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What Students Want

It comes down to passion, commitment and challenges

By Helen S. Schwartz

As a first-year student from a small high school, Kristin Alongi '08 felt overwhelmed by her introductory chemistry class. Fearing she would fail, she decided she had to withdraw. But her teacher and advisor, George Shields, the Winslow Professor of Chemistry, delayed signing
the withdrawal form."I knew she was a good student, so I told her I wasn't going to sign the slip immediately," he says. He encouraged her to stick with it and assured her she could meet the challenge.

The next day, Alongi earned a 100 on her first quiz."She never came back to get my signature," Shields says. Ultimately, Alongi got an A+ in the course. Today Shields tells the story to similarly anxious first-year students, and Alongi is a chemistry major and winner of a Goldwater Scholarship for excellence in the sciences.

One of Adam Polonski's teachers, Assistant Professor of English Katherine Terrell, contacted Polonski '08 after he had taken a course with her to encourage him to submit a paper for presentation at a student conference. Terrell worked with him to revise the paper. Then, after it was accepted, she drove him to the conference in Pennsylvania and was there to hear his panel.When professors reach out to you, Polonski says, they "help you become better at anything you do."

Such stories attest to Hamilton students' appreciation of the quality of teaching on the Hill today and illustrate the distinction between
good professors and great ones. The capable professor comes to class prepared to teach; the superb one seduces you into loving the subject. The average professor answers difficult questions; the amazing professor demands them and poses them. The dutiful professor keeps office hours faithfully; the exceptional professor stops to talk while crossing campus or invites your class to dinner. The common denominator, Alongi says, is passion. A great
professor is "not only passionate about the subject, but passionate
about teaching and passionate about students."

The power of that passion can engage students and help them make connections across radically different disciplines. It's what made geology major Kim Roe '08 comfortable enough to risk Associate Professor Lydia Hamessley's world music course—and then to catch up with her more musically inclined classmates under Hamessley's patient guidance.

Roe was following a Hamilton adage that advises students to "take the professor, not the course." It's a tradition that reflects a core liberal arts value: At the undergraduate level, what matters most is a broad, balanced intellectual journey. As Kunter Kula '11 explains, "You choose to take a class not because you are interested in the subject, but because you are going to learn and understand a new perspective." Interest in the subject itself will follow, notes Mariam Ballout '10; great teachers "are so enthusiastic about their topic that it rubs off on students even if the students were not as enthusiastic going into the class." Eric Kuhn '09 adds,"If a subject is taught by a fantastic teacher,magically, like osmosis,we will also grow to love that topic."And for Brianna Felton '09, the passion of a great professor for the subject simply "makes it fun."

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Lydia Hamessley, Music,
and Brian Collett, Physics


George Shields, Chemistry



Karen Brewer, Chemistry


Margaret Thickstun, English