Professor Accessibility, TA's, and Relationships

molliebatmit
Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:19:27 +0000

At these small schools, I’m finding that the classes are all extremely engaging and that besides a couple of slightly larger intro courses, the classes are under 30.





There’s also a sole emphasis on undergraduate teaching as opposed to research and graduates like MIT.

As an MIT alum, and now as a Harvard graduate student, I think the idea that universities like MIT neglect their undergraduates in favor of their graduate students is basically junk. MIT is a place where undergraduates aren’t treated much differently from graduate students, and where everybody believes undergraduates can make substantive contributions to scholarly pursuits.

There definitely is an emphasis on research at MIT, but there’s also a strong emphasis on getting undergraduates involved in that research. So MIT’s excellence in research means a richer academic experience for undergraduates, not an impoverished one. As an undergraduate at MIT, you can take advantage of MIT’s resources immediately by taking graduate-level courses and becoming involved in cutting-edge research.



I know that senior faculty do teach freshmen, but do they care to do more than stand lecture well and walk out and leave everything else up to the TA’s?

In most courses, TAs lead recitation sections, where students can discuss problems and review material from class. TAs also often grade problem sets and exams, though the exams and psets themselves are written by professors. TAs exist to assist professors, not to supplant them.



Is building relationships with professors at MIT part of the academic experience or not? How much do they really care about undergrad teaching?

At least in my experience, it’s easy to build relationships with professors at MIT if you’re willing to make the effort. I was very close with my research supervisor (who was also my academic advisor), and I had several professors whose offices I could go to without an appointment to discuss classes, my future, and everything else.

I don’t know that most professors consider themselves specifically devoted to undergraduate teaching, because many (or most) upper-level classes at MIT are joint grad-undergrad classes. So they would consider themselves dedicated to teaching, but they don’t really see the need to differentiate undergraduates from graduate students.



How interested are professors in having undergrads come during office hours just to chat about academics and other things?

Very interested.