NOTE: At the request of President Trefny, four undergraduate students developed the Faculty Profile that appears here. The Faculty Senate, strongly suppressing urges to word-smith, revise, and expand the students' effort, wanted to make available to the campus community the original wording submitted by the students to President Trefny. The Senate felt that it was important to capture the essence of what undergraduates, in their words, expect from a Mines faculty member. The Faculty Profile follows.

Each professor's goal must be the success of students and their preparation for life outside of the Colorado School of Mines. Since this is a complex task, the role of a professor is multi-faceted, requiring many skills beyond simply an understanding of the material that he or she is teaching. These skills break down into three general categories: personal characteristics, teaching style, and course organization.

Personal Characteristics
Above all, the professor must be most interested in the student's success in understanding the course material. All CSM professors must understand the importance of a professional but congenial relationship with their students in achieving this goal. Professors should be approachable inside and outside of the classroom. Open-door policies are highly encouraged. Professors must treat all of their students with compassion and respect, and should be understanding of students' situations outside of school. A good CSM professor should be open and honest, have patience and inspire his or her students.

Teaching Style
A CSM professor should be an engaging, interactive, and focused lecturer, covering relevant material with clear and concise language, both oral and written. A professor should have a strong command over the curriculum, and be able to explain difficult concepts in a variety of ways. A professor should be able to make connections between class material and the real world, and employ demonstrations and hand-on experiments when appropriate. Whenever possible traditional presentation techniques (i.e. whiteboard or chalkboard) should be used over electronic medium.

A professor is true to his or her schedule, making classes, obliging office hours, and returning graded material in a reasonable amount of time.

A professor places emphasis on getting the students to understand concepts, and strives for an appropriate mixture of theory and example. A professor is both perceptive (can smell confusion) and patiently receptive to questions. A professor is aware of the skill level of class, providing a stimulating level of challenge to students while having the ability to adjust the pace of a course.

Course Organization
Professors must present their course in a way that allows students to succeed. Professors should provide a clear syllabus at the beginning of a course to allow students to plan their studying and prepare for course milestones while also being able to adapt it to unforeseen circumstances.

Coursework should be well balanced, with enough homework, quizzes, and exams to ensure learning the material, while taking into consideration time restrictions of the students. A professor should strive for consistency between lectures, homework, and tested material. Group work, hands-on experiments and demonstrations, and other creative teaching techniques should be incorporated in lecture where they improve understanding.

A professor's goal must be to challenge students, but to be fair in evaluating them. Therefore, grading should be focused on a student's understanding and use of concepts, rather than clerical errors (math mistakes). Exams should be designed to adequately reflect the expected knowledge level of the students, leading to reasonable uncurved averages.

Authors: Amber Smith, Ashleigh Rhodes, Andrea Loh, and John Hillert
March 13, 2003