I remember a conversation that I had with a random young, person that I came across working at the Department of Transportation in Austin who had taken an introductory Ethnic Studies course at UT.  I was initially so excited to meet and have this conversation with him, but then he shared that it was one of the worst classes he had ever taken at UT.  

Fortunately, the faculty member is no longer teaching at UT.  The course and the faculty member's teaching sounded subpar, if not openly hostile, toward the students. He said that that experience turned him off to Ethnic Studies which he did not pursue any further.  He said that the students agreed as a group to write a bad evaluation of the professor.  

While I was so disappointed to hear this former student's account, it speaks to what this research and findings are about.  These courses need to matter every bit as much as any, yet sadly, they are not always treated this way.

-Angela 

It Matters a Lot Who Teaches Introductory Courses. Here’s Why.

By Beckie Supiano APRIL 15, 2018

Joshua Lott for The Chronicle

The first professor whom students encounter in a discipline is likely to play a big role in whether they continue in it.

Introductory courses can open doors for students, helping them not only discover a love for a subject area that can blossom into their major but also feel more connected to their campus.

But on many campuses, teaching introductory courses typically falls to less-experienced instructors. Sometimes the task is assigned to instructors whose very connection to the college is tenuous. A growing body of evidence suggests that this tension could have negative consequences for students.

Two papers presented at the American Educational Research Association’s annual meeting in New York on Sunday support this idea.

The first finds that community-college students who take a remedial or introductory course with an adjunct instructor are less likely to take the next course in the sequence.

The second finds negative associations between the proportion of a four-year college’s faculty members who are part-time or off the tenure track and outcomes for STEM majors.

The community-college paper, “Role of Adjunct Faculty in Realizing the Postsecondary Dreams of Historically Marginalized Student Populations,” is not the first to examine the link between part-time instructors and student outcomes, said Florence Xiaotao Ran, its lead author. Several previous papers have found a negative relationship between contingent faculty members and student outcomes.

At least one study has found the opposite effect, although that research was conducted at Northwestern University, which, as its authors noted, is typical in neither its student population nor its working conditions for adjuncts.