What is Reddit's opinion of
Rate My Professor?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
➔ Rate My Professor website
By popularity on Reddit, this Service is:
100 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
Pretty sure this is Professor Bill Head from Indiana University. He loves to throw shit, including tests and assignments. Not at all in a malicious way, but because it's funny to throw a six page packet to someone fifteen seats away and watch it go awry. He's a pretty good teacher.
I had a feeling it was going to be considered better than nothing but he had already said he was going to post a study guide almost a week before. This is his ratemyprofessor for reference
The worst part is Wesley Scroggins is an associate professor at Missouri State University. This is a supposed institution of higher learning, but it makes you wonder if they have this asshat teaching there.
Here is his rating from RateMyProfessors.com. As expected the reviews are mostly dismal.
When choosing your classes, make sure that your professors aren't horrible. For this check ratemyprofessors. Trust me, sometimes the professor makes or breaks the class. For example, we had one professor at my uni who's goal was to flunk at least 3 students a semester for plagiarism. Her goal!
Also, buy core books (the ones in your major's basic classes), but not from you school's bookstore. Try Amazon. Also, when the books are not as important, rent from chegg. This place has great discounts on books and fantastic customer service.
He is clearly a very dedicated teacher, but he is not the only dedicated teacher in the Berkeley math department. I know this for a fact. One of these very dedicated teachers is Craig Evans, whose name Coward drags through the mud with out of context quotes.
I've talked about this a lot with people I know from UC Berkeley (mostly people who were grad students or postdocs there), and everyone I've spoken to believes that Coward is egregiously cherry picking and manipulating information, and that Coward's self-aggrandizing rhetoric is not particularly well founded. These are people I know care deeply about teaching, and have a history of working effectively for their students.
There are problems with undergraduate math education, and UC Berkeley might illustrate many of these problems. This is an important topic worthy of discussion. But in this particular situation, it just doesn't seem like that's what's going on. I'd keep in mind that professionalism will prevent the UC Berkeley math department from responding as loudly or as one-sidedly as Coward's attack, but that doesn't mean that he's giving you the full story, or even an honest representation of anything (see CowardGSI's comments and my comment below). I'd encourage people to keep fighting for better education, without jumping on the Coward bandwagon.
Curious what Akhil Amar's RateMyProfessor's rating was. 3.3/5
"He's a nice person I'm sure but not a good teacher. Tends to talk more about himself than about the subject, constantly off on tangents, very defensive if questioned and cannot handle being disagreed with. I hear he's better with the undergrads. Read his book, skip the class."
"Awful class. Amar is a little too full of himself to make this an enjoyable experience. He is incredibly smart and spends the entire class trying to show that to you. Way better classes available at Yale"
I can see it.
I, too, was less than enthused by the "fired for being too good at my job" schtick, so I had a look at some unofficial, but public student reviews. He seems to be fairly popular, but the comments nearly universally seem to emphasise that he spends a lot more time "inspiring" than "teaching".
I find it tough to believe he's particularly been hard done by when he's been given a huge amount of notice that the Department wants his style to change and he's apparently refused. If I hired someone and they ignored my requests as to how they do their job, I doubt I'd be too enthused about keeping them on.
Peet was the petulant little manlet that went on CBC claiming that JBP's refusal to use synthetic pronouns was 'hate speech'. He's not exactly an unbiased commentator on his issue.
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/search.jsp?query=Christine+ford
Looks like you can only find her by the name Ford.
This is the specific link from pic: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1352705
Use Rate my professor. If they have a terrible score then it might be worth dropping the class.
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/
There may be some unfair scores in it, but if your professor has a great rating it’s nice to know.
> HUM 1020. INTRODUCTION TO HUMANITIES.
> Basic introduction to humanities. Focuses on central concepts, historical development and fundamental nature of philosophy, architecture, music, religion and art. Concepts from such disciplines integrated with contemporary American culture.
Wonder how she got in to teach at a college? Let's see...
- woman (✔)
- ethnic minority (✔)
- religious minority - not globally of course, in America silly (✔)
- teaching bullshit liberal arts class where she reads off a set lesson plan using predetermined materials (✔)
That's a 100% hire if you are an administrator at a liberal arts college. Read the reviews: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=816729
They say "just repeat what's in the book, and it's easy A, all work done online. would take again for another easy A." etc
Garbage "professor" for a garbage educational system.
The prof named in the article should be outed:
From his profile, he's refereed journals such as > > “Is Slash an Alternative Medium? ‘Queer’ Heterotopias and the Role of Autonomous Media Space in Radical World Building.” Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action 1.1 (2007). 69-85. Web."
> “Taking the Leather out of Leathersex: BDSM Identity and the Implications of an Internet-Mediated Sadomasochistic Public Sphere.” GR: Journal For The Arts, Sciences & Technology 2.2 (2004): 39-44. Print.
Here are what his recent interests are:
> These include such topics as hashtags as technosocial assemblages; MMOs and avatar infidelity; the politics of race-activist hashtags such as #Ferguson; haptics and digital touching; and the emerging sex robot industry.
Has a 4.8 rating on ratemyprof because he seems to teach nothing and hand out marks, according to the reviews.
I love how half her tweets are about white people even though the discussion wasn't ever about race
I haven't had interactions with either of them, but browsing through ratemyprof it seems a general trend is Peterson is knowledgable and good prof, whereas Peet doesn't seem to care much about her students and is a nasty person.
