Why Rose rocks, part 2

Hopefully, none of this is an eye-opener for graduating seniors, but for underclassmen, if you didn’t know this before, now you do. Here are more reasons why Rose rocks!

No matter what you want to do academically at Rose-Hulman, the faculty and staff are eager to help you. Not grudgingly, not hesitantly, not somewhat willingly. Eagerly. So, before I go on, how is this different from any other school?

I have a friend in Germany right now taking a course where there were several hundred students in a hall with a professor who is not terribly excited to be present. I considered registering for a course at Ohio State; the department representative I spoke with informed me that the professors had absolutely no obligation or even likelihood of helping a student with issues (it was a minor scheduling concern). In other schools, the only form of help is a teaching assistant, who is simply not as helpful as a professor.

One way in which they are so helpful is in class scheduling. If you are ever in a bind, schedule-wise, it’s not a problem, just go ask. Granted, this shouldn’t be a problem if you are on a standard schedule or have submitted a double major plan to the registrar, since the registrar goes out of their way to make sure there are as few conflicts of this type as possible.

But, if you do have a problem, faculty and staff are all too happy to help. Some of the things they have done are: overload the section, raise the cap (and then overload the section), move the room so the cap can be raised, open up another section, change the hours a section is offered (my ADES course was moved at least four times prior to the start of the quarter and it never gave me a conflict), allow you to miss one hour a week to deal with a lab schedule, permit course substitutions, help you test out of a subject you’re already very familiar with - the list goes on and on.

So, on to something other than simply scheduling: actual academic work.

Rose-Hulman professors (generally) enjoy helping students learn. That’s why they’re here. At other schools, professors are required to do research and/or publish on a regular basis, but not here. Professors are willing to give you direction in research, help you with current coursework, or just help you with any material you’re interested in even when they have never taught the class. Some will help with problems that are not strictly related to any class, such as checking a statement of purpose for graduate school applications. The moral of the story: go talk to your profs (and the registrar and secretaries and anyone else). They don’t bite, so stop over!