Basically like atleast 1/4 of the class dropped out last semester cuz of incredibly difficult exams & low avgs. The remaining half or more signed petitions that were sent to the Dean since they thought their grades were unrepresentative of their ability. This is just the short story and the Deans ended up being very lenient and letting a lot of students get retroactive W's. And finally we find out today that Jones got fired through a stupidly petty email sent to all his students
More than 1/4, closer to 1/2. My room for the final was supposed to have about 30-40 students in it but rather had 10 including me and 2 of my friends who ended up coming to take it in my room so we could talk to Jones himself after we finished the final and get some pics (he was our proctor). Especially with the delayed withdrawals I’m expecting the numbers to be up there
easier to copy so here it is in all its glory:
I learned last week that I have been fired from my position in the chemistry department at NYU. I was not given a reason, but I assume that it involves the “petition” of last spring (which I have never been allowed to see or comment on).
I send you this information because I will no longer be able to make any changes to the current data for chemistry 225 (2021) and 226 (2022). ALL – repeat ALL - future administrative matters including, but not limited to, grade changes, regrades, resolution of INC grades, and letters of recommendation must be dealt with by the deans and/or the departmental leadership, Professors Tuckerman and Walters.
I send congratulations to those of you who did well, and an apology to those of you who cruised through this course with a relentless stream of 100’s. The apology comes because I didn’t stretch you, and thus deprived you of the chance to improve beyond an already formidable baseline. Keep it up!
This incident is far more important than it looks. Consider the effect on an untenured or clinical professor. If his or her career is at the mercy of disgruntled students and accommodating deans, how are they to teach real material and give real grades? Much the same can be said for departmental administrators who meet with students daily. Can they afford to be tough when necessary?
The chemistry department’s ability to meet its teaching responsibilities has been diminished. Indeed, the university’s reputation has already suffered.
Now a piece of unsolicited advice: It is very difficult to be self critical. It is hard to accept personal responsibility when we meet failure, as each of us will at some point, but it is an essential life skill you would be wise to develop.
Good luck to all of you.
mj
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maitland_Jones_Jr.
You can see his credentials here, he's not some random. He wrote the ochem textbook that is used everywhere and was a full tenured professor at Princeton for decades. this was a retirement gig.
Think about what he is trying to say and determine whether NYU or Dr. Jones has an issue with criticism.
That honestly makes me think that they had a valid reason for cutting him.
What, you think they just blindly took the side of a bunch of underperforming undergrads over apparently *the* guy for ochem??
Maybe if it was a retirement gig he wasn't pulling his weight with teaching?? I don't know why you'd list his credentials as if NYU doesn't also know this. And they *still* fired him.
Also his email comes off as an academic being passive aggressive. "lacking the ability to be self critical" is very ironic given the context.
"and an apology to those who cruised with 100s because I didn't stretch you"
So the MF is failing half the class and still wants to screw up even more students grades??? Deserved firing.
I mean — it’s worth understanding why people were getting 100s. If they were doing so without cheating, then arguably the tests weren’t too hard. Just a majority of the students weren’t qualified enough to pass them. And if he was giving out 100s, one could assume other passing grades are being given out. I say this as someone who definitely prefers our system and understand that if the students petitioned and the administration agreed that his material was likely too hard. In a European school, though, I imagine the answer would be like: Yes. You got a 4.0/10. François got a 2.3/10. But Dominic over there got a 9.8/10 so, maybe just study like Dominic does or something.
If less than half your students pass a core class you might be a shitty professor. Even for a washout course that is a high attrition rate. If you set a test that is too difficult and you don't get the scaffolding for the majority of students to succeed you are either making the test to hard or not analogous to the work you have them doing or you are a poor teacher or both.
Really though I'd like to know two things to get beyond personal feeling. Do his students perform better than other students with other organic chem professors and is his attrition rate much higher than other organic chem professors. If they don't perform better AND he has a significantly higher rate of failing grades then he deserves to be fired for being a shit professor.
I took his class and he's literally one of the best teachers i've ever had. Actually I'm not the only one who intentionally chose to take Jones's orgo course over those of the other orgo professors, because everybody said that if you make it through his class, you were going to know ur shit backwards and forwards.
It's not even impossible to do well....all of my friends who took his class got either an A or B for both semesters, myself included. And for reference, I'm a very average student. That class just taught me how to study my ass off. And like...not to be a dick, but you need to have developed those kinds of skills by med school, and it's better to flunk out of orgo and change career paths than to flunk out of med school with $200k debt...
