May 23, 2008
Great, My Professor
Partly because he was fed up with childish comments on Web sites where students rate their professors, a business-school professor at Temple University has created an online forum for students who want to sound off. So as not to mislead students, the site’s title suggests its intent: “Thank You Professor.”
“There are so many vehicles for students to express their opinion,” says the site’s creator, Samuel D. Hodge Jr., chairman of the business school’s legal-studies department. “But there’s nothing really at the school where the professor can get a letter directly from the student.”
When the site went live on May 1, Mr. Hodge says, he expected about a dozen comments in the first week. Instead, more than 200 flooded in. He converts each note into a letter to the faculty member being praised, then makes sure the business school’s dean gets a copy.
Mr. Hodge moderates the comments, but so far there haven’t been any negative posts on the site, he says.
For example, the four “thank you notes” left on the site so far for Rob B. Drennan Jr., an associate professor of risk, insurance, and health-care management, have been uniformly laudatory (three were signed, and one was anonymous). “I truly enjoyed his class,” wrote one student, Tom Coia. “Difficult and challenging, but isn’t that what we want from school?” Contrast that to an anonymous comment concerning Mr. Drennan that a student left last spring on RateMyProfessors.com: “BOOOOO!!!!!”
Mr. Hodge, incidentally, has appeared on an MTV Web site of faculty members who “strike back” against comments on RateMyProfessors.com. He says Ohio State University is the only other institution he knows of that gives students a way to thank their professors on the Web.
Temple may extend the site to the whole university, he says: “It’s such positive reinforcement.” —JJ Hermes
Posted on Friday May 23, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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What a terrific idea to give students a vehicle for praise. Reading those “rate my professor ratings” is so demoralizing for those of us who give our hearts and souls to teaching and mentoring students…
— Sally Stoecker May 23, 07:13 AM #
A nice idea, but it would be even better if the name of the site were grammatical. Since it’s direct address, it should be “Thank You, Professor.”
— John Shea May 23, 08:46 AM #
Re site name: Good point, John Shea — but a comma is, well, not exactly domain name-friendly. A better yet site name would have been Thank Your Professor. Kudos to Mr. Hodge for creating it.
— Jeanne Krier May 23, 11:15 AM #
My guess is that the name is a play on “Rate my Professor”. Rate/Great — rhyme time. I suggest also retitling Rate my Professor along these lines, so that it is more reflective of actual content: Grate my Professor.
— Mike Barnett May 23, 11:38 AM #
Univ Of MO – Columbia has had thank you link for at least a year
“# Thank-a-Tiger (Send a thank you note to a professor, adviser or staff member.)”
http://thankatiger.missouri.edu/
— Rym Hubbard May 23, 08:38 PM #
I wish there were a place to thank former professors with whom one has lost all touch. Thirty years after finishing my B.A., I still find myself thinking thankfully with regard to certain professors for the valuable things I learned in their classes — that is, not just subject matter, but the life lessons conveyed along with such matter. I’d love to be able to thank them in reality.
— Johanna May 24, 05:35 AM #
Re: #6 – I also wish I could go back and find one undergrad professor in particular. I learned quite a bit from him and as I complete my doc program, I wanted to thank him personally.
Dr. Andres Perez y Mena, THANK YOU.
- Lisa R., LIU-Brooklyn ’99
— Lisa Richardson May 25, 01:32 PM #