Professor
Ursula Heise
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2021 - I really enjoyed this class with Professor Heise, because she is genuinely passionate about these topics. There were 5 assignments we had to do in total, and none of them were difficult in my opinion. She also offered extensions to students if they needed it. The discussion sections were pretty laid back and at least with my TA (Samantha), we did a lot of activities related to the content we talked about in class. There was a lot of material to cover and sometimes I felt a bit overwhelmed, but we would always discuss the readings in class, so if you didn't get a chance to finish everything before the lecture you'd still cover the main ideas. One of the things I really enjoyed about the class is that Professor Heise would give us a variety of media to study, not just books to read (we had graphic novels, podcasts, movies, short films, etc.). She is a clear and engaging lecturer, and she makes sure to take enough time to fully explain concepts. I would highly recommend this class!
Spring 2021 - I really enjoyed this class with Professor Heise, because she is genuinely passionate about these topics. There were 5 assignments we had to do in total, and none of them were difficult in my opinion. She also offered extensions to students if they needed it. The discussion sections were pretty laid back and at least with my TA (Samantha), we did a lot of activities related to the content we talked about in class. There was a lot of material to cover and sometimes I felt a bit overwhelmed, but we would always discuss the readings in class, so if you didn't get a chance to finish everything before the lecture you'd still cover the main ideas. One of the things I really enjoyed about the class is that Professor Heise would give us a variety of media to study, not just books to read (we had graphic novels, podcasts, movies, short films, etc.). She is a clear and engaging lecturer, and she makes sure to take enough time to fully explain concepts. I would highly recommend this class!
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - This class is a lot of work. There are 20-40 pages of weekly readings every week, two discussion posts, 3 short papers, a midterm, and a final. I think the midterm and final were fairly easy as long as you do the readings, pay attention in class, and farm your TA for info but the short papers could have done with a bit more clarity on grading. On the papers, I would recommend going overboard and putting out extremely high quality, well formatted, and well cited work to ensure you get an A. My TA was super helpful with clarifying the short paper expectations after I bombed paper 2, so make sure to utilize your TA as much as possible. The lecture slides were not useful at all and the lectures are not posted online so you kinda have to go to class and pay attention, but Prof Heise is extremely passionate about the topic has so much knowledge about the field of environment literature and sci-fi which can make lectures fun to listen to. She is an extremely knowledgeable, caring prof and I really couldn't have asked for a better prof for my first quarter, I'll definitely try to take other classes with her in the future. My only issue with the lectures other than them not being uploaded online is that the slides are not easy to take notes on (dense quotes, pictures, etc.) which makes studying for tests kinda annoying. Other than that though, this class was pretty fun and I would take it again, maybe just with a bit more mental prep to try hard and put my all into the readings and essays.
Fall 2023 - This class is a lot of work. There are 20-40 pages of weekly readings every week, two discussion posts, 3 short papers, a midterm, and a final. I think the midterm and final were fairly easy as long as you do the readings, pay attention in class, and farm your TA for info but the short papers could have done with a bit more clarity on grading. On the papers, I would recommend going overboard and putting out extremely high quality, well formatted, and well cited work to ensure you get an A. My TA was super helpful with clarifying the short paper expectations after I bombed paper 2, so make sure to utilize your TA as much as possible. The lecture slides were not useful at all and the lectures are not posted online so you kinda have to go to class and pay attention, but Prof Heise is extremely passionate about the topic has so much knowledge about the field of environment literature and sci-fi which can make lectures fun to listen to. She is an extremely knowledgeable, caring prof and I really couldn't have asked for a better prof for my first quarter, I'll definitely try to take other classes with her in the future. My only issue with the lectures other than them not being uploaded online is that the slides are not easy to take notes on (dense quotes, pictures, etc.) which makes studying for tests kinda annoying. Other than that though, this class was pretty fun and I would take it again, maybe just with a bit more mental prep to try hard and put my all into the readings and essays.