I liked this class a lot, and both Professor Trager and my TA were invested in making sure their students wee comfortable with the content. The class is taught very conceptually, with Trager using historical examples and anecdotes to describe the concepts. There were a couple of short papers due that were not difficult because they were based around applying these concepts to current world politics situations. The tests were all short response, but you have to study for them and have a clear grasp on concepts and examples to write about. I would recommend this class to poli sci majors, but caution people taking as a GE unless you are prepared to read (the reading consisted of long textbook chapters and outside articles that were pretty lengthy).

This is one of those classes that you can really pick between going to lecture or reading the textbook, it is largely the same material presented in two different formats. That being said, the class is fairly easy. However, it is quite important to do the extra assigned readings because he put some questions about them on the midterm. The writing assignments were basically just news summary type things so not too bad either. As long as you do the work and show up to class you should do well.

This class with Professor Trager is fairly easy if you do the readings since you don't necessarily have to attend lecture. Vice versa you can also attend lecture and still get an understanding of the concepts if all you did was simply go to lecture. Though, the TA's are the one's who grade your work and there can be misconceptions of what is correct and wrong between other TA's. With that being said just know what you TA looks for when it comes to the midterm and the final.

Trager is a nice guy, but the TAs honestly do the heavy lifting of actual teaching, and that is only if you go to office hours. This class is honestly very unclear, and the reading is very intensive each week. It's the reading that you have to read over and over to understand something. The final is cumulative, so that's a LOT of theories you have to memorize to their respective authors. In addition, if you don't know much about history, like having the entirety of WW1 and WW2 in extreme detail, this class will be much harder for you. The people that seemed to excelled in this class were the people who are history buffs. Also, if you're shy of participating, don't take this class, because participation is mandatory for a grade during section. Also, the section moves extremely fast, topic to topic wise.

I don't want to judge the professor based on anything other than him as a lecture, since that was our relationship and what I know him as. So please don't take this personally. With that said, the class was one of the worse ones I've experienced at UCLA. First, the lectures. The lectures managed to somehow be too slow and yet too fast. I think this was because the professor talks very very slowly, and especially on material that doesn't matter. He often goes on these historical examples that I think are tangents, but they can't really be tangents because that's pretty much all he talks about? Then, on the really important parts, he just reads from the PowerPoint and then skips to the next page, where we don't have enough time to copy it down. This would be fine if the PPTs were uploaded online, but then there's another problem. The powerpoints were uploaded online but they are always broken and the structure messed up. Often times they aren't even the powerpoints from class, either missing many pages or have pages on there that weren't even presented in class. The course material was also a bit all over the place. After attending every lecture before the midterm, I was so confused as to what we were learning. At the end of the quarter now I can't really tell you what the course is. (and it's not that I'm not learning or trying, I got an A+ on my midterm). It just seems that the professor is not aware of these shortcomings and half-forces people to go to class. He doesn't really force you, since there are no grades associated with lecture participation, but at the very start of the quarter, he says that people should come to class, and he is so not accommodating for people who want to watch the lecture at a later time. I think watching the lectures online would be so much better because his lectures in person are just so confusing. If we were allowed to slow down the lecture in places that need to be slow and fast forward in places that aren't necessary that would make the class so much better. But to get the recordings to class, you have to email your TA for every lecture you want and get the link and PASSCODE to the lecture. (I can't stop thinking about how I need a password to watch something that I already pay a shit ton of money for) Honestly, many of the times that I went to lecture I just thought that it was a waste of time, to a point where I just didn't go to class anymore towards the end of the quarter because it just wasn't worth it. I think that if the professor wants people going to class, he should make going to class enticing rather than forcing people to go by not providing the lectures (in a "no questions asked" way). I'm sure the professor is a great researcher in the field, but he is just not a good lecturer. And the thing is, as a student, I don't get to see the side of Dr. Trager being a leading person in the field, I only see the side of him teaching students, and it is not great.

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First of all, Trager is incredibly knowledgeable professor as well as a very kind person. He’s always willing to help and will gladly answer any student questions to the best of his ability in office hours

Second, his lecture style was simply not for me. He asks an open ended question about every 30 seconds, forcing you to think about the issue. This sounds good in practice but doesn’t work as well as I believe he thinks it does as he’s never able to correct students that may be misunderstanding.

He’s a funny guy but his tone and style when speaking make it pretty easy to doze off, even when he’s talking about something interesting.

Now onto content. The class is based around about a dozen or so IR theories proposed by different authors in the assigned readings.

While the theories themselves aren’t the hardest to master, there is a ridiculous amount of them and readings tend anywhere from 30-100 pages a class.

His lectures often don’t cover the actual theories, and only vaguely cover the topic the theories discuss. I know I’m making it sound kind of vague, but just know that lecture attendance isn’t really needed to do well in the class as a result

It’ll come down almost entirely to your TA to help you understand the material. Both the TAs for my class were wonderful, but it’s obviously a gamble in future sessions.

Grades are determined by:

Short multiple choice weekly quizzes in section (typically very very easy and you should get 100% if you do the readings)

Group project- make a presentation using survey data given during class. Not the hardest project and TAs typically give out 95s-99s if you do everything on the syllabus.

Participation

Midterm and Final- covers the theories in detail. Short answers and long essay. Final is cumulative. Pretty difficult and take a long time to study for.

Overall, I’d say this was a pretty good class. It was definitely difficult but if you put the time in you can get a good grade. Not the hardest poli sci class at UCLA material wise but definitely a pretty huge workload for readings and a ton of material