No, this is not happy hour at the local bar down the street. This is UCLA physics professor Raymond Waung’s happy hour where students are welcome to stay an hour after class to ask questions and seek homework help.
To Waung, having an extra informal hour during the week to help students understand course material is important given the quick nature of the summer school sessions.
“The teaching assistants and I have a combined eight office hours per week and even more prior to exams,” said Waung. “I try to provide as many resources as possible to help students adapt to the faster pace.”
Summer resources, such as Waung’s happy hour, not only help students with the subject material but also foster a unique interaction in the classroom that differs from that during the rest of the school year.
Joe Lipper, a third-year physiological sciences student, said the summer offers an interesting change of pace in contrast with the overcrowded lecture halls that contain hundreds of students during the fall, winter and spring quarters.
“I can’t even begin to tell you how frustrating it is when I walk into a lower division class during the school year and can’t find a seat,” said Lipper. “I’ve had to sit in the aisles plenty of times for a lot of my introductory chemistry and life science classes.”
During the summer, Lipper said his class has far fewer students and makes him feel more a part of the class rather than just a number. He feels there is more of a connection between the students and the professor during the summer session and said that his professor often tells the class stories or jokes to make the course material more understandable and more interesting.
Natalie Marte, a third-year environmental science student, said her summer class is very interactive and allows the professor to effectively communicate to students through demonstrations and real-world problems.
“Since physics concepts are often difficult to grasp, I thought it was really cool that my professor took the time to set up a demonstration on wave movement and then was willing to explain what happened,” said Marte. “During the year, professors sometimes lecture about topics without interacting with the students.”
Marte feels that the summer sessions can be difficult, however, given the fact that they move at such a quick pace.
“Although there is interaction, professors realize that they have to get through all the material of a 10-week course in six weeks,” said Marte. “I feel like my professor is teaching something entirely new every class, which makes it difficult to keep up.”
Josh Aulakh, a third-year political science student, is taking an intensive Italian course during the summer that compresses 30 weeks of material into eight weeks. He feels that the summer offers a unique change of pace because his class is taught by three separate professors that encourage a more conversational approach to teaching.
“I remember going to class during the Netherlands and Brazil World Cup match and my professor asked me in Italian if I was rooting for the Brazil team,” said Aulakh. “Unfortunately, Brazil had already lost and I broke the news to the rest of the class. I was upset about it, but it was still pretty cool to talk about it in Italian with the rest of the students and professors.”
In addition to students, professors sense a different feel in the classrooms during the summer months.
Manija Said, a UCLA geography teaching fellow, likes that the summer classes feel more intimate. She said she tries to pause her lectures as much as she can to ask the students for questions or to further explain key points.
“Over the summer, I have a smaller group of students to interact with,” said Said. “By teaching these students, I can learn what parts of the course work and which ones don’t. For me, it’s a great learning experience, as well.”
Said, who is a new teaching fellow, added that the summer allows her to see how well her students are learning the course material based on how she presents it. To her, the summer session is a preview of what classes will be like during the fall, winter and spring quarters.
However, Said finds the summer sessions to be difficult at the same time because her class does not have any discussion periods.
“It is on me to effectively communicate all the course material because there are no discussion sections for this geography class during the summer,” she said. “It would be nice to have sections where TA’s could expound upon course concepts, but the time constraint makes it difficult.”
Waung enjoys teaching a large introductory physics course, made up of students with a wide range of academic majors, over the summer, since he is used to teaching classes of a much smaller scale during the year.
“It is really my only opportunity to teach large classes at UCLA,” said Waung. “Since I usually only teach smaller workshops of 20 physics students during the fall, I look forward to connecting with a larger diversity of students with different majors each summer.”
Waung added that the summer also allows him to test out some of his best jokes with the students in his class. He added that although they might be seen as cheesy, he hopes his jokes will create a laid-back and fun learning environment for students during the summer months.
“There are many different conservative forces in the world of physics,” said Waung. “There is gravity, spring force and of course George Bush’s military.”