Posted on 10/21/2022 8:25:43 AM PDT by lowbridge
An NYU chemistry professor who claimed he was fired after students complained that his class was too hard said colleges “coddle” students instead of helping them succeed with “tough love.”
Maitland Jones Jr. taught at the expensive Manhattan private school for 15 years before he was canned ahead of the fall semester after a student petition alleged that his organic chemistry class was too difficult to pass.
“Organic chemistry is a difficult and important course,” he wrote in an op-ed published in the Boston Globe Thursday.
“Those of us who teach it aim to produce critical thinkers, future diagnosticians, and scientists.”
The 84-year-old said he has witnessed a decline in student capacity in recent years as well as administrators bending to the wishes of students more often than not,
“Deans must learn to not coddle students for the sake of tuition and apply a little tough love,” Jones wrote. “They must join the community in times of conflict to generate those teachable moments.”
He said professors now fear teaching demanding material and assigning low grades to students who perform poorly because they worry they’ll face punishment.
“[Young professors’] entire careers are at the peril of complaining students and deans who seem willing to turn students into nothing more than tuition-paying clients,” Jones said.
The ex-teacher said the students must learn to accept failure and grow from their mistakes. He argued doing so is a vital life skill today’s students aren’t getting.
“Students need to develop the ability to take responsibility for failure,” he wrote. “If they continue to deflect blame, they will never grow… Failure should become a classic ‘teachable moment.'”
Jones, who previously taught at Princeton University, said he watched a decline in students’ attendance and participation in his class over the past couple of years.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
the course dint change, the quality of the students did...
I took two O-chem lecture and 1 lab in a 10 week 8 AM to 5 PM M-F lecture, T-Th 6 PM to 10 PM lab during the Summer of 1975. Earned an A in all classes. It was challenging, but worthwhile to do it that way. The P Chem needed the diff EQ to comprehend the material and perform on the exams. Digital logic and microprocessors were straight forward. I taught the microprocessor course at my local college for 3 1/2 years. When I purchased a house 30 miles from the college campus to be closer to the data center where I worked doing software engineering, I stopped teaching. Too much traffic. The Molecular Biology degree was intended a prelude to med school. I decided that I preferred EE/CS as a career with less educational costs. Zero regrets.
Weeder courses are a necessary part of colleges. Some people are academically capable of continuing, many are not. It's better to sort it out early. While pursuing my master's in pathogenic microbiology, I managed to catch a case of flu that progressed to bacterial double pneumonia. It trashed my 2nd semester of grad school. While recovering from the pneumonia, I studied and acquired a 2nd class radiotelephone license, added a ship's RADAR endorsement then upgraded to 1st class radiotelephone. For fun, I acquired a Tech class ham license, upgraded to Advanced, then Extra. Life in the EE/CS realm is more pleasant than a smelly lab.
Reminds me of my intro to thermodynamics class…. Exam the first day
The high score was a five
The mean was below one
After returning the exams Dr Nielsen said and now you know what you don’t know so let’s get to work
For ME
Intro to thermo
Statics and dynamics
Third semester physics
All had labs
I took O chem from an eighty year old prof. He was still doing research and earning pattens. Very straight forward guy.
Because those are foundational courses
“Organic Chemistry 1&2 w/ lab are weeder courses”
Yep. Knocked me out of Pre-Med. Went on to do well elsewhere though. Funny enough, I’m still a Medical Underwriter though. LOL.
Well I mean how many new elements have been discovered in the last 50 years?
True except for things related to computer derived solutions to problems
I taught comp sci for high school and the state regulations mandated several things so I would be safe in teaching them year after year. I also taught comm technologies. I could not keep up with the rate of advance but there was theory to cover so I was making it OK. But I knew the internet was showing the advances. Heck, even cell phone technology is very advanced from amplitude modulation. A prof would need to change the syllabus every year.
Good for all the courses you cited— I stayed in EE but the Chem Dept asked me to switch to a Chem major after my first course ( I took honors) but I had so much respect for the chem majors taking p chem and organic ( and I was not fearful of the problem I would face in EE). I will never know what I missed I did like Chem.
RE: The 84-year-old said he has witnessed a decline in student capacity in recent years
OK, on this issue he is absolutely right. But I’m just curious, why is he still teaching at age 84? Does he need the money? Why not just retire and enjoy life instead of having to deal with this politics and headache?
Retirement isn’t for everyone.
Cool, and an interesting path. I switched from ChemE to EE when I started reading about Nikola Tesla.
I found it so weird that he was never discussed while growing up.
P.S. Edison was a dick.
Some labs are brutal. 1 credit 15-30 hours of work...
We only had Physics 1 & 2. Was it Electrodynamics?
I think EE is better for life and career.
Most Chemistry jobs want you to have a PhD, if you want to make decent money and/or do research.
A BS in EE, and you can’t get a job anywhere in the country.
I do Electrical Distribution Design, which is everywhere.
ChemE jobs were in a lot of crappy places.
You don’t want an industrial chemical factory near a high density population center.
You’d probably work outside of Odessa TX or Bum**** KS.
Absolutely agree about Edison!
Edison greatest skill was at self-promotion PR!
An industrial hero of that era that few talk about is George Westinghouse. A lot of people think Westinghouse cheated Tesla. From my past reading Tesla did not think he did, so I’ll go with Tesla’s opinion.
By the early 1900s Physics had passed Tesla by, his choice in being basically a hermit didn’t help. I am a Tesla fan, but he had his limitations and was dead wrong on a number of things all primarily due to his isolation.
How about Oliver Heaviside as a virtually unknown science hero?
Nikola Tesla, though not technically diagnosed, was mentally ill. Hanging out with pigeons, everything needs to be divisible by three, pearls made him nauseated, etc.
Westinghouse paid for his room in the New Yorker Hotel where he died.
Room 3327. (divisible by 3)
I never heard of Heaviside until University. You could add Claude Shannon, Dirac, Maxwell, and others.
I certainly recall step functions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside
“After returning the exams Dr Nielsen said and now you know what you don’t know so let’s get to work.”
I think that might be the kind of “tough love” the professor in the article advocates. It also appears that your thermo prof took it as his mission that the students would learn the material.
Very good Heaviside book!
He was very much a hermit also had similar money problems like Tesla. It’s said he never or hardly ever bathed. Likely similar but not exact mental problems as Tesla.
Of the three you named I think only Dirac was the odd one. I once worked with a guy who was Dirac’s last student. Dirac died very soon after the PhD defense. Dirac likely had Asperger Syndrome.
“You’d probably work outside of Odessa TX or Bum**** KS.”
A former colleague with a ChemEng BS and an MBA did the Odessa stint and managed to get back to Tulsa OK to be closer to her parents. She left the industrial world and went into consulting/education which is where I worked with her. She married and has a son so I think her life has worked out for her.
Thank you for the link, I’ll check it out.
It’s interesting how many genius level IQ’s have some form of mental illness.
It’s cool your friend studied under Dirac.
I’ve read Six Easy Pieces by Feynman. He was certainly an interesting character. Not too many bongo playing, safe cracking, Nobel Prize in Physics winners...
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