Senior Surveys
Eric | February 23, 2006I recently completed my “senior survey” as part of my graduation paperwork. The Clark School of Engineering requires all seniors to rate their experiences while completing their degrees. I wanted to share my feelings on quality:
The best kept secret at the University of Maryland, College Park is how horrible the teaching at the math department really is. The textbooks are unreadable and the professors cannot communicate. I only had two (out of 7 courses) who could speak english clearly. My chemistry course was three hours of titrating per week….sound fun? Richard Feynman once stated that if one could not present physics in a way that allowed a freshman to “get it”, one has no business teaching it. The physics department could use some lessons from Dr. Feynman. Don’t erase the board while writing on it!!! You know who you are!!!
First of all, budget cuts in favor of groundskeeping and more research faculty ensured that the electives I was interested in were eliminated. As a result, I switched majors. For those who don’t know, CORE is a set of liberal arts courses that are categorized so students may choose which to take. Personally, I feel that CORE is too dispersed to be meaningful, although I was able to get some easy As and Bs.
The engineering school has no notion of career paths. This makes ‘elective selection’ (or lack thereof) a big issue for me. In spite of all the research and sports achievements that have been made over the last 3 years, the quality of education has fallen dramatically.
On the plus side, we have Fair Trade coffee, rennovated sports arenas and neat grounds for us to be mugged in! GO TERPS: ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM!!!
