So have you had a professor fail a whole class before?

nhclone

Well-Known Member
Nov 20, 2008
3,631
1,606
113
I remember hearing horror stories before I had Sturgis and I think he was my Dynamics prof. IIRC he just wasn't that great of a teacher, but nothing too memorable. No one could put me to sleep like Abendroth (sp?) in Steel Design though. I don't think I was awake for more than 30% of that class.

I think this might be the first time I've ever agreed with every single word in a post. I always used Abendroths class as ISU Daily time...read the sports section, do the soduko....almost finished half of a crossword once even. :yes:
 

BoxsterCy

Moderator
Staff member
Sep 14, 2009
48,421
47,341
113
Minnesota
Was the professor's initials MP?

Too long ago to remember. I recall that he thought of himself as some sort of sanitary engineering guru. The next class was taught by some really olf guy (of so it seemed to me as a 19 year old) who came out of retirement to teach it. It was highway design and I learned a lot (enough that in my first job in an architecture offcie they throw me in the engineering department where I was Mr. Cut/Fill and Alignment Guy) He was great old dude and good teacher, everything the other guy was not.
 

cyclone1975

Well-Known Member
Feb 4, 2007
1,102
122
63
Ankeny
300815_10150338637043028_500063027_7968925_397463241_n.jpg

There is sooooo much truth to this cartoon!
 

cy1010

Well-Known Member
Dec 16, 2009
3,047
86
48
I had took a math class (though not recalling which one specifically) where everyone in my class failed the first exam.

The exam was a photo copy of a bunch of problems had written in pencil by the instructor and all the answers had to be in terms of pi.

That instructor was not retained after the end of that semester.....
 

FarmClone

Well-Known Member
SuperFanatic
SuperFanatic T2
Dec 3, 2009
1,358
1,971
113
Anyone have TAs/lab instructors who can't speak english? Lei Li lab instructor for bio 211 was impossible to understand. She probably doesn't teach anymore fortunately. I believe she was a grad student and I took that a couple years ago.
 

Scruff

Well-Known Member
Mar 11, 2008
1,022
1,426
113
Coralville, IA
First to exams in my upper level accounting course has gotten a class average below 50%. I agree with who ever said grades this low should reflect poorly on the course or the teacher. He curves it but with most of the class knowing less than 50% of the material should we be allowed to pass? We should get Fs and he should be fired. "Sarcastic pirate" Basically after talking with him tonight he thinks a lot of account majors don't belong here and should have been weeded out long ago, but the college of business gets more money for more enrollment so they won't do that. I wanted to tell him its not his job to weed us out when we are seniors.
 

longtimeclone

Well-Known Member
Dec 8, 2009
7,952
230
63
Up north
First to exams in my upper level accounting course has gotten a class average below 50%. I agree with who ever said grades this low should reflect poorly on the course or the teacher. He curves it but with most of the class knowing less than 50% of the material should we be allowed to pass? We should get Fs and he should be fired. "Sarcastic pirate" Basically after talking with him tonight he thinks a lot of account majors don't belong here and should have been weeded out long ago, but the college of business gets more money for more enrollment so they won't do that. I wanted to tell him its not his job to weed us out when we are seniors.

Which class was this? I thought the hardest was 387 and I didn't take that class until the fall of my 5th year.
 

bowlfan912

Member
Feb 15, 2010
493
-118
18
Ames,IA
Anyone have TAs/lab instructors who can't speak english? Lei Li lab instructor for bio 211 was impossible to understand. She probably doesn't teach anymore fortunately. I believe she was a grad student and I took that a couple years ago.

Wow I had for bio 211 lab 2 years ago. Yeah that was interesting.
 

Tre4ISU

Well-Known Member
SuperFanatic
SuperFanatic T2
Dec 30, 2008
28,211
9,323
113
Estherville
Those are more of case by case basis, I know I am still in the 1969 category and helped me out in the long run and still paying dividends....

I'm with you. I always had sport held over my head. Two Bs, tops, or no sports. I later found out through my brothers grades that those were empty threats.
 

EYEoftheSTORM

Well-Known Member
SuperFanatic
SuperFanatic T2
Jan 3, 2009
3,124
515
113
35
Ames, Iowa
while on the topic of college professors my grandfather was a professor at Iowa State. For all you Ag majors do you remember or had a Dr. Kahler from the 80's and 90's? He passed when I was young and remember small amounts about him at ISU/ nothing about his teaching styles.
 

