How bad is Manchester University?
Consider how long it took the university to deal with the now-notorious Professor Surprenant; and consider that even now the university has communicated nothing about the whole sordid affair to the students who had to suffer her appalling presence. No updates; no apology. Nothing.
… James Wyatt, who was the Life Sciences School Representative at the time, told [the campus newspaper], “the problem with her teaching style was that she was completely disorganised and a terrible communicator.
“The combination of her often illegible diagrams photocopied from a multitude of textbooks delivered in an order that she often seemed to be confused by, her random rambling, sidetracking, and often inaudible mumblings made for a shocking course of lectures.
“I was one of those who made audio recordings of lectures, these only served to remind me of the appalling lecture delivery the first time round.”
According to another student who took the module, in one lecture the entire room of students resorted to shouting at Surprenant as they couldn’t follow the flow of her teaching, with the room of outraged students described as “a riot.” [Unfuckingbelievable. How can a university be so contemptuous of its students that even after this incident it would fail to remove Surprenant from the classroom?]
As Surprenant’s lectures became “increasingly chaotic and hard to understand,” student representatives within the Life Sciences Faculty raised the issue at a staff-student liaison committee in October. At this meeting it was arranged for Wyatt, along with Carly Mckenzie, the Life Sciences Faculty Officer for the Students’ Union, and other course representatives to meet with Surprenant herself to discuss the students’ concerns.
However, following the discussion with Surprenant students remained unconvinced of any improvement. “She totally disregarded the concerns put to her [and] tried to imply that we were the voice of a worrying or complaining minority,” said Wyatt.
Students also expressed concern that the teaching they received has ultimately affected their final degree qualification, Wyatt stated: “I wholeheartedly believe that this unit severely impacted on the time and effort that I could dedicate to other course units.”…
She sounds, from the students’ descriptions, quite, quite drunk.
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Update: Then there’s the
politics department.
October 5th, 2009 at 2:10PM
Reminds me-
When I was an undergrad at NU there was a faculty member who was such a bad lecturer that the class hired a tomato assassin to come in and pitch tomatoes at the him. The guy was really cool – in the old sense of the word – and ducked behind the lab bench. When the assault was over he rose and reportedly said: "If I had known this was going to happen, I would have worn my pith helmet."
To be fair, I was not in his class but knew him and he asked me to make inquiries about this reaction, which I did. He also changed as best he could…
October 5th, 2009 at 3:36PM
Once had a drunk in our department. He appointed a "waker" in his classes to wake him up at the end of class. It took a while, but the University became convinced he had to be eased out after he cut off some of a girl’s hair on the train. The union defended him of course.
October 5th, 2009 at 3:59PM
francofou: Waker. I’m giggling to beat the band.
I’m imagining a mass market novel by that name – WAKER – following this professor’s amazing adventures…
More seriously, I’ve long been amazed, in following stories about professors for years on this blog, at the incredible misbehavior students will tolerate from professors in the classroom. Students seem to keep the behavior to themselves, and then tell their tales on Rate My Professors, which is one of many things that makes that website so readable.
It might be an interesting experiment for some Psych department to hire actors and have them represent professors in front of various classes at a university. As the professors’ behavior deteriorates to the point of criminality, unconsciousness, every flavor of lewd crude and rude… will the students react in any way?
October 5th, 2009 at 5:54PM
It was IMPOSSIBLE to get students to complain formally about this guy. The standard stance was: I don’t want to cause problems for him.
A couple of days after the hair-cutting incident, he showed up with a black eye and bandages. Her family was less tolerant than our union.
October 6th, 2009 at 7:38AM
We had a legendary prof here who gradually went off the rails over the last decade of his career. It ended with him showing up in the wee hours to woo a young lady at her own apartment; supposedly she was not even in one of his classes. A hasty retirement with the final semester on sabbatical was arranged.
Alcohol was not involved. Gilligan is actually the only place that I have been where we have not had an obvious faculty alky. We certainly have had a few alkies, but I have never heard of anyone even being suspected of holding a class while tanked.