I won't quote any specific reviews since it would be total cherry picking but draw your own conclusions here and here (I'd recommend not looking at recent reviews, they may be biased by this whole situation)
I was going to take her relativity class this semester too, now I'm rather glad I couldn't fit it in
Steve's interview impressed me and judging from his rate my professor reviews he does a great job at relating to younger people. I don't think he'll be the typical older player.
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1788289
If you're unfamiliar with ratemyprofessor, this isn't a common thing that so many people are this obsessed with a professor to the point where they'll have 50 reviews and no bad ones and such a high rating.. so I think it says a lot
This guy regularly posts reviews about himself (because RMP has a horrible, horrible filter):
Many of the real bad reviews states that he speaks broken english, and the 'good' reviews are clearly written by him, in either broken english or the same 'script'. He was a professor at the University, became a Dean at another, was fired after a few years, then re-hired at St. Cloud State University - He shouldn't be teaching any course at all.
edit: He used to teach web design, and this is his current website.
It's interesting that her Rate My Professors page has complaints about this going back to 2012. Even students who like her question the validity of her information.
Here's mine if you don't mind a little self-doxxing. You might have to dig a little since there are a lot, but a few favorites:
"it doesn't hurt that he looks like a vaudevillian puppetmaster."
"He has that Samwise Gamgee/hobbit look about him that I find so appealling!"
"He once slapped a turkey during class, just to show that he could."
I neither confirm nor deny abusing ground fowl during my class.
I'm not sure I can continue reading this article.
It begins:
>I am reasonably sure that our tax dollars could be put to better use than chasing down a rabbit trail trying to impune a 16-year-olds dating record of him trying to get “some” as a young man. Give me a damned break; this is insanity!
Let's ignore the typo.
The allegations describe someone forcing a younger girl down and groping her while another boy watched. That is not a young man "trying to get some." That's sexual assault.
Second the article links to "Ratemyprofessors" to prove that Ford is an unpopular Professor that is "Unhinged". http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1352705
However - she has an average of 3.2 on a scale of 5 and most of the comments were on how hard she pushed students to put forward their best work.
Complaints had nothing to do with her "liberal" ideas and everything to do with "Hard grader and talks for 2hr 45min without giving a break."
There was nothing in their supporting link about her being "unhinged."
I feel like I don't need to go any further than that - it's an article that uses poor sourcing and unfounded claims to defend the SCOTUS Nominee.
The author gives credit where credit is due to Feinstein's ability to serve her constituents but their attempts to discredit an alleged victim and characterize sexual assault as normal courtship are huge red flags as to where the article is going.
So, I've never heard of this guy before, and I assume others here are in the same boat. Why is everyone (based on the comments here) assuming that he's a TBM pushing apologetics? It seems just as easy to read this as a serious academic trying to relate to a fairly religious student body by speaking their language.
His faculty page looks legit to me. https://www.uvu.edu/profpages/profiles/show/user_id/15279
Student reviews seem positive. The only complaints are about the difficulty of his course, not that he's beating a Mormon drum. http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1872886
None of my Googling brings up the slightest hint that he's an apologist.
Also, Jill Biden sounds fantastic. Check her out on rate my professor... Notice how no one mentions Joe Biden in her reviews and everyone recommends her, pretty much. Someone warns you though that she's very liberal... Hmm, I wonder why?
The fact she does her own thing and is great at it is pretty awesome. http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1251801
In a word, yes. But don't just take my word for it, check his ratemyprofessor profile.
He was probably the best professor I (never officially) had. I didn't know about him until I heard from other students how good he was. I ended up going to his lectures instead of my scheduled ones and the difference was unbelievable. Wish I'd started going sooner.
Ratemyprofessors.com often has reviews that contain whether or not the prof used the book. (Also great to know if you should avoid the prof altogether haha). God I wish it had existed when I was in school...
ROTFL. He's in Brooklyn, chances of him driving and seeing a car with a Trump bumper sticker on it is nil. I doubt he gets to Staten Island or NW NJ much. I'd actually be a bit surprised if he has a car, he probably takes the train when he has to actually teach a class.
Needless to say, chance of him being able to buy a gun in NYC is pretty low as well. The city isn't big on the Second Amendment.
His RateMyProfessors page is good reading; he's considered an easy A:
You can actually check them out here. A repeating comment I'm seeing is he "loves to hear himself talk" and that he is "more interested in his strict classroom policies than actually teaching".
EDIT: A few "hates America" ones in there as well.
His profile on ratemyprofessors.com makes him sound like an awesome prof.
Not that I would expect anything else from a creationist, but how dense do you have to be to expect a recommendation from a biology professor when you deny the most important theory in biology with no evidence? Honestly why would you expect a recommendation from any science prof as a creationist. You think these people should just gladly sacrifice their intellectual integrity and reputations over you?
I would strongly suggest you get a textbook called "Advanced Engineering Mathematics" (you can buy used cheap) - you won't need everything in it most likely, but it covers a huge amount of material and can be used as a reference as well as a textbook. Rather than spending a lot of time giving you examples and explaining topics it has a format where it presents a theorem, proves it, gives you one example, then moves on to the next theorem then gives you a set of problems which you can work through. In this way it fits differential equations, linear algebra, vector algebra, multivariable calculus, as well as some complex analysis and partial differential equations into one book.
