To My Professor: Student Voices for Great College Teaching: What college students really say about their instructors, with advice from master educators and teacher trainers

Michigan State University School of Journalism

Aug 2016 · Read the Spirit

About this ebook

“To My Professor: Student Voices for Great College Teaching” begins with remarks by students about their professors. They tend not to be the kind of remarks that professors usually hear, and some are harsh. Others are full of gratitude for teachers who inspire and motivate. The “To My Professor” statements are really just starting points that lead to advice from master teachers. Teaching college is difficult and this book has some potential solutions. More than 50 chapters cover situations including expectations, communication, technology, race, gender and religion, mental and physical health.   

About the author

Led by editor and teacher Joe Grimm, a journalism class at Michigan State University gathered comments from college students about what they really say about their instructors but do not reveal in person. Those comments, from interviews, written on index cards and posted on social media, became the starting points for explorations into how professors, teaching assistants and other college teachers can be more effective.

Grimm has spent about 40 years teaching in college classrooms as an adjunct and faculty members and almost 20 years evaluating students as a newspaper recruiter. The students on this project had majors or minors in more than 10 fields of study.

The concept of the book is to have students raise the questions and criticisms and to then find classic, goal-oriented techniques that make teaching for more effective teaching in those situations. Many of the answers come from award-winning teachers and those who train them. This book complements and refers to other teaching literature, but does so from the point of view of college’s ultimate consumers: the students.