Worried about Rice professors

Hermes
Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:29:54 +0000

I’m a Political Science major. I haven’t taken Intro to IR yet, but I’ve heard great things about the class. A different prof teaches it in the fall… maybe you’ll like him (Stoll) better if you take it then. Supposedly he’s a little harder, but I’ve heard great things about his lectures. I took Intro to to Comparative Politics in the fall, and I can assure you that Dr. Ambler is incredible. I always enjoyed going to class, and the discussion sections every Friday were usually very engaging. I’m sorry that you sat in on LING 200… I took that as well, and I wanted to shoot myself. The class is on the easy side, but it’s incredibly boring no matter who’s teaching it.

Other than LING 200, I’ve loved all of my professors at Rice. Heck, even the linguistics guy was okay… I just didn’t like the material as much as I thought I would. It’s probably fair to say that Rice will have no more mediocre professors than the LAC you’re considering. No matter where you go to school, professors are human, and not all of them are capable of giving an over the top lecture every day. Yes, there’s a huge difference between Rice and UT in that while our professors do research, you won’t be sitting in a lecture hall with 299 other students and a professor who can only think about his or her upcoming thesis while delegating most of the teaching duties to his or her TAs. Rice definitely has a liberal arts feel when it comes to its focus on undergraduate education and engagement, and I don’t think you’d be compromising much of anything by coming here… especially if it’s that much cheaper :)