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Subject: Re: teaching loads and quality
Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 14:27:54 -0500
From: Rick Tarara <rtarara@SAINTMARYS.EDU>
I'll also answer the original question--how rare!
At Saint Mary's College we carry at 10-12 contact hour load. I both prep
and run labs, although we can get student help to prep (takes more time to
tell them what to do than to do it). My current student load is a 64
student class (3 contact hours)(no graders--by choice since my assignments
don't lend themselves to an undergraduate grader), prep and cover one of the
4 labs for that course (2 hours), and a 17 student class (4 hours) and the
lab (2 hours). This latter class is new this year. No lab manager, no demo
manager. We are expected to have extensive office hours (I'm available
about 20 hours/week ).
I'm quite satisfied and would be willing to do more hours (have done 17-hour
semesters). I'm here because I want to teach and that is both encouraged
and rewarded by the College. That is, while scholarly activity is important
for tenure and promotion, the expectations are that more time is spent in
teaching than in research.
Rick
**********************************************
Richard W. Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
rtarara@saintmarys.edu
FREE PHYSICS INSTRUCTIONAL SOFTWARE
www.saintmarys.edu/~rtarara/
PC and MAC software
NEW! SIMLAB2001--AIRTRACKS & BALLISTIC LAUNCHER
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******************************************************
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carter, Tom" <Cartert@CDNET.COD.EDU>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2001 12:27 PM
Subject: Re: teaching loads and quality
Hi,
To answer the original question...
I teach at TYC and have a 9 month contract. I have
a requirement of 16 contact hours, teaching a total of
about 40 to 80 students per term. I prep my own labs,
although we have PT lab manager who keeps the lab
organized.
Am I happy/satisfied? Yes, sure. My feeling is your
level of satisfaction depends highly upon your relationship
with your immediate administration. My Dean is not perfect
(he ALWAYS seems to have me teaching 4 hours in a row somehow,
5 days a week), but his heart in the right place. He doesn't
always give me what I want, but I think his decisions always take
the students' education into account. In the short time I've
been here, I've gotten two grants from the college, one to
upgrade labs and another to do an formal study of some PER stuff.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: teaching loads and quality
Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 15:44:19 -0500
From: Jack Uretsky <jlu@HEP.ANL.GOV>
Dewey-
Exactly! So not all institutions are like Clement and Hefner's.
So Clement's generalities, which did not distinguish, were far too broad.
Regards,
Jack
On Tue, 2 Oct 2001, Dewey Dykstra, Jr. wrote:
Hi all-
John's posting is so full of broad generalities that it leaves me
aching to hear all the exceptions that I know are out there. We get many
visitors at Argonne who seem happy and satisfied in their physics teaching
jobs. Some of the institutions are U. of Chicago, Iowa State, Penn State,
and U. of Florida. Are there others?
Regards,
Jack
Jack:
I sincerely doubt that any of those "happy" with their jobs at the
institutions you mention have contact times of 18 - 21 hours. My
experience is that their contact times are more like 6 or 7 and for
much more pay than Clement or Heafner receive. Clement actually
teaches at a private HS, I believe, but many of us out there have
positions with loads like Heafner at a college or university but
loads like HS.
Dewey
--
Franz Kafka's novels and novella's are so Kafkaesque that one has to
wonder at the enormity of coincidence required to have produced a writer
named Kafka to write them.
Greg Nagan from "The Metamorphosis" in
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