Vet School Instructors

[StartingoverVet]

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Quick question for y'all.

I have noticed in some posts that people mention the instructor (singular) for a class.....

Here at Penn, we have multiple, multiple, multiple instructors for every class (around 10 seems the norm?)......

Is that true at your schools?? Or do you just have one or two instructors for each class?

I am not talking about TAs or assistants, I am talking about the people who actually give the lectures.

Thanks for indulging me.

 

[twelvetigers]

I think this will vary a lot.

Phys I here used to have one or two, but this time (just changed IORs) it had five. Phys II will have two, as normal.

Groos/Developmental Anatomy has one, and next semester the Comparative Anatomy will have one.

Histo is split pretty evenly between two professors.

Zootech is a catch-all sort of thing that has a whole variety of labs from different clinicians, and the Ethics course is also pretty spread out.

I think that quite a few classes here are the same person all the way through, though.

 

[EllieGirl89]

Quick question for y'all.

I have noticed in some posts that people mention the instructor (singular) for a class.....

Here at Penn, we have multiple, multiple, multiple instructors for every class (around 10 seems the norm?)......

Is that true at your schools?? Or do you just have one or two instructors for each class?

I am not talking about TAs or assistants, I am talking about the people who actually give the lectures.

Thanks for indulging me.

We have multiple instructors (not 10, but maybe 3-7) for Anatomy, Histology, Cell Biology, Radiology, and Animal Behavior. For Professional Development we have 1 main instructor, but have a lot of guest speakers. Epidemiology is the only class where we have just one instructor. And actually, that's new; up until this year Epi also consisted of one main instructor with many guest speakers.

 

[Chinola]

For anatomy we have only one instructor. For all of our other classes (we don't do physiology, instead we kind of separate out each of those topics into individual classes and them group them into threes. Animal Systems I, II and III.) we have a coordinating instructor who is the one that teaches the majority of the lectures (anywhere from half to 90%). Then there is anywhere from one to around five other professors that do a lecture or two. There is always one professor though who is "responsible" for the class. For classes like professional development and career opportunities we have a different speaker for each class.

 

[LetItSnow]

Is that true at your schools?? Or do you just have one or two instructors for each class?

Here at UMN it totally varies. We have a couple classes taught by only two instructors. Anatomy is three. Animal Populations, Professional Development, Nutrition, and other courses appear to be Guest-Speaker-Of-The-Day type of classes.

So it's really all over the map.

We always have just one course coordinator, though, as far as I can tell.

 

[katryn]

It varies by class here.

Only a few classes have dedicated professors, but certain topics consistently have dedicated professors across several classes. Things like bacteriology, virology, and parasit had one to two dedicated professors who do nothing but those areas. But things like physio, histology, and both pathologies (gen and clin) are split up among various clinicians based on specialty, and they teach in multiple courses whenever the subject material is applicable. The professor who covered red blood cell morphology in histology is also the professor that covers the red blood cell material in clin path. Some classes are also split up based on large animal vs small animal, medical vs surgical, and so one. For example our urinary systems has two professors for small animal med, one for large animal med, one for surgical principles, and one for pathology.

 

[Bearby]

For anatomy we have only one instructor. For all of our other classes (we don't do physiology, instead we kind of separate out each of those topics into individual classes and them group them into threes. Animal Systems I, II and III.) we have a coordinating instructor who is the one that teaches the majority of the lectures (anywhere from half to 90%). Then there is anywhere from one to around five other professors that do a lecture or two. There is always one professor though who is "responsible" for the class. For classes like professional development and career opportunities we have a different speaker for each class.

and there's always one "guest" professor that confuses the hell out of everyone by talking about things like t rex.

 

[nyanko]

Multiple lecturers for most courses in our curriculum and all blocks in the new curriculum.

 

[cowgirla]

I think this will vary a lot.

Phys I here used to have one or two, but this time (just changed IORs) it had five. Phys II will have two, as normal.

Groos/Developmental Anatomy has one, and next semester the Comparative Anatomy will have one.

Histo is split pretty evenly between two professors.

Zootech is a catch-all sort of thing that has a whole variety of labs from different clinicians, and the Ethics course is also pretty spread out.

I think that quite a few classes here are the same person all the way through, though.

Most of the second year classes have multiple lecturers- Clin Path, Clin Anatomy, Pharm, Parasit II. I think Virology is the only core class were we only have 1.

 

[SocialStigma]

For most courses (anat, phys, clin med, art of vet med, health management etc), we have multiple instructors (2-3). For histo and genetics we only have 1.

 

[bbeventer]

How does that work? Does a different instructor teach a different section? I had that for microbiology and I have to say I was not a huge fan due to the constant changing test types each section. How does that work in vet school?

 

[Coquette22]

Yeah, it varies by course. For physiology, we have one professor just about all semester, though there is another guy who comes in to teach one section. Animal production has a whole slew of instructors, because the topic is so broad that it's impossible for one professor to be an expert in all of it (so we have one prof do aquaculture, one did dairy, one did beef, one did sheep/goats...). Behaviour/welfare is another broad topic, so we have a bunch of instructors, some of whom only give 1 or 2 lectures. Anatomy is one primary professor, with another one who does nervous system stuff and another one (who we ALL adore) who does radiology. Immunology is one professor only.

I can't say the variation in testing bothers me, personally.

 

[SocialStigma]

How does that work? Does a different instructor teach a different section? I had that for microbiology and I have to say I was not a huge fan due to the constant changing test types each section. How does that work in vet school?

