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THINGS I WISH THEY HAD TOLD ME

Richard M. Felder

North Carolina State University

Most of us on college faculties learn our craft by trial-and-error. We start teaching and doing research,

make lots of mistakes, learn from some of them, teach some more and do more research, make more

mistakes and learn from them, and gradually more or less figure out what we're doing.

While there's something to be said for purely experiential learning, it's not very efficient. Sometimes

small changes in the ways we do things can yield large benefits. We may eventually come up with the

changes ourselves, but it could help both us and our students immeasurably if someone were to suggest

them early in our careers. For whatever they may be worth to you, here are some suggestions I wish

someone had given me.

 Find one or more research mentors and one or more teaching mentors, and work closely with them for

at least two years. Most faculties have professors who excel at research or teaching or both and are

willing to share their expertise with junior colleagues, but the prevailing culture does not usually

encourage such exchanges. Find out who these individuals are, and take advantage of what they have to

offer, if possible through collaborative research and mutual classroom observation or team-teaching.

 Find research collaborators who are strong in the areas in which you are weakest. If your strength is

theory, undertake some joint research with a good experimentalist, and conversely. If you're a chemical

engineer, find compatible colleagues in chemistry or biochemistry or mathematics or statistics or

materials science. You'll turn out better research in the short run, and you'll become a better researcher

in the long run by seeing how others work and learning some of what they know.

 When you write a paper or proposal, beg or bribe colleagues to read it and give you the toughest

critique they're willing to give. Then revise, and if the revisions were major, run the manuscript by

them again to make sure you got it right. Then send it off. Wonderful things may start happening to

your acceptance rates.

 When a paper or proposal of yours is rejected, don't take it as a reflection on your competence or your

worth as a human being. Above all, don't give up. Take a few minutes to sulk or swear at those obtuse

idiots who clearly missed the point of what you wrote, then revise the manuscript, doing your best to

understand and accommodate their criticisms and suggestions.

If the rejection left the door open a crack, send the revision back with a cover letter summarizing

how you adopted the reviewers' suggestions and stating, respectfully, why you couldn't go along with

the ones you didn't adopt. The journal or funding agency will usually send the revision back to the

same reviewers, who will often recommend acceptance if they believe you took their comments

seriously and if your response doesn't offend them. If the rejection slammed the door, send the revision

to another journal (perhaps a less prestigious one) or funding agency.

 Learn to identify the students in your classes, and greet them by name when you see them in the hall.

Doing just this will cover a multitude of sins you may commit in class. Even if you have a class of over

100 students, you can do it—use seating charts, labeled photographs, whatever it takes. You'll be well

compensated for the time and effort you expend by the respect and effort you'll get back from them.

 When you're teaching a class, try to give the students something active to do at least every 20 minutes.

For example, have them work in small groups to answer a question or solve a problem or think of their

own questions about the material you just covered.

In long class periods (75 minutes and up), let them

get up and stretch for a minute.

Chem. Engr. Education, 28(2), 108-109 (Spring 1994).

For other active learning exercises, see R.M. Felder, “Learning by Doing,”

<http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Columns/Active.pdf>.

Even if you're a real spellbinder, after approximately 10 minutes of straight lecturing you begin to

lose a fraction of your students—they get drowsy or bored or restless, and start reading or talking or

daydreaming. The longer you lecture, the more of them you lose. Forcing them to be active, even if it's

only for 30 seconds, breaks the pattern and gets them back with you for another 10 to 20 minutes.

 After you finish making up an exam, even if you KNOW it's straightforward and error-free, work it

through completely from scratch and note how long it takes you to do it, and get your TA's to do the

same if you have TA's. Then go back and (1) get rid of the inevitable bugs and busywork, (2) make sure

most of the test covers basic skills and no more than 10–15% serves to separate the A's from the B's,

and (3) cut down the test so that the students have at least three times longer to work it out than it took

you to do it.

 Grade tough on homework, easier on time-bound tests. Frequently it happens in reverse: almost

anything goes on the homework, which causes the students to get sloppy, and then they get clobbered

on tests for making the same careless errors they got away with on the homework. This is

pedagogically unsound, not to mention unfair.

 When someone asks you to do something you're not sure you want to do—serve on a committee or

chair one, attend a meeting you're not obligated to attend, join an organization, run for an office,

organize a conference, etc.—don't respond immediately, but tell the requester that you need time to

think about it and you'll get back to him or her. Then, if you decide that you really don't want to do it,

consider politely but firmly declining. You need to take on some of these tasks occasionally—service is

part of your professorial obligation—but no law says you have do everything anyone asks you to do.

 Create some private space for yourself and retreat to it on a regular basis. Pick a three-hour slot once

or twice a week when you don't have class or office hours and go elsewhere—stay home, for example,

or take your laptop to the library, or sneak into the empty office of your colleague who's on sabbatical.

It's tough to do serious writing or thinking if you're interrupted every five minutes, which is what

happens in your office. Some people with iron wills can put a “Do not disturb!” sign outside their

office door, let their secretaries or voice mail take their calls, and Just Do It. If you're not one of them,

your only alternative is to get out of the office. Do it regularly and watch your productivity rise.

 Do your own composing on a word processor instead of relying on a secretary to do all the typing and

correcting. If you're a lousy typist, have the secretary type your first draft but at least do all the revising

and correcting yourself.

Getting the secretary to do everything means waiting for your job to reach the top of the pile on his

desk, waiting again when your job is put on hold in favor of shorter and more urgent tasks, waiting yet

again for the corrections on the last version to be made, and so on as the weeks roll merrily by. If a job

is really important to you, do it yourself! It will then get done on your time schedule, not someone

else's.

 Get a copy of McKeachie.

Keep it within easy reach. You can open it to any page and get useful

suggestions about every aspect of teaching and research backing for them.

 When problems arise that have serious implications—academic misconduct, for example, or a student

or colleague with an apparent psychological problem, or anything that could lead to litigation or

violence—don't try to solve them on your own. The consequences of making mistakes could be

disastrous.

There are professionals at every university (academic advisors, trained counselors, attorneys) with

the knowledge and experience needed to deal with almost every conceivable situation. Find out who

they are, and bring them in to either help you deal with the problem or handle it themselves.

If your department head or dean is the one doing the asking, however, it’s advisable to have a good reason for saying no.

W.J. McKeachie, Teaching Tips, 11

Edn., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 2002.