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- Jun 20, 2014
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Long post ahead but just want to provide as much detail as possible. So there is this basic science professor (PhD, not MD) at my medical school that has repeatedly acted unprofessionally apparently for years and has never gotten called out on it. I just finished my 2nd year and took Step 1, so I'm wondering if now would be a good time to speak to someone about her, now that I will no longer be seeing her or taking classes with her. I mentioned her unprofessional behavior in several course evaluations, but I doubt anyone really cares about those since they are anonymous. Some examples...
She goes out of her way to find out both academic and personal information about students and then shares this with her "favorite" students. A guy in our class had failed two classes the first semester of M1. One day he walks into lab late during the second semester and she stops her lecture to make a comment like, "maybe if you could make it to class on time, you wouldn't have failed your ___ and ___ classes" in front of the entire class and then laughs. The student was clearly embarrassed.
A friend of mine had to remediate a class over the summer. She found out about this and told of our classmates that the student had failed the remediation (which wasn't even true) and wouldn't be returning. When my friend did return to school, he was bombarded with multiple people asking him how he got to come back.
She spread rumors about a couple students in our class who she didn't like about how they had paid their way into getting accepted to the school through large donations. This professor isn't even on the adcom, but she manages to get a hold of everyone's applications and finds things in them to embarrass students about, like lower than average mcat scores, etc. I'm sure this rumor is in no way based in truth, but probably a good percentage of our class has heard it by now, which is really unfair to those two students who got in due to their merits, not money.
During the fall of our M2 year, I had to have surgery due to an unforeseen medical condition. The dean was nice enough to let me make up the exams I would be missing during the 2.5 weeks I had to take off for the surgery and recovery instead of making me take a LoA or remediating in the summer. I didn't tell any of my classmates the reason for my absence, as I felt it was personal and didn't want a big deal made about it. One of the exams I was going to miss during my absence was for this professor's course, so I did speak to her ahead of time and told her the reason I would be gone and the reason for my surgery. I didn't actually ask her to keep this information between the two of us, but I guess I expected that any reasonable person would just do that without being told. When I returned, I found out that this professor had in fact told several of the students she was close to about it, who had then told many others, and soon I had basically all my classmates coming up to me and asking me if I was okay, which is what I wanted to avoid in the first place.
These are just some examples of the way this professor acts on a daily basis. I feel that she is incredibly unprofessional and believe the reason she has gotten away with it is because many students and even other faculty feel intimidated by her. Should I go to the dean about this to try to put an end to it? I'm afraid he will want to avoid having to take action and may just ignore me. Is there someone else higher up that would be better to speak to? I'm also afraid, if the dean and the school take her side, that they will view me as a complainer or trouble-maker and will be reflected negatively in my dean's letter in the future. Any advice?
She goes out of her way to find out both academic and personal information about students and then shares this with her "favorite" students. A guy in our class had failed two classes the first semester of M1. One day he walks into lab late during the second semester and she stops her lecture to make a comment like, "maybe if you could make it to class on time, you wouldn't have failed your ___ and ___ classes" in front of the entire class and then laughs. The student was clearly embarrassed.
A friend of mine had to remediate a class over the summer. She found out about this and told of our classmates that the student had failed the remediation (which wasn't even true) and wouldn't be returning. When my friend did return to school, he was bombarded with multiple people asking him how he got to come back.
She spread rumors about a couple students in our class who she didn't like about how they had paid their way into getting accepted to the school through large donations. This professor isn't even on the adcom, but she manages to get a hold of everyone's applications and finds things in them to embarrass students about, like lower than average mcat scores, etc. I'm sure this rumor is in no way based in truth, but probably a good percentage of our class has heard it by now, which is really unfair to those two students who got in due to their merits, not money.
During the fall of our M2 year, I had to have surgery due to an unforeseen medical condition. The dean was nice enough to let me make up the exams I would be missing during the 2.5 weeks I had to take off for the surgery and recovery instead of making me take a LoA or remediating in the summer. I didn't tell any of my classmates the reason for my absence, as I felt it was personal and didn't want a big deal made about it. One of the exams I was going to miss during my absence was for this professor's course, so I did speak to her ahead of time and told her the reason I would be gone and the reason for my surgery. I didn't actually ask her to keep this information between the two of us, but I guess I expected that any reasonable person would just do that without being told. When I returned, I found out that this professor had in fact told several of the students she was close to about it, who had then told many others, and soon I had basically all my classmates coming up to me and asking me if I was okay, which is what I wanted to avoid in the first place.
These are just some examples of the way this professor acts on a daily basis. I feel that she is incredibly unprofessional and believe the reason she has gotten away with it is because many students and even other faculty feel intimidated by her. Should I go to the dean about this to try to put an end to it? I'm afraid he will want to avoid having to take action and may just ignore me. Is there someone else higher up that would be better to speak to? I'm also afraid, if the dean and the school take her side, that they will view me as a complainer or trouble-maker and will be reflected negatively in my dean's letter in the future. Any advice?
