Female Science Professor talks about the frustrations associated with making sure your class has a decent room and all that fun stuff, especially when it’s a small interdisciplinary freshman seminar. The irony, of course, is that an off-the-beaten path course on a topic that the professor is really passionate about is much more likely to end up being the Best Class Ever for the enrolled students than any of the inevitable required courses, but they will always get the short end of the stick when it comes to scheduling and logistics.
But it got me thinking about the concept of the Best Class Ever. What is it that makes a college course especially memorable, years down the line? After at least fifteen seconds of quality rumination over my own experiences, two common features stand out. First, the professor was absolutely enthusiastic about the material; they weren’t just punching a clock, they were truly into it. Second, a very delicate balance was struck, in which the material was ultimately understandable (and interesting, it goes without saying), but also extremely challenging. The best classes were those in which you learned an incredible amount, but only after really sweating for it. Other than that, my favorite classes didn’t really have much in common; they were a remarkably heterogeneous group.
My favorite undergrad class, and also my favorite non-science class (among many strong contenders), was probably “Contemporary Political Images,” taught by philosopher-turned-social-theorist Jack Doody. We covered a lot of political and social theory — Marx, Rawls, Habermas, Leo Strauss, Alasdair MacIntyre, that kind of thing. It was a small seminar, and an indispensable ingredient of the class’s awesomeness was the talent and enthusiasm of the other students. Every week we were wrestling with Big Ideas about Virtue and The Good, and some of the best conversations were over breakfast in the dining hall before class. And years later, when Clarence Thomas mumbled something about Natural Law at his confirmation hearings, we all knew exactly what was going through his mind.
My favorite class in grad school, and also my favorite science class (without quite as many strong contenders) was probably Nick Warner’s general relativity course at MIT. I was a grad student at the liberal-arts college up the river, but Ted Pyne and I happily hopped on the Red Line twice a week to attend this course, given the sorry state of Harvard’s GR offerings at the time. This was a big lecture course, with detailed hand-written notes handed out beforehand, and there wasn’t too much in-class discussion — Nick talked awfully fast, and it’s not easy to stop that much momentum once it gets built up. (But there was a weekly recitation where we could ask whatever crazy questions popped into our heads.) Every week we were pushed to the limit, and loved it. We must have loved it, as Ted and I taught our own seminar to our fellow grad students the next year, and I went on to teach the course as a postdoc, and then as a professor, and write up my own notes, which eventually made it into a book. In the foreword of which, Nick gets a hearty acknowledgment.
So what were your best college classes ever? Feel free to provide supporting evidence and anecdotes, and reason inductively from there to a comprehensive theory of class awesomeness.
(I won’t reveal the best class ever from a teacher’s perspective — like children, they’re all my favorites.)
Like #22, my favorite “relevant” (i.e., in major) class was the QM class I had with Bob Jaffe—a fantastic lecturer. I was also lucky enough to have an enthusiastic recitation instructor (Michael Forbes), rather than an unnamed depressingly boring one. This is the semester where Dirac notation is introduced for real, and when I took it, it was really well done, and like Sean says: I had to work hard for it, but I had fun and could tell I was actually learning instead of doing pure “busy work.”
I think my favorite classes of all time, though, were the Algebra classes taught by The Man himself, Mike Artin. The material was simply gorgeous, Artin is the most enthusiastic lecturer I’ve ever encountered (there were some memorable moments second semester when he was literally too excited to talk), and he was very supportive of the non-mathematicians in his class.
Only the seminars were interesting. I didn’t attend most lectures, only the problem sessions from time to time.
My class is the same as mgary’s. I took the same course but 2 years later. Hitoshi Murayama taught the first part of graduate quantum mechanics and lectured with an excellent flow and enthusiasm. His homework was very tough (although I’ve heard the teacher that taught the next part was tougher), but I felt very accomplished to struggle through the sets. I also learned a great deal of mathematica. These seem to hit spot on with Sean’s general two features that make a great course.
Hitoshi still pops up frequently on the web with general lectures on ATLAS. While reading the slides, I try to replay in my mind the way he’d lecture them. (On an unrelated note, I’ve never caught him laughing before!)
@Martin (number 4): Was that David Mackay’s course at Cambridge, by any chance? I think that was one of my favourites too. The lecturer was bright, enthusiastic and conveyed his content with precision, and the topic was fascinating too. You can see him giving a talk to Google on Dasher.
Re: #11 by Elliot.
Not really a coincidence.
To excerpt from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_B._Leighton
Robert B. Leighton (September 10, 1919–March 9, 1997) was an American physicist who spent his professional career at the California Institute of Technology. His bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. degrees were all from Caltech; he joined the faculty in 1949. His Principles of Modern Physics 1959 was a standard textbook. After Richard Feynman’s Lectures in Physics course, in the early-1960s, Leighton spent over two years reworking the tape-recorded text into publishable form: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, which were published in 1964 and 1966, and which have enjoyed perennial success ever since…. Leighton retired from teaching in 1990…. One of his sons, Ralph Leighton, also collaborated with Feynman on several books.