You can skip all the differential equations generally and go straight for the Linear algebra and vector parts.
I took my Differential Equations class with a DiffEq textbook by the same textbook author (Dennis Zill - all his students hate him) - it was the first time I ever remember a math textbook standing out to me in my math courses. I absolutely love the book A.E.M. and would never keep it far from me while programming even if I only need it occasionally. If I were required to dispose of my entire library and was allowed to keep only two books - I would keep the OED and that textbook.
Simon Springer has a RateMyProfessors page
Hotness: Yes (???)
> Springer is a helpful prof and a nice, personable fellow. Unfortunately his expertise did not line up with this class and it became a class about anarchism and development. You will get a good mark if you attend and participate in class, but his marking criteria can be confusing or non-existant at times.
Rate My Professor, a website which allows college students (and anyone with an internet connection, really) to 'rate' professors based on factors. It's horribly unreliable due to the fact that students who fail classes invariably blame the professor for being 'too difficult.'
At Rutgers, there was a similar professor that was famous in the mechanical engineering department for a similar pattern. The first day of class he said to us: "I have a bad reputation for having a very hard class, but it's very easy. 50% of the first exam will be on the stress-strain diagram for steel. You must memorize the stress-strain diagram. If you memorize it, the test will be very easy. Even though I say this now... I know that 50% of you will not listen. And then you will fail. And then, you will blame me, saying that I can not teach."
I thought he was great, but that's because I listened and studied what he told us to. Other people had complaints about how he "can't teach"
I'm currently taking Operating Systems at the University of Wisconsin and my professor is the author of that book. Crazy stuff. He is a great professor.
EDIT: I should say co-author. He co-wrote it with his wife.
>Felt as if CNA was just covering their ass before people start accusing them of giving free publicity to ghostwriting services
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1949364
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1164874
> Even though his lectures are kind of dry sometimes the assignments make up for it. You'll get an A as long as you meet the criteria (which is not that mo much to begin with). The only thin you'll have to worry about are the tests which are moderately easy.
> really,really nice professor! it's easy to get A.
Yea....Obviously for show.
Mesa Community College is an awesome school to get started down this path. I started there and then went on to get a degree in Computer Engineering at ASU.
Mike J teaches the introductory Computer Science classes there and is absolutely top-notch. He's a young guy with the patience of a saint and is an incredible teacher. I had him when he first started teaching at MCC and his classes were challenging and truly prepared you to continue in the degree program. I took CSE100 (Intro to programming using C++) and CSE205 (Object Oriented Programming/Intro to Data Structures and Algorithms using Java) and it made the following classes SO MUCH EASIER than they would have been had I not had such a thorough teacher (like the ones teaching lower-division classes at ASU). If this is a path you want to go down, you really can't pick a better place to start. Best of all, if you don't like it, you're not out thousands of dollars like you would be at ASU! And if you go all the way through with it, there are a ton of software companies in the Phoenix area.
Some entitled weasel has given her teacher a poor rating on RateMyProfessor because he didn't cave to her SJW agenda.
> This "teacher" wouldn't allow my fellow African American students who were too traumatized by the Michael Brown proceedings to postpone the exam. We have been disrespected and are disturbed by professor Raney's lack of consideration for our general well-being. If you emailed me asking to take this teacher, I would simply respond with "NO."
His other ratings were all either good or average.
From her page on Rate my Professor: "Great prof, but if you take Lang 120 you WILL have to do a meme project and it will be cringey."
sauce http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1642308
From Rate My Professor
Liz has a lot to offer her students and knows her subject well...BUT she does project bias towards her students. She projects her insecurities on you if she cannot figure out a way to reach you as an aspiring actor. This reflects reflects on her ineffectiveness as a professor. You'll be given a course in "Life Politics" 101.
lulz.
Though I enjoyed the single commentor's inside scoop into this particular professor's flair for anger, emotional abuse, and inability to 'play nicely' with the other faculty I popped over to the Rate My Professor website and with ~60 postings going over 7 years (http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=353007) and having him rated as an average teacher I suspect there may be more to the agitation in makes_comments post than has been let on. Perhaps makes_comments did not do well in the apparently very difficult SPCOM119 speech class?
edit removed a 't'
Paul Krugman's Rate My Professor page is fantastic. link
Highlights include:
>He's deadwood, not an active researcher. Princeton students deserve more than a newpaper columnist, no matter what are his political beliefs. This was the home of Einstein and krugman is a disgrace to this legacy
>He's great! Newsflash, Conservatives are too stupid to get this far. Chances are that if you're at Princeton, the cons have been weeded out long ago
lmao
Akhil Amar on rate my professor > He's a nice person I'm sure but not a good teacher. Tends to talk more about himself than about the subject, constantly off on tangents, very defensive if questioned and cannot handle being disagreed with. I hear he's better with the undergrads. Read his book, skip the class.
The new prof, Xinmiao Zhang, is essentially a robot that jumps around topic to topic without explaining anything, then makes the exams take years. She used to teach at Case Western and her reviews there are very reflective of our experience this semester.
I am confused about this guy's political orientation. His rate-my-prof page implies he is a radical left dude. http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=17183
Is anyone familear with him?