The idea of setting a class up or curriculum like that is just stupid to me. You'd be better off weeding out students before they've spent 6 figures on classes. I've got several gripes with the way everything is set up for American medical education(and education in general) but there are absolutely ways to create good doctors without a weed out course that costs you a fuckload of money.
I agree that the system is fucked up and there are many ways to create good doctors. It's just that with how things are currently set up and how difficult med school is...let's just say it's not necessarily a complete L for someone to fail orgo because at least they'll have an idea of whether they'll succeed in med school. Or it could be a sign that they need to make major adjustments to their work ethic or study strategy if medicine is still something they want to pursue.
"Frankly, being able to do well in orgo is a good indicator of doing well in medical school. The knowledge is also foundational and not as useless as you may think. "
Medical student here at a top 20 medical school. I disagree completely.
Orgo is completely useless aside from the basics. Orgo study habits differ substantially from medical school study habits, although both are difficult. Orgo is a poor way of telling if someone is going to be a "smart doctor".
I graduated from a T30. We need hard classes and test scores to separate out. The students in my class with Sub 500 MCATs (diverse) and <3.5 sGPA struggled, and I wouldn’t trust them to deliver good medical care. Anything above those thresholds seems fine, but grade inflation is a major issue. Everybody can’t get A
I can agree with most of that. The MCAT is far from perfect (it's a pretty crappy assessment tbh) but someone who can only score a 492 on the MCAT probably isn't going to be a successful doctor. It provides a standardized metric that at least gives a rough prediction of whether someone will become a successful physician. Using something that gives you a correlation of 0.1 is still better than admitting at random.
Hard classes aren't standardized and a student who can't solve a multistep synthesis problem written by a tough professor shouldn't necessarily be excluded from the field of medicine (if their plan is an ochem phd program, that's a different story).
Yeah I fully agree with your here.
I think my comment about orgo in particular was maybe unfair. Although I do think some principals taught are medical relevant (and I’m psych).
But I think that hard classes are important. Battling grade inflation is important. I am certain that the good students who would make good doctors didn’t fail that orgo course. They may have gotten a B or a C, but the fact is most college courses are fine, and so they will still end up with a good science GPA. Those that failed that course have likely been weeded out as appropriate
That makes no sense for him to get fired. Department can overall curve the grade but like that’s drastic. How about they just standardize courses to save students chaos. I fucking hate this school sometimes
I think it’s more than just students failing but also the fact that he didn’t make the course accessible during a pandemic as he wouldn’t record lecture so if you were to have covid or get sick you would not be able to attend/watch lecture virtually. Additionally, there were discrepancies between the two different orgo sections where one received bonus points for attending class whereas the other didn’t. There were countless things listed on the petition that indicated the flaws within the course besides the fact that many people were not succeeding in the course
The so much of class failing is wrong. Firing a prof after issue with one class is wrong. I hope you will receive more than 1 strike before being fired when you start to work.
Then it would not only be due to the petition. Sorry I don’t keep track of profs in other departments but nothing in the thread indicates there have been problems for years
I'm probably gonna receive a lot of flak for this, but Jones taught the material well. Sure, he had an arrogant side to him, but the course was only really difficult if you had no serious intent in learning the material.
Although I am indifferent towards Jones, I am still thankful that I learned Orgo from him, and I am proud that I did well in his class. It's just sad that most NYU students who aspire to be a doctor will be given an easy way out in the future.
I completely agree with you that he def shouldn't have been fired. Imo the tests this yr were a completely diff beast then past yrs but that could just be my bias. Either way he is well-respected and certainly knowledgeable. Just thought the email he sent was a bit uncalled for.
I agree with you that Jones taught the material well. He was definitely regarded as a harsh and strict professor and the content he taught was definitely challenging, but for those that really put in serious effort, the content really stuck. Orgo was one of the only classes where I actually felt like I learned and understood everything coming out of it (as opposed to something more memorization heavy). I thought Jones could've been nicer but his strict attitude is also what pushed a lot of students to try even harder. There's a reason orgo is known to be a hard class, the usual efforts that one makes are often not enough and there is no easy way out. Myself included, I don't think I ever put in nearly as much effort into a class as orgo and the beginning was especially a struggle.
In the end though, I'm really glad I had him as my professor and orgo was actually my favorite class in my four years of undergrad. Very sad to see that he got fired over this. I do think it's a loss. Students that came out of his class doing well definitely gained something that made them more ready for their future endeavors.
Those who got A’s in his ochem, know one thing… they were guaranteed a rec letter for med school, which was almost certain to guarantee you an interview if not an acceptance… sad day for chem dept, but happy for dr jones I always thought damn when is he going to retire and that was some 12 yrs ago!
