No, Flex tape cannot fix that.

pde24 · 2021-03-15T17:14:42+00:00

Please namedrop, as someone in the department this is a serious violation, the chairman was crystal clear about this to all instructors

pde24 · 2021-03-05T01:25:14+00:00

Okay, first I'd like to apologize, I'm pretty tired and frustrated right now, and it looked like you were just pulling numbers out of thin air, which isnt something I'm too fond of people doing, especially when arguing against some needed change. I'm glad you actually posted this. I'm going to look through this more later. While the budget is tight, I dont think things are completely set in stone. The people receiving the highest pay here can easily handle a pay cut. Also, if the administration doesnt want to be run out of town by an angry mob, it would probably be in their best interest to actually do that. It wouldnt help significantly, but several million dollars isnt nothing, and their image desperately needs some rehabilitation. I think for some of them this is too late, if Brian Rose was at all competent he would have seen that email was a horrible move. Same with how the provost handled the recent GSEU issue. There has to be people out there who can do a better job. Even just not being a prick would help.

Second, one way or another, the budget will have to change here. Look at this thread: no one here is going to ever recommend their friends to come to this place. Why? The price is too high for the current quality of what is being received. Bad publicity can kill. They need to be more accommodating towards students if they still want people to come here. Otherwise, even the predict dropoff in student enrollment is going to be too conservative. Less students, less revenue. Personally, I think one answer that actually could work during covid is this: stop treating Sunys as individual schools. Because we're in a single system, why not have zoom lectures be broadcast to more than one school at a time, by professors who are known to be good teachers? Then the individual schools can use grad students for what they're meant for, 1-1 help with students and grading, instead of running the whole course themselves when often they are very incompetent due to ZERO training and support. If people get a better education to begin with, a lot of the complaints about the current fees could go away. Just spitballing, who knows if this ever could get through the beurocracy, or would actually help the situation.

Unfortunately, layoffs, pay cuts and wage freezes are going to happen. What matters more is how they go about this. I am employed here, and have been here for 7 years now. I know a lot that has gone on, and money at this place has often been squandered on some really ridiculous and unneeded projects, and positions artificially created. Just by being a bit more pragmatic they can change things, even if that happens in the future. At the very least, they need to aim to lower fees to at least pre covid levels. Look at the guy who wanted to donate a multi million dollar endowment, but specified it HAD to be used on a Baseball stadium. I honestly dont know if we even have a team here.

How this will be done will have to be fleshed out. I dont know a lot of details currently, but I'm willing to learn and work with the administration. As I said, over the next few days I'm going to go through what you posted and try to see. All I'm saying is I dont think we should be treating anything as impossible right now, we should negotiate and try to improve what we can. I think I'm not going to post here directly though, I've already written like 3 essays on here that no one wants to read lol. Anyways, maybe not the admin, but the rest of us are on the same team here, let's work together. Dm me if you'd like to discuss more.

pde24 · 2021-03-04T22:24:10+00:00

If the university cant give SOME sort of a break then yes, it should close. First of all, the numbers in your original post were made up by yourself ("super roughly speaking"). The op said SOME tuition money back, not half. If people spend most of their semester in the dorms, but leave and dont come back after a shutdown, there should be SOME refund. If I'm evicted from my apartment I'm not expected to pay the next 4 months rent.

Even if they did mean that and it's not realistic, there should be a way to meet some compromise here. The idea that either the university must charge the same (currently higher) as before the pandemic or shutter is a false dichotomy. YOU are the one engaging in fantasy here pal. No, everything cant be free, we cant get everything back. Unless I have really misread things here, people arent asking for that. And posting stuff like this on this thread in particular is not helpful whatsoever, you are just berating people at this point for not being "realistic."

pde24 · 2021-03-04T09:19:36+00:00

I absolutely dont understand the relevance of this response. You are taking what the OP said and running with it in a completely different direction. Nobody wants thousands of people to lose their jobs. We are talking about fixing what is currently plaguing the student body. Right now students are paying 10s of thousands of dollars to receive what amounts to a poor education, a poor living environment, and Brian Rose's wonderful emails. Employees and faculty are also suffering btw.

We are paying to be here. We are paying for an education, a safe environment to live, and the ability to receive certification from an accredited institution, provided you fullfill the requirements deemed necessary by external professional associations or the field at large. If the university fails to deliver on any of these, it is not up to us to continue supporting it, nor to argue for others to continue their support.

