Students

The students are amazing. Everything they learn is from lectures and they are writing like mad to get it all down. Since there are no textbooks to look up anything, they need to get every word. Someone told me that they can get through a Ph.D. and never see a textbook. They don’t seem to have any laboratories so they have little practical knowledge. Whatever their limitations, they make up for in their enthusiasm. I’m not sure how they are evaluated. It seems they attend classes and at the end of the year, they take a comprehensive exam and if they pass it, they go on to the next year. Once I figure this out, I will clarify this.

Tuition is just $100 for the entire year and it is kept low so that young people have something to do. They struggle along with very little money or even much of a hope of a job when they finish. However, they must come from families with at least some means since they come from all over the country. They need to find some kind of housing and meet expenses.

For second year students, I designed some simple exercises based on some botany labs I used to teach. I introduce the topic (Leaves, roots, etc) and use the laptop and projector as a “microscope” or as a way to demonstrate the topic. I give them a few questions based on what they are looking at. At first they seemed really shy about interacting with me. They are not used to speaking with their teachers. The first two labs, I had to talk them through it. By now, they are used to my style and they seem to like it. Here they are looking at flower parts and working on identifying some basic flower morphology.

I suggested to the Dean that they use the office that they built for me and convert it to a Departmental library. They love the idea. So these students will have access to at least a dozen recent textbooks and the CD ROMs that come with them.