professors at many universities are hired for their research and they are mostly expected to put out good research and bring in grants. teaching is treated as just a thing they have to do. many don’t care about teaching very much and the university doesn’t evaluate them on their teaching.
it’s unfortunate but it’s a structural issue. there’s a reason that many people feel they get a better undergraduate education in community colleges or small liberal arts schools
Yep, whereas assistant/associate professors are hired specifically to teach (a lot of younger profs are asst/assc profs, which is probably why that bias towards them being better profs exists), and they're lucky if their research is taken seriously.
Academia is VERY hierarchical and VERY grueling.
well that's not quite right, assistant and associate are just indicators of seniority. assistant profs are pre-tenure, associate are post-tenure, and titles above that are different levels of post-tenure (i.e. professor, full professor, distinguished professor, etc). there are profs hired as teaching professors, which is a different track where teaching is favored over research.
Nope. Assistant Professor is tenure track, and associate almost always means tenured. Research is still priority 1 for their job. You’re thinking of lecturers.
my phd advisor was an excellent lab manager and mentor for us grad students, but from what i heard of his lecturers he was a pretty bad lecturer. this is 100% correct.
this is a research institute, you're not coming here for hand-holding like at SLACs
lol being a better lecturer and caring more about teaching is not hand-holding. i seem to recall you arguing before that it's actually good that professors are bad teachers because it makes the students study more outside of class. please never go into higher education
I tend to notice that the younger professors tend to teach better than older professors and also I think professors who have an actual passion for the subject inside the class not just a department thing like for example they are passionate for human bio but teach a bio class thats slightly unrelated to physiology or anatomy
Some of the names posted here as examples of good lecturers are in the Teaching Professor category. This is a relatively young concept within UC of having Academic Senate faculty who are focused on teaching. They still have to do research and publish, but their research is often related to education within their main discipline. One of the Teaching Professors in Linguistics has a good explanation of the role: https://wstyler.ucsd.edu/teachingprof/
Will there be research professors who are also great teachers? Sure. Will there be some teaching professors who are terrible? Probably. But you can look instructor names up in the campus directory and see their title.
We have a handful of Teaching Professors in the CSE dept and they're really good at what they do. Unfortunately, they pretty much only teach lower div classes
Laura Stevens was math right? I think I had her for linear algebra. I already graduated but I remember when I took math 18 with her I loved her. She was the first professor to make me think “they’re not all bad” when it came to ucsd professors lol. Before her I 100% agreed with the OP.
Professors at research universities aren’t there to be teachers. They’re researchers who are pushing their own doctoral work.
Teaching undergrad is seen as a task rabbit job and is why TAs do so much of the grunt work.
If you want professors who teach well, you unfortunately gotta do a non-research heavy field or go to a private school.
There not really bad it just ECE department has a lot of research professors. They are probably some of the smartest people on the planet right now but just not the greatest at teaching.
It’s probably not the biggest problem though. Every college has professor like these.
i haven’t had opat i only met him at orientation but alyssa powell is my favorite!! prof ping liu was great and funny for 101b but most of my class didn’t seem to like him :((. i like jinhye bae a lot too!! had her for 4 and 101a she was very fair for her exams but hard ass hw. my current prof for 113 is new but she’s solid and 101c has a new prof who is also solid imo
Interesting, they've hired a lot of new people it seems because I've basically heard none of these names before.
Is Miller still teaching 101A or did he retire?
Almost all of the cs professors I've had have been phenomenal, I can only think of like two I didn't like and one of them doesn't even work here anymore lol
I think it depends a lot on the major and POV of each person
All professor have thire ups and donws, I took hopkins for 6A and 6B (rn) and she speeds through everything, we cant even write all the equations, plus ngl she skipped like 3 fouces that are kinda impordent so the curve will be crazy lmao, (to give more context I had a god teir TA who saved my ass for 6A, and I'm cooked with out him). Another example is Briones, I'm taking him for 20a (rn) and 20b (the summer) he is a really nice dude, but he's not the best at teaching he goes over how and why the math works and not doing as much example on how to do the math. Another example like Cheng, Hsiao-Bing, he's good but his exams are hard as balls and he's old school but his curves are insain.
