teaches them how to teach. In fact, professors are not qualified to

20 Teaching Minds teaches them how to teach. In fact, professors are not qualified to teach since they know nothing about teaching. They are hired by uni- versities because of their research credentials, and teaching doesn’t matter much. There is some lip service about the subject but no one ever got hired at Yale as a professor because she was a great teacher who did no research. Here is a professor of computer science from a very highly ranked Big Ten university (he does not want his name mentioned): Every faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at my university thinks that their small insignificant area is important enough that all undergraduates must take a course in it. When you add all those courses up there is simply no time for a student to do anything other than take crazy courses in subdisciplines represented by the faculty in the department. Everybody’s course is a sacred cow. If you tried to put something new in, something would have to come out, and no faculty member wants his course to be eliminated. Professors are not there because they are good teachers. I certainly knew nothing about teaching when I became a profes- sor at Stanford many years ago. But I hated seeing students bored and miserable and started to think about what the problem was and how I could fix it. Many professors do exactly this. They want to be good at something they do regularly and their pride makes them into good teachers. Not all professors do this, by any means. What does it mean to become a good teacher in that context? Professors are rated for their teaching ability. It is clear if one looks at those ratings what the criteria are from the students’ perspective. They rate the friendliness, fairness, enthusiasm, and even the “hotness” of their teachers. These ratings have been studied extensively and conclusions like this one are typical: While student evaluations of faculty performance are a valid measure of student satisfaction with instruction, they are not by themselves a valid measure of teaching effectiveness. If student evaluations of faculty are included in the evaluation process of faculty members, then they should represent only one of many measures that are used.! HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023766