A half hour into professor Steve Noll’s American History lecture, he’d already paused six times for waves of laughter.
Tuesday’s presentation was about the economic incentives behind slavery, and Noll had already impersonated an ignorant high school teacher, cracked jokes about Florida State students and made a historical reference to Elvis Presley. And he was just warming up.
“Class can be both entertaining and intellectually challenging,” Noll said. “If I’m just going to sit there and drone on, why should they even bother coming?”
His teaching methods may seem unorthodox, but they’re partly why Noll and two other UF professors were named among the 300 best professors in the U.S. by the Princeton Review.
The education services company profiled Noll, journalism professor Mike Foley and mathematics professor Sergei Shabanov in its new book, “The Best 300 Professors.” The list was released Tuesday.
The professors were chosen from a pool of about 42,000 professors across the globe. UF had the most representation out of the eight Florida colleges listed. Professors were chosen for the list based on student surveys, data from RateMyProfessors.com and input from school administrators.
The book was a collaboration between The Princeton Review and RateMyProfessors.com, a website through which students publicly grade the quality of their professors. Noll, Foley and Shabanov each have an “Overall Quality” rating of more than 90 percent on the website.
“He’s what you want in a professor,” said Kelly Vidal, a 19-year-old history and political science major in Noll’s class. “Even in a two-hour period, he always keeps everyone’s attention.”
Noll said he encourages his students to take what they learn in class and use that information to challenge their own beliefs. He also wants them to question his teaching.
For Foley, entertaining his Reporting students isn’t just part of his job, it’s a lifestyle. He’s been known to dance from one side of his lecture hall to the other to get a lethargic class’s attention.
Foley’s class may be fun, but it’s also serious. His easiness score on RateMyProfessors.com is 50 percent.
He said he’s had students write him, “Thank you for kicking my ass.”
For professors hoping to be included in the next volume of the publication, Foley’s advice was simple.
“I think it helps if you’re funny,” he said. “It’s like sugar with medicine. You can get the facts down if you can throw a joke in there.”
