LifeItself

Here are two other questions related to the title: What unique benefits are given to students at all levels - from freshmen to PhD candidates - by a good engineer and scientist, who also happens to be a decent teacher?  How are these benefits different from those delivered by a credentialed, but scientifically incompetent teacher? We keep on hearing the loud and stubborn voices that call for a strict separation of teaching from engineering practice and research. I think that these voices are tragically mistaken. By the way, when I say "tragically," I am thinking of Euripides , Aeschylus , Sophocles , and Shakespeare. In a good Greek tragedy the audience knows the inevitable fatal outcome, but the protagonists don't. For 22 years, I have been a teacher at two top public universities in the U.S.: UC Berkeley and UT Austin. Over time, I have taught some pretty large classes, so my statistical sample is sufficiently broad to justify the statements I shall make next. ...

On May 14, 2011, Professors Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa published an unsettling Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, entitled " Your So-Called Education ."  In it they show that roughly 1/2 of all undergraduates learns little or nothing in college, regardless of tuition costs. Never mind, much of the tuition goes to nicer dorms, bigger gyms and other amenities, while education is left behind . Apparently, education is not on top of priorities of the young undergraduate "customers" and their overly protective parents. I presume that the authors refer mostly to the non-science and non-engineering students, because no engineering student would ever survive learning for just 11-13 hours per week.  This is why practicing engineers make only o ne-half of one percent of the population in the U.S.  It gets really lonely out there when we talk about rigors of engineering education, while other people stare at us in silence, their eyes saying: " You guys think too muc...