NY University fires acclaimed chemistry professor - students moaned hard course!

[MickinMD ★]

NY University fired a chemistry professor who had taught at another university for decades, wrote an organic chemistry book, and retired to acclaim then returned to teaching at NYU.

82 students out of 350 signed a petition saying the organic chemistry course was too hard!

Links to the NY Times story, if they let you read, are here and here.

One opinion letter reflected what I feel: ...his organic chemistry class was just too hard. The students, the article suggests, had forgotten how to study during the Covid lockdown....what were they doing, playing video games? Why weren’t they studying Dr. Jones’s textbook? Why weren’t they watching the videos of his lectures that he paid for out of pocket? ...

Instead of weeding out the students who failed to make the grade, N.Y.U. invoked the increasingly popular American response: If the goal is too hard to reach, move the goal posts.

The article said those who fail organic chemistry might not be admitted to medical school. That’s good news. If I were hospitalized with a possibly fatal illness, would my doctor decide that finding a correct diagnosis was just too hard?

On my first day of organic chemistry, the professor said, "Look at the person to your left, right, in front of you and behind you.  Odds are 3 of the 4 will NOT get a C or better for both semesters of organic chemistry.

Only 35 of us out of 165 did - and that was a good thing: it eliminated bad doctors, nurses, and scientists.  It was not that the course was too hard. It was that too many students who didn't belong in the class because they had cruised through our easy freshman year and then hadn't learned how you need to study, especially in math and science and tech, in college to get through their sophomore year.

[Razors Edge ★]

I loved my lower level chemistry classes including organic chemistry.  Even so, I'm betting 1) most folks making the comments in italics couldn't pass my relatively easy 101, 102, and 112 level chem classes and labs, AND 2) that the kids taking chem classes NOW are often well ahead of the kids who took chem classes years ago.  Of course, the AP/IB kids might have tested out of that NYU class, so maybe it was more the less math & science inclined who ended up taking it?  Hard to know without reviewing  the class in person, I guess?

[bikeman564™]

stoopid kids

[JerrySTL ★]

I have a neighbor who has a PhD in Math. She taught at numerous colleges and universities and often wasn't asked back. She'd have classes where only one or two students passed. In one case she was teaching Math for Math Teachers where her students were high school math teachers. The entire class walked out.

I talked to one of her former students who said that she was on an ego trip showing the students how much she knew about math and not really teaching at the level the students needed. 

Even though the headline is shocking, remember that there's often more than one side to a story.

[Razors Edge ★]

Just now, JerrySTL said:

I have a neighbor who has a PhD in Math. She taught at numerous colleges and universities and often wasn't asked back. She'd have classes where only one or two students passed. In one case she was teaching Math for Math Teachers where her students were high school math teachers. The entire class walked out.

I talked to one of her former students who said that she was on an ego trip showing the students how much she knew about math and not really teaching at the level the students needed. 

Even though the headline is shocking, remember that there's often more than one side to a story.

I had a physics class in college that was graded on a curve.  It was absurd that getting like 30% correct was passing, but that's how it worked.

I wasn't great at physics when it started getting more complicated, and I absolutely hated going into a test knowing the goal was to get a 30 out of 100.  WTF???  That sort of teaching wasn't motivation to me, and certainly was one of my least liked classes in college.

[jsharr ★]

23 minutes ago, MickinMD said:

NY University fired a chemistry professor who had taught at another university for decades, wrote an organic chemistry book, and retired to acclaim then returned to teaching at NYU.

82 students out of 350 signed a petition saying the organic chemistry course was too hard!

Links to the NY Times story, if they let you read, are here and here.

One opinion letter reflected what I feel: ...his organic chemistry class was just too hard. The students, the article suggests, had forgotten how to study during the Covid lockdown....what were they doing, playing video games? Why weren’t they studying Dr. Jones’s textbook? Why weren’t they watching the videos of his lectures that he paid for out of pocket? ...

Instead of weeding out the students who failed to make the grade, N.Y.U. invoked the increasingly popular American response: If the goal is too hard to reach, move the goal posts.

