Lenoir-Rhyne University has one of the country’s best undergraduate teachers according to The Princeton Review. The Massachusetts-based education services company profiles outstanding professors at 122 colleges in its new book, The Best 300 Professors. Among them is LRU Professor of Biology, Dale F. Burnside. Professor Burnside is the only professor teaching in North Carolina included in this publication.
Published last month, The Best 300 Professors is a project that The Princeton Review teamed up with RateMyProfessors.com – the highest-trafficked college professor ratings site in the U.S.—to develop. The book’s impressive roster of top teachers features professors in more than 60 fields ranging from Accounting to Neuroscience to Sport Management.
The selection process took into account qualitative and quantitative data from survey findings and ratings collected by both The Princeton Review and RateMyProfessors.com. (See “How the Professors Were Chosen” below.) The professors featured in the book are a truly select group: from an initial list of 42,000 professors considered, the final group of “best” professors chosen constitutes less than .02% of the roughly 1.8 million post-secondary teachers instructing students at colleges and universities across the US. The professors in the book are not ranked (nor are their colleges ranked in this book) but each professor profiled received high ratings from their most important audiences, beneficiaries and critics: the students they teach and inspire.
“Stories and examples help students to understand concepts,” says Dale Burnside, the LRU professor, who enthusiastically claims, “Biology is fascinating. My mind gets wrapped up with it.” He transmits this devotion to his students, letting them know that he is “actively involved in their learning” and giving them both the foundation and the tools for thinking and solving problems. “I am blessed to be in this career. The students are very good to me,” he says. A former student refers to her experience as “one of the most fun classes ever. He speaks on your level and makes class enjoyable. You won’t be skipping his class.”
Professor Burnside began teaching in 1964 in Cincinnati, OH at Aiken High School. He has been at Lenoir-Rhyne since 1974.
Even after teaching for forty-four years, Professor Burnside still prepares every class to make it “fresh and new.” “I am blessed to be in this career. The students are very good to me,” he says. His classes are arranged into an organized presentation of basic facts followed by thought provoking questions ideas and student response, which students say “makes learning fun and exciting.” “He is serious about his teaching and loves his career choice,” says another.
Said Robert Franek, Princeton Review’s Senior VP / Publisher, “We developed this book as a tribute to the extraordinary dedication of America’s undergraduate college professors and the vitally important role they play in our culture, and our democracy. One cannot page through this book without having tremendous respect for the powerful ways they enrich their students’ lives, their colleges, and ultimately our future as a society. Together with Dale Burnside’s students who rated him so highly, we salute the LRU professor and each of the other professors we profile for their outstanding teaching. We are truly pleased to recommend them—and the schools at which they teach—to college applicants and their parents who use our resources.”
The Best 300 Professors also includes profiles of the colleges at which one or more of the book’s top-notch professors teach. The school profiles give students considering attending these colleges information on admissions, tuition, SAT/ACT score ranges of admitted students, and other useful data.
The Princeton Review is not affiliated with Princeton University and is not a magazine.
How The Professors Were Chosen
The Princeton Review and RateMyProfessors.com annually collect data from students at thousands of colleges across the country (and abroad) about their classroom experiences and assessments of their professors. For this project, The Princeton Review culled an initial list using its surveys of hundreds of thousands of students that revealed the colleges at which students highly rated their professors’ teaching ability and accessibility. Data from RateMyProfessors.com identified more than 42,000 professors at those schools that students had rated on its site. Combining this info, a base list of 1,000 professors was formed. After obtaining further input from school administrators and students, as well as from Princeton Review’s surveys of the professors under consideration, the editors of The Princeton Review made the final choices of the professors they profile in the book. The lists of professors are organized three ways: alpha by state/city/college/professor/department, alpha by professor/college/department, and alpha by department/professor/college. These can be found at www.princetonreview.com/best-professors.aspx.
About The Princeton Review
The Princeton Review (Nasdaq: REVU) has been a pioneer and leader in helping students achieve their higher education goals for 30 years through college and graduate school test preparation and private tutoring. With more than 165 print and digital publications and a free website, www.PrincetonReview.com, the company provides students and their parents with the resources to research, apply to, prepare for, and learn how to pay for higher education. The Princeton Review partners with schools and guidance counselors throughout the U.S. to assist in college readiness, test preparation and career planning services, helping more students pursue postsecondary education. The company also owns and operates Penn Foster Education Group, a global leader in online education, providing career-focused degree and vocational programs in the fields of allied health, business, technology, education, and select trades through the Penn Foster High School and Penn Foster Career School (www.pennfoster.edu). For more information, visit www.PrincetonReview.com.
About RateMyProfessors.com
RateMyProfessors.com is the highest-trafficked U.S. college professor ratings site (comScore), with more than 7,500 schools and over 13 million ratings, providing an automated system for quickly researching and rating more than 1.5 million professors from colleges and universities across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The site reaches more than 4 million college students each month.
A complete list of the professors in the book is accessible at www.princetonreview.com/best-professors.aspx
Media Contacts for The Princeton Review: Jeanne Krier, Princeton Review Books, 212-539-1350 or Joseph Iovino, Director of Public Relations, 888-865-7737, ext 5678, JIovino@review.com
