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 ...
> Didn’t he have tenure? <
It’s very odd. The guy was “a star teacher at Princeton” (says the article). Then he leaves Princeton to take a year-by-year contract job at New York University. Yes, very odd.
My freshman roommate had a goal of being 4.0 in pre-med. He made it. It was great, like having a single room, never saw him.
I have a Kardia device that seems to provide good electro heart data for 30 seconds at a time.
Nearly as good as what I see during brief annual visits, but always accessible [and it logs data for “sharing”].
Organic Chemistry was not so hard.
P-Chem was a bugger!
Or a proctologist.
Organic chemistry first semester is actually very easy, second semester also easy for those prepared (similar to Calculus II). Physical chemistry was a lot harder and more like filtering courses in physics and engineering.
Me= Pharmacy Graduate. Chem, physics, and math got rid of those in pre-pharm that would not succeed in pharmacy school. It was necessary and it worked. Those that made it into pharmacy school had a very high rate of graduation. The less skilled or less motivated were gone.
No, he did not.
I looked into this story, as I used to teach at a university.
Like so many who do so nowadays, I was a contract hire. They called it “soft money”, and the contract was renewed based on a grant we had from the FedGov and State. So I had to sign up every time the grant was approved (every 5-6 years). Tenure wasn’t offered for these positions. In fairness to the University, the pay I received as part of the contract was MUCH higher. I did this for 20 years, so even met the state teacher’s retirement fund, and I put in cash to that every month. Actually, they lost the grants when I had been working for them for 18 years, but I still had two years left. I wasn’t paid except when taught a specific classes that had been on the schedule. I spent the last year working for someone else, but still had vested in the retirement so I could still retire when I hit what would have been my 20-year mark. A LOT of colleges and universities do this. You get paid more than faculty on some contracts, but you could lose your job, too.
Anyway, long story short, Dr. Jones was on a one-year contract. He wasn’t fired, rather they refused to offer him another contract.
That was the BS part, really. He fulfilled all other requirements. On that alone, he might have cause for a suit based on age discrimination.
Kids these days need to spend more time watching RetroTV!
It’s most probable that this guy’s students were a lazy and whiny bunch who didn’t put in the effort to pass organic chemisty (I took a year of organic, so I’m quite familiar with the drill).
On the other hand, I knew an engineering professor who would brag that at least 50% of his students would fail his upper-level engineering classes. It was like he was proud of it.
In that particular case, I think the problem was with the engineering professor, and not with the students. So you never know.
Well like I always said: if you can change a radiator hose, you can do bypass surgery.
Updating my checklist for finding a good doctor ......
All I can say is: Snowflakes, preferred pronouns, "my truth," campus safe spaces, .........
“Didn’t he have tenure?”
I expect he had tenure when he was on the faculty at Princeton, where he spent the bulk of his career.
Maybe a decade back, he retired from Princeton, and took a position at NYU - I expect that position was non-tenure track, which would not be unusual for a faculty member past retirement age taking a position that required only classroom teaching (and not the intensive research program expected of the tenured faculty at schools at the level of Princeton and NYU).
So if Jones at NYU was a member of the “teaching faculty” rather than the tenure-track research faculty, he would be hired on a series of one-year contracts, or at least contracts of two or three years. If they paid him for his current year’s contract, all they’d have to do is fill someone else in for the rest of the academic year, and then just not offer him a contract for the coming year (and beyond).
Still a totally bad move on the part of NYU.
Not enough morons are able to get a “college diploma” because college is too hard. Gotta make it easier like the banana republic universities. Affirmative action and “diversity” is the greatest threat to our national security. Maggots and morons with diplomas are running around all over the place trying to find jobs. Unfortunately they all have diplomas with piss pour intelligence and work ethics.
Prior to an organic test I would lay in bed mentally drawing the structures and reactions. If unable to I would get out of bed and look it up, otherwise I could not sleep.
Isn’t this the school that pays all the costs for medical school? Well, if they couldn’t get into medical school, they could always switch gears and become environmental scientists or palm readers.
He is 84 years old and taught at Princeton for 43 years — from 1964 to 2007. Then went to teach at NYU. Maybe he wanted a change of scenery.
Yes, P-Chem was a bear for me, too.
“Math is hard!”
Re: Medical, Pharmacy, Optometry, Podiatry, Dental Schools/ etc.
In my first week we were required to read 300 pages of a dense histology book and we were tested on every paragraph. And....That was only one class! Classes started at 8 a.m. and finished at 5 p.m. It was grueling. All the classes were that intense.
If these students are struggling with organic chemistry as undergrads, they will not have the discipline or intelligence to manage graduate school in the health professions.
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