Yeah for physiology, we had one prof teach the neuro and hemo sections, and another one is teaching digestive phys right now. For clin med we had one prof for the SA section and one prof for the LA section. And so on for the rest of them.

 

[StartingoverVet]

How does that work? Does a different instructor teach a different section? I had that for microbiology and I have to say I was not a huge fan due to the constant changing test types each section. How does that work in vet school?

Typically we have 1 instructor teach for a few classes in a particular subject (can be anywhere from 1 lecture to 10). The exam is made up of questions from a combination of the different lecturers based on how many lectures they had out of the total for that test. So the questions can vary quite a bit depending on the questioner's style.

Our intro to clin med classes 1st year were the most extreme with most lecturers giving only 1 lecture and the questions varying from basic, obvious questions, to examining the minutest details

Outside of the clinical classes, I am not so sure it is a great system, which is why I wanted to see how it is done elsewhere.

 

[bbeventer]

Typically we have 1 instructor teach for a few classes in a particular subject (can be anywhere from 1 lecture to 10). The exam is made up of questions from a combination of the different lecturers based on how many lectures they had out of the total for that test. So the questions can vary quite a bit depending on the questioner's style.

Our intro to clin med classes 1st year were the most extreme with most lecturers giving only 1 lecture and the questions varying from basic, obvious questions, to examining the minutest details

Outside of the clinical classes, I am not so sure it is a great system, which is why I wanted to see how it is done elsewhere.

Interesting. I can see the benefit of getting experts opinions on varying areas of study, from my experiences though it makes for a difficult test to study for though.

 

[orca2011]

Maybe I'm just weird, but I'm kind of looking forward to classes being done this way. This is how pretty much all my courses (except maybe 2) were done when I studied abroad in England and it was my best year academically. I felt like it kept things interesting and was nice if I wasn't particularly found of a particular professor's teaching style.

 

[breenie]

Maybe I'm just weird, but I'm kind of looking forward to classes being done this way. This is how pretty much all my courses (except maybe 2) were done when I studied abroad in England and it was my best year academically. I felt like it kept things interesting and was nice if I wasn't particularly found of a particular professor's teaching style.

It was how almost all of my undergraduate science classes were done, with the exception of chemistry.

I adapted, and thrive in that environment now, but I can see it being supremely annoying if you haven't had it forced on you for 3+ years already.

 

[orca2011]

It was how almost all of my undergraduate science classes were done, with the exception of chemistry.

I adapted, and thrive in that environment now, but I can see it being supremely annoying if you haven't had it forced on you for 3+ years already.

Yeah, it was definitely a little weird at first but then I got used to it. Sometimes it was confusing because the lectures and lecturers would get a little mixed up, but I'm pretty sure that's also due to the UK being a little more disorganized at times and messing up the scheduling. Haha.

 

[scb44f]

It was how almost all of my undergraduate science classes were done, with the exception of chemistry.

I adapted, and thrive in that environment now, but I can see it being supremely annoying if you haven't had it forced on you for 3+ years already.

I was not exposed to team-taught courses before vet school, but I kind of like that someone really knowledgeable in that area is teaching it, instead of someone who's interested in a topic that's only mildly related. I think the professors are a bit more excited about their topics this way, so they tend to teach it with more pizzazz.

 

[twelvetigers]

I was not exposed to team-taught courses before vet school, but I kind of like that someone really knowledgeable in that area is teaching it, instead of someone who's interested in a topic that's only mildly related. I think the professors are a bit more excited about their topics this way, so they tend to teach it with more pizzazz.

And test it with more pizazz, as well.

Prof: How could you not know this? It's common knowledge!
Us: Yeah, if you have a PhD on the subject...

Ah well.

 

[scb44f]

And test it with more pizazz, as well.

Prof: How could you not know this? It's common knowledge!
Us: Yeah, if you have a PhD on the subject...

Ah well.

Hahah yes, that's definitely true too!

 

[Pelagia]

At NCSU, we have multiple instructors for most of our classes.

We've had three main professors for physio, for each of the major sections we've covered (exercise phys, neurophys, endocrinology/repro), but several other professors who did a lecture or two. In total for that class, we've had probably 5 different people teaching us!

For anatomy, we've switched between two instructors who are teaching us different areas of the body, though we have multiple lab facilitators (who include the instructors for this semester and next, as well as others!)

In BacT, we have one main instructor, but have had several guest instructors.

And at our school, we have a class called TAU (Teaching Animal Unit) where we actually get to go out to the farm Friday mornings and work with various species (this semester, we did turkeys, goats, beef cattle, dairy cattle, swine, and horses). Each of those labs has a different instructors.

 

[lei325]

We have 10+ lecturers per strand (ie Alimentary, Endocrine, vet public health, etc). But for say, equine topics (colic and diarrhea most recently), we really only have 3 lecturers that rotate.

 

[BlacKAT33]

I adapted, and thrive in that environment now, but I can see it being supremely annoying if you haven't had it forced on you for 3+ years already.

This is how I think of it too! First semester I hated it! But I've adapted to it now and am doing well. I can predict what professors are going to be like. Viewing old exams helps too (even if the format has changed). Even without looking at old exams you can usually tell how much detail they expect you to know by what they say during lecture.

As I'm getting into more interesting classes, I love seeing the enthusiasm that each professor brings since they lecture on specifically what they research (and love). Especially in labs, their positive energy really makes me like the subject even if I thought I wouldn't. I just came back from lab and the quote of the day was "IT'S NOT A TUMOR, ITS A BABY!" when describing a conceptus amorphous globosus, it was entertaining.

It is also nice because sometimes if one professor has extremely hard exam questions you will only get his questions for a small portion of the exam!