The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 79, No. 20, Ed. 1 Friday, February 14, 1992 Page: 4 of 24
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4 FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1992 THE RICE THRESHER
OPINION
Natural science professor responds to criticism, defends program
To the editors,
I was confused by the opinion
article, "Rice should be nothing but
ashamed..." in the 7 February
Thresher, which starts with a quote 1
can't recall making or, at a minimum,
is wildly out of context What this has
to do with NSCI course itself is a
mystery, as is why anyone outside
the course would care, except for the
misleading quote.
Editors' note: The Thresher
confirmed Michel's quote
with other class members.
They said the quote lacked
a context and Dewan's in-
terpretation was common.
However, we are nothing if not
prompt in rising to the advice of ev-
ery student Readings in Scientific
American, as proposed by the fea-
tures editor, were on the course syl-
labus handed out at the beginning of
this semester.
NSCI 101 and 102 possibly has the
most complete records of individual
student performance of any course
given at Rice. The grading standards
are explicit and totally objective. Stu-
dents can find out how they are doing
on a weekly basis. Last semester 1
didn't make out the grades (that is up
to the recitation instructors who know
the individual students), beyond as-
sembling the distribution of total points
and suggesting grade break points.
The same is true this semester except
Professors humans, too
To the editors,
It is clear from reading Shaila K.
Dewan's article ("Rice should be
nothing but ashamed by Natural
Science courses") in last week's
Thresher that she still has no idea
what response Curtis Michel was
trying to elicit from his NSCI 102
class concerning the abusive
evalutation he had received. Al-
though I was not present at the inci-
dent, like most professors at Rice,
Fve received my share of this kind of
anonymous personal attack posing
as a "course evaluation," and so I had
no trouble imagining what Curtis
Michel was trying to achieve.
Ixt me provide the following in-
sights for Dewan in the hope that
they will allow her to understand the
situation more clearly.
1. Most professors try very hard
to do a good job of their teaching.
2. Professors, like students, are
members of the human race. When
they've tried hard at something, and
are then rewarded by vicious per-
sonal abu se (often made all the more
stinging because it hits at those very
weaknesses they are only too pain-
fully aware of) they feel deeply hurt
and profoundly discouraged. I sus-
pect that every professor on campus
knows what it's like to smart from
the pain of a direct and mean-spir-
ited attack on his or her individual
foibles and weaknesses as a human
being.
3. Most professors who have ex-
perienced these feelings also have a
strong sense of being treated badly
and unfairly. They feel disappointed
that their students have no sense of,
or respect for, them as fellow sen-
tient human beings. Their reaction
can be summarized and distilled po-
litely into the following sentiment.
"No decent human being would or
should feel free to treat another per-
son in this way."
So now let's go back to Curtis
Michel's class. What, we wonder,
could it be that Michel wanted the
class to recognize and acknowledge
about the evaluation in question?
Kate Beckingham
Associate Professor,
Biology and Cell Biology
No bestseller science
To the editors,
1 speak in defense of the simple
harmonic oscillator, a concept be-
littled in the article by Shaila K. Dewan
{Thresher, 2/7/92). Only the closed
imagination would fail to note how
strange it is that a pendulum bob—
with its speedings-up and slowings-
down—travels different distances in
the same amount of time. No wonder
Galileo was startled after Mass. This
concept has accompanied the West
for more than 400 years—turning up
here as heatwaves in a lattice; there
as stars bobbing up and down
through cosmic time; in our leisure
as music decomposed; and every-
where as the elementary excitations
of light in all its variety.
Better a periodic oscillator than
science off the bestseller list
Better to find the transition to
chaos as a function of spring con-
stants, than to grouse about "...con-
nections to the real world." (Mr.
Melzler and Mr. Mahncke should at
least know that Natural Science is
the study of the real world.)
Better a lifelong study of springs,
than to learn that the "paradigm
pathway" is superior to the "informa-
tion pathway" (just where do these
Get drunk and
play with spheri-
cal triangles or
find life without
science—now!
paradigms come from, but through
the acquisition of knowledge?).
To searchers after Pythagoras, a
word of advice: get drunk and play
with spherical triangles: then you
might understand MicheL For the
rest, find life without science—now!
