You hate the professor? Hit his student (Part 1)
[Translation from the Greek original]
Necessary clarification: No student belongs to any professor—obviously. But some colleagues believe that because a professor has a special relationship with a student, the student belongs to the professor.
Second clarification: I use the common gender according to old good grammar.1 .
The most typical example of a special relationship between professor and student arises in the supervision of student projects, where the supervising professor and supervised student actually acquire a special relationship that lasts from a few months to a few years.
The choice is always the student's. He chooses the professor he wants to work with, and together they determine the topic. If the relationship is healthy, the two retain their freedom and have separate duties. The professor advises and helps. But, the job is the student's. Likewise, the credit, e.g., high or low grade.
Of course, a large proportion of professors have large difficulties to understand this simple fact. For example, somewhere early in my career, a professor who was a permanent member of the examination committees in one examination period mentioned at the General Assembly of the Department something like “all the theses I examined were very good, except for those of Koutsoyiannis, which were awful”. I explained that I hadn't done any thesis in that particular period, but I had done only one, a long time (15 years) ago.
In the end, it is the student who pays for the hostility, whereas in reality the target is the professor. In my teaching career, I have encountered this several times. A male and a female professor wanted to “cut” a female and a male student, respectively, who had done excellent and useful work. In both of these cases, the colleagues in question were playing expertly in their respective subjects. How did the students dare to enter their field? Which means: How did I dare to supervise a subject that belonged to their own fields?
One of the most typical cases of professorial arbitrariness and injustice to a student was this postgraduate thesis: Preliminary investigation of small works for the exploitation of water resources in Ethiopia (2001).
It was undertaken by Eugenia Arapaki, a graduate student who already had experience as a working engineer, a courageous woman who left her children to go to Ethiopia for a week. The goal was to study local conditions, collect hydrological data, and conduct an investigation into possible construction of a small dam. A dam that would help an Ethiopian community become water and food sufficient. The master thesis was carried out in collaboration with the Consulate General of Ethiopia in Greece and the Faculty of Engineering of Addis Ababa University.
Eventually, a dam site on the Damte stream was selected and studied in reconnaissance. With the partnerships established, the dam that was initially studied, finally became a reality with funding from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Greece (about 100 million drachmas).
[Video production: Nikos Mamassis]
Later, when I was dean of the School (2018), I commissioned another thesis to see what happened to the dam. It was done by another courageous student, Ioanna Kouki: Water resource development projects in Ethiopia: Evaluation of Damte dam operation. Again, she visited the dam site in Ethiopia with the participation of a faculty member, Dr. Harry Saroglou, and with the co-supervision of Professor Nikos Mamassis.
When Ioanna came back and I asked her about her impressions, she told me that she was crying with emotion for the acceptance of the project by the local population, and for the way she was welcomed and treated. She was told that before the dam was built, the local people ate once every two days, but now they eat twice a day.
But let's go back to Eugenia Arapaki who spearheaded the whole adventure. She was crying too. Not out of emotion, but because of the way she was treated by some of my colleagues. What business did you have to undertake a diploma thesis with Koutsoyiannis? Why did you get involved with Ethiopia? What kind of a crappy diploma thesis is that?
This was also reflected in her grade. I gave her a 10 (the maximum). One professor gave her a 5, below the basis, which is 5.5 for theses, and the third member of the three-member examining committee showed a balancing act and gave her an 8. So her final grade was an 8. I'm embarrassed every time I remember it—I can't say anything else.
When I say "the professor" or “he” I mean either a male professor, a female professor, or any of the other 137 genders we are told exist. If I am talking about a particular person and I do not want to give his name, I may refer to his age or his gender, e.g. "the 37-year-old" or "the female professor"