Four Calvin profs in Princeton Review's 'The Best 300 Professors'

Four Calvin College professors are included in the Princeton Review's 'The Best 300 Professors.'

The Princeton Review--one of the nation's best-known education services companies--teamed up with RateMyProfessors.com--the highest-trafficked college professor ratings site in the U.S.. The two organizations used qualitative and quantitative data from survey findings and ratings in selecting the professors included in the first comprehensive guidebook to America's top undergraduate professors.

Calvin College professors Larry Louters (Chemistry), Doug Vander Griend (Chemistry), Dan Miller (History) and Kevin Corcoran (Philosophy) are among just 12 professors in the state of Michigan to be included on the list.

"It is a great honor for these faculty members to be recognized by the students they teach," said Calvin's provost Claudia Beversluis. "Even with all of the significant scholarship and research that is done here, it has always been our top priority to prepare our students well through solid teaching. And this honor helps validate that mission."

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 their professors. For 'The Best 300 Professors' project, The Princeton Review culled an initial list from its surveys of hundreds of thousands of students. That list 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.

The two organizations winnowed that list down to a list of 1,000 professors. The editors of Princeton Review then gathered input from school administrators and students--as well as from Princeton Review's own surveys of the professors under consideration--to make the final choices of the professors profiled in the book.

Said Robert Franek, Princeton Review's Senior VP/Publisher and author of the Company's flagship college guide, 'The Best 376 Colleges,' "We developed this project 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 feeling tremendous respect for the powerful ways these teachers are enriching their students' lives, their colleges, and ultimately our future as a society."

'The Best 300 Professors' was published today, and is one of nearly 150 Princeton Review books published by Random House in a line that also includes 'The Best 376 Colleges.'

For more info, visit http://www.princetonreview.com/best-professors

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Matt Kucinski
Media Relations Manager
Calvin College
msk23@calvin.edu
616.526.8935 (office)
616.307.7429 (cell)
Received on Tue Apr 3 09:31:06 2012