Ratemyprofessors.Com Announces 2011-2012 Highest-Rated Professors and s Iona s Andy Gold Named Top Professor Stanford, of Memphis and St. Johns River State Lead the Site s Annual Rankings Tweet It: Students rank @Stanford top school on @ratemyprofessor #RMPTopLists New York, NY August 29, 2012, the largest online destination for college professor ratings, today released its annual lists ranking the nation s top professors and universities, based entirely on students input. Iona s Andy Gold, a business professor, leads the list of top university professors, followed by William Renfroe, a biological sciences professor at Pensacola State and Kevin Raiford, a business professor at the of Southern Nevada. Topping the nation s list of universities are Stanford, of Memphis, and St. Johns River State. Whereas the 2010-2011 top universities list was dominated by many of the nation s biggest state schools, smaller universities and private schools have a more prominent presence in this year s rankings with schools like Union, Missouri Baptist and Marist making their mark in the top 25 (the full lists for all categories are included below and can be viewed at toplists.ratermyprofessors.co m). The rankings for best schools were determined by analyzing both professor ratings and campus ratings. Different from typical college rankings, this list is generated entirely from the input of the students themselves providing an authentic overview of daily life at each respective school. As many students continue to pursue moderately-priced alternatives to traditional four-year universities, once again published a list of highest-rated junior colleges. San Diego City clinched the top spot, with Hostos Community and Oakton Community following close behind. This year s top junior college professor is Sam Blank, a communications professor from the Borough of Manhattan Community and last year s top junior college professor, Margie Lewkowicz of Georgia Perimeter, finished fifth this year. Miami Dade was home to five of the top 25 professors on this list, more than any other junior college. There s no higher honor for teachers and schools than to be praised by the students who are being impacted by their influence every day, said Carlo DiMarco, Senior Vice President, Strategic Partnerships and Development, mtvu. We extend our sincere congratulations to all of the professors, universities and junior colleges on our top lists.
Students posting on praised this year s highestranked university professor, Andy Gold of Iona in New Rochelle, New York, stating, Gold has a really good way of teaching material that other teachers could make boring. He will change your perspective on a lot of business and world issues. Other students remarked on his ability to engage, writing, [Gold is] the best teacher I ve ever had at Iona [he] really made me look at things from a different perspective and changed the way I view my education. Students share similar sentiment about highest-ranked junior college professor Sam Blank, of Borough of Manhattan Community. One student wrote, [Blank is] one of the very best teachers I have ever had. [He is] most knowledgeable with a great sense of humor willing to go out of his way to help with all issues. Now that I took his class I will miss him terribly! Meanwhile, psychology professor David Daniel at James Madison snagged the top spot on the annual RateMyProfessor.com Hottest Professors list. Besides being described as super hot, students rated Daniel as one of the best professors at JMU he is really funny and helpful and he actually makes you want to come to class. After nabbing the final spot on the 2009-2010 hottest list, history professor Hugo Schwyzer of Pasadena City is back and hotter than ever in 2011-2012, ranking second. One reviewer referred to him as Hotty McHot, while another wrote while he s attractive, you ll be more interested in what he says than his handsomeness. Thomas Beard, an Economics professor at Auburn, has been a mainstay on the hot list for years. He was the only professor to make the list for the third consecutive year, moving up five spots to No. 4 this year. For the first time, will debut its Fun Lists as part of its annual rankings. Starting today with Best Professor Smiths, the site will roll out a quirky countdown of lists over the next few weeks, including Most Followed Professors on Twitter, Top 5 Presidential Professor Names and Top 5 Hottest Math Professors. is built for college students, by college students. It is the highest-trafficked U.S. college professor rating site (comscore), reaching its highest-trafficked months ever in April 2012 (7.5 million unique visitors) and May 2012 (7.4 million unique visitors). Owned and operated by MTV s college network, mtvu, the site consists entirely of student-generated ratings of current or former professors, featuring more than 7,500 schools, 1.7 million professors and 14 million ratings. RateMyProfessors.co m reaches 6 million college students on average each month. The 2011-2012 Rankings Include: Top 25 Professors 1. Andy Gold, Business, Iona 2. William Renfroe, Biological Sciences, Pensacola State 3. Kevin Raiford, Business, of Southern Nevada 4. Paige Baltzan, Business, of Denver 5. Bridget Middleton, Mathematics, Santa Fe
