Professors ranked 7th among faculties at two-year colleges
(PALATINE, IL) Helen Burroughs and Charles Brown love their students – and their students love them. The associate professors boast two of Harper College’s highest scores on RateMyProfessors.com, a popular student-fueled website that now lists Harper’s entire faculty as one of the top-rated cumulatively among two-year programs nationwide.
The site, which features student ratings and comments regarding more than 1 million professors at 6,500 colleges across the United States, puts Harper’s faculty at No. 7 on its community college list for 2009. The annual rankings analysis was released this month.
“Each year, the RateMyProfessors.com rankings shine a light on the incredible work taking place at institutions across the country,” says Carlo DiMarco, Vice President of University Relations for mtvU, the MTV college network that owns and operates the site. “These lists directly reflect the voices of the students who are on campus, in these classrooms and listening to and learning from these professors.”
Burroughs, a Harper alumna who has taught psychology fulltime at the College for 12 years, has nearly 90 RateMyProfessors.com reviews and an overall quality score of 4.9 on a 5-point scale. In their online comments, students say she’s a dedicated professor who ensures everyone learns the material and has a great time doing it.
“I feel really honored,” says Burroughs, a former pediatric nurse who came to Harper in her 30s looking for a career change and was so inspired by her own Harper professors that she became one herself. “I love my job; I love these students; I love this campus. This makes me feel really good.”
Also rating high is Brown, who – motivated by teachers in his own life – has headed up numerous Harper ethics, religion and other philosophy courses for 15 years. His overall quality score is 4.8 points out of 5 on the website, with students calling him a caring, passionate professor who makes the course fun and the material interesting. He says he’s flattered by the favorable reviews and remarks.
“I hope that we, the Harper faculty, have indeed made some significant impact on the lives of the students who rank us so highly,” said Brown, whose two sons attended Harper before eventually graduating from the University of Illinois. “However, my confidence in the Harper faculty comes from actually working with and observing these colleagues in action. I have never had a problem recommending students to attend Harper College, because I know that this faculty is so good.”
RateMyProfessors.com annually releases a synopsis of top-ranked faculties and individual professors, based on ratings submitted by students. The site analyzed only professors who received more than 30 reviews over the last three years; scores from the most recent years were weighted more heavily.