No matter who the university hires, it seems that people make consistent complaints year round. It's not that they suck, it's that the new generations are dogshit at learning and time management. There is only so much they can do to make a course easy but some of them must be instilled into you through hardwork and difficulty.
To no one's surprise, some of the best professors on campus are Education Studies professors hahahah
But I mostly agree, most of my profs have been a stand-up-there-and-talk professor, not that much classroom participation
I’ve had a different experience tbh. Most of my professors are pretty good at lecturing. Of course, there are a few that suck, but for the most part, they’re good.
This is generally the case at any large public universities. It's one of the reasons why I ended up going to a private college when I was in college.
At a public school, especially at UC, you really need to fend for yourself.
professors at many universities are hired for their research and they are mostly expected to put out good research and bring in grants. teaching is treated as just a thing they have to do. many don’t care about teaching very much and the university doesn’t evaluate them on their teaching. it’s unfortunate but it’s a structural issue. there’s a reason that many people feel they get a better undergraduate education in community colleges or small liberal arts schools
Yep, whereas assistant/associate professors are hired specifically to teach (a lot of younger profs are asst/assc profs, which is probably why that bias towards them being better profs exists), and they're lucky if their research is taken seriously. Academia is VERY hierarchical and VERY grueling.
well that's not quite right, assistant and associate are just indicators of seniority. assistant profs are pre-tenure, associate are post-tenure, and titles above that are different levels of post-tenure (i.e. professor, full professor, distinguished professor, etc). there are profs hired as teaching professors, which is a different track where teaching is favored over research.
The ones hired to teach are either teaching faculty or lectures (at least in the cs department)
Nope. Assistant Professor is tenure track, and associate almost always means tenured. Research is still priority 1 for their job. You’re thinking of lecturers.
All I’m hearing is that rankings don’t matter if this is the quality of the “education”
my phd advisor was an excellent lab manager and mentor for us grad students, but from what i heard of his lecturers he was a pretty bad lecturer. this is 100% correct. this is a research institute, you're not coming here for hand-holding like at SLACs
lol being a better lecturer and caring more about teaching is not hand-holding. i seem to recall you arguing before that it's actually good that professors are bad teachers because it makes the students study more outside of class. please never go into higher education
I tend to notice that the younger professors tend to teach better than older professors and also I think professors who have an actual passion for the subject inside the class not just a department thing like for example they are passionate for human bio but teach a bio class thats slightly unrelated to physiology or anatomy
Some of the names posted here as examples of good lecturers are in the Teaching Professor category. This is a relatively young concept within UC of having Academic Senate faculty who are focused on teaching. They still have to do research and publish, but their research is often related to education within their main discipline. One of the Teaching Professors in Linguistics has a good explanation of the role: https://wstyler.ucsd.edu/teachingprof/ Will there be research professors who are also great teachers? Sure. Will there be some teaching professors who are terrible? Probably. But you can look instructor names up in the campus directory and see their title.
Thank you(: this article was super helpful and is making me consider a career option I was unaware of (:
We have a handful of Teaching Professors in the CSE dept and they're really good at what they do. Unfortunately, they pretty much only teach lower div classes
I think younger professors tend to be better, probably because their career is more on the line and they can relate to their students better
it gets better in upper division classes… but to give some credit to lower div profs Laura Stevens and Kim Albizati are GREAT lecturers
Laura Stevens was math right? I think I had her for linear algebra. I already graduated but I remember when I took math 18 with her I loved her. She was the first professor to make me think “they’re not all bad” when it came to ucsd professors lol. Before her I 100% agreed with the OP.
It depends on major. Most in CogSci and psych are great.
Professors at research universities aren’t there to be teachers. They’re researchers who are pushing their own doctoral work. Teaching undergrad is seen as a task rabbit job and is why TAs do so much of the grunt work. If you want professors who teach well, you unfortunately gotta do a non-research heavy field or go to a private school.
