Dont take this class! The grade distribution is outdated! This professor should just die (he's 90) and not teach anymore. His voice is coarse, his emotions are platonic, and he lost his teaching abilities.... The only thing he knows how to do is give us 20 questions of NITPICKY, HARDASFUCK true and false questions on the final.

This class was not that hard if you study, watch all the movies he presents in class, and go over the course reader a couple of times.

Selling the course reader for this class.

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I love this class!!!

The class has a mixture of graduate and undergraduate students. There are four easy homework assignments, two fair midterms, and one overwhelmingly long final. Every once in a while we watched a documentary during lecture; one was on the melting ice glaciers, another on landfills, and another on epigenetic.

I personally found the class interesting to the point where I researched more information to learn more about a specific subject. The professor and TAs are very supportive and encouraging; they all have an approachable demeanor. The professor endearingly throws some humorous comments once in a while during lecture and in his course material. The lectures are two hours long so I suggest sitting in the front seats to prevent dozing off if you don't find the subject within your taste of tea.

The grading system is fair. I ended up with an A- in the class, though I averaged out a B in all the categories, it was still considered above average. I prepared for the exams by reading the course material before lecture, rereading the course material again after the lecture, and then briefly rereading the course material while looking at the ppt before the midterms and final. Some information on the powerpoint is not found in the course material.

I would say that the two midterms are fair - and almost easy if you come prepared. Just constantly review the course material and the ppt slides. My course material was beat up with highlights and torn pages. The final exam had some free response questions that I thought was tricky. He does post sample midterms and finals on his website that were very similar to his actual exams. Before upcoming midterms he dedicates the last few minutes of lecture to answer our questions about the tests, such as the level of memorization required and what to emphasize. He once told us that sometimes it's not a science major that gets the highest score on the exams, and probably because humanity majors are better able to synthesize material. There is a LOT of information to be covered, but this class isn't scary. He tells us that most of the class will get an A or a B, which I think is true.

Also, if you want to get started on a research project, this professor is very willing to help.

I definitely recommend the course and the professor. It's because of this class that I'm thinking about going to graduate school for public health.

Blow off class. No attendance except for midterm and final. Long course reader with even longer ppt notes. He describes his creation of the exams as placing all the pages of the course reader and ppt notes on a wall and throwing darts and asking questions from those.

Not much guidance from the professor or assistant teachers as you can never get a hold of them except when they handed out exams once. If you're looking for a good nap, sign up right away. Also, I didn't see 3/4s of the student until the final. crap

I agree with the person below. I signed up for this class, because a lot of people told me that this class was great and had an easy grading scale. Well, I have to say its absolutely boring, and the exams are suppose to be easy and straightforward, but honestly they were quite tricky to me. But hey, maybe people had previous exams and that's why they did well. I swear I knew the material, but I have to say it was definitely and absolutely not worth it considering the time I put into this class for the grade received

this class is ridiculous. no point in going. and his grading curve/methods are awful, no room for improvement if you are not performing well in the course. absolute torture and didn't seem to want to make it better, honestly fuck this and fuck the minor there are better things to do with your money and time

He is lucky to be teaching an interesting subject because the material is the only thing that was keeping my attention span. He was dry and boring every single lecture. The assignments are very easy (5 papers) and gives you full credit if you wrote a complete thought. The exams were very fair but the grading was a little knit picky for my taste. Overall an extremely easy course. Unfortunately he lulls students to sleep with his droning voice, what a shame for such an interesting area of study...