6. Caroline Seefchak, English, Edison State 7. Andrea Cordaway, Mathematics, of Texas at San Antonio 8. Irene Vlachos-Weber, Psychology, Indiana Bloomington 9. Ray Otto, Biology, George Mason 10. Jim Thomas, Philosophy, of Maryland Baltimore County 11. Theodore Graham, Mathematics, Florida State at Jacksonville 12. Greg Dixon, Political Science, of West Georgia 13. Randall Benfield, Business, California State Sacramento 14. Gary S. Gaffney, Law, Florida Atlantic 15. Thomas Douglas, Anthropology, California State Long Beach 16. Dan Mitchell, Chemistry, Bellevue 17. Chad Ostler, History, Utah Valley 18. Scot Plunkett, Family & Consumer Science, California State Northridge 19. Mina Tsay, Communication, Boston 20. Linda Hickman, Business Administration, California State San Marcos 21. Gary Brice, Mathematics, Lamar 22. Omar Al Nasser, Finance, of Houston Victoria 23. Katir Patel, Microbiology, of Massachusetts 24. Chris Dula, Psychology, East Tennessee State 25. Joab Corey, Economics, Florida State Top 25 Universities 1. Stanford 2. of Memphis 3. St. Johns River State 4. Union 5. Florida Agricultural and Mechanical 6. Missouri Baptist 7. Marist 8. Roosevelt 9. Claremont McKenna 10. Saint Anselm 11. Minnesota State 12. SUNY Cortland 13. Mitchell 14. of North Dakota 15. Palmer Chiropractic 16. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical 17. of New Haven 18. Young Harris 19. Suffolk 20. Ohio Northern 21. Florida State at Jacksonville 22. Radford 23. SUNY Cobleskill 24. of Portland 25. Christian Brothers Top 25 Junior s 1. San Diego City 2. Hostos Community 3. Oakton Community 4. Tri-County Technical 5. San Jacinto South 6. Lone Star (All 7. Normandale Community 8. Cypress 9. Owens Community Toledo 10. Harford Community 11. Prince George s Community 12. Irvine Valley 13. Jefferson State Community 14. Ventura 15. Madison Area Technical 16. Wallace Community 17. Santa Ana 18. Thomas Nelson Community 19. of DuPage 20. Rogue Community 21. Cuesta 22. Bunker Hill Community
23. Northampton Community 24. Moraine Valley Community 25. Brevard Community Palm Bay Campus Top 25 Professors at Junior s 1. Sam Blank, Communication, Borough of Manhattan Community 2. Tony Smith, Communication, St. Petersburg (All 3. John W. Todd, Communication, Miami Dade (All 4. Raj Bose, Business, of Phoenix Hawaii Campus 5. Margie Lewkowicz, Mathematics, Georgia Perimeter Decatur 6. Ronald Walker, Communication, Miami Dade (All 7. Luis Beltran, Mathematics, Miami Dade (All 8. Melinda Shoemaker, Psychology, Broward (All 9. Lynne Vazquez-Rizzo, Mathematics, Ocean County 10. Ryan Adams-Barton, Social Science, Miami Dade (All 11. Charles Sidun, Biology, Community of Allegheny County 12. Susan Wessner, Mathematics, Tallahassee Community 13. Ted Wiecek, Mathematics, Truman 14. Mehrdad Mahmoudi Zarandi, Mathematics, Ivy Tech Community Bloomington 15. Kristen Cole, Psychology, San Diego City 16. Kyle Barbieri, Political Science, Georgia Perimeter Decatur 17. Ellen Feig, English, Bergen Community 18. David Demko, Sociology, Miami Dade (All 19. Tracey Magrann, Biology, Saddleback 20. Douglas Phinney, History, Broward (All 21. Phil Maywalt, Computer Science, Broome Community 22. Robert Martens, Biology, Brookdale Community 23. Norman Belleza, Biology, Tidewater Community 24. Stephen Miciak, Success, Hillsborough Community Tampa 25. Mark Shannon, Communications, Los Angeles Harbor Top 10 Hottest Professors 1. David Daniel, Psychology, James Madison 2. Hugo Schwyzer, History, Pasadena City 3. Ruth Dellinger, Mathematics, Florida State at Jacksonville 4. Thomas Beard, Economics, Auburn 5. Shaun Vecera, Psychology, of Iowa 6. Adrienne Alaie, Biology, Hunter 7. Barbara Kalvelage, Biology, of Southern Indiana 8. Amir Sabzevary, Philosophy, Laney 9. Derek Milne, Anthropology, Pasadena City 10. Isabelle Sacramentogrilo, Geology, San Diego State Top Lists Ranking Methodology is the Internet's largest destination for collegiate professor ratings with more than 7,500 schools, 1,700,000 professors and 14,000,000 ratings. The site uses a five-point Likert scale as well as a binary scoring system for students to rate professors. Below is a summary of the overall methodology used to compile the 2011-2012 rankings:
Each individual professor rating is first standardized and subsequently the standardized scores for the years 2009, 2010 and 2011 are weighted, putting more weight on recent years and fewer weight on ratings from the past (15 percent for 2009, 25 percent for 2010, and 60 percent for 2011). Using the weighted score, professors are ranked from high to low. Only professors with 30 ratings or more are included to provide statistical significance. In an attempt to break ties, professors with a greater number of ratings were ranked higher; the rationale is that a larger amount of information typically results in an estimate closer to the true parameter. Nevertheless, ties (i.e. professors with the same score and the same number of ratings) still occur. In that case, if two professors are tied for the same place - say 5th - then the next available rank is 7th. It should also be noted that school size does not affect the outcome of the lists nor does it give professors from larger schools an advantage over their corollaries from smaller schools. RateMyProfessors performed a regression analysis on school size vs. number of ratings and found no noteworthy correlation. More information on how this methodology was applied to each category is available here: http://www.ratemyprofessors. com/methodology.jsp. Data analysis was conducted with the help of Professor Wolfgang Jank, Associate Professor in the Department of Decisions, Operations & Information Technologies at the of Maryland s Robert H. Smith School of Business. About mtvu Broadcast to more than 750 college campuses as well as via top cable distributors in 700 college communities nationwide, mtvu reaches nearly 9 million U.S. college students making it the largest, most comprehensive television network just for college students. Twentyfour hours a day, seven days a week, mtvu can be seen in the dining areas, fitness centers, student lounges and dorm rooms of campuses throughout the U.S., as well as on cable systems from Charter Communications, Verizon FiOS TV, Suddenlink Communications, AT&T u-verse and nearly 70 others. mtvu is dedicated to every aspect of college life, reaching students everywhere they are: on-air, online and on the campus. mtvu airs music videos from emerging artists that can t be seen anywhere else, news, student life features and initiatives that give college students the tools to advance positive social change. mtvu is always on campus, with hundreds of events per year, including exclusive concerts, giveaways, shooting mtvu series and more. For more information about mtvu, and a complete programming schedule, visit http://www.mtvu.com. Contact Jake Urbanski jake.urbanski@mtvstaff.com \ 212.846.6888 Related Top Lists