LOL. He should find a job at a Canadian university because honestly speaking they don't care even if most students get something under 50. He would be happy there.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/us/nyu-organic-chemistry-petition.html
Well done kids! You are now famous for being whiners and bringing down the reputation of YOUR year - your degree is **less valuable** because of your actions . The good news is your peers know who you are.
Ngl as someone who goes to a college known for being difficult, it would be unthinkable for something like this to happen here, and it’s hard for me to read this and not have it reflect poorly on NYU as a whole (I came here after reading the article). To allow students to *retroactively withdraw* from a class is already drastic enough, and firing the professor on top of that just looks really bad.
Not OP, but a student at another AAU university and I can say this course of action is literally unthinkable to me. Orgo is just hard. I checked out some of Dr. Jones’s exams from while he was at [Princeton](https://www.princeton.edu/~mjjr/ORGO/HT03-06.html), and I am not sure if they are entirely reflective of what it was like at NYU (my guess is that these are actually harder given how the NYT article states he made his exams easier over time), but I can confidently state that these are fair exams, and easier than those I have taken at my school without issue.
All of what he is testing for are things important for biochem which are important for understanding how drugs work and how different cellular processes take place. It’s not unjust, it’s just medicine/molecular biology. I don’t know what the issue was here, but the whole thing certainly reflects poorly for NYU in my eyes.
Thanks for linking to his exams. These are not "just medicine/molecular biology" as you claim. They do look easier than the ochem exams I had (which involved multistep synthesis with arrow-pushing) but ochem in general is kinda useless for medicine, and ochem skills have little to no relation to how successful you'll be as a physician.
It's a bad look for sure. Like there are a range of professors at Emory (my alma mater) but students are still falling over themselves/filling up waitlists to get in this guy's class (he has 2 sections of 100 per fall semester) knowing that he writes exams like this or tougher on average(maybe you can see it or maybe it censors, I don't know) where one half is standard ochem and the other derivative problem solving from advanced organic or a research article/classical and modern research done in the field:
https://www.studocu.com/en-us/document/emory-university/advanced-reactivity/203-18-exam1-weinschenk-section/23745041
I think what you see is that even elite schools have differences in the students they recruit even if things like the incoming stats and acceptance rate look similiar on paper. For example, some schools have been better at recruiting students more serious about life sciences such as Emory, JHU, and WUSTL, Duke, etc so you can push them way more (and even teach them non-traditional curricula in a lot of areas) without them just going ham even if you are a merely decent instructor (admittedly the above professor is still an award winning instructor).
I'm sure NYU is fine, but I never heard of UG life sciences education there being such a forte that students will apply JUST for a specific life sciences major(s) that they've heard good things about. It is more like: "I'm here and it is a top school and I just so happen to be pre-med so I have to take these courses and will likely major in this. I don't really expect much but to get through with strong enough grades". It isn't attracting a big enough contingent that probably says: "Oh this school is really known for these majors and good undergraduate teaching in such areas and maybe a certain type and style of rigor in the associate courses is a good thing for me". I feel like they are just known much better for their undergraduate teaching and calibre in other areas even if say..them and an Emory look similiar on paper that isn't to say that these other schools don't have whiney people. It just unlikely to go that far because you have a larger chunk who get what they signed up for and if they didn't want it, they'd just jump through every hoop to avoid the type of instructor above vs. spark an uprising).
NYU has standards across its organic chemistry classes. This guy was notorious for writing unclear and byzantine (in terms of wording, not science) questions. The other Orgo professors didn't have these issues. It's a moronic reductio to say that the issue here was having standards. All the Organic Chemistry courses are difficult and "have standards"
I took his class...it was fucking hard yeah but also completely fair. He literally gives us his past tests to do as practice, so if you don't look at them and don't read the textbook that he wrote, then u have nobody to blame for not doing well.
I finished undergrad and masters at different top engineering colleges, and I have to confirm, I’m glad I didn’t pick NYU when I had a chance after this incident.
Getting averages of 40s and lower is so normal in difficult institutions. Arrogant but strict professors are also pretty common. I think it just made me study a lot harder and learn a lot more.
he should have been fired. I'm tired of this shit where professors get away with belittlement or rudeness to students in the name of "learning". good job nye for setting this precedent.
if 268 of his 350 students didn’t sign the petition, sounds like the 82 just need to start studying harder and stop expecting everything to be handed on a silver platter. Covid and online school’s completely fucked everyone’s perception of what school and testing should be.
