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Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

alexandercoward.com

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Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#211

Post by justifier »

berkmathstudent wrote: post #97

I took his Math 1A class (1st semester of calculus) in Fall 2013, which was his first semester here. Pros: 1)He made calculus engaging, exciting, and worth going to for an 8AM class. I never felt like it wasn't worth it. 2)Convinced me to be a math major by inciting my passion for math. 3)He genuinely cares and spend an enormous amount of time working 1-on-1 with students to help everyone. He freely gives out his cel…

> free from quizzes, midterms and your final can be 100% of your grade

sounds nearly mathematically utopian

i once was failed in an intro to logic course at an undergraduate university

i spent the class time working on my own projects, and sitting under trees

when the final came it was maybe the third time i attended the class

i got an A on the final, but when i received my final grade i found that attendance was monitored by daily quizzes that accounted for 40% of my grade

was the class intended to evaluate my understanding of truth tables or to determine how i spent an hour of my day three days a week?

because i thought the final more than confirmed the former

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#212

Post by akjj »

Let me offer up another version of Dr. Coward's story: An employee is hired and does his job brilliantly in some aspects and along some metrics, but his employer has complaints in other areas, which are hard to read since we haven't heard their side. These issues are brought up with the employee in writing multiple times over the course of a year: September 2013, April 2014, and November 2014. Apparently, the employee does not address the issues and instead insists that he's doing a brilliant job and that the employer's criticism is really about him being too awesome. Employer decides that they don't want a rogue employee and fires him in October 2014, effective June 2016. Why such almost 2 years of lead time? Maybe it's contractual, but I'm sure that if they really wanted to, they could fire him at the end of the academic year. I read this as the employer trying to get the employee to take them seriously and still giving him another chance to change. Now, in 2015, the employee obviously still doesn't care what the department thinks.

Not everyone who claims to be a misunderstood and persecuted genius actually is one. There are people who are brilliant in some areas, but unwilling to accommodate being part of a larger group and difficult to work with. In programming terms, imagine an extraordinary programmer who's unwilling to use the organization's standard programming language or version control. I'm not sure that the Berkeley math department is really any different in preferring a pretty good in all areas to someone brilliant in some, but flawed in others, and, most importantly, unwilling to change.

At first, I wondered why he was blowing up the whole issue and whether it would actually help. If part of the issue is in the level of preparation for science classes, then the administration is going to be just as unfavorable as the department. Then I noticed that he's started some kind of teaching-related company. So, the department told him to change or be fired and he decided he'd rather do the latter, but as long as he's going out, he might as well try to get some publicity for his company.

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#213

Post by laxatives »

VanillaSwirl wrote: post #70
laxatives wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems pretty clear that it is immensely difficult to score at least a 6 average on these evaluations. Based on the article, it sounds sufficiently difficult that almost no one else managed to score above a 6 in two decades.

Student evaluations are heavily influenced by perception of the professor's personality. Look on Ninja Courses and you'll see what I'm talking about. Coward has a cult of influence that makes him seem like a close friend to his students, and this no doubt skews his ratings and potentially distorts students' perception of the professor's performance as a teacher (rather than his personality). There are professors whos…

Who do you think the primary beneficiary of rating systems are, students or teachers?

Any benefit the teachers see from knowing their ratings is purely so that they can improve the experience for their students. If a professor can't speak english well or have social deficiencies preventing from communicating clearly, they aren't excellent teachers.

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#214

Post by wfo »

socrates2016 wrote: post #37

Have a Berkeley math degree. Two observations. Student ratings are whack. I had a professor I thought was really good but had an average rating. I had one fellow student state that he hated the professor. I am pretty sure the professor did nothing to him that deserved that hatred. People don't like it when they don't do as well as they expect. Second, it appears that the math department hires based on research becaus…

That's the case at every university; students are, for the most part, whiny entitled drunk and high children -- especially in intro classes. Giving their opinions influence over an adult's career is absolutely insane.

The skillset required to really get through to kids like that is entirely divorced from teaching more advanced classes or research: it's half nannying and half high-school football coach with a splash of the subject material.

And every department hires almost entirely based on research they have to more and more as budgets are slashed since research is their only opportunity to bring in more funding.