Sean,
I just took Nick’s GR class this spring. We used your book and his old handwritten notes, both of which were great. But it was the lectures which were truly remarkable…incredibly fast-paced, but just slow enough that you could follow, on a good day. I was particularly impressed with the ease with which the mathematics was introduced, explained, and incorporated. I am in complete agreement that his course was the best science class I have ever taken…but not the best class in general.
I took one course taught by Jim Kincaid about the breakdown of common sense. Though not as intellecutally challenging as GR was, this course somehow managed to change my entire outlook on the world. I think that, in general, science courses don’t allow for this type of far-reaching influence. They are too concerned with specifics, and, while undeniably interesting and important, can’t have a broad impact on a person’s philosophy. Taken as a whole, an education in science can surely have a remarkable influence on somebody’s worldview, but I think that a single course rarely has this ability.
Unfortunately I was too far advanced into my graduate school years to take Sean’s legendary class (I did sneakily try…). But I did get a chance to take Sean’s GR class, which was a lot of fun, though I have already learned some of the material on my own so the gee-whiz factor was not there.
In terms of making the biggest impression on me, the best class in grad school I took was Scott Dodelson’s Radiative Transfer in Astrophysics class. If you think E+M is boring, it’s because of the evil known as Jackson. Scott made E+M as fun as you could get. He has a very physical style, focusing more on gaining intuition then the dreary derivation of equations line-by-line. I still refer to my old notes that I took in his class once in a while (especially when I read ApJ papers.)
I enjoyed pathology in my fourth year of undergrad most of all. It was taught by a different professor each week, so you got an expert on the subject – cancer, infections, inflammation or whatever. It was also good because it brought together nearly everything that was boring and required in third year and showed how they all come together.
Going to a real autopsy was pretty wicked too. Whole new meaning to a ‘wet’ lab.
As an undergraduate, the course that sticks out was Theo Ruiz’s course on Medieval History. When I came to the first lecture, the lights were off in the lecture hall. Suddenly, we hear Gregorian chanting, followed by Theo Ruiz himself dressed as a monk with a large candle. What an entrance. Years
later I ran into him and he was surprised I became a scientist.
As a gradute student, Sasha Kashlinsky gave an amazing series of lectures about
various topics in astrophysics. I almost remember word for word the one he gave about the negative heat capacity of gravity and its consequences.
Perhaps I’m not a good student, but the classes I remember best are the ones where we laughed a lot- I guess I’m a class clown of sorts. 🙂 I mean honestly now, how would I ever be able to forget my computational methods in physics class where we got the professor into such fits of laughter that he fell onto the floor behind his podium? Or the thermodynamics class on Halloween when we did a pumpkin seed eating game based on the professor’s mannerisms? (“prof references equation that isn’t there= 5 seeds”, “prof mentions he’ll be at a faraway conference on friday= 10 seeds”)
Though ok, from a more academic, sterile viewpoint I guess the class that I remember best and influenced my life the most was freshman kinematics. I had my first-ever “this is so friggin cool, I am going to jump up and down from excitement” moment there, the professor was so enthusiastic about physics that I ended up working for him in his lab based on that alone, and it essentially made me a physics major.
Complex Analysis, delivered by Dr. Alexander Its at Clarkson University around 1992 or so. I think I saw someone else mention a Complex Analysis course. The material is… stunning. But Its, with his thick Russian accent, was also amazing.
He would begin lecturing as soon as his body broke the plain of the doorway. No notes. Ever. Armed only with a piece of chalk he would conduct us through long, treacherous & profound theorems like a symphony, with every epsilon and delta in its perfect place. After the final exam, I was ready to tackle the Riemann hypothesis, but I was distracted by this girl…
Enthusiasm is key, a passion for explanation, caring about the students learning. Two quarters of undergrad quantum at the University of Chicago demonstrated this for me. The first quarter was awful – horrible book, wretched teacher, I didn’t learn anything and got the lowest grade I’ve ever had. Second quarter we used the same damn book, but the teacher (David Grier) was outstanding, and I managed to learn the two quarters of QM in one.
And Sean’s undergrad GR course was awesome. Especially for being the first time through (at the U of C, at least). Such a pity my alma mater lost him.
While we’re on the U of C, I have to concur with the above mention of Paul Sally. Amazing teacher. I actually threw away the textbook after the class (not Rudin, don’t remember the author) and LaTeX’d my notes to make my own real analysis book.
One thing I found in grad school is I enjoyed the astronomy classes vastly more than the physics classes, despite a wide variety of teachers in both. The astronomy faculty treated the grad students as colleagues – junior colleagues, to be sure, but colleagues nonetheless. The physics faculty treated us like boot camp recruits. Makes a world of difference.
And I’ll just say, what a pity is it when a brilliant researcher can’t teach to save his life. Bardeen, Bardeen…
I’ll echo Eugene in voting for Any Class By Scott Dodelson at the grad level.
But the most important, influential, and really really fun class I’ve ever had was a Physics/Philosophy cross-listed undergrad course on the QM measurement problem, taught by David Albert at Columbia. I took it as a German Lit major and it drove me right back into science, where I happily live today.
