Biology Instructor Barbara Kalvelage wanted to be in the top 10 list for ratemyprofessors.com, and this year she received her wish.
“I got an email a couple weeks ago that said I had made the national hot list,” Kalvelage said. “I thought that was so silly. I called my husband and said, ‘Someone is trying to Punk me.’ … I really thought I was being Punk’d.”
She wasn’t Punk’d – she made the list, but the wrong list, she said.
“Of course, the list I wanted to be on wasn’t the hot list,” Kalvelage said. “I wanted to be on the quality list… but I got roses out of it. My husband bought them for his hot wife.”
Kalvelage said she is “hooked” on ratemyprofessors.com.
She has more than 340 ratings on ratemyprofessors.com with her overall quality being a 4.8 and an easiness level in the middle, at a 3.8, both out five.
The highest-ranked teacher on ratemyprofessors.com is a professor from New York with an overall quality of 5 and an easiness level of 4.8. He has 37 ratings.
“I really don’t see how a professor could get all fives,” Kalvelage said. “You can’t reach every student, but when you do reach them, it’s good.”
The average for all of the USI professors on ratemyprofessors.com is a 3.68 overall quality.
Kalvelage teaches Biology 105 and has won Faculty Member of the Year and H. Lee Cooper Core Curriculum Teaching Award, both in 2009.
“Outside of (the two awards), there’s not much that happens for core, and I don’t expect to win either of those again,” she said. “But on ratemyprofessors.com, I can see how I am relating to the students. I am trying to bridge a big generation gap.”
In 2004, 82 percent of about 130 student class passed Biology 105.
“I thought, ‘I will never have that again,’” Kalvelage said. “I wanted to remember that class forever because they worked so well with each other and they asked good questions, and I was so impressed with them. So I got my tragus pierced. I thought I will always have them with me.”
She then issued a challenge for every class afterwards, she said.
“I would tell every class after, ‘This class got an 82 percent. If you can beat that, Mrs. K. will do something for you, too,’” she said.
In 2007 a class beat the percentage, and it realized that, too, she said.
“They asked me what I would get pierced this time,” Kalvelage said.
Instead of a piercing, Kalvelage got a feather tattoo on top of her forearm.
“I call them my feather class,” she said. “I lost two students from that class so I have two tear drops. Every time I see that feather, it makes me feel so good.”
For any class that beats the 85 percent, Kalvelage said she would get liposuction. For her birthday, she orders chicken and dumplings with two additional sides of dumplings.
“I tell my students that because that’s why I need the liposuction,” she said.
Before each class, Kalvelage said she plays music that pertains to what is being taught in class.
For example, if they were studying the heart, she would play “I’m Not Going to Break your Heart,” she said.
Kalvelage said if anyone did not like the music and complained, she would stop it.
In her classroom, she has a comment box.
“If they don’t like something I’m doing, and they have a suggestion on how to it, they can put it in the comment box,” she said. “Through the years, I’ve learned from my students. Just by trying different things in teaching, I feel like I’m a better teacher.”
Kalvelage started teaching at USI in 1999. She said she didn’t plan on teaching – she took a night class at USI and the professor asked if she would be interested.
“It was only 12 hours a week,” she said. “I could do that standing on my head… (I thought) it would be just until they got someone else. I loved it so much that I quit my other job.”
Before coming to USI, she worked as an aquatic biologist.
“I was the first woman allowed to work on rivers (with the Environmental Protection Agency),” she said. “I had to file a grievance in order to get on the river because they said women can’t get on boats because women fall out of boats.”
Kalvelage said she doesn’t plan on retiring any it time soon.
“The school might plan on it,” she said. “I cannot imagine not teaching…. I cannot imagine sitting at home and drinking coffee all day or something. Even over the summer, I felt like I was just losing so much of life.”
Biology Department Chair Henri Maurice said there is a reason Kalvelage received the two teaching awards.
“She is really good at what she does with our students,” he said. “That is, I think, why she continues teaching. She truly enjoys working with students.”
He said he thinks she becomes more upset if students do not do well than the students do.
Maurice does not use ratemyprofessors.com like Kalvelage does, he said.
“I don’t believe in that because that is not what the university uses,” Maurice said. “But I do know she is highly rated on ratemyprofessors.com, and that’s totally fantastic.”
As for her using piercings and tattoos to motivate students for the pass rate, he said he thinks everyone is different.
“I think each person is individual, and if a person is excited about doing that, then that’s their prerogative,” Maurice said. “I think that’s really cool she does (piercings and tattoos as incentives). I think other faculty perhaps relate to their students in other ways that don’t have to necessarily be tattoos or piercings. There are other ways to relate to their students.”
He said he is glad she does not plan to retire.
“It makes my job easier because I don’t have to replace her,” Maurice said. “She does a lot of really good things with introductory students.”
Junior social work major Kayla Rupp had Kalvelage last spring for Biology 105.
Rupp said she hated biology before Kalvelage’s class.
“She related it to real-life stuff,” Rupp said. “She made it relevant to your life.”
Kalvelage had a strict texting policy where if you texted during class, she kicked you out, Rupp said.
“I wasn’t too fond of it, but it’s her policy… She was very understanding of the college age group, but she stuck to her guns,” Rupp said. “She was still an adult and a teacher, but she understood being young. She’s still young at heart.”