Robert Poch, a senior research fellow in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, is rated as the top instructor at the University of Minnesota according to the popular website, RateMyProfessors.com. The ratings are created by past students and feature reviews of their instructors to help prospective students pick courses. Out of the over 5,000 rated instructors, Robert Poch has the most five-star reviews out of any other instructor. 100 percent of the reviewers said they would take another course offered by Poch.
The praise for Poch from past students is staggering. One student writes, “most amazing professor at the U. period. Left the class a better person with a new love for learning. TAKE THIS CLASS IF YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY! Never met a professor as amazing as Bob. I have never been able to say I left a class a better person until now.”
Another student enthuses, “By FAR one of the best professors at UMN. He cares about you and wants you to succeed and get an A in this class, this being said, he still requires you to put effort into the class, you go over every single topic in depth and he makes sure you understand, he is very understanding. By far the best class I have ever taken.”
Poch focuses on community building and engaging students as co-creates of knowledge through active interaction with each other in his history courses. “While studying history together in CI 1121 (Educational Movements Past and Present: Multicultural Perspectives), my philosophy is that everyone in the course is a fellow historian rather than students in a history course,” he says. “That is a fundamental difference given that historians are responsible for interpreting and sharing historical information verbally and in writing whereas students are often limited to a role of repeating information on tests. Fellow historians actively discuss historical sources with each other and bring value to the community by interpreting sources differently given our different experiences and identities.”
Poch believes in the ability of students to take very complex historical information and develop skillful meanings and connections from it that have important contemporary applications. “That kind of engagement is a powerful motivator for me as a teacher and makes me truly love what I do,” he adds.
Learn more about academics offered in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.