The article said those who fail organic chemistry might not be admitted to medical school. That’s good news. If I were hospitalized with a possibly fatal illness, would my doctor decide that finding a correct diagnosis was just too hard?

On my first day of organic chemistry, the professor said, "Look at the person to your left, right, in front of you and behind you.  Odds are 3 of the 4 will NOT get a C or better for both semesters of organic chemistry.

Only 35 of us out of 165 did - and that was a good thing: it eliminated bad doctors, nurses, and scientists.  It was not that the course was too hard. It was that too many students who didn't belong in the class because they had cruised through our easy freshman year and then hadn't learned how you need to study, especially in math and science and tech, in college to get through their sophomore year.

So what are you going to to do with your free time now that you lost the teaching gig? 

[MoseySusan]

14 minutes ago, bikeman564™ said:

stoopid kids

An opinion piece in the NYT this morning makes the point that when paying $83k+ for tuition, failing out isn’t an option. 

[dinneR ★]

If you think chemistry is difficult, you should try getting through the CVS phone tree.

[Wilbur ★]

1 hour ago, MickinMD said:

NY University fired a chemistry professor who had taught at another university for decades, wrote an organic chemistry book, and retired to acclaim then returned to teaching at NYU.

82 students out of 350 signed a petition saying the organic chemistry course was too hard!

Links to the NY Times story, if they let you read, are here and here.

One opinion letter reflected what I feel: ...his organic chemistry class was just too hard. The students, the article suggests, had forgotten how to study during the Covid lockdown....what were they doing, playing video games? Why weren’t they studying Dr. Jones’s textbook? Why weren’t they watching the videos of his lectures that he paid for out of pocket? ...

Instead of weeding out the students who failed to make the grade, N.Y.U. invoked the increasingly popular American response: If the goal is too hard to reach, move the goal posts.

The article said those who fail organic chemistry might not be admitted to medical school. That’s good news. If I were hospitalized with a possibly fatal illness, would my doctor decide that finding a correct diagnosis was just too hard?

On my first day of organic chemistry, the professor said, "Look at the person to your left, right, in front of you and behind you.  Odds are 3 of the 4 will NOT get a C or better for both semesters of organic chemistry.

Only 35 of us out of 165 did - and that was a good thing: it eliminated bad doctors, nurses, and scientists.  It was not that the course was too hard. It was that too many students who didn't belong in the class because they had cruised through our easy freshman year and then hadn't learned how you need to study, especially in math and science and tech, in college to get through their sophomore year.

This is why it is good we die in our 70's or 80's.  Nobody can adapt to the stupidity of progress. 

[Parsnip Totin Jack ★]

One of my sisters taught a nursing class at Catholic University. The Administration told her to pass the students instead of failing them. She quit that gig. She said the students didn’t want to do the work that she required. 

[Thaddeus Kosciuszko]

The university wouldn't have fired him if he'd given all the students participation trophies at the end of the class.

[Ralphie ★]

Organic chemistry was my least favourite class. I think there is something inherently wrong in the way it is taught. Some professors manage to take all the joy oot of a subject. General and physical chemistry were much mo better. 

[maddmaxx ★]

I didn't take organic chemistry but at RPI the chemistry and physics courses were taught in parallel and amounted to "chemical physics" and "physical chemistry".  This was way back in the day when electron orbits were taught normally while we were learning about probability theory and energy levels and a more mobile version of describing the positions of electrons around a given atom.

They were great courses but very difficult and time consuming.  The amount of lab work and the math describing the experiments we performed took up multiple tens of hours each week outside of classes.