Here is what helped me graduate:
RateMyProfessor will help you pick the best teachers. Also, please rate after each semester.
Amazon/Chegg book rentals. Wait a day or so after class meets to make sure you actually need the book.
Understand that a deployment(s) does not make you SME on Iraq/Afg, world politics, anything else.
VA Work Study is tax free money and working in the vet office at my school was great because I was already on campus and provided me with some extra cash.
Paid internship for credit is great! When you graduate you'll be a few years removed from the military and industry experience will matter. Being in the military is great and all, but it is getting more and more competitive where that isn't the differentiator it used to be.
Enjoy homie and good luck.
Not that I am in complete disagreement with this (though some of his numbers are questionable and I am disappointed by the lack of citations), Jonathan Katz is famous for holding a number of other controversial and questionable opinions.
Some of his gems include: "In Defense of Homophobia," "Anyone Who Bombs Baghdad Gets My Vote," "Diversity is the Last Refuge of a Scoundrel," "Why Terrorism is Important," and "Cold Thoughts on Global Warming" (which explains why we should embrace climate change).
His ratemyprofessor page evaluates him as "pure cock," and he was once described as the "What Am I Doing Here Guy" of the gulf oil spill relief group. There are a number of better sources for this kind of opinion piece.
The prof named in the article should be outed:
From his profile, he's refereed journals such as > > “Is Slash an Alternative Medium? ‘Queer’ Heterotopias and the Role of Autonomous Media Space in Radical World Building.” Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action 1.1 (2007). 69-85. Web."
> “Taking the Leather out of Leathersex: BDSM Identity and the Implications of an Internet-Mediated Sadomasochistic Public Sphere.” GR: Journal For The Arts, Sciences & Technology 2.2 (2004): 39-44. Print.
Here are what his recent interests are:
> These include such topics as hashtags as technosocial assemblages; MMOs and avatar infidelity; the politics of race-activist hashtags such as #Ferguson; haptics and digital touching; and the emerging sex robot industry.
Has a 4.8 rating on ratemyprof because he seems to teach nothing and hand out marks, according to the reviews.
The point they made is that even if she is an outstanding educator her score should be lower just from students that are unhappy with their grades.
The only way to have a score that high is if she has never had any students get upset with her in any way or if she has had very few students which were all sycophantic in nature. Reading the actual reviews on RateMyProfessor heavily suggest the second.
I know. Sounds a little too much like a set up. His name was actually Dr. McCarthy and this was the museum. He actually got some notoriety a couple years ago when he recreated the sounds of neanderthal vocal tracts.
Edit: Really? No updoots for giving the details?
Michael Persinger has a respectable 3.8 (out of 5) rating on RateMyProfessor.com despite his courses being a 1.9 on Easiness and the average grade of his raters is a C+: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=16162
Implying that he is interested getting a free pass so he can insult his students doesn't jive with his recognition as a lecturer for which he has received awards.
If you can't see how delving into provocative and 'offensive' areas can be educational, I suggest you re-read your introduction to psychology books where you will find many examples.
Note: I disagree with much of his research and his focus on proving paranormal bunkum. However, this discussion is about academic freedom.
Is he? He was a visiting artist and occasionally taught courses there, possibly while getting his master's degree in 2004. And there's a ratemyprofessors page for him as recently as 2010. But I couldn't find him on a faculty list anywhere.
Not a whole lot of reviews, but pretty positive stuff on ratemyprofessors.com
Edit: Fucking wow. All but the most negative review have vanished. He WAS between 4.0 and 4.5 in all categories (except maybe easiness). Damn reddit, you scary sometimes.
i am in her 241 class now and she’s honestly the worst professor I’ve experienced at ub. i left a rating on ratemyprofessor, but its gone so she must removed it. Type her name into ratemyprofessor’s and see how much she sucks: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/search.jsp?query=silvia+saccon she told us she used to run the math program at case university. why did she come to ub and why did ub hire her?
A quick look into Amanda Peet... who the article doesn't list as Amanda or uses a pronoun for... hmmmmmm
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=30566
>Peet is awesome but their lectures are a little dense.
...
>Amanda Peet is an amazing person. Extremely prone to long tangents, irritable, and difficult to get a long with, but also quirky and very knowledgeable. Your experience will be dramatically shaped by whether you decide to view their personal eccentricity as a mark of genius or insanity. Nevertheless, if you give them respect, you'll get it back.
I think I might be noticing a pattern here...
Most of the other reviews seem to focus on political correctness, becoming hostile towards students when challenged on politics (meaning she pushes here politics during class most likely), and generally not teaching to the subject.
There are a few Survivors with Rate My Professor pages.
and probably some others I'm forgetting/don't know about
Maybe you won't like that answer, but most likely you simply suck at teaching and you should be doing something else. When professors are good such rating won't affect them.
Case in point: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=161939
This professor is definitively not easy and can fail you if you won't do your work. The thing is that he's so good at explaining the concepts, that if you fail a test you know it is not him but you who failed. He loves the subject (Physics) he is extremely clear, he can make the subject very interesting and he also loves to teach (he already retired yet still teaches part time). He's definitively the best teacher I ever had.
Hello!
In my post, I was referring to http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ . You just type in the name of your teacher, and student reviews of the teacher should pop up.