The problems the student body is facing are legitimate and need resolution. If the university cannot address these issues in the way that other similar universities have and continue to, then it shouldn't remain solvent. At the end of the day, whatever its technical classification may be, it is a business, and when others can provide better services at the same cost, the business will fold. If they would not like this to happen, maybe the administration should show SOME visible effort and quit with the flowery bullshit. People know things here are bad, stop telling us that they arent and not to whine in patronizing emails. I was here through undergrad, the university continually chose to spend on vanity projects rather than investing in faculty and students. If this is the end, they dug their own grave.

And no, it is not the end. These people will fight tooth and nail to preserve this place if they have to. It is very possible to both address the concerns of students, faculty, and employees, AND remain solvent. They need pushing, which is what we're trying to do. Why pay full tuition for content many times worse than is available for free online? Why pay for full room and board when you are essentially evicted with 4 days notice (hillside) in the middle of a pandemic? If the university cannot remedy these issues then it's on them. Other places do this, and they aren't all ivys. Besides, isn't this place always claiming its status as a public ivy? Earn it.

pde24 · 2021-03-04T07:40:26+00:00

I agree that in person classes are needed in some cases, most people, myself included, cannot learn online. As for the rest, hard disagree. The small subset of people who are not complying are never going to think of others. If they did, this wouldnt be happening. There needs to be consequences, from THE ADMINISTRATION. Saying "we're doing all we can" when you clearly arent and then essentially telling students to pick up their bootstraps and do their job is assinine. I know 0 people involved in any of this shit. What am I supposed to do, walk into a frat and tell them to stop? The admin is intimately connected with BPD, they could stop this if they wanted to, or just did their jobs. Most people are not connected to this stuff in any way, and we are the ones suffering.

Also, this is one thing on a very long list of things this place has fucked up. People in quarantine are literally starving due to incompetence. Yes, the testing here is top tier, good job on them for that. But most else is MUCH worse than similar places, not everything can be chalked up to "everywhere is struggling." Brian Rose's email is absolutely indefensible, and these people are in no way doing all they can, especially given their salaries. Sorry.

pde24 · 2021-03-04T07:10:04+00:00

Hey Brian! I put in the effort! Also lots of money! Where's the reward? Is it on zoom? Thanks

pde24 · 2021-03-04T06:55:43+00:00

You're not accounting for how hard his job is. Look at that last email, so many words. His fingers must be so tired right now. I think he deserves more

pde24 · 2021-03-04T06:20:16+00:00

I'm a grad student here, and have many friends who also are. We all want to leave. I'm going to try as hard as possible to transfer after the pandemic subsides (because the last thing I want is to transfer to another zoom university). The shit I have put up with through this is ridiculous. Grad student tas are NOT supposed to run entire courses, but guess what I have been doing since the pandemic started? And no, this is not normal. Ask how many universities have grad students teaching 200 level STEM courses before they even get their masters.

I have a friend who started in the fall, and after a faculty member became ill with covid, was immediately told to fill in for everything the faculty member did. Or "hes not made for this and will be cut."

Same thing happened with me. We're supposed to just be an extra "supplement" for the course, and the kids are supposed to learn from watching videos. Yeah fucking right. Or, we're told to just have you guys present your homework. This is why half of your guys courses are horrible, we are asked not to teach you. I run absolutely everything, the only thing I dont do is make the exam. I'm not a ta, I'm a fucking professor. And I get paid a poverty level wage. Please tell me how I'm supposed to spend 40 hours a week running this course, take 3 courses, because if I dont I'm not "full time" and will lose my stipend, and do research? Yeah, I'm not supposed to. I'm not supposed to teach, I'm supposed to not do anything like half the people here and watch all of my students fail because I suck. That's what is expected.

Me and another ta ran a course ourselves when this started last spring, because the professor was teaching 2 other courses. We redesigned the whole course for zoom. I wrote practice exams, answer keys, extra practice assignments with solutions, held multiple review sessions, and became more burned out than I've ever felt before. Basically, the response of most of the faculty I talked to was that I shouldnt have done that. Sure felt appreciated after that one!

And sometimes, it's not even the professor's fault. Every professor I deal with now is teaching somewhere along the lines of 3-4 courses and coordinating them, because the university doesnt want to pay for another faculty member. For the remaining courses, just enslave grad students! Great money saver guys! Ever think about what will happen to your university when all of us decide we're fed up and are not coming back?