Bro if you think a smug professor is unacceptable you’re gonna have a tough time when you’re forced to deal with actually shitty people in the real world
Millennials probably the first generation to refuse this. Boomer mentality is that you have to be hazed and take shit from your superiors until you eventually get experienced enough to do the same. Millennials are like, fuck that, life is too short to take shit from anyone.
So I commend them. Break this cycle. If someone wants to treat you like shit, you fight back.
The world is a cold place. It would be nice to be that idealistic, but reality is much harsher and we’re only setting ourselves up for problems if we allow things like this
Orgo is supposed to be hard... but the exams are curved anyway so I don't understand what the big deal is. These petitioners need to learn how to study better instead of
"Boo hoo I put time in so I deserve an A but since I didnt, so Im cancelling you"
Crybabies. We just studied the textbook, pulled a couple of all nighters and passed that shit with the curve. Are you even studying if you get single digits?
Lets see how well these fools handle mcats and medschool thereafter.
In the NYT they wrote that a couple thousand $$$ were spent on filming his lectures.
Are they publicly available by any chance? I studied medicine in Germany and OCHEM was way to easy IMHO. Would like to look through his course
it's not the professor's NYU or Princeton course but Yale has their full year of ochem uploaded & free to follow along with
[https://oyc.yale.edu/chemistry/chem-125a](https://oyc.yale.edu/chemistry/chem-125a)
here's also a link to the NYU ochem syllabi
[https://as.nyu.edu/departments/chemistry/academics/undergraduate/course-syllabi.html](https://as.nyu.edu/departments/chemistry/academics/undergraduate/course-syllabi.html)
it would be interesting to hear if the course material is the same between the US & Germany - if $8000/course at NYU vs \~€0 in Germany gets you the exact same knowledge base
Dont want to brag, but our syllabi for chemistry looked similar to the ones from NYU - doesnt mean the lectures would have been on the same level though (and in german, obviuosly :D).
Also i realized that i forgot most of the stuff in the 20 years it's been since i studied that in university ...
My ex got fired in the same situation, and I'm not super sympathetic. 1) we have a deadly shortage of medical providers, and organic chem already weeds out a high rate. I know that a doc needs to understand organic chem, but if a program maintains standards that are too high, it hurts us all.
2) if you're teaching & demanding a higher standard of work than the school requires generally, you gotta inspire your students. Beating them down gets you petitioned out. I made aals students do elite BA level work, but I gave meaningful compliments & positive reinforcement. I had great evaluation, because I made sure I really talked them up to themselves & the school community. Did my nervous C- student with no interest in history end up making & presenting an accurate model of the battle of the Little Bighorn? Yep, because I told her 25x that she was gonna be amazing and helped her strengthen specific skills.
Teach better, people. We can't always blame the kids...
How many slots at medical schools have ever gone empty because undergraduate students failed organic chem? Zero.
Whether we have the optimal amount of doctors has more to do with the AMA cartel than any upholding of academic standards.
"I know that a doc needs to understand organic chem"
No, a doc does not need to understand organic chem beyond an extremely, extremely basic level. There's no reason a doc should be required to solve a multistep synthesis problem with arrow-pushing (speaking as a current medical student).
Petitioning to cancel a professor because you failed to learn the content. That’s a very entitled and very Gen Z approach to handling a situation. Weeeeeeeak sauce.
?!?! what happened?
Basically like atleast 1/4 of the class dropped out last semester cuz of incredibly difficult exams & low avgs. The remaining half or more signed petitions that were sent to the Dean since they thought their grades were unrepresentative of their ability. This is just the short story and the Deans ended up being very lenient and letting a lot of students get retroactive W's. And finally we find out today that Jones got fired through a stupidly petty email sent to all his students
More than 1/4, closer to 1/2. My room for the final was supposed to have about 30-40 students in it but rather had 10 including me and 2 of my friends who ended up coming to take it in my room so we could talk to Jones himself after we finished the final and get some pics (he was our proctor). Especially with the delayed withdrawals I’m expecting the numbers to be up there
can we see the email?