Alright so first off, in all my experience and people I've talked to, honors classes aren't 'harder'. I would say they're just 'better'. The differences are usually -
Smaller class size
'better' professor (almost always has a better ratings online and I'm guessing in their internal system)
Extra project/lab (I've done a few honors math classes including honors calc 2 and 3. Each of them had basically the same course load but had 3 or 4 'projects' tacked on. Either just extra problems to work out in full or some easy stuff in Matlab. it was a grade booster both times for me. Same idea extended into other honors classes too)
Also, although it doesn't mean much, everyone will be in the honors college there. Not a bad thing. I would always recommend taking the honors one if you can
If you have any interest in graduating in the honors college, you also should take the honors section, since only the starter classes offer an honors section.
For looking up professors, either ask people you know, or check rate my professor and read through the reviews, noting class they took and all that. Both seem good for math profs -
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1797323
https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=175828
Hope that helps. If you have any questions hmu here or send a pm
At this point we ought to start thinking about breaking universities up and putting these kinds of degrees under a different name than ones in hard sciences. It's pretty unfair to get a degree from McMaster in hard science and be equivocal to someone who got a degree in purely unscientific bullshit.
Anyway, she seems like a new professor that isn't very good. People either love her for being nice/interesting or she's apparently worthless:
I just checked this guys professor rating page and Holy Shit I love hearing what some of the students have to say about him. This guy is a D bag even to BYU I students. http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=913554
I feel so lucky to have never even thought about attending this shit hole of a university (not worthy of the title)
If he's still around, ECE 2010 with Makarov. Useful stuff to know anyway. His lectures are engaging - he usually ends up covered in chalk dust because of how god damned excited he is. He also shows up to all the labs. His passion for his job really shows.
I'm fairly sure he's moved on, but Prof. Berezovski for anything (I had him Calc I/II). Great teacher and total badass. If you don't get a 100 on a test, he'll let you come to his office and keep revising it until you do. Also, he almost broke the pepper scale on ratemyprofessor:
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1630956
If you want an interesting elective, I took Philosophy of Religion with Gottlieb. You basically sit there and listen to a sort of crazy Jewish socialist ramble about whatever he wants. Good times.
Edit: Some details.
High ratings, high demand for their classes for Priestman, Vacante, and Stewart. Stewart was one of the best profs I had at Western, definitely in my top 3 with the retired Craig Simpson and Nig from PoliSci. His 3000 level classes were always packed and had a sizeable waiting list. I doubt Western has better professors lining up to be working for the history department.
And while I get that they have to generate income, there are so many bureaucratic administrators who work fewer hours, accomplish less, yet get paid more. Given that its a public university and NOT a business, I think it's pretty shady. Given how many of my professors over 4 years had second and third jobs, I'd say its not about the professors, this one is solidly on the institution.
we need more profs like Prof Hudson pls.
Very good professor according to RateMyProfessor at 4.6 and makes memes.
Wish all my professors are like Prof Hudson.
Some profs are assholes man. I took a class two semesters ago and had to drop it because the professor was literally an insane person. Here's his rate my professor page:
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=209915
Took the class again last semester with a different prof and got an A.
If you haven't already, would you please provide a rating for him on RateMyProfessor that way student's would know not to take his class? That might not do a whole lot, but it could still help a bit.
Reads like a grumpy old man who is trying to write for the first time. How the hell is he a journalism professor?Though I do have to agree there is a lack of signage for directions to the art gallery.
Edit: Unsurprisingly, his Rate My Professor rating isn't good
I went to school with one of the elites, and her track record with the fawning new generation reads like "Not my job to educate you, shitlord. Read and indoctrinate yourself instead of extrapolating your own ideas."
The next generation of "teachers" are more subtle than Dworkin, Solanas, or that one woman who assaulted a pro-life demonstration and jaked their signs (and may have professional ties to my old acquaintance aforementioned).
tl;dr: bitches be cray, and they do exist in the wild.
Use Rate My Professors and CAPE results. Also speaking from experience, many professors have very thick accents, which may or may not be a problem for you.
- Arrange all of your classes to be a solid block schedule, with possibly a gap for lunch.
- Look at the grade distributions and ratemyprofessor review for each class as well.
- Get a consistent sleep schedule.
- Start eating healthy.
- Attend meetings for any club you may possibly be interested in, but only join if you like the club and have the time to spare.
- Move out of your comfort zone to make friends.
Shawn Jackson. Hands down. http://w3.physics.arizona.edu/people/shawn-jackson
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=453118
Has great wit and sarcasm, clear lectures, good examples. He helps students period. The only thing I don't know is what is he drinking from the red cup he brought to every lecture . . .
Yes, I have a moderator mail explaining I was banned for being "rude" - i.e. not breaking any rule, just questioning the veracity of their anointed prophet.
If you look at the Rate My Professor Page for an identically named professor in psychology at Rutgers, a stone's throw from the Medical Center at Rochester you will see Rutger's Kevin Coffey is renowned for being an easy instructor, especially if you ask him about his research. Hmm. "want an A+?" Stroke his ego.
And since Rutger's Kevin Coffey and Rochester's Kevin Coffey are very likely the same person then the question arises - why has an academic with a horrible publishing record jumped ship to a new university? And is this really a person we want lecturing to reddit's vast hoard of impressionable teens and twenty-somethings?
