A BYU religion professor received the No. 1 ranking on a national Web site that allows students to recommend their favorite faculty or warn about their worst.

Professor Randy L. Bott, who is popular for his Doctrine and Covenants classes among others, was given rate-myprofessor.com’s highest ranking on the Web site’s 2008 Top Rated Professors List. BYU placed No. 7 on the Top Ten Faculty List.

Ratemyprofessors.com is a Web site where students can submit rating and comments about professors. Profes-sors are scored on a 1-5 scale in categories including quality, helpfulness, clarity, easiness and even “hotness,” marked with chili peppers.

According to the Web site, rankings are formulated by finding the mean average of the ratings, with a higher em-phasis being placed on the most recent ratings. School size was not taken into account.

Bott received his first student ratings in 2003 and has since received a total of 177 ratings.

“I think the credit goes to the spirit,” Bott said. “When you teach the truth to people who want to know, the spirit is there.”

Bott said he is impressed by the attentiveness of the students who rated him and expressed appreciation. He said the professor who ranked second even called to congratulate him.

“I don’t ever remember going back to thank a professor the way these students have,” he said. “It makes me feel like an ungrateful leper.”

Taylor Fenton, an exercise science major from Salt Lake City, took Bott’s Sharing the Gospel class as a fresh-man.

“Even though his classes are big,” Fenton said, “he is able to connect with students through his question and answer period at the beginning of class. He knows exactly what is on our minds.”

Though Bott has a zero hotness rating, he scored a 4.6 in all of the other categories from more than 180 ratings.

Copyright Brigham Young University 4 Dec 2008