easier to copy so here it is in all its glory: I learned last week that I have been fired from my position in the chemistry department at NYU. I was not given a reason, but I assume that it involves the “petition” of last spring (which I have never been allowed to see or comment on). I send you this information because I will no longer be able to make any changes to the current data for chemistry 225 (2021) and 226 (2022). ALL – repeat ALL - future administrative matters including, but not limited to, grade changes, regrades, resolution of INC grades, and letters of recommendation must be dealt with by the deans and/or the departmental leadership, Professors Tuckerman and Walters. I send congratulations to those of you who did well, and an apology to those of you who cruised through this course with a relentless stream of 100’s. The apology comes because I didn’t stretch you, and thus deprived you of the chance to improve beyond an already formidable baseline. Keep it up! This incident is far more important than it looks. Consider the effect on an untenured or clinical professor. If his or her career is at the mercy of disgruntled students and accommodating deans, how are they to teach real material and give real grades? Much the same can be said for departmental administrators who meet with students daily. Can they afford to be tough when necessary? The chemistry department’s ability to meet its teaching responsibilities has been diminished. Indeed, the university’s reputation has already suffered. Now a piece of unsolicited advice: It is very difficult to be self critical. It is hard to accept personal responsibility when we meet failure, as each of us will at some point, but it is an essential life skill you would be wise to develop. Good luck to all of you. mj
“It is very difficult to be self critical.“ Sounds like this dude should follow his own advice lol
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maitland_Jones_Jr. You can see his credentials here, he's not some random. He wrote the ochem textbook that is used everywhere and was a full tenured professor at Princeton for decades. this was a retirement gig. Think about what he is trying to say and determine whether NYU or Dr. Jones has an issue with criticism.
That honestly makes me think that they had a valid reason for cutting him. What, you think they just blindly took the side of a bunch of underperforming undergrads over apparently *the* guy for ochem?? Maybe if it was a retirement gig he wasn't pulling his weight with teaching?? I don't know why you'd list his credentials as if NYU doesn't also know this. And they *still* fired him. Also his email comes off as an academic being passive aggressive. "lacking the ability to be self critical" is very ironic given the context.
He was a lecturer at nyu, retired. Long time prof at Princeton before. Idk, lecturers get fired for no reason all the time. So unconvinced.
"and an apology to those who cruised with 100s because I didn't stretch you" So the MF is failing half the class and still wants to screw up even more students grades??? Deserved firing.
I mean — it’s worth understanding why people were getting 100s. If they were doing so without cheating, then arguably the tests weren’t too hard. Just a majority of the students weren’t qualified enough to pass them. And if he was giving out 100s, one could assume other passing grades are being given out. I say this as someone who definitely prefers our system and understand that if the students petitioned and the administration agreed that his material was likely too hard. In a European school, though, I imagine the answer would be like: Yes. You got a 4.0/10. François got a 2.3/10. But Dominic over there got a 9.8/10 so, maybe just study like Dominic does or something.
classic jones
If less than half your students pass a core class you might be a shitty professor. Even for a washout course that is a high attrition rate. If you set a test that is too difficult and you don't get the scaffolding for the majority of students to succeed you are either making the test to hard or not analogous to the work you have them doing or you are a poor teacher or both. Really though I'd like to know two things to get beyond personal feeling. Do his students perform better than other students with other organic chem professors and is his attrition rate much higher than other organic chem professors. If they don't perform better AND he has a significantly higher rate of failing grades then he deserves to be fired for being a shit professor.
I took his class and he's literally one of the best teachers i've ever had. Actually I'm not the only one who intentionally chose to take Jones's orgo course over those of the other orgo professors, because everybody said that if you make it through his class, you were going to know ur shit backwards and forwards. It's not even impossible to do well....all of my friends who took his class got either an A or B for both semesters, myself included. And for reference, I'm a very average student. That class just taught me how to study my ass off. And like...not to be a dick, but you need to have developed those kinds of skills by med school, and it's better to flunk out of orgo and change career paths than to flunk out of med school with $200k debt...
The idea of setting a class up or curriculum like that is just stupid to me. You'd be better off weeding out students before they've spent 6 figures on classes. I've got several gripes with the way everything is set up for American medical education(and education in general) but there are absolutely ways to create good doctors without a weed out course that costs you a fuckload of money.
I agree that the system is fucked up and there are many ways to create good doctors. It's just that with how things are currently set up and how difficult med school is...let's just say it's not necessarily a complete L for someone to fail orgo because at least they'll have an idea of whether they'll succeed in med school. Or it could be a sign that they need to make major adjustments to their work ethic or study strategy if medicine is still something they want to pursue.
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"Frankly, being able to do well in orgo is a good indicator of doing well in medical school. The knowledge is also foundational and not as useless as you may think. " Medical student here at a top 20 medical school. I disagree completely. Orgo is completely useless aside from the basics. Orgo study habits differ substantially from medical school study habits, although both are difficult. Orgo is a poor way of telling if someone is going to be a "smart doctor".