Dr. Hayes, why should we buy from a man who is not trained in basic biology or nutrition, does not understand anything about how weight loss works, thinks that normal fluctuations in weight are statistically significant data, and is classified by his own students as disorganized, mistake-prone, and generally terrible, with many students claiming you are the worst professor they have ever had?
Furthermore, how do you think NASA and UC-Irvine would feel about you using their good names to push a scam product that is not supported by any science whatsoever?
This method works on many websites that have this type of pop-up adblock disabling request and I just used it again a few moments ago at latimes.com. That said, you may see some reduced functionality because you are in effect disabling JavaScript itself, however that's the drawback of not just disabling adblock altogether.
I did notice some reduced functionality on RMP, but for me it just forwarded me to the mobile site located at:
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/mobile/professor_search
The search functionality seems to work just fine, although the left-side buttons and the top search bar aren't working. Your mileage may vary, but for simple professor searches, it works for me.
Just thought I'd share since it's a method I've been using on other sites and it's the first time I've seen a popup like this on RMP.
Found the professor in question, Katharine Westaway, on ratemyprofessors.com. Many students give her good ratings, but there are some warning signs. One student warns that she's a HARDCORE feminist (caps like this). Another points out "Grades you based on gender and whether or not you agree with her opinions". Color me unsurprised.
I'm definitely interested in seeing what you create. I think this could be a powerful tool for anyone who is, has been, or will be a missionary. If you haven't done so already, you might check mormnomnomnom's thread and the comments on my thread to see what ideas other people have already suggested. I especially liked what /u/ignorant_ said, that it could be called "About My Mission President" rather than "Rate My Mission President" so that the focus is on collecting qualitative rather than quantitative information. That strikes me as a way to invite people to be more reflective and less casually cruel in their comments. But you're creating this site, so those choices are of course up to you.
You might want to read the rules of conduct that Ratemyprofessors uses here--I think this is how they must absolve themselves of website users behaving badly. (TIL RmP is owned by Viacom. Who knew?)
Two of his reviews on Rate My Professor are great
> Good teacher overall but he was really hard on this international student from Peru, I'm not sure what that was about..
and
> Fun story: Guy stubbed his toe on his way to class and yelled out loud "SUKKAA BUJAT" I don't know what he meant but I died of laughter good prof.
I don't mind calling this fucker out: he's not actively teaching anymore, and he was wildly tenured when I was in his class decades ago...
By far one of the worst professors I've ever had. The reading for the class was a flat joke. Existentialism and phenomenology are pretty damn fluffy, but there is a huge body of interesting text: Sartre, Derrida, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard...All interesting shit. We read none of that, just a little 200 page pamphlet that gave a vague overview of some of the core concepts. 300 level class! 200 page book!
He filled the rest of the time with his own rambling thoughts on "this-ness" (existentialism is a downer: he never talked about it if he could help it) how the Internet (it was new then) was going to unravel the fabric of civilization. He talked incessantly about the beauty of nature, and we never once had a class outside, despite the beautiful weather.
Class was graded on three papers. Mainly about your personal experience and also how great the prof was (for extra credit). By the end of the class I was so sick of him I spent half my time trolling him by asking specific questions from the reading (which he often failed to answer). Ended up with a D in the class, probably the only one he gave that semester, and when my advisor saw it, he laughed for 5 solid minutes (while i ranted) and then took me out for a beer.
I learned later that there were only two continental philosophy profs there, and they'd both been chosen specifically because of how bad they were, so as to push serious students back to analytic philosophy (The other prof based all of her classes around the great existentialist Anne Rice).
All that being said here is his page.
The course codes she's teaching appear to be Composition I, Composition II, and Survey of American Literature.
The students report in RatemyProfessor indicate that if you don't agree with her spiritual beliefs, you do not do as well.
Further, the assignment (Final Exam: 1984) sounds like what we might expect to see in a Comp or Lit class, so my guess is that this is a final assignment for composition and/or literature.
The language in the prompt should be entirely different if she's asking the students to support a chosen position in writing. It should say something along the lines of,
'Take the position that...'
'Adopt the view that..'
'Make a case for...'
'Build an argument for...'
Instead, it uses a declarative. "Now we're going to discuss how the absence of God makes this all possible." That's stated as a fact in the instructions, not as a premise in a prompt.
"In this essay, you will describe the specific issues/events in the book that prove the stated thesis to be true."
This is an assertion, not a thought exercise. She's a composition instructor, so she knows or should know how to use language. She's articulating here that her thesis is true, not asking the students to support a case.
Moving beyond that, I'm questioning her credentials and qualifications. Generally speaking, the more educated you are, the better you are at seeing and understanding that there can be multiple interpretations or points of view regarding the same source, and that sometimes the truth itself is not all black and white. This would seem to be especially true in the field of literature.
She's not promoting thinking at this deeper level for her students, as she's not acknowledging that any point of view other than her own exists. More disturbingly, I'm afraid that she's not thinking at that level, which calls the validity of her training into question.
Sometimes words are hard What? This is not an argument in favor of her bullying. If you cannot debate the hard issues, you don't have the right to debate.
She has feelings . . . ok. She is the one in power in this situation, trying to incite her students in ugly, violent behavior. She is using her privilege as a faculty member to shut down speech she doesn't like. Funny, I don't hear many stories about pregnant women physically intimidating young people on campus they disagree with. I did hear about Dr. Miller-Young doing this. She is doing this because she has the power to enforce her ideological and affective biases (she is a faculty member and her viewpoints are those of the majority on campus i.e. in relation to those girls she is the one in power).