[Razors Edge ★]

It is an interesting idea - what is too easy or too hard, and how do you find the "just right" level for a class?  I assume grade schools have curriculums, so in Algebra I, you're not introducing more advanced topics until you have ticked off the earlier concepts?  Is NYU following that sort of strategy or do professors have greater leeway in building their courses and pacing the classes?  I think of something like a course on Shakespeare.  A Shakespeare expert could surely spend a WHOLE semester on the nuances and meaning and history of a SINGLE work like Romeo & Juliet or The Tempest or whatever. Or, they could do a good job dividing the semester into 4 pieces with a focus on four major works and including a compare and contrast, or they could treat it as a more broad overview with each week focusing on a different work.  With the course design and the level of understanding left to the discretion of the professor, students may come into a class expecting a traditional approach to Shakespeare, but end up with either a wonderful deep dive into a work or a tortured examination of tiny nuances & minutia instead.  Sure, a professor may be an eminent scholar of Shakespeare, but have they designed a course that makes sense for their audience?

[maddmaxx ★]

About 60 years ago courses were what they were.  Passing or failing them was on you.  At the same time, high schools were multi track places with one track for college prep and other tracks for different types of careers.  I was nominally in a college prep routine and had to fight to get to take electives such as drafting, typing, electronics shop

[dinneR ★]

Maybe the prof is just a charlatan. That's what Mick said about the Yale prof with the peer reviewed research on exercise. 

[maddmaxx ★]

I once had a computer science prof named......................Rommel.....................who followed the philosophy of you either turned in your programs and they worked or you didn't.  His opinion was that's what you had to do in the real world.  I suspect that he had never met some of the programmers I had.  

[shootingstar]

1 hour ago, Old No. 7 said:

One of my sisters taught a nursing class at Catholic University. The Administration told her to pass the students instead of failing them. She quit that gig. She said the students didn’t want to do the work that she required. 

A university professor here in town that I had dinner recently, said a few students complained when she assigned 20 pages of reading.

Babies.

[shootingstar]

Vs. the shock of an English lit. professor on critical analysis...for essay-writing, he was demanding and bloodied up people's papers in red ink and much lower mark than expected. He was demanding but....he was very good. I saw through his initial slashing brutality.  You had to justify every main point.  It made one a sharper writer.

[Razors Edge ★]

33 minutes ago, dinneR said:

Maybe the prof is just a charlatan. That's what Mick said about the Yale prof with the peer reviewed research on exercise. 

Most are!

 

[shootingstar]

While alot of professors aren't very good instructors as a priority over their research work, I  am not sympathetic if alot students perpetually now complain it's too hard. Especially after, if the prof. has adjusted the teaching style abit /  mechanisms/criteria for grading.

Within certain faculties, there is an expected fail rate for certain undergraduate courses during lst year.

 

 

[Prophet Zacharia]

Hard to know what to make of this. When a class average is 30%, something’s wrong. Is it the kids don’t want to work? Did the completion of high school virtually set them back academically in ways we haven’t quite figured out the extent of? Is Dr. Jones just ready for retirement and isn’t willing to work with his students anymore? Is he being punitive in his test prep because he senses they don’t care or work hard “enough” to his liking? Is he using similar exams as in the past, or new ones? When I was an undergrad in Organic Chemistry at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland (), it was graded on a curve. The tests could be as difficult as the prof wanted, and we all had shared opportunities for lectures, text reading, office hours and TA access, but at the end of the day we were compared to our classmates. Still plenty failed out, but a straight percentage grade wasn’t ever a consideration.

I also wonder if Dr. Jone’s teaching performance has slid over the last few years, as this quote clearly isn’t about THIS current class.

Dr. Jones’s course evaluations, he added, “were by far the worst, not only among members of the chemistry department, but among all the university’s undergraduate science courses.”

[Scrapr ★]

I read a note that this course was a weed out course. Make it or break it. The students all know which course is the inflection point in their academics. 25% complain it's too hard. Sounds like 25% got weeded out from the Doctor track. As Rodney says....the world needs ditch diggers too

[Zephyr]

I have always thought it was interesting the those who teach at the University level don't need to have taken courses teaching them how to teach.

[shootingstar]

1 hour ago, Zephyr said:

I have always thought it was interesting the those who teach at the University level don't need to have taken courses teaching them how to teach.

