The University of St Thomas

Date: Mar 01 2008
Major: Math (This Major's Salary over time)
Before attending UST, I had attended the United States Air Force Academy for two years, and, prior to that, I spent four years at Strake Jesuit College Prep from which I graduated in 2002. I originally left USAFA, because I had become disillusioned with our government's international relations policy, and because i was disgusted by the amount of bureaucracy that pervaded all aspects of the academic and social life at the Academy. I decided to attend St. Thomas in an effort to return to the academic rigor and quality of instruction that I had become accustomed to during my years at SJ. In retrospect, I probably should have gone to a Jesuit University, but Strake being my only "Catholic" education, I assumed that UST would hold to the same standards. My admissions counselor was very helpful and friendly and made me feel welcome at UST and was glad to have someone from the Academy transferring.

My first negative experience, though was with a Professor Rocha. It was a survey class in world literature, but could have been more appropriately titled "The Oddessey and some CS Lewis". I will say nothing personal about Prof Rocha's teaching style, which I found lacking, but the class spent an inordinate amount of time on the most famous of Greek epics which should have been thoroughly digested by every well prepared high school student. Nevertheless, 85 percent of the lecture time was used by Prof Rocha reading out of the Odessey and telling the class which phrases to underline and thus memorize for the exams. The other 15 percent of the lectures dealt with Christian Charity. I honestly do not think that the course title was undeserved and in place of "world" should have been put "western" or perhaps "occidental". I don't mean to dwell on this one experience, but it was my introduction to St. Thomas' style. In addition to what I said above, I was given poor grades on my writing assignments (which I am not used to) with no justification whatsoever. Most of the time, we never saw our essays/papers again after turning them in. There was basically no feedback with the exception of a letter on my report card. I recieved a C in the class.

My greatest variety experience at St. Thomas was due to my majors classes (I was a mathematics major). With one exception, most of my mathematics professors seemed socially inept. They were either egotistical and demanded that assignments be worked out in the precise language they were teaching, regardless of demonstration of understading of concepts, or they had no ability to interact with the students and merely read from the text for lectures. In some of my classes (by no means all), homework seemed to be more important than exams. I still don't understand how one could make A's on every exam and not achieve an A in the course because of failing to turn in homework.

I would like to point out several positive influences to try to balance out the negatives that I have described. First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Paul Knopp for his patient and skillful explanations of what I considered at the time to be difficult mathematical concepts. I should point out that I had never been interested in math in high school and have always considered myself a more verbal type of person. I originally chose mathematics at UST as an attempt to expand my intellectual interests and to challenge myself. Dr. Knopp included my in his personal research over the summer and although I probably took up more of his time than I actually helped him, I found the experience extremely rewarding and fulfilling on both an intellectual and emotional level. It is my opinion that Dr. Knopp should be teaching Calculus and Abstract Algebra, as these are formative and fundamental classes for the major, although I am sure he has his own opinions as to what he should or could teach. Dr. Knopp was one of the few instructors I had even outside of my major who was able to leave his ego out of the classroom and indeed out of the academic setting.

The second positive experience I had at UST was in an art appreciation class. I cannot recall the instructor's name but she was from Seattle prior to coming to St Thomas, and I believe she was European. Her class, although towards the end of the semester, my attendance record was abysmal, opened my eyes to the world of visual art and created in me a desire to study the artistic endeavors of man and woman. I now go to art museums often and derive a profound since of satisfaction from these visits that I would not have had if not for this class. The instructor had a great way of pulling out significant elements of famous artworks and teaching the student to build not only a verbal language to crtique the art but a visual language to decipher it and appreciate it. Even though I did not attend every class, I did recieve one of the best grades on my term paper and it was due mainly to the instructor's imparted wisdom and experience.

I hope this review has been helpful for the reader. I urge the reader not to merely accept my statements for truth (which of course is subjective) but as a record of some experiences that I found significant. If you are interested in this University, indeed in any university, I implore you to take a moment and decide what your goals are for your education. If your desire is to succeed socially, and you would like a lesson in how to please others and get around in the world of appearances, St Thomas may provide a fertile practice ground. If, however, you are, like me, more interested in personal fulfillment and self-actualization, you may want to ask yourself if you even need a university education at all. Thank you for reading and please forgive my grammatical errors as I am not going to take the time to proof-read. Good luck.