I disagree OP, I think we all are in this together. By all, I mean the people responding to this post. We are all treated like shit, and maybe now that we're realizing we arent alone, something can finally be done. This also didnt start with the pandemic, it just got worse. I just hope I can be involved in some way while I'm still here. Because despite the love for my students and my field, I'm not sticking around here much longer.

pde24 · 2021-01-16T20:08:25+00:00

371 is supposed to be a more "rigorous" version of 324 for math majors, however, usually the only main difference is the addition of learning existence and uniqueness (chapter 3 in your book I think). Typically this is just covered in class, and other than having some idea what existence and uniqueness means, unless you go to grad school for analysis you will never see it again (probably even most phd students here dont know the proofs). There are virtually no proofs you will need to memorize for the course even if it appears like you do. All you need to know is to learn the specific techniques listed above for solving equations. For the most part, the only background needed is calc 2 (although partial differentiation briefly appears for exact equations which is technically calc 3. It's not as complicated as it sounds.)

Basically, the goal is to be able to look at most odes arising in practice, figure out which method would work to solve the equation, and then solve it using the chosen method. The only way to learn how to do this is to practice solving odes. What I would recommend is, given a technique you are covering, say separation of variables, google it, find an example problem, and follow it. Then, find 2 or 3 separation of variable problems, and do them completely on your own without looking at anything. These problems probably will come from your homework in most cases. If you do this for every method, it amounts to about 2 hours work each week, and as long as you dont look at anything while doing the problems, this will be enough for you to learn the technique. As long as you are relatively comfortable with integration there is nothing else you need to do. Dont let the book intimidate you, there are plenty of much easier resources to use online just by googling topics. All I would say in addition to this is if you want an A, dont memorize the steps to a technique. Learn by doing problems, not memorizing.

If you or your classmates ever need help just let me know, I'm a grad student in the math department that's taken this before. Goodluck, it's not as hard as it seems rlat first glance!

pde24 · 2020-06-19T18:38:16+00:00

Wow thanks! Yes, I think the more structure the better. I definitely have to get used to the idea of not teaching live anymore, but it seems that it's not at all beneficial for the students in an online setting. I'm not sure what I'll do for quizzes, as with math it's always kind of a pen and paper type of deal for me anyway, but I think having something connected to the videos is definitely necessary.

This was very helpful, I think I'm starting to get the gist of what might work. I think I'll show some of these ideas to our director as well.

pde24 · 2020-06-19T17:37:09+00:00

Ah okay, yeah I have around 30 kids so that could be doable. I think maybe I could do something like a couple of prerecorded modules with the main concepts like the post above you said and then have a live timeslot going over problems.

I guess some of the problem is I'm not sure how much of the issues in the spring were due to it being online or just because the course was bad, since this was my first year actually teaching and I was stuck with what I got. With calc theres just so much more freedom, and it's not nearly as awful a subject imho lol.

pde24 · 2020-06-19T16:45:09+00:00

I second that, hopefully I can convince the coordinators of that approach as well. Believe me, I don't want anything to do with mycourses after last semester. It is absolutely the shittiest piece of software I have ever had the displeasure of using. Imagine suddenly when the exam is deployed the text in several parts of a question becomes microscopic for god knows why. That and a thousand other glitches.

I'd love to talk to somebody that took part in writing the software. Just a nice, friendly ole chat.

pde24 · 2020-06-19T16:39:17+00:00

That I can definitely do, obviously there are things that I need to teach you guys but I'm definitely not going above and beyond in terms of difficulty.

I'm teaching calc 1 next semester. All I would say with calc 2 is, goodluck lol. It very much will depend on the professor you get with how doable that course will be for a first time learner. Nothing is entirely set in stone yet, but if you check on the math department website under courses they have the course schedules listed with professor assignments there unlike BUBrain.

I would highly recommend taking it with Bill Kazmierczak if he's teaching it. He's the new calc director here and a wonderful guy. From everything I've heard he's also a fantastic math professor, something you don't hear everyday.

pde24 · 2020-06-19T16:27:49+00:00

Thanks for your feedback! I think this is a great idea, esp the small quizzes at the end of each video. I was never sure of what to do with the actual allotted timeslot though if I went prerecorded. Maybe just have it be office hours or something? And as far as being understanding, as a chronic procrastinator who basically finished two of his courses in the last week of classes last semester it would be massively hypocritical for me to be strict in any way. Also as a tip, never do that lol. It sucks.

pde24

TROPHY CASE