They don't have to, though some universities do offer such courses each yr. on-site, without charge to professors and post-grads who must teach lower levels.

[shootingstar]

I looked up my BIL's rating since he has been a long-time engineering professor & researcher @University of Toronto for past 3 decades.  I don't rely on these alternate public independent ratings.. I believe the profs at U of T,  are rated internally within the online university's system, like many other universities.

He teaches at least 2 undergrad courses each semester. His area of expertise is apparently 1 of the more difficult areas of engineering sciences. Quantum /plasma physics.

His office resides with the Institute of Aerospace Studies....but honest, what he teaches doesn't have to do with airborne objects.

As person, BIL is a patient, calm person.  He doesn't discuss engineering stuff or his teaching unless asked. He does find ways of explaining things simply and is humble within our family. (You have to be or else you would be lost.)

His daughter, rom-com author ex-geological engineer, likes to poke fun at her father's jokes on twitter. But I think she's proud to have a brilliant, but patient father.

    

 

[shootingstar]

And I looked up my history professor friend.  This is the person who got complaints from students for her tame amount of assigned reading. She also taught English lit.

[Prophet Zacharia]

His complaints about his perception that his students have declined in their abilities pre-date COVID. Which actually makes me wonder if it’s him that’s changed. Always known for it being a hard course, he goes from getting teaching awards to having complaints made about his demeanor. 

[shootingstar]

7 minutes ago, Prophet Zacharia said:

His complaints about his perception that his students have declined in their abilities pre-date COVID. Which actually makes me wonder if it’s him that’s changed. Always known for it being a hard course, he goes from getting teaching awards to having complaints made about his demeanor. 

Well, you know the Internet doesn't make it easier for anyone with a "public" role or their job requires providing service to public.  I've seen the rating for my sister-doctor.  It's actually hard enough giving good care, even harder when people are sick/not well.

[Ralphie ★]

2 hours ago, Zephyr said:

I have always thought it was interesting the those who teach at the University level don't need to have taken courses teaching them how to teach.

I had a professor who just mumbled his way through lectures. That sucked. 

[Bikeguy]

9 hours ago, Prophet Zacharia said:

Is Dr. Jones just ready for retirement

That could be the case...  the guy is 84 years old.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maitland_Jones_Jr.   

It's hard to tell what really happened there.  

Maybe he has taught the class the same way for decades, and the way students 'learn' has changed, but he has failed to see that change?   And the students were correct?

Or maybe his is correct? The students just didn't understand the material, and they should have flunked?  

There is sooooo much that is not being explained. Or worse, being explained incorrectly.    Maybe they truth is in the between both extremes? 

Yeah.. we may never know what really happened. 

I'm just glad I graduated back in 77.   

[sheep_herder ★]

1981 was the year I left teaching at 39. What a blessing when I moved into full time research and lecturing became 30 minute to an hour  presentations at field days and professional meetings. Last time I had to present university lectures was 2008 in China at 66.

Hard to judge Dr. Jones' situation without knowing the whole story, but this likely is one of those 'grey areas' with some truth to both sides.

Pretty sure I don't want to return to university lecturing at 80. No I did not take any education courses to prepare for university lectures, but I bet they would have been helpful.

Happily retired since 2006!

[MickinMD ★]

21 hours ago, Razors Edge said:

I loved my lower level chemistry classes including organic chemistry.  Even so, I'm betting 1) most folks making the comments in italics couldn't pass my relatively easy 101, 102, and 112 level chem classes and labs, AND 2) that the kids taking chem classes NOW are often well ahead of the kids who took chem classes years ago.  Of course, the AP/IB kids might have tested out of that NYU class, so maybe it was more the less math & science inclined who ended up taking it?  Hard to know without reviewing  the class in person, I guess?

By the early 90's, kids were much better prepared, on average, for college than back when I was a teenager.  But today they are NOT as well prepared - SAT's are down - and they are poorly prepared for being responsible and self-disciplined as you need to be in college.