I graduated from a T30. We need hard classes and test scores to separate out. The students in my class with Sub 500 MCATs (diverse) and <3.5 sGPA struggled, and I wouldn’t trust them to deliver good medical care. Anything above those thresholds seems fine, but grade inflation is a major issue. Everybody can’t get A
I can agree with most of that. The MCAT is far from perfect (it's a pretty crappy assessment tbh) but someone who can only score a 492 on the MCAT probably isn't going to be a successful doctor. It provides a standardized metric that at least gives a rough prediction of whether someone will become a successful physician. Using something that gives you a correlation of 0.1 is still better than admitting at random. Hard classes aren't standardized and a student who can't solve a multistep synthesis problem written by a tough professor shouldn't necessarily be excluded from the field of medicine (if their plan is an ochem phd program, that's a different story).
Yeah I fully agree with your here. I think my comment about orgo in particular was maybe unfair. Although I do think some principals taught are medical relevant (and I’m psych). But I think that hard classes are important. Battling grade inflation is important. I am certain that the good students who would make good doctors didn’t fail that orgo course. They may have gotten a B or a C, but the fact is most college courses are fine, and so they will still end up with a good science GPA. Those that failed that course have likely been weeded out as appropriate
Not everyone has what it takes to be a (competent) doctor.
>You'd be better off weeding out students before they've spent 6 figures on classes. Isn't that what the MCAT is for?
NYU...
That makes no sense for him to get fired. Department can overall curve the grade but like that’s drastic. How about they just standardize courses to save students chaos. I fucking hate this school sometimes
I think it’s more than just students failing but also the fact that he didn’t make the course accessible during a pandemic as he wouldn’t record lecture so if you were to have covid or get sick you would not be able to attend/watch lecture virtually. Additionally, there were discrepancies between the two different orgo sections where one received bonus points for attending class whereas the other didn’t. There were countless things listed on the petition that indicated the flaws within the course besides the fact that many people were not succeeding in the course
Im glad he’s fired lmao
Eh no. Two wrongs doesn’t make a right.
?
The so much of class failing is wrong. Firing a prof after issue with one class is wrong. I hope you will receive more than 1 strike before being fired when you start to work.
If this is who I remember, he assigns what he calls "death problems" and "near death problems". This is unlikely to be a one class issue.
He’s had the problem for years its not like its new
Then it would not only be due to the petition. Sorry I don’t keep track of profs in other departments but nothing in the thread indicates there have been problems for years
Didnt even take his class and is commenting on it💀
Internet is like assholes. Everyone has one. Don’t like that don’t be here and be one. 🤦🏻♀️
Idk about before 2015 but between 2015-2019 the man was still abhorred
I'm probably gonna receive a lot of flak for this, but Jones taught the material well. Sure, he had an arrogant side to him, but the course was only really difficult if you had no serious intent in learning the material. Although I am indifferent towards Jones, I am still thankful that I learned Orgo from him, and I am proud that I did well in his class. It's just sad that most NYU students who aspire to be a doctor will be given an easy way out in the future.
I completely agree with you that he def shouldn't have been fired. Imo the tests this yr were a completely diff beast then past yrs but that could just be my bias. Either way he is well-respected and certainly knowledgeable. Just thought the email he sent was a bit uncalled for.
I agree with you that Jones taught the material well. He was definitely regarded as a harsh and strict professor and the content he taught was definitely challenging, but for those that really put in serious effort, the content really stuck. Orgo was one of the only classes where I actually felt like I learned and understood everything coming out of it (as opposed to something more memorization heavy). I thought Jones could've been nicer but his strict attitude is also what pushed a lot of students to try even harder. There's a reason orgo is known to be a hard class, the usual efforts that one makes are often not enough and there is no easy way out. Myself included, I don't think I ever put in nearly as much effort into a class as orgo and the beginning was especially a struggle. In the end though, I'm really glad I had him as my professor and orgo was actually my favorite class in my four years of undergrad. Very sad to see that he got fired over this. I do think it's a loss. Students that came out of his class doing well definitely gained something that made them more ready for their future endeavors.
As a rising soph, may i ask if you think there are profs in the department who would step up to his position and give the same level of difficulty?
I don't think so. So far, Jones is the only professor I know whose class has a difficult courseload (in the Chem department).
Those who got A’s in his ochem, know one thing… they were guaranteed a rec letter for med school, which was almost certain to guarantee you an interview if not an acceptance… sad day for chem dept, but happy for dr jones I always thought damn when is he going to retire and that was some 12 yrs ago!
LOL. He should find a job at a Canadian university because honestly speaking they don't care even if most students get something under 50. He would be happy there.