Best instructor I ever had was a high school mathematics teacher named Josh Abrams. He taught all mathematics as applied mathematics, and let his students work on computational projects until they started to see the theory and abstractions for themselves. (My favorite example: He taught calculus backwards. It began with numerical solutions of differential equations, moved on to Riemann sums, then to limits, then to integration, then differentiation.)
A close second was UChicago’s Honors Analysis sequence, which was taught by Rhagavan Narasimhan when I took it. Narasimhan covered analysis on metric spaces, basic operator algebra, complex analysis, and differential forms and elementary differential topology in the space of a year. Every class I’ve taken since has been easy by comparison.
An undergraduate quantum mechanics course that started with “consider a particle, or should that be a particle and a peep”. And when it came to being flash, Professor B. was ambidextrous and so could crack a lengthy equation across a black board without pausing for breath. (He did this infrequently, so that one only realised later what had happened.) I’m sure he is too modest to have me mention him by name, but I will always remember him.
In the undergraduate low temperature lab, small groups collaborated to reproduce classic experiments at liquid helium temperature. Over the term, we designed them on paper, built them in the machine shop, nursed the dewars as they cooled down, attempted to collect data, warmed up and rebuilt the apparatus when it didn’t work the first time, then tried again. (Who knew that ordinary solder joints don’t survive at 2K? We were undergraduates.) The professor had just started at Stanford and was awaiting construction of his lab, giving him an inordinate amount of time to devote to teaching. He loaned us equipment shipped from his old lab since he wasn’t using it yet. He’d worked in low temperature experiments for years at Bell Labs and later received the Nobel. He told great stories about what it is to be a working experimental physicist and spent a lot of time with us in the machine shop and in the lab. (Of course, this was one of those classes that consumed all waking and sleeping hours. Ironically, it was a two-unit course. When the University attempted to encourage more breadth of study by putting a limit on the number of units department can demand for a major, the physics department changed all the 5-unit classes to 3-unit classes, but was still one over the limit. In a wry joke, this lab was dropped a unit to make up the difference.) Best. Class. Ever.
This may seem pretentious for being overly humble, but it’s not meant that way.
Remedial Writing, given as a summer course at Ithaca College by Prof. Barb Adams. I was a 17-year old kid so eager to get into college that I jumped in four days after graduating from high school and took what classes I could find in the summer offering (which meant finding ones which had no prerequisits). This one was a real gem. Four students and a braless, feminist professor who raised goats (this was early 1970’s) to make goat cheese, knew her stuff, and cared about teaching. She was also willing to hang out after class and talk about most anything. I learned more useful things about writing (and reading) in that single condensed 6-week class than in anything before or since.
Why was it effective? No pressure from the teacher, just help. All of us students were there because we really wanted to learn. Lot’s of in-class practice — write for 5 or 15 minutes, read out loud, listen to constructive feedback from the others — not much lecutre, lots of good reading assignments. The 4:1 ratio was a huge plus. I remember much laughter and some real tear-jerking moments.
Heck, that was more than 30 years ago and comes to mind like yesterday.
Three of us organized a fourth-year seminar course – read 50 seminal papers in one semester, and write a summary paper that doesn’t exist in the literature.
Only half the class was in the leas tbit intimately familiar with the material to start with, but through implementing peer review throughout the year we all learned so much – no one was left behind.
It was absolutely bonkers, and I’m surprised they let us do it. But everyone finished, and everyone loved the course!
@Paul (number 29) – Yes, it was indeed David Mackay’s course, and I second all your comments.
Computer Science 61A: The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, at UC Berkeley, 1989, taught by Brian Harvey, based on the text by Abelson and Sussman.
“First, the professor was absolutely enthusiastic about the material; they weren’t just punching a clock, they were truly into it. Second, a very delicate balance was struck, in which the material was ultimately understandable (and interesting, it goes without saying), but also extremely challenging.”
Undergrad- Baraba Klinger – Films of the 1950s. Absolutely amazing course which opened my mind to numerous different ideas and modes of thinking.
Tied for first – Murray McGibbon – Acting 2. Learned more in that class about life than any other class period.
Grad School – Jeff Rush – Scene Analysis. Always chaotic, but always enjoyable. I can now carefully dissect structure in story and understand how a story really works.
My experience with Philip Hugly at the University of Illinois was almost the same as Mike at #10 above, except I did not go on to become either a philosopher or mathematician. In conversations outside class, Hugly introduced me to Frege’s work in the foundations of mathematics and Cantor’s transfinite set theory. His commitment to finding the truth in enormously complicated things and generosity to a frankly knuckleheaded sophomore had a foundational impact on my intellectual development. I cannot adequately express my gratitude to Professor Hugly for that semester in 1974.
My personal low came in Real Analysis a few semesters later. I could not follow the professor in part of a proof he was doing at the board. As I sat formulating my question, the guy in front of me asked the question I wished to ask. Professor X turned, paused, and witheringly suggested, “If you don’t understand that, perhaps you should be in life sciences.” I closed my notebook, took a mental inventory of drink specials at various campus bars, and never returned to the class again.