Chuck Dermer
Faculty Fellow, Space Physics
U.Blue needs tax money
To the editors,
In anticipation of next Tuesday's
general elections, I would like to in-
form the student body of the Uni-
versity /Hue's need for a blanket tax
increase. Since the founding of the
magazine in the early 80s, our one-
dollar-per-student budget has not
increased, yet printing costs have
skyrocketed. This year submissions
came from both academs and SEs,
undergraduates and graduate stu-
dents, and have increased in number
to a grand total of 300 (up from last
year's 225), but we can only publish
approximately 50 of these submis-
sions under our current budget. With
a one dollar increase in our blanket
tax, we can double the number of
printed works and provide enough
copies for the entire student body.
Our solicitation of ads and gifts from
Rice's humanities departments will
enable us to publish the magazine
this year, but next year, we may not
be so lucky. Our magazine is the only
forum at Rice for the publication of
studentcreativeoutpuL For the future
of UBlue, I urge all students to vote
for the University Blue blanket tax
increase on Tuesday and keep the
arts alive at Rice.
Stephanie Drescher
Editor, University Blue
for the students in my recitation sec-
tion. The only students in danger of
failing are those very near the bottom
of the point distribution. We don'tknow
where that is until the course is over
and then we have the difficult deci-
sions to make of what to do with those
near the bottom. Effort by the student
is an important criterion. Unfortu-
nately, I already have sue students who
have not yet taken a single quiz.
I would suggest that students,
such as the features editor, should
not procrastinate and put NSCI off to
the junior or senior year, where the
potential for it to be relevant to the
Rice experience becomes nil, al-
though we suspect it will prove handy
beyond the hedges anyway.
The Metzler & Mahncke article,
also in the same issue, was clearly a
thoughtful analysis of the many fac-
ets of the course. Had the syllabus
not been written a bit too cryptically,
they would have found it to be re-
sponsive to some of their concerns.
To it I would add the following points.
We did not have
a prize-winning
teacher free.
(1) One can't simply insist that
every last student pass Math, Chem-
istry, and Physics. (It's been tried
before.) We would lose too many
great authors, statesmen, etc. Ac-
cordingly, the so-called "regurgita-
tion" questions give those students a
chance to show that they have been
trying, attending class, and paying
attention, and thereby give us confi-
dence they picked up something.
This testing is done on a weekly ba-
sis and has been extremely effective.
Because anything in class can be
tested on, the students cannot be
selectively attentive ("Will this be on
the test?" Yes!). With machine grad-
ing we can now track responses to
quizzes (we should have done this
first semester). This gives us feed-
back on what is and isn't registering.
For example, the question alluded to
by the features ed itor had been asked
on last semester's final, the correct
answers were discussed in a review
first week of class, the question was
repeated in the quiz at the end of that
week, the correct answers were
posted, and the question was re-
peated two weeks later. The correct
choices increased but so did those of
an incorrect choice! We have an-
nounced that this question will be on
the final, so we are bending over
backwards to help all the students.
We are trying to break the cycle of
only learning that which is person-
ally easy and shrugging off the dif-
ficult. In a vertical curriculum, where
each year builds on the previous, this
approach eventually leads to every-
thing becoming difficult. To the de-
gree that we can succeed here, it will
benefit everyone.
(2) Students present a broad range
of backgrounds in such a course, so
one has to design a curriculum that is
supplementary to those who have a
strong background and one that is in-
troductory to the rest, otherwise one
group or the other is alienated. Here
too I think we have been reasonably
successful, but much more needs to be
done: we need more demonstrations
and a good textbook or notes. We
goofed, for example, on the calculus
book which, although a self-help text,
some students found annoying instead
of cute. We should have been clearer in
describing our overall aims in the syl-
labus. But these are hardly unheard-of
difficulties with any reorganized course.
Incidentally, "problems with pulleys
and weights," castigated by M&M, are
conspicuous by their absence.
(3) The course has evolved out of
previous experience and the current
version was the product of brain-
storming by a dedicated team within
the department Oohn Freeman, Jon
Weisheit, Bob Haymes, Joss Haw-
thorn, Arthur Few, with contributions
from Steve Baker, Ron Goldman,
Dick Massey, Terry Lohrenz, Dean
Kinsey, and others). We did not have
a prize-winning teacher free and had
to settle on yours truly to handle
The so-called
"regurgitation"
questions give
students a chance
to show they
have been trying.
much of the load. Because ofthat and
the revised curriculum, we took the
extraordinary precaution of rehears-
ing essentially all of the lectures over
the summer to an audience consist-
ing of the team, some students, and
the secretary who handles the course
grades, etc. for comments. We
emerged from this exercise confident
that the material was at a reasonable
level, pitch, and pace. I am not aware
of any other comparable exercise ei-
ther here or elsewhere, ever.
