@Cue7 " “Please, to all the the posters on this thread, let’s not misrepresent what undergraduate experience at a Penn Lab can mean. I’m friends with a few PIs (Principal Investigators - i.e. lab heads) at Penn, and make no mistake, their purpose is to churn out high level research. More than teaching, more than mentoring, they face pressure to generate research. Undergrads are the LEAST useful resource to aid in this endeavor. (Grad students are moderately useful, but slow, and post-docs are the most productive.)”
D’s experience may have been given a unique level of responsibility, idk. She worked directly with the professor for several days, and then largely independently after that. The professor wanted a student with strong technical CS and math background to construct a very large database to make their research more efficient. To do that, she needed to understand the objectives of the research, the information needed to assess the thesis, the math behind the assessment, be able to access the required data in bulk, compile the data, cleanse the data, and organize it into a database that can be accessed and assessed efficiently. The professor was not a CS professor, but a professor in another department who needed a level of technical and math skills that most of their own students did not possess. I guess when you say, “Undergrads are the LEAST useful resource to aid in this endeavor” it depends. This professor’s grad students did not have the skills to construct the database they needed from scratch, so they hired her to create it. It was a really great opportunity for D and she learned a lot of technical details as well as a lot about cutting edge research in another area. Maybe that isn’t typical? Maybe other freshman are getting coffee and donuts? idk.
@Cue7 “In practice, busy faculty (especially on the science end) often farm the bulk of the teaching out to post-docs and grad students.”
I am confused about this response, because you a lot about Penn. There must be something I do not know. I was told by Penn and my D has confirmed that professors are required to teach their own classes, and that in practice that means that the professor can not delegate the teaching of undergraduate courses, and can also not delegate their office hours. The professor may send an assistant to guide the class through a review, but only if there is no new material being taught. Post docs and TA’s are allowed to grade papers, and support students with homework help, lead a recitation etc., but they do not teach new material to the class.
This rule may not have been in place when you were there, or perhaps it is only the rule in SEAS, but that is the rule now. In the two years that D has been there, D has not had a single course that was not taught by the professor. Perhaps you can tell me more about your perspective.