Texas A&M Professor Gets an F for How He Handled His Unruly Class

People can joke about almost any university. Growing up in South Texas, Aggie jokes were always my favorite. But one Texas A&M professor just made a joke out of himself recently when he failed an entire class.

Texas A&M at Galveston professor Irwin Horwitz became so disgusted with some students' behavior that he failed the entire class - even though he admitted some of the attendees had not actually engaged in misbehavior.

After writing a scathing email to the class where he failed each student, Horwitz walked away from the course. Texas A&M later overturned his decision to fail everyone.

I've worked in management for more than 15 years. I understand frustrations that exist when subordinates don't act as professionally as you'd like, have poor work ethics, put a task delegated to them back on your plate, act immature or rebel.

But guess what? That is all part of the learning and teaching required of managers. Being a management professor, Horwitz should have had that part of the management dance mastered. He could even have used examples cited in his email to the class as examples of challenges that exist in real world management, then offered great techniques to manage those challenges.

Failing the entire class is tantamount to firing an entire workforce due to the transgressions of a few employees that had become unmanageable.

Look, we've all had that one overzealous high school teacher who made idle threats about failing students for being disruptive or giving zeros when a student was caught cheating.

Mine was English professor Dr. Sid Boland.

During my freshman year, I was transferred to Dr. Boland's class during the second semester due to overcrowding. He was such a megalomaniac that on the first day of class each year he insisted the class refer to him as Doctor (I didn't believe he had the skills necessary for such a lofty title) and once added seven zeros to my average due to my speaking out of turn!

I was assigned his class again in my sophomore year and was shocked and scared to return. He handed out the syllabus on the first day of class and insisted our parents read and sign the document.

I informed my father of my concerns. Dad, being an English major and graduate of the College of William and Mary, looked over the syllabus sent by Boland and did something epic: he made several grammatical corrections, then returned the document to the Superintendent of Northside School District in San Antonio, along with his own note of concern as to why Sid Boland would be allowed to continue to teach English with such poor writing skills.

I was soon called into a meeting with both the superintendent and principal of the school and was immediately assigned a different instructor and asked to keep the matter private (which I did...until now).

Maybe he's just staying true to the Aggie stereotype, but hopefully Horwitz never returns to a position of management professor, as he clearly hasn't mastered the techniques necessary of a great manager.