If any instructors on campus feel that there is no concern about their attitudes toward teaching, they are living in some world of complete self-delusion. Every time an instructor makes an effort to improve the learning environment at MSU, there is a huge groundswell. Conversations are heard on a daily basis about how professor X or Y made learning more tangible by simply taking a little more time to make sure that obscure knowledge was clear in the minds of the student population.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there is a segment of the population that will complain about any amount of work and effort required of them. They are always with us, but there is a larger group that respects the work instructors do and the work those instructors require of their students.

After listening to many positive conversations about fantastic instructors all over campus, I began to listen to the other side of the coin. Weeding out the “too much work,” “too hard” and “the class takes time out of my partying” comments; it is interesting to listen to what the larger population says about poor instructors. The comments come from intelligent college students who are not only looking for value for their investment in their education, but something more.

They want to be treated as what they are, intelligent adults. Perhaps that is where the truly poor instructors run into trouble. They treat their classes like a hodgepodge of middle or high school students. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of students have loans, own homes, have children, drink legally, run for political office and could be sent to foreign lands to defend American interests. That is as adult as any 50- or 60-year-old. Students are intelligent adults and need to be treated as such.

Let’s start thinking about behaviors that we have seen or heard about regarding things that do not reflect good instructor practice. These are things that need to be improved and if changed can make the educational process a whole lot more productive and less stressful to, I believe, students and instructors alike.

Take an instructor who decides to cancel class in a required course simply because the weather was good and she wanted a three-day weekend to go hiking with friends. Wow! That sounds great! I won’t have to go to class and I, too, can have some time off! Yeah, that sounds nice, but it is a three-credit required class in a classroom filled to the brim and the class is getting shortchanged. One hundred students, lots of tuition dollars and a loss of $2,000 in time to “go hiking.” Suppose next week a student wants to go to Chicago with friends for a three-day bender. Response from the same hiking instructor — “That is not a good excuse to miss class! There will be a penalty if you are not in attendance.”

That should raise a little conversation among the troops. Another instructor decides that if class started 20 minutes earlier and ended 20 minutes late, then class could be canceled on Fridays. Wow! That is great. No class on Friday. That 20 minutes before and after make it impossible to get to class on time from across campus and equally impossible to get to the next class on time. The other problem involves the instructors before and after the class who need to prepare for, or finish their lectures in the same room.

There are many things that happen on campus that truly require the opinions of all of MSU family. The next time you see something that needs to be addressed, corrected or just plain screamed about, do it!

Craig Gunn is a State News guest columnist. Reach him at gunn@egr.msu.edu.