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#215

Post by wfo »

jldugger wrote: post #96
phantom_oracle wrote: post #84

2 things about this fascinate me: 1) The knock-on effect of having this cross-published on HN and reddit will somehow make this story reach some form of news-media -> which in turn will influence UC Berkeleys decision, as they will be under the media-spotlight. 2) I always thought many STEM professors were useless educators who only taught students as a by-the-way while they chased fame/recognition among their peers…

> 2) I always thought many STEM professors were useless educators who only taught students as a by-the-way while they chased fame/recognition among their peers for academic-success (or status). Well, you forgot Research Dollars. It's an open secret that STEM undergraduate education is seen as a departmental obligation, and that your goals, and what you were hired to do is produce new research. Best case scenario you…

It's true; while his grievances are valid in effect he's putting forth a very good argument for the MBAs running the show in the administration that are frothing at the mouth to cut faculty, hire adjuncts and pay them nothing, which makes room in the budget for fancy unnecessary buildings and higher admin salaries -- Sorry, I mean "make universities more efficient".

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#216

Post by wfo »

Simulacra wrote: post #101
phantom_oracle wrote: post #84

2 things about this fascinate me: 1) The knock-on effect of having this cross-published on HN and reddit will somehow make this story reach some form of news-media -> which in turn will influence UC Berkeleys decision, as they will be under the media-spotlight. 2) I always thought many STEM professors were useless educators who only taught students as a by-the-way while they chased fame/recognition among their peers…

Very good point. A professors job should be foremost to teach. Research and chasing fame should come second. In my opinion, universities have flipped this on its head. They've allowed and in some ways forced professors to relegate teaching to a level of "by the way". Students pay and go to university to learn from teachers, not to subsidize researchers. There's something very wrong when a University places more empha…

There are research universities and teaching universities. If you want to go to a college that focuses on teaching calculus 101 they exist though I don't know why as a budding mathematician you'd want to sprint full speed away from doing real mathematics.

The research has to be done somewhere. It's supposed to be subsidized by the public or private donations but funding is regularly and methodically cut so the only remaining reliable source of income is tuition which ends up having to pay for both.

Not an ideal situation but unless Americans start deciding research is worth paying money for (unlikely) it's what we have.

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#218

Post by justifier »

squirrel wrote: post #90

I was a grad student and teaching assistant in Berkeley maths 1998-99. I observed that the department intentionally admitted many more grad students than it could possibly put through the full PhD, and had a well-tuned system for weeding them out after a year or two - chiefly a "preliminary exam" that was notoriously tough and (in my view and that of many others) unfair. A charitable view would be that the department…

> I left the university, and mathematics, and have been much happier as a result

is the second bit true? why lump mathematics with your leaving of the university?

what does it mean to leave mathematics?

i stopped looking at the stars because i left the business that hires engineers to build commercial lenses?

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#219

Post by JennyHarrison »

archmikhail wrote: post #109
hendzen wrote: post #69

Not the only skeleton in the UC Berkeley Mathematics closet - see the story of Jenny Harrison [0] for another example. [0] - http://articles.latimes.com/1993-05-02/magazine/tm-30007_1_j...

I had her for a class a few years ago, and like Coward, she was an excellent teacher who didn't care for the norms of the department. She was actually working on a new textbook at the time which was all about teaching the fundamentals of mathematics in a completely different way to give a better foundation for higher level mathematics. At the time, she had just taken a small group of non-STEM majors, and using her bo…

I am glad you enjoyed my course, archmikhail. The last chapter of my text needs to be written. I will do that as soon as the department lets me teach H110 again. Birkhauser accepted it years ago, but we need a new contract. I could just sell it on amazon as an ebook, I suppose. I have gotten a flurry of emails asking for copies this morning. This is very encouraging, but I have to finish it before releasing it.

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#220

Post by squirrel »

justifier wrote: post #218
squirrel wrote: post #90

I was a grad student and teaching assistant in Berkeley maths 1998-99. I observed that the department intentionally admitted many more grad students than it could possibly put through the full PhD, and had a well-tuned system for weeding them out after a year or two - chiefly a "preliminary exam" that was notoriously tough and (in my view and that of many others) unfair. A charitable view would be that the department…

> I left the university, and mathematics, and have been much happier as a result is the second bit true? why lump mathematics with your leaving of the university? what does it mean to leave mathematics? i stopped looking at the stars because i left the business that hires engineers to build commercial lenses?

Yes, the second bit is true, for me - I am much happier as a consulting CTO than I ever would have been as a maths professor (abandonment of the latter career is what I meant by "leaving mathematics"). I guess I have to thank Berkeley for helping me to discover this fact relatively quickly.

I did not mean to lump maths and Berkeley together - I happened to leave both at the same time, but that doesn't mean I had to, or indeed that this was necessarily best for me, or would be best for others.

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