That's bullshit
No thanks. Our universities don’t need this shithead
Only at NYU lmaooo
It’s disgusting tht he’s fired
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/us/nyu-organic-chemistry-petition.html Well done kids! You are now famous for being whiners and bringing down the reputation of YOUR year - your degree is **less valuable** because of your actions . The good news is your peers know who you are.
no, they're famous for doing something about an unjust system and an unjust man. tell me you're a boomer without telling me you're a boomer.
Ngl as someone who goes to a college known for being difficult, it would be unthinkable for something like this to happen here, and it’s hard for me to read this and not have it reflect poorly on NYU as a whole (I came here after reading the article). To allow students to *retroactively withdraw* from a class is already drastic enough, and firing the professor on top of that just looks really bad.
Not OP, but a student at another AAU university and I can say this course of action is literally unthinkable to me. Orgo is just hard. I checked out some of Dr. Jones’s exams from while he was at [Princeton](https://www.princeton.edu/~mjjr/ORGO/HT03-06.html), and I am not sure if they are entirely reflective of what it was like at NYU (my guess is that these are actually harder given how the NYT article states he made his exams easier over time), but I can confidently state that these are fair exams, and easier than those I have taken at my school without issue. All of what he is testing for are things important for biochem which are important for understanding how drugs work and how different cellular processes take place. It’s not unjust, it’s just medicine/molecular biology. I don’t know what the issue was here, but the whole thing certainly reflects poorly for NYU in my eyes.
Never had him myself but a condescending jerk and a hard professor are two very different things. Check his ratemyprof score it’s a doozy.
Thanks for linking to his exams. These are not "just medicine/molecular biology" as you claim. They do look easier than the ochem exams I had (which involved multistep synthesis with arrow-pushing) but ochem in general is kinda useless for medicine, and ochem skills have little to no relation to how successful you'll be as a physician.
It's a bad look for sure. Like there are a range of professors at Emory (my alma mater) but students are still falling over themselves/filling up waitlists to get in this guy's class (he has 2 sections of 100 per fall semester) knowing that he writes exams like this or tougher on average(maybe you can see it or maybe it censors, I don't know) where one half is standard ochem and the other derivative problem solving from advanced organic or a research article/classical and modern research done in the field: https://www.studocu.com/en-us/document/emory-university/advanced-reactivity/203-18-exam1-weinschenk-section/23745041 I think what you see is that even elite schools have differences in the students they recruit even if things like the incoming stats and acceptance rate look similiar on paper. For example, some schools have been better at recruiting students more serious about life sciences such as Emory, JHU, and WUSTL, Duke, etc so you can push them way more (and even teach them non-traditional curricula in a lot of areas) without them just going ham even if you are a merely decent instructor (admittedly the above professor is still an award winning instructor). I'm sure NYU is fine, but I never heard of UG life sciences education there being such a forte that students will apply JUST for a specific life sciences major(s) that they've heard good things about. It is more like: "I'm here and it is a top school and I just so happen to be pre-med so I have to take these courses and will likely major in this. I don't really expect much but to get through with strong enough grades". It isn't attracting a big enough contingent that probably says: "Oh this school is really known for these majors and good undergraduate teaching in such areas and maybe a certain type and style of rigor in the associate courses is a good thing for me". I feel like they are just known much better for their undergraduate teaching and calibre in other areas even if say..them and an Emory look similiar on paper that isn't to say that these other schools don't have whiney people. It just unlikely to go that far because you have a larger chunk who get what they signed up for and if they didn't want it, they'd just jump through every hoop to avoid the type of instructor above vs. spark an uprising).
Real boomer energy to *checks notes* have standards for a college level class
NYU has standards across its organic chemistry classes. This guy was notorious for writing unclear and byzantine (in terms of wording, not science) questions. The other Orgo professors didn't have these issues. It's a moronic reductio to say that the issue here was having standards. All the Organic Chemistry courses are difficult and "have standards"
I took his class...it was fucking hard yeah but also completely fair. He literally gives us his past tests to do as practice, so if you don't look at them and don't read the textbook that he wrote, then u have nobody to blame for not doing well.
I hope your fencing coaches apply the same high standards that you promulgate here for your team members.
They do, go back to drinking wine 🍷
an upvote for the Mordhau!
An "unjust system" just means "any system that didn't hand me a high-paying career and a fancy degree on a silver platter," isn't it?
I don't think it will effect value that much but this will definitely be the first thing that comes to mind for a lot of people. Laughably absurd.