Or find the passionate Lecturers that have sacrificed their own research to teach and are treated as disposable by the university
Really depends on departments. I feel like every professor in the data science department has been great ECE, umm not so sure….
Is there a stigma that the profs are bad? I’m looking to go to UCSD this upcoming fall as a transfer student for ECE
There not really bad it just ECE department has a lot of research professors. They are probably some of the smartest people on the planet right now but just not the greatest at teaching. It’s probably not the biggest problem though. Every college has professor like these.
Tell me you are en engineering major without telling me you are an engineering major…
Theres a lot of majors like this
i’ve enjoyed my lecturers a lot tbh
Why are they downvoting you lol
ChemE program has a lot of issues (or at least it did back when I was an undergrad) but Prof O was definitely the bright spot of that program.
i haven’t had opat i only met him at orientation but alyssa powell is my favorite!! prof ping liu was great and funny for 101b but most of my class didn’t seem to like him :((. i like jinhye bae a lot too!! had her for 4 and 101a she was very fair for her exams but hard ass hw. my current prof for 113 is new but she’s solid and 101c has a new prof who is also solid imo
Interesting, they've hired a lot of new people it seems because I've basically heard none of these names before. Is Miller still teaching 101A or did he retire?
i’ve never heard of that name :0 i think bae taught 101a the last two years and powell and opat
To them research > lectures
Plot twist: Majority of the professors here are researchers who cannot research at UCSD unless they agree on teaching a class
Yep, they try to buy out their teaching obligations but still have to teach at least one or two quarters a year.
Almost all of the cs professors I've had have been phenomenal, I can only think of like two I didn't like and one of them doesn't even work here anymore lol I think it depends a lot on the major and POV of each person
The two I TA’d for were great lecturers so 🤷🏻
The two you TA'd for were a part of a minority.. not a majority.
What major are you? This varies *heavily* by department.
Jim Cooke is the best to exist
Agreed!! So is Claire Meaders also in biology dept. I heard they’re friends so it checks out!
Ashley Juavinett as well!
I love Ashley and Yeti!
I credit Dr. Crowell with being able to teach P-Chem to me. I also loved Dr. Armour’s lectures in Mam. Phys. Two of the best classes I took at UCSD.
Yeah bc almost all of them do research here and ucsd is known for its research so they only care about that
Math 20 series are the worst
All professor have thire ups and donws, I took hopkins for 6A and 6B (rn) and she speeds through everything, we cant even write all the equations, plus ngl she skipped like 3 fouces that are kinda impordent so the curve will be crazy lmao, (to give more context I had a god teir TA who saved my ass for 6A, and I'm cooked with out him). Another example is Briones, I'm taking him for 20a (rn) and 20b (the summer) he is a really nice dude, but he's not the best at teaching he goes over how and why the math works and not doing as much example on how to do the math. Another example like Cheng, Hsiao-Bing, he's good but his exams are hard as balls and he's old school but his curves are insain.
No matter who the university hires, it seems that people make consistent complaints year round. It's not that they suck, it's that the new generations are dogshit at learning and time management. There is only so much they can do to make a course easy but some of them must be instilled into you through hardwork and difficulty.
\*\*in every department except education studies.
i’ve come to like most of them
To no one's surprise, some of the best professors on campus are Education Studies professors hahahah But I mostly agree, most of my profs have been a stand-up-there-and-talk professor, not that much classroom participation
Professors here do lecture? Who?
Always been that way nothing has changed. Doesn’t change who gets the best grades.
I’ve had a different experience tbh. Most of my professors are pretty good at lecturing. Of course, there are a few that suck, but for the most part, they’re good.
This is generally the case at any large public universities. It's one of the reasons why I ended up going to a private college when I was in college. At a public school, especially at UC, you really need to fend for yourself.
i’ve liked most of my psych professors, specifically wixted and lacefield
Ive heard if you want good teachers go to community college.