friend RIP.
I checked the IMDB and he had a pretty prolific career. Nothing like 6 years of a steady paycheck, but didn’t lack for work. Looks like he retired in 2010. I liked the show, it was pretty realistic.
When I watch Adam-12 reruns I think Malloy and Reed wouldn’t make it through a shift these days.
We got that later—in Physical Chemistry—a VERY tough course which required multivariable calculus!!!! (No calculus required for Organic Chem.)
Look at Dr. Jones’ research record:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maitland_Jones_Jr.
Wow!!!!
At 84, he was teaching on a contract basis after retirement, so it was easy to fire him. But the chemistry department did not want him to be fired!!
We are sooooo scrooooowed!
I thought physical chemistry was a lot harder than organic. Those partial differentials were rough.
So your surgeon didn’t actually go to class...
How can do they expect to do well on the MCATs or pass their boards if they can’t hack o-chem taught by one of the leading educators in the country?
I got A’s in Organic, but B’s in P-Chem!!!
I was proud of those B’s. There may not have been any A’s, and there were all too many D’s and F’s!!
D’s and F’s were not supposed to happen at MIT, and the old professor who served as chemistry student advocate complained about them. I don’t remember what happened with those complaints. I imagine that many Chem majors took P-Chem over with a different professor and passed.
Since I was a Bio major, my high grades in Organic and P-Chem made me very unpopular with Chem majors—for awhile. However, they eventually shrugged it off, and we returned to being friends!
My father got a B in P-Chem — the only B he ever got in his life, grade school through medical school. Otherwise straight As. Of course, he was working full time to help support his parents and brother at the time, too. I remember him telling me that because of his work schedule, he and a friend got permission to use the lab one weekend and they ran the whole semester’s labs simultaneously and wrote them up by Monday morning.
I was never that kind of student, but by golly I got an A in P-Chem! Never used it for anything throughout my career.
.....by golly I got an A in P-Chem!.....
Good for you!!!!
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