Rickybaby

Active Member
Apr 15, 2006
904
39
28
Actually I had an incident like that; and yeah it was in the stone age. It was a Junior level Operating Systems class in CS which fortunately I kinda liked. The instructor was horrible. I mean horrible. The problem was not that he didn't know his stuff because frankly I don't know. The problem was that he couldn't speak or understand English. I think he was Chinese or from Taiwan. Anyway, as the semester rolled on the students got more and more ******. And actually kind of confronted him in class. Remember this is the stone age; not like today where somebody would have whipped out a gun and mowed people down. Just snide comments and general disrespect. Around Thanksgiving he went away for a couple of weeks (I think he went home) and we had a TA; who was OK but nothing special. Anyway, while the guy was gone a couple of the students went to the administration, filed formal complaints, and tried to get him fired.

Needless to say, when he got back he was ******. Really ******; and frustrated I think too because no matter how ****** he was he couldn't really yell at us or anything because he couldn't speak English. Anyway, the semester was almost over and then he hands out a sheet which explains his philosophy on the final. He is going to make it hard as ****. Essentially impossible and everyone will flunk it. But: its optional. If you don't want to take it you don't have to and you can keep the grade you currently have. Here is the thing: probably 90% of the class was getting C, D or F's. A lot of people had taken to not even showing up and were banking on aceing the final to bring their grade up so they could pass. Of the 10% of the class that were were getting A's and B's almost all were foreigners; Asian/Chinese. The guy couldn't speak English but he wasn't stupid. Luckily I had a B and decided that was good enough for me. I don't recall ever seeing that Prof again.

Weird story.
 

trigger1

Well-Known Member
May 21, 2008
329
312
63
Ames
while on the topic of college professors my grandfather was a professor at Iowa State. For all you Ag majors do you remember or had a Dr. Kahler from the 80's and 90's? He passed when I was young and remember small amounts about him at ISU/ nothing about his teaching styles.

AgEd professor? If that's the one, super nice guy. Didn't have him for a class, but did consult with him on some grad adviser / enrollment stuff. Strong Hort background as I recall. Always willing to make time for ag teachers around the state. One story I was told was that he put up a grad student in his basement when it was time for that student to write his thesis. Just had him come over, made him hole up, and get the thesis written. A good man, personable, caring. If that's the same Dr. Kahler, you should be proud of him.
 

acrozier22

Well-Known Member
Mar 17, 2006
2,826
164
63
Southeast Iowa
Oh we did the work, she claimed we were "cheating" by taking images off of google and citing them properly. She never told us what source was or wasn't availible.

If you were taking images off google and then citing the Google URL, it's not cheating but it's not cited correctly. It's really poor practice as well.
 

Clone83

Well-Known Member
Mar 25, 2006
5,074
1,075
113
Update:
So she started crying at the end of class and blamed it on being emotional, said she was going to "re-grade" everything.

She was also the professor that was crying because Steve Jobs died......I'll let you design majors guess who it is.
The first econ course I had the teacher was horrible. It was in a big lecture hall, Dairy Industry 117 as I recall, and eventually everyone was talking among themselves while she went on up front, which she found very upsetting and eventually let us know. No one got anything out of the lectures and that is part of what they were talking about, the major reason people started talking. Today I can say it was like a Seinfeld episode or something. :) We were pretty much all freshmen I believe and this was our second quarter (a long time ago) or more probably would have been skipping class already. I think the first test maybe about everyone got low Bs or middle Cs at best, all about the same, because we just didn't know the material, and as I recall the test was poorly designed like class. Or IMO she might even have made it extra hard to teach us a lesson, to show us how much she knew.

I wasn't the type to go out of my way to meet with professors, but I did in her office immediately after class once because I had to for some reason. It was obvious she had been crying, and she had to compose herself. Made me feel sorry for her. It just had to do with scheduling or something, but me stopping by she actually really appreciated.

Sometimes I think people have things going on in their personal lives, that aren't going to be resolved in a day or two. But I think she just wasn't a good teacher.

I believe she was just a graduate student. But for some of the comments here, it is hard to imagine she went on to a teaching career. :jimlad:

In fairness, my second econ teacher was outstanding and similarly a graduate student I believe, though she was probably as good of teacher as any professor I had. In a huge lecture hall she was also as hot as any of the women taking the class :cool: not to in any way detract from her excellence as a teacher.
 
Last edited:

EYEoftheSTORM

Well-Known Member
SuperFanatic
SuperFanatic T2
Jan 3, 2009
3,124
515
113
35
Ames, Iowa
AgEd professor? If that's the one, super nice guy. Didn't have him for a class, but did consult with him on some grad adviser / enrollment stuff. Strong Hort background as I recall. Always willing to make time for ag teachers around the state. One story I was told was that he put up a grad student in his basement when it was time for that student to write his thesis. Just had him come over, made him hole up, and get the thesis written. A good man, personable, caring. If that's the same Dr. Kahler, you should be proud of him.

