Kopp's Weekly - Getting to Know Your Faculty

Your greatest weapon is the ability to ask for help.

Dear students,

It's the start of week #3, and by now you have homework assignments due, hopefully are getting to know a few people in your classes, and might even be staring at a first midterm exam or paper. It was just about this point in my freshman year that I'd seen a string of three bad quiz grades in my physics class and turned in a paper for what was to be my worst grade since fifth grade gym class.

The big realization we all come to about college classes is that we have to learn the best way for us to study and master material. Expectations are different, the level is likely higher, and at some point or another we all start working on material that is outside our past experience set. Sometimes we have pretty good ideas, and often we can point to successful strategies from high school. Peers and mentors have many good strategies to offer, but it seems time for an important talk about your faculty instructors and how they can help. These are the folks, after all, who are setting the expectations for the class, and these are the folks who have some mastery of their field so have a lot to offer you for advice, redirection, and mentoring.

I owe my freshman year to two instructors. In Greek civilization I earned a C+ on my first paper — apparently I was pretty much making stuff up and I really needed to be able to defend my views. The next paper, I researched every analysis that had been written about that text and had so many citations that the footnotes took a third of each page I wrote. The professor's written comments following the big "B-" noted, "I wanted your views, not someone else's." Later, in office hours, very supportively, he said something akin to "All semester, I just wanted you to understand my goals for this course, which is to read, analyze, and critique a text. How about you try that for the last paper?" In the same semester, I was also bombing my intro physics class. Odd, as I had taken copious notes about the text, listened carefully in class, and yet I proceeded to bomb several quizzes. I went to see the professor in his office, and he gently tried to acquaint me with the idea that science courses were about solving problems; unless I practice, then there is no way to suddenly be good at it when a quiz or exam occurs. Both examples inform my advice for you: make it your business to know and understand your faculty; understand from them what are the goals of a course and what are the skills necessary to become a master of the material. Make an appointment, and in addition to seeking advice about your course, get to know what they do, why they find it interesting, and what their field is all about. You will will become a more educated learner, and by meeting them you will perhaps open doors to new knowledge, an appreciation for their scientific field, or just be on their radar as a hard-working student.

Many students do this naturally, and they ask about everything needed to be successful freshmen, to how to decide between med/grad/professional school options, to how to research careers accessible to their degree, to how to feel more connected to communities here on campus. Kudos to them. For many of us, this is an acquired skill, and one worth starting earlier than later.

Best wishes for the coming week,
Sacha Kopp
Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education,
College of Natural Sciences