Check out comments about her: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1047530
Strange lady. Probably smart, but so into her subject she has no perspective. Don't ever disagree with her!
She has to be one of the worst around. She does engage in proper debate. You either agree with her point of view or she becomes aggressive and belittles you. She is always wrong [sic] and you are never right. Please don't take her class. It's not worth it.
The absolute worst professor I have ever had. She made the whole class miserable. We couldn't wait to get out of that class every single day. The homework is not too bad but having to listen to her gab on and on about nothing every day was torture. RUN!!
She is usually unprepared for class, cannot stand it when you disagree with her and lacks basic communication skills. She assigns shock value reading to make points that she could otherwise not validate. When she feels she is loosing a debate she resorts to insults and intimidation.
Are you Mark Blair? It is the only name publicly associated with the project at the moment. Are you the initiator of the project or did the idea come from one of your students?
Mark Blair appears to have very good reputation score on ratemyprofessors.com.
http://www.sfu.ca/psyc/faculty/blair/Dr._Blairs_Site/Welcome.html
Avoid Paul Latiolais. He doesn't take responsibility for student learning.
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=290007 (the most recent reviews are exactly the experience I had)
- Joseph Bradford for MTH 254 was alright
- Andy Flight for MTH 261 was alright
Join a study group or a group you can do homework with. And avoid hybrid or "flip model" classes.
If you're committed to it, it'll be fine.
Regarding DJW: I had him for 419.
- In my experience he is a poor lecturer in that he delivers the content poorly (writing, speech, and examples are all subpar) and cannot address questions effectively. He also goes into unrelated tangents periodically.
- His quizzes would tend to incorporate "tricks" that he presented in lecture rather than exercise core concepts, so if you were sick or traveling, you were hosed regardless of how well you knew the material.
- His grading was such that everything revolved around getting the correct answer. Demonstrating understanding of the material, but perhaps with an arithmetic error, would result in a zero.
- Other opinions
- Bottom line: I have a BSE, MS, MSE, and just finished my PhD, and in all that formal education this was the standout class that I look back upon and am entirely disappointed by in every respect.
Nilsen-Hamilton is without a doubt the worst professor that I've ever had. Not only is she a terrible professor that most of what's on the exam isn't taught in class, but she's also rude to students that ask "dumb" questions. She even has a 1.1 rating on ratemyprofessor from the previous years that she's taught the course. I'm amazed that they allow her to teach with how bad she is at it.
Not a prof but relevant topic: yesterday a prof at my school was caught watching porn and his rate my prof page has some pretty great comments
His ratemyprofessor page is amazing
One day he was discussing the allegory of the cave by Plato. It is basically an ancient version of the Matrix. Anyway, he pulled out a bike lock, beat some students, and shouted "Plato was a loser!". Then he tucked into the fetal position, rocked back and forth and mumbled something about his precious excrement.
Hello, I'd like to report a theft, my bike lock has been stolen after I parked it near campus in Berkeley. Has anyone found it by any chance ? I have a thick Kekistani accent so he asked me where I am from. I replied, "I am from Kekistan, Praise KEK PBUH". He started beating me with a big black bike lock while yelling, "That is f***en made up you POS. Thats not real like gender nonbinary nonconforming demisexual sapiosexualism!!!" All I could do was beg Pepe and the Lord KEK for justice!
Taking this class gave me flashback to Catholic school. Professor Canton would walk around the room wielding a bike lock and rap any students' knuckles who couldn't recite Marx's Communist Manifesto by heart.
Nestor Handzy is the greatest goddamn professor you will ever have.
This is a man who will draw chalkboard sharks when asked without batting an eye. A man who will interrupt his own lectures to talk about The Walking Dead.
Yes, it is. He's very popular at http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=977070
The remarkably low difficulty is expected, given how he's preaching feminism rather than teaching anything, but the comments suggest that his courses are more like social clubs than actual learning. Your tax dollars at work, I suppose. Rutgers is a publicly funded university.
Julie Schauer may talk a big game about terrorism and criminal deviancy, but at heart she opposes marijuana legalization because her family's money (which built the trust she used to donate) was built on conservative ideals (e.g., fuck the poor, get money).
Apparently she's a shit professor too.
I feel ya, I'm a "scientist punk" just like Greg. In theory I should love them... but yea... "bland" is a good word. I have seen them live a few times though and they definitely do a good job. I feel like their albums are generally over-compressed and a lot of Greg's lyrics come off to me as "im14thisisdeeeeeep" when I really listen to them. His book was cool though and I do find myself jamming to B.R. from time to time.
Greg's RateMyProfessor page is pretty funny if you have never seen it before.
Let's see... He's noted as being a strict grader that doesn't deal work late assignments, and as someone who plays the devil's advocate in class, trying to get students to discuss and support their stances...
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1557063
Well, so far he seems like any philosophy/humanities professor. Since we can't really find anything about the girl (including what class it even was, apparently), let's look at Liberty Council, where this retort is coming from...
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Counsel
So, they threaten to sue over libraries attempting to get kids to read, and over songs in school plays not being religious enough. Doesn't sound like a group who worries about the realty of a situation when a sensationalized perversion of it supports their cause much better.