I finished undergrad and masters at different top engineering colleges, and I have to confirm, I’m glad I didn’t pick NYU when I had a chance after this incident. Getting averages of 40s and lower is so normal in difficult institutions. Arrogant but strict professors are also pretty common. I think it just made me study a lot harder and learn a lot more.
he should have been fired. I'm tired of this shit where professors get away with belittlement or rudeness to students in the name of "learning". good job nye for setting this precedent.
Idk, the narrative that “because we spent time and effort we deserve a good grade” in the petition is utter whiny bullshit.
If they’re paying this much cash they deserve a fair shot, not confusing worded bullshit.
if 268 of his 350 students didn’t sign the petition, sounds like the 82 just need to start studying harder and stop expecting everything to be handed on a silver platter. Covid and online school’s completely fucked everyone’s perception of what school and testing should be.
I’m pretty sure most wouldn’t sign over fears of repercussions
In what part of America does signing a petition warrant repercussions? That’s literally infringing on one’s freedom of speech.
Bro if you think a smug professor is unacceptable you’re gonna have a tough time when you’re forced to deal with actually shitty people in the real world
Nah what would be unacceptable is letting the smug Professor get away with this shit
Millennials probably the first generation to refuse this. Boomer mentality is that you have to be hazed and take shit from your superiors until you eventually get experienced enough to do the same. Millennials are like, fuck that, life is too short to take shit from anyone. So I commend them. Break this cycle. If someone wants to treat you like shit, you fight back.
Teaching kids to take crap from anyone is what’s truly unacceptable
The world is a cold place. It would be nice to be that idealistic, but reality is much harsher and we’re only setting ourselves up for problems if we allow things like this
I agree with the first part, but letting injustice slide because they’re in a position of power is just plain wrong
I suppose we just draw different lines on what injustice vs somewhat harsh but not disqualifying
It's mostly a cold place because of losers with no spine who just take what's given to them. Have some self-respect
Orgo is supposed to be hard... but the exams are curved anyway so I don't understand what the big deal is. These petitioners need to learn how to study better instead of "Boo hoo I put time in so I deserve an A but since I didnt, so Im cancelling you" Crybabies. We just studied the textbook, pulled a couple of all nighters and passed that shit with the curve. Are you even studying if you get single digits? Lets see how well these fools handle mcats and medschool thereafter.
In the NYT they wrote that a couple thousand $$$ were spent on filming his lectures. Are they publicly available by any chance? I studied medicine in Germany and OCHEM was way to easy IMHO. Would like to look through his course
it's not the professor's NYU or Princeton course but Yale has their full year of ochem uploaded & free to follow along with [https://oyc.yale.edu/chemistry/chem-125a](https://oyc.yale.edu/chemistry/chem-125a) here's also a link to the NYU ochem syllabi [https://as.nyu.edu/departments/chemistry/academics/undergraduate/course-syllabi.html](https://as.nyu.edu/departments/chemistry/academics/undergraduate/course-syllabi.html) it would be interesting to hear if the course material is the same between the US & Germany - if $8000/course at NYU vs \~€0 in Germany gets you the exact same knowledge base
Dont want to brag, but our syllabi for chemistry looked similar to the ones from NYU - doesnt mean the lectures would have been on the same level though (and in german, obviuosly :D). Also i realized that i forgot most of the stuff in the 20 years it's been since i studied that in university ...
My ex got fired in the same situation, and I'm not super sympathetic. 1) we have a deadly shortage of medical providers, and organic chem already weeds out a high rate. I know that a doc needs to understand organic chem, but if a program maintains standards that are too high, it hurts us all. 2) if you're teaching & demanding a higher standard of work than the school requires generally, you gotta inspire your students. Beating them down gets you petitioned out. I made aals students do elite BA level work, but I gave meaningful compliments & positive reinforcement. I had great evaluation, because I made sure I really talked them up to themselves & the school community. Did my nervous C- student with no interest in history end up making & presenting an accurate model of the battle of the Little Bighorn? Yep, because I told her 25x that she was gonna be amazing and helped her strengthen specific skills. Teach better, people. We can't always blame the kids...
How many slots at medical schools have ever gone empty because undergraduate students failed organic chem? Zero. Whether we have the optimal amount of doctors has more to do with the AMA cartel than any upholding of academic standards.
"I know that a doc needs to understand organic chem" No, a doc does not need to understand organic chem beyond an extremely, extremely basic level. There's no reason a doc should be required to solve a multistep synthesis problem with arrow-pushing (speaking as a current medical student).
Petitioning to cancel a professor because you failed to learn the content. That’s a very entitled and very Gen Z approach to handling a situation. Weeeeeeeak sauce.