Re: teaching loads and quality

["Carter, Tom" <Cartert@CDNET.COD.EDU>]

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.

  I took a pay cut coming from private industry, but not nearly
as big a cut as I was expecting.



---------------------------------
Dr. Tom Carter
Physics
College of Dupage
(o) 630-942-3346
(f) 630-942-2759
http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/cartert


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dewey Dykstra, Jr. [mailto:dykstrad@EMAIL.BOISESTATE.EDU]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2001 11:40 AM
> To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu
> Subject: Re: teaching loads and quality
>
>
> > 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
>
> --
>
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr.                 Phone: (208)426-3105
> Professor of Physics                  Dept:  (208)426-3775
> Department of Physics/MCF421/418      Fax: (208)426-4330
> Boise State University            dykstrad@email.boisestate.edu
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>
> "As a result of modern research in physics, the ambition and hope,
> still cherished by most authorities of the last century, that physical
> science could offer a photographic picture and true image of reality
> had to be abandoned."  --M. Jammer in Concepts of Force, 1957.
>
> "If what we regard as real depends on our theory, how can we make
> reality the basis of our philosophy? ...But we cannot distinguish
> what is real about the universe without a theory...it makes no sense
> to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what
> reality is independent of a theory."--S. Hawking in Black Holes
> and Baby Universes, 1993.
>
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++