I think I'll wait till more is known about exactly what happened before believing this claim.
Like any other college, they have crappy professors and amazing professors. Definitely check Ratemyprofessors.com before you choose a class. I did not do well in high school at all, but I was able to get my GPA up to a 3.8 at Suffolk and transfer to Stony Brook afterwards.
Be content! It'll give you a higher chance of seeing familiar faces and making friends. In high school you know everyone, at ASU you'll be just another face in a sea of people. It's a bit overwhelming, but you'll really be able to get away from all of the drama and focus on yourself.
Make sure to use ratemyprofessor in the future for all classes you are able to pick.
His RMP page.
I'm sad, it's basically 100% identical with every other philosophy professor's ratings page. 50% "WOW I LEARNED A LOT" and 50% "WAT ID PHOLOSOPHRY"
Believe it or not, I was in a class with her last semester at Duke in the Sociology department, titled "Taboo Markets" (here's the ratemyprofessor on the professor- the class sucked. http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1711120).
We didn't really talk about porn in the class unfortunately, but she did have some outbursts to the professor a few times about gametes and shit
I once took a class from this teacher (link below), they deleted my comment ages ago. I had an A+ in his class and didn't have to take the final. Read on, you will enjoy.
They deleted most of the Bad comments from RMP (there's still plenty) but you will get a basic understanding of the guy just reading them and what i wrote and the comments on his page.
.
When I took the class we used to take bets each day to see if he would be wearing the same clothes the next day. He would always wear jean shorts with black sneakers (that never changed, he never washed them). He once wore a pink shiny shirt, that he most likely found in a parking lot behind a dance club, for 3 weeks. His stomach always rubbed against the chalkboard so we knew how long it had been since he last washed it based on the number and color of smudges. My favorite thing about him was he once had a chocolate drip running down from his face to his neck for 2 weeks (not an exaggeration), we thought he was bleeding at first but quickly realized it was leftovers. Another time he lost all of our exams when someone broke in to his car (most likely his home) and stole his briefcase. And if that wasn't enough, he couldn't afford a hearing aid so he had a microphone on a string around his neck attached to headphones. One day he stopped wearing it and never wore it again. From that point on he would make up answers to questions he thought people were asking, sometimes with hilarious results. I always felt bad for the guy, but WTF was he doing teaching?
Link here: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=203248&page=8
Which is why I use ratemyprofessors.com
Unfortunately sometimes there's a monopoly on a required class...fucking hate those. Found out about it after my first semester of college, been a goddamn lifesaver.
It really varies on the professor and the school in general. I am an art history major, and my freshman year I was at a larger school (about 20,000) that was more lecture based. My current school (about 3,000) are a lot more discussion based. They survey levels (100 level) were still relatively lecture-based, but definitely gets more participatory as time goes on. Try going on http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ to see if you can find any information about your professors speaking style.
If this is your first art history course, I am going to assume it is a survey. You are basically going to cover a wide variety of works each being representative of a specific area/movement in art and the movements in general.
- Multiple choice exams
- Incredibly PowerPoint-heavy for a CS class
- She refuses to code in class. Instead, she'll just show you her completed program and talk about it.
- OOP isn't really a challenging course to begin with. It's basically an "Intro to Java" course.
- More: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1890315
What concerns do you have? Do you have a major in mind?
It's a two year community college that's had some financial issues in the past few years. Currently it's tuition free for SF residents.
Loving the effort you put into this, and the details you gave us.
From his grad school: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1198814
From his post doc: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1958816
I found multiple CVs and a bunch of other stuff on the first page of google's search results.
Let's all take a moment to marvel that Ana Kasparian is somehow allowed to teach a journalism class at Cal State-Northridge
This rate my professor stuff sounds... interesting in regards to her behavior:
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=30528
>...She is also extremely hard to see outside of class. She abhors e-mail...
>She knows her stuff, but keep your head down and obey. I dropped the course when she verbally attacked another classmate for no reason at all.
>She seems nasty but she gets nicer, stick with the course.
> There's a lot of material, so be prepared to ignore your other classes. And don't be suprised to be told to "SETTLE DOWN!!!" when it is utterly silent.
It will not going to work because the last time that scraper was used (January 2014), an entry page looked like this:
Now it looks like this:
Completely different layout. You will need to rewrite the scraper from scratch.
I have taken 3 GE's online. Foothill is good, because it is a quarter system, the academic calenders b/w poly and foothill match up, and the teachers are generally easy.
Lake Tahoe community college is also another option, but is far less together with paperwork and generally more of a c**pshoot.
Here's some helpful stuff.
1) Find out what GE's you want to take online.
2) Cal Poly GE's need to be converted into statewide CSU GE's (yes, they are different). Convert them using this link: http://www.calpoly.edu/~cosamac/pdfs/Assist_help.pdf
3) Go to http://web1.assist.org/web-assist/tcaAgreement.do?inst2=none&inst1=none&type=csuGe&ia=FOOTHILL&ay=14-15
Under "CSU GE-Breadth Certification Courses" select the GE you have just converted.
4) Go to the foothill catalog and check for online courses offered the quarter you want them.
5) Go to http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ and find the easiest professor that is teaching a GE you want to take online.
6) You still need to enroll in Foothill and register for classes, but this is pretty easy... enroll early.