Professor
Natalie Masuoka
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - Professor Masuoka is certainly knowledgeable and passionate about racial politics. The biggest issue with the class is the lack of rubric and structure. The professor and TA didn't exactly specify what they were looking for in terms of the midterm so a lot of people got lower grades, iirc the average was around a low 80%. However they definitely gave us more support for the final paper and the final exam, I went to office hours and the TAs were really helpful. I think the final paper and exam averages were around a 90-95%, so that helped bring up the overall grade for most everyone after the low midterm grades.
Fall 2023 - Professor Masuoka is certainly knowledgeable and passionate about racial politics. The biggest issue with the class is the lack of rubric and structure. The professor and TA didn't exactly specify what they were looking for in terms of the midterm so a lot of people got lower grades, iirc the average was around a low 80%. However they definitely gave us more support for the final paper and the final exam, I went to office hours and the TAs were really helpful. I think the final paper and exam averages were around a 90-95%, so that helped bring up the overall grade for most everyone after the low midterm grades.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2018 - Professor Masuoka’s lectures were in whole irrelevant to the material presented in the books we read for the course and the tests reflected little from lecture slides. In fact, the lectures were not engaging. They were boring to sit through even though the subject itself could be presented in a fascinating manner. By the end of the quarter the class felt as if there was no strong point it attempted to convey and felt like a bit of a waste of my time. There are three books assigned for the quarter accompanied by three 5 page papers summarizing the key points of each one. These were not easy reads nor were they page turners. The tests were graded very critically and most everyone I know in the class who are A students got mediocre grades due to the specificity the professor wanted from our answers even though we were responsible for an untenable plethora of book and lecture knowledge. The Teaching assistants didn’t seem to care about our understanding of the readings and did little to help us understand the fundamental ideas presented in the books and the lectures. Maybe the professor designed her course to be overly strenuous on a subject that should be graspable to any political science student because it is her first year at UCLA and she wants to make a statement for future employers by including too much material on her syllabus to look ultra professional, but this class should be a hard skip for anyone reading this. I didn’t take away anything of value from the class and in retrospect should have taken a more engaging and manageable course.
Fall 2018 - Professor Masuoka’s lectures were in whole irrelevant to the material presented in the books we read for the course and the tests reflected little from lecture slides. In fact, the lectures were not engaging. They were boring to sit through even though the subject itself could be presented in a fascinating manner. By the end of the quarter the class felt as if there was no strong point it attempted to convey and felt like a bit of a waste of my time. There are three books assigned for the quarter accompanied by three 5 page papers summarizing the key points of each one. These were not easy reads nor were they page turners. The tests were graded very critically and most everyone I know in the class who are A students got mediocre grades due to the specificity the professor wanted from our answers even though we were responsible for an untenable plethora of book and lecture knowledge. The Teaching assistants didn’t seem to care about our understanding of the readings and did little to help us understand the fundamental ideas presented in the books and the lectures. Maybe the professor designed her course to be overly strenuous on a subject that should be graspable to any political science student because it is her first year at UCLA and she wants to make a statement for future employers by including too much material on her syllabus to look ultra professional, but this class should be a hard skip for anyone reading this. I didn’t take away anything of value from the class and in retrospect should have taken a more engaging and manageable course.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2020 - This was an incredible and hands-on class! Professor Masuoka did an amazing job of mixing in guest lecturers with time to work hands-on with our project groups in order to plan and execute our project. Overall, this was a great activism-based class that allowed students the opportunity to create a tangible impact and count underrepresented groups on the 2020 Census.
Winter 2020 - This was an incredible and hands-on class! Professor Masuoka did an amazing job of mixing in guest lecturers with time to work hands-on with our project groups in order to plan and execute our project. Overall, this was a great activism-based class that allowed students the opportunity to create a tangible impact and count underrepresented groups on the 2020 Census.
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