I think this may be him. I do not know of the story about letting a student stay in his basement but it very well could be him as he was very religious and generous. He did have a horticulture background as he would grow dahlias and enter them in the state fair for competition. Im glad to hear you thought this way about him.
 
Nov 9, 2008
293
7
18
Anyone have TAs/lab instructors who can't speak english? Lei Li lab instructor for bio 211 was impossible to understand. She probably doesn't teach anymore fortunately. I believe she was a grad student and I took that a couple years ago.

I had one like this...he was black....out of Africa black that is. Very smart guy, highly educated but his English was simply awful. He taught an economics class and half the class quit. I stuck it out and got a C and was damn proud of it. I also had another teacher who taught a statistics class who was a lazy guy......really lazy. We showed up for the two hour final and he kept saying read the directions, read the directions. I was never one to read directions but did that day and sure enough the directions said write your name and then answer the first question and the last question, wait until the clock says xxxx(ten minutes after the test started) time and then turn the test in. The first and last questions were dumb, not even related, more of a what did you get out of this class type stuff. No wrong or right answer for it. If you followed the directions you got an A, if not and you finished the 100 question test you got whatever grade you earned on the 100 questions. I think 15% of the class read the directions.
 

IcSyU

Well-Known Member
Nov 27, 2007
28,307
6,981
113
First to exams in my upper level accounting course has gotten a class average below 50%. I agree with who ever said grades this low should reflect poorly on the course or the teacher. He curves it but with most of the class knowing less than 50% of the material should we be allowed to pass? We should get Fs and he should be fired. "Sarcastic pirate" Basically after talking with him tonight he thinks a lot of account majors don't belong here and should have been weeded out long ago, but the college of business gets more money for more enrollment so they won't do that. I wanted to tell him its not his job to weed us out when we are seniors.

Which class was this? I thought the hardest was 387 and I didn't take that class until the fall of my 5th year.

I'm gonna go ahead and bet it was Accounting 485 (Principals of the Federal Income Tax) with Jon Perkins. He's a ****** bag.

I'm a licensed EA and got a copy of one of his exams and had to look some of the **** up because it doesn't test what you know, it tests how stupid he can make you look. Instead of testing to see if you know the basics of the tax code, he asks if you can remember the exception to the exception of the exception. Being an EA does not mean I know everything there is to know about taxation, but when I can barely do anything because everything is set up as a trick question something is wrong.

He point blank called our class stupid in the fall of 2009? Sorry prof, when the class average is 44% it isn't that we are stupid, it's that you suck at your job. How he still has a job is beyond me as no one actually likes him. He thinks the Iowa State College of Business is like a Stanford business degree. Welcome to being at a state school Perkins. Not everyone is socially awkward and reading their tax book to get off.
 
Last edited:

LindenCy

Kevin Dresser Fan Club
Staff member
Mar 19, 2006
32,371
4,092
113
Chicago, IL
Actually I had an incident like that; and yeah it was in the stone age. It was a Junior level Operating Systems class in CS which fortunately I kinda liked. The instructor was horrible. I mean horrible. The problem was not that he didn't know his stuff because frankly I don't know. The problem was that he couldn't speak or understand English. I think he was Chinese or from Taiwan. Anyway, as the semester rolled on the students got more and more ******. And actually kind of confronted him in class. Remember this is the stone age; not like today where somebody would have whipped out a gun and mowed people down. Just snide comments and general disrespect. Around Thanksgiving he went away for a couple of weeks (I think he went home) and we had a TA; who was OK but nothing special. Anyway, while the guy was gone a couple of the students went to the administration, filed formal complaints, and tried to get him fired.

Needless to say, when he got back he was ******. Really ******; and frustrated I think too because no matter how ****** he was he couldn't really yell at us or anything because he couldn't speak English. Anyway, the semester was almost over and then he hands out a sheet which explains his philosophy on the final. He is going to make it hard as ****. Essentially impossible and everyone will flunk it. But: its optional. If you don't want to take it you don't have to and you can keep the grade you currently have. Here is the thing: probably 90% of the class was getting C, D or F's. A lot of people had taken to not even showing up and were banking on aceing the final to bring their grade up so they could pass. Of the 10% of the class that were were getting A's and B's almost all were foreigners; Asian/Chinese. The guy couldn't speak English but he wasn't stupid. Luckily I had a B and decided that was good enough for me. I don't recall ever seeing that Prof again.

Weird story.

Back in the 1990's CS 228 was taught by a guy, who was a nice guy, but I don't think was used to teaching the class and ran through the semester's worth of material in 2/3 the semester then started reviewing. 80% of the class had a C or lower I think and 50% had a D or F. It was pretty brutal, but still not as bad as some of these stories.

I had another CS class where the TA was speaking during a review session and I couldn't tell if it was Chinese or English.