A big problem now is that, in order to fool the parents, media, etc. into thinking high school is ever better, schools award more credits and students take more classes than before. But the school day is still the same length so the key classes, math, science, English, etc. meet for less time than they used to. 

Also, A-day, B-day schedules have become common where a different set of courses meet on each day. Instead of meeting 50-55 min. each school day, they meet for 85 min. every-other-day. Not only do they get 15-25 min less class time every 2 days, teenagers can NOT be expected to stay on task for 85 minutes: many classes award homework time near the end of classes.

Also, if you're out sick on Friday, the last time you had Friday's classes was Wednesday and they don't meet again until Tuesday. How well do you think teenagers learn when the courses they take meet 6 days apart?

 

[Razors Edge ★]

1 minute ago, MickinMD said:

By the early 90's, kids were much better prepared, on average, for college than back when I was a teenager.  But today they are NOT as well prepared - SAT's are down - and they are poorly prepared for being responsible and self-disciplined as you need to be in college.

So, kids today are not at the PEAK of the early 90s kids (I was on that cresting wave, I guess), but seemingly, still ahead of the curve when compared to ALL other groups besides those exceptional early-90s kids?  IOW, still pretty sharp?

[Kirby]

As others have mentioned, hard to know what to make of this particular situation.   In general,  I do think there is pressure on teachers at a number of levels not to fail students.  My friends who are teachers at high school have mentioned it, even when students are caught cheating.   But I can also imagine if a significantly higher percentage of students are failing a course than other courses taught by a variety of professors that perhaps the teaching isn't as effective as he thought or the tests aren't an accurate reflection of what is being taught.

[maddmaxx ★]

1 hour ago, Razors Edge said:

So, kids today are not at the PEAK of the early 90s kids (I was on that cresting wave, I guess), but seemingly, still ahead of the curve when compared to ALL other groups besides those exceptional early-90s kids?  IOW, still pretty sharp?

does not logically follow from his statement.  did they not teach logic rules when you peaked?

[Razors Edge ★]

1 minute ago, maddmaxx said:

does not logically follow from his statement.  did they not teach logic rules when you peaked?

You got numbers to prove the current kids are much below the peak early-90s kids?  I doubt it.  They're way more prepared and higher achieving than most generations before them. So what if they are not quite Gen-X level? Can't all be at the top. 

[maddmaxx ★]

12 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

You got numbers to prove the current kids are much below the peak early-90s kids?  I doubt it.  They're way more prepared and higher achieving than most generations before them. So what if they are not quite Gen-X level? Can't all be at the top. 

No I don't, nor do I make a claim.  You do not have numbers either but you leaped right out to make an unsubstantiated claim.  Thus the lesson in logic.

[shootingstar]

I just realized I have nieces and nephews that cross over 3 generations. And am not counting 2 grand-nieces.

One thing that seems noticeable in my extended family is the somewhat higher level of self-confidence in speaking up earlier in life, in the next generations. It doesn't mean they do things fantastically better, just more at ease in bigger crowds and with wider range of adults outside of their parents, presenting earlier in life to groups, etc.

[Razors Edge ★]

5 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

No I don't, nor do I make a claim.  You do not have numbers either but you leaped right out to make an unsubstantiated claim.  Thus the lesson in logic.

Meh - I'm rolling with Mick's assertion and not yours.  His "By the early 90's, kids were much better prepared, on average, for college than back when I was a teenager. " point is the one that matters, and if you have a beef, take it up with him.

[maddmaxx ★]

2 hours ago, Razors Edge said:

Meh - I'm rolling with Mick's assertion and not yours.  His "By the early 90's, kids were much better prepared, on average, for college than back when I was a teenager. " point is the one that matters, and if you have a beef, take it up with him.

He stated that current students are not as good as those in the 90's.  There is no comparison implied to those before the 90's.  Your statement defies the laws of logic.

 

Slap.

[Randomguy]

On 10/6/2022 at 9:51 AM, MickinMD said:

Only 35 of us out of 165 did

That just means your instructor sucked ass so bad, just couldn't teach to willing students.