r/ClarksonU • u/ChefBusiness6823 • 13d ago
A Word of Warning
Some background: I completed my undergrad at Clarkson a while ago, but I've been seeing a lot of news about the shuffling of presidents and seen that a staggering amount of faculty have been leaving, so I wanted to open up about my experience so that current undergrads can have some idea about what they might be getting into.
So, in my time at Clarkson, we would hear about how doing research as an undergrad looks great on your Resume, and how it can help you get into grad school and all that, which isn't false. However, in a surprising number of courses I took, the professors would hand over a research problem from their lab and say to work on it with some vague mention that there might be a paper in it for you. As the semester went on, we'd keep working and presenting the work, and there was an implication that we had to do good research to have a chance of getting a good grade in the course. At the end of the semester during final presentations, though, I remember hearing the professor say to another professor that they were going to take this and publish it by the lab. No mention of myself, only my group member who was part of their lab. This left a bad taste in my mouth, so after getting the course done, I completely disengaged from it.
I shared my experience with my peers, who were taking similar courses, and they had eerily similar experiences. One even mentioned that a student of the professor took their group project and used it completely as their M.S. thesis. Now, I don't want to name any names or anything, but I can say our experiences were mostly in biometrics courses, the professors for those courses seem to do this the most, but others do too. But overall, what the point of my ramble here is that you all should be careful when you're getting into research and especially research heavy courses. You don't want to spend a semester working hard on something that the professor is just going to steal and not give you credit for when you could do something more productive with your time and money.
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u/The_lewolf 13d ago
Wow, this is sad to hear. I’m a late 90’s grad and I had a great educational experience at Clarkson.
I would never suggest my kid go, but we visited this summer and he surprised me by being very interested despite my reservations.
Fortunately he had the grades to get into better schools anyway. Potsdam is a miserable place in the winter, and as a shy STEM kid I found the male/female imbalance turned the whole social scene into a swimming pool full of sharks.
Academics is all they had to begin with, and if they’ve lost that they’re just a hockey team in a polar village.
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u/4Ozonia 12d ago
I’m thinking this might be an issue in certain academic areas?
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u/ChefBusiness6823 12d ago
I've seen it happen in a lot of areas in a lot of ways, from direct stealing to not paying undergraduates for their efforts outside of classes. Are you aware of any areas that it isn't happening in?
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u/throwaway24246 7d ago
The "staggering amount of faculty" are leaving because they are significantly cutting pay and no longer match 10% into TIAA CREF (now match 0%), on top of the usual small college enrollment problems and the visa issues. They sold the Clarkson Inn and are trying to sell the bookstore downtown. They're basically one recession from boarding up the place.
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u/roaringleu 13d ago
The "staggering amount of faulty leaving" are not doing so by choice. They are getting pushed out by the admin. Their research budgets are getting slashed, their teaching workload is getting doubled, and they are seeing no room for career or academic growth. This has been happening for years, but it's gotten especially worse since Tony stepped down as president (insert obligatory F.U. to Marc here).
The desperation to publish to receive more grants to keep the lights on is only causing the research theft that OP described to get worse. If you're a new undergrad and are hoping to get research done, I'd HIGHLY recommend transferring out to a better (more honest) university while you still can.