(5) The team has gone over sug-
gestions such as the end of the M&M
article numerous times. Some alter-
natives such as discussing science
literacy and history are in fact in the
second semester (the first semester
was necessarily more dry, just get-
ting basics established). Others are
impossible to implement in large
classes. "Science literacy" at any level
is not easy. Someone can't be conver-
sant about Einstein and E=mc2 who
doesn't quite understand why the 2
is perched up on the c like that. Or if
It might be easier
if the students
weren 't so bright.
these symbols have the mysterious
properly of "units."
(6) We specifically surveyed the
students late first semester on
whether the two large classes plus
one small Friday recitation was a rea-
sonable compromise. Less than nine
percent said no. As a practical matter,
most introductory classes are large.
HUMA is an exception but it gets
outside funding, which is not perma-
nent. Breaking250 students into small
classes of 15 to 20 taught by specially
trained teachers would probably only
require a permanent supplementary
increase in tuition of around $500.
The justification seems weak.
(7) Finally, insofar as this note
goes, NSCI serves both the students
and the university in an important
way. To the students it offers an effi-
cient way of satisfying the science
requirements (two semesters, not
four) without havingto compete with
science majors in courses that are
much faster paced. This is such an
obviously good deal that most stu-
dents think that NSCI is "required."
For the university, NSCI serves as a
buffer, absorbing a large number of
nonscience students who would
otherwise still have to take science
and math courses. (But which ones?
250 people in Physics 121?)
Teaching the course is time-con-
suming, but it is interesting and
challenging. We are gaining a lot of
detailed experience and feedback,
especially from the testing, which
will help substantially improve the
course. In some ways it might be
easier if the students weren't so bright
F.C. Michel
Professor
Space Physics and Astronomy
Natural science alternative proposed
To the editors,
The recent articles about the
Natural Science course remind me
that I proposed a pilot course in sci-
entific literacy early last December.
The main goal of the course is to
attempt to educate students so that
they will have a general understand-
ing of some of the main scientific and
technological issues which this
country and the world will face dur-
ing their lifetime. Obviously such is-
sues span the realm of physics,
chemistry and biology. They should
also, I think, have some simple ideas
about astronomy and geology, in
answer to the question: how did this
all get here?
Almost as important is showing
students (not telling them) that they
can learn on their own. Some subsid-
iary goals are getting students to un-
derstand what science is and what it
is not; having students experience
the methods of scientific reasoning;
enabling students to obtiin quantita-
tive answer to some simple problems;
and, helping students catch the ex-
citement of science.
There may be an ideal method to
reach these goals, but we act under
some constraints. One definitely
needs a textbook for the course: it
should cover at least 75 percent of
the material in the course. Conse-
quently, it is better to have a'"hot-
perfectly-suitable textbookthan none
at all. The level of the text should be
no higher than Scientific American.
The textbook should have enough
references (at a slightly higher sci-
entific level) to enable students to
pursue a few particular problems at
some depth. The students should be
required to pursue problems, writing
at least two papers a semester on a
problem of their choice. An oral re-
port sh ou Id probably accompany th is.
Students are not prepared to "suf-
fer" through elementary courses in
order to become scientists. Conse-
quently, one should start with prob-
lems in which students are inter-
ested and build from there. It may be
chaotic, but that's how young chil-
dren learn.
For students taking this course, it
would replace Natural Science 101
and 102, subject to the approval of
the Undergraduate Curriculum
Committee. Enrollment would have
been limited to abouttwenty students.
This proposal was not accepted.
I pointed out that, in order to be
successful, and assuming that it were
given to all freshmen academs, such
a course would necessitate a serious
financial commitment by the univer-
sity. I guessed it at $100,000 per year,
but I am no administrator. Perhaps
the university cannot afford such an
expense at present.
I hope that the idea will be revived
in some future years, as I believe that
a somewhat similar course is seri-
ously needed.
Jean-Claude De Bremaecker
Professor
Geology and Geophysics
Determine thefutureof the opinion pages.
Circle one of the following and return this to the Thresher office.
• Mark David Schoenhals, Amit Dinesh Mehta, and Henry Wiltshire
Mahncke should continue to fill the pages with articles.
• Mark, Amit, and Henry should continue to write but be supplemented
by other writers. (NOTE: You can choose this only if you submit an
editorial or letter to the editor with your ballot.)
• The opinion pages should be empty.
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Zitterkopf, Ann & Howe, Harlan. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 79, No. 20, Ed. 1 Friday, February 14, 1992, newspaper, February 14, 1992; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245805/m1/4/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.