My main goal: To help my students succeed in their professional endeavors.
My basic assumption: My students strive for success in their professional endeavors.
Behavior during class. A university education is the highest educational stage (and one of the highest privileges) in a person's life. Such an education is a rewarding process of dedication and commitment to pursuing knowledge and acquiring professional skills. The main environment for this process is the classroom.
As a K-State faculty member, I am responsible for having the 'ultimate control over classroom behavior' and to 'exercise my best judgment in setting standards of conduct for my classes and for taking a reasonable approach in responding to disruptive behaviors' (as described in the Guidelines for faculty members regarding students conduct).
It is then of capital importance to set the pertinent standards of professional classroom behavior and to discourage inappropriate behavior. Examples of inappropriate or unprofessional behaviors include: non-threatening disruptive behavior, threatening behavior, students sleeping in class, students reading the newspaper or doing the crosswords in class, students eating, texting or browsing the internet during class.
As part of my duties as teaching adviser, I often attend and evaluate lectures by teaching assistants and, in some cases, I have witnessed how instructors allow students to sleep or read the newspaper or text during their lectures. I consider this as lack of character and a flaw in the instructor. In my view, such an instructor is, maybe unwittingly, showing scarce interest in the students' rapport and their involvement in the learning experience.
Behavior during office hours. My office hours are indicated on the course's website. I strongly discourage pop-up visits. If you cannot make it to my office hours, you can contact me to make an appointment.
If a student comes to my office hours and my office door is closed, the student must knock on the door and wait for an indication to come in. This may sound as a triviality; however, I have seen students going for the doorknob first, or directly opening the door and coming in. Needless to say, that shows a poor level of sophistication and social skills.
Assignment submission. The course assignments (homework, labs, projects, etc.) are posted on the course's website. The basic principle for every assignment is the following:
| deadlines are sacred. |
As a professional, one is
expected to deliver and to deliver on time. A successful technique for
some of my students is that of a personal
deadline which is a deadline several days before the actual
deadline of an assignment. The personal deadline technique allows
students to feel in charge, in control of their academic activities and
that they own their most valuable resource: time.
Poor time management leads to last-minute rushes, stress, and loss of confidence, which results in a degraded performance.
A necessary condition for A-grade work is on-time work.
Students' work must be neat, well-organized, and stapled. Loose pages, pages just ripped off the notebooks, stained pages, and illegible handwriting denote the lack of the student's interest in the assignment.
Before submitting an assignment the student should ask him/herself 'Is this the work of an engineer?', or 'Is this the work of a teacher?', or 'Can this work be considered professional?', or 'Does this work represent me well?'.
Poor time management leads to last-minute rushes, stress, and loss of confidence, which results in a degraded performance.
A necessary condition for A-grade work is on-time work.
Students' work must be neat, well-organized, and stapled. Loose pages, pages just ripped off the notebooks, stained pages, and illegible handwriting denote the lack of the student's interest in the assignment.
Before submitting an assignment the student should ask him/herself 'Is this the work of an engineer?', or 'Is this the work of a teacher?', or 'Can this work be considered professional?', or 'Does this work represent me well?'.
Contacting me by e-mail. Regarding e-mail regulations: Excerpts from the policy on Official Electronic Correspondence with Faculty, Staff and Students:
'All faculty, staff, and students are issued a K-State eID and an e-mail account for use throughout the time they are a student or an employee. The definition of an official University e-mail address is eID@ksu.edu or eID@k-state.edu'
'E-mail shall be considered an appropriate mechanism for official communication by Kansas State University with faculty, staff, and students. E-mail shall also be considered an appropriate mechanism for official communication by faculty with students.'
'Faculty, staff, and students are expected to check their e-mail on a frequent and consistent basis in order to stay current with University and/or faculty-student related communications. '
'Faculty may require students to provide their official K-State e-mail address (eID@ksu.edu) to receive a reply.'
That is, e-mail communication from an official K-State e-mail address is considered an official means of communication and official K-State e-mail address should be checked frequently.
I require students to e-mail me by using exclusively their official K-State e-mail. I will disregard messages from e-mail addresses associated to parties such as gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc.
Regarding e-mail contents: During my years as an instructor I have received e-mails from students with 'greetings' such as 'Yo, teach', or 'Hi!', or 'Hey, Diego!', or 'When the homework due? [sic]', which do not correspond to a professional, academic relationship between an instructor and a student.
Here is a sample for appropriate e-mail communication:
Prof. Maldonado: My name is (here your name) and I'm in your Math (here course number) class. I'm contacting you regarding (here the body of your letter). Sincerely, (here your signature) |
Here are the parts of a letter and here are further sample letters. I enforce the practice of a formal, professional communication to prepare students to address themselves to prospective employers and to government, industry, business, and professional entities in general.
Grade posting: I always use the K-State online system to post grades for each assignment as soon as I get those grades from the TA's, grader, or after my own grading. This allows students to monitor their perfomances in real time.
The magical-beam-of-light theory. For some strange reason, some students implicitly subscribe to the theory that during the evening they are handed their engineer (or teacher, etc.) diplomas, a magical beam of light will fall upon them and will immediately turn them into an engineer (or teacher, etc.) And all of the sudden they will become professionals, they will know how to address themselves to other people in a professional environment, how to manage time and meet deadlines, how to have a clear handwriting, how to be resourceful, independent, and reliable, even if they have not practiced these skills before!
There is no such a magical beam of light.
Professionalism and success are not events, they are processes. It is not the diploma that validates the student, it is exactly the other way around.