Reviews for BSCI361

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Marcia Shofner BSCI361 Expecting an A usblr 01/23/2024	I took the winter session, 3 weeks long. It was really intense (as expected) so I really don't recommend taking this class in the winter if you have other time-consuming obligations. I honestly enjoyed the content of the course, and despite it being an asynchronous class I could tell she is a nice person (in my opinion) However, most of the due dates were inaccurate. It's partially because she copied the class information from the previous year, but the due dates on canvas would be different from what was in the assignment description. Sometimes it would be even 5 days off, which is a lot in a 3 week course. It made things very confusing and almost made me miss assignments. These wouldn't be changed for days upon days. They changed the due date of the final paper only 4 hours before the incorrect due date (they accidentally made it 1 day earlier) Also, despite the exams being open note, I studied to the best of my ability (its hard to learn 7-9 chapters in a week, and there are a lot of content and examples of studies you have to remember) and I swear, some of the questions made no sense. They were based on nothing from the book, at least. Truth be told, I did not watch all of her lecture videos or look at the slides (which may have solved this issue for me) but, there is not enough time in 3 weeks to do all of that. My study strategy was probably terrible and that's my bad, but I found those online exams questionable at best... Per week there are 2 discussion posts, a few assignments related to the unit, 1 exam (3 exams total). Then there is one optional cumulative final to replace your lowest exam score, and a group paper. I had to take off points due to the disorganization of the class and the weird exams. I think if I had taken this class in the spring/fall I would have enjoyed it much more, but this made me feel so stressed and burnt out right before the spring semester lol. Also points off for that. If you can handle the fast pace then maybe this is for you. You're better than me!
Marcia Shofner BSCI361 Expecting an A- Anonymous 04/21/2023	I absolutely loved this class. I took it over the winter session, which I was a bit worried about. But the professor made it fun and laid back. Obviously, it was intense as a three-week course, but the assignments were fun and engaging. I would definitely recommend this professor. She seemed to get involved in getting to know her students even though everything was asynchronous. She really helped me to get a good grade in the class by offering extra help and extra credit.
Sarah Lee BSCI361 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/21/2022	Fantastic professor! She made lectures interesting and offered many assignments. She also has a great personality! Slow grader for exams, but other than that, she's amazing. I wish she could teach all of my BSCI courses
Marjorie Reaka BSCI361 Anonymous 12/15/2021	Marjorie Reaka is so unbelievably boring. Incredibly boring. She is a very traditional lecturer, meaning her lectures are extremely bland and dry. It is so difficult to maintain focus during her lectures, she makes no effort to keep anyone engaged. When it comes to content, the lectures still suck. Her slides were almost always 100+ pages and filled to the brim with excessive text, images, and random/unimportant information. She makes it very difficult to differentiate between what the important points of each topic are and what is just extraneous information. She will spend a lot of unnecessary time describing examples and experiments in detail that are really not that relevant to the class. She was was never on schedule because she is not an effective or efficient lecturer in any single way. In essence: her lectures Suck. I never retained any piece of information from hearing her talk. Her slides are so difficult to follow; they're not concise, they're ugly, wordy, hard on the eyes (this seems like an unimportant thing to note, but there are SO many bright colors in her slides and overlapping texts and images--they're really hard to read and follow along with). A lot of times her lecturing would involve so much rambling that she wouldn't match up with her slides, causing her to stay on one slide for a long time and then skip ahead several slides. On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes she would fly through the slides super quickly. I cannot emphasize how bad these lectures were, I did not learn a thing from them. I would personally recommend pulling up her lecture slides on your own laptop/tablet during the class and just go through that at your own pace. Like I said, the slides aren't easy to decipher and synthesize, but her teaching doesn't contribute in any single way. I would just take note of any examples that she Really emphasizes in class, she will occasionally say what concepts are really important to remember. Her slides are also pulled straight from the textbook (some of the topics were altered), but the textbook is pretty useless too. The textbook is full of even more examples, but it might be useful to use as a way to explain some concepts better than Reaka's slides do. I didn't ever use the textbook though (for lecture, I did use it for discussion). I downloaded the textbook off of Libgen--don't buy it. The textbook was only useful in the sense that it had the answer key for all of the textbook questions that were assignments for discussion. Reaka is gonna say that her exams mostly cover broad concepts and that you mostly need to know general concepts. That's a lie. Her exams are specific, I really had to study for them. All of the information IS in the slides, which is one good thing, but I would really review and go through all of the content in the slides, because her exams are challenging. She will usually mention a few things to focus your studying on for each exam, which is useful. I had two midterms for this class and the final was (mostly) not cumulative. It had a few questions on topics that were tested on the midterms, but it was mostly testing on the last third of the course. The only grades in the class are the exams and the discussion assignments, which for my class (Fall 2021) were twenty points each and super, super easy. I got 100% on every single discussion assignment (but this is dependent on your TA) and I didn't need to attend discussion to be able to do the questions. Also, the assignments I had were barely tied to lecture and not helpful for learning the content in any way. Reaka is nice, she's just boring and a bad lecturer. She will kindly answer any questions (but not necessarily well) and will recognize the students that are more engaged in class/put in more effort. I wish I liked her more, but I just hated that class. It's not the end of the world if she's your professor, but she's not ideal (however, I don't know who else teaches BSCI361). I think she was an awful professor, but if you put in some work, it's not impossible to do well in that class. I like ecology, it's part of my major, but holy hell did she make it boring.
Daniel Gruner BSCI361 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/05/2021	I love Dr. Gruner! He is not the most interesting professor all the time, but he is super genuine and really cares about his students success. The class was not too hard and he let us drop up to two of the four exams depending how many projects we did. He is very supportive and has done some really interesting research, and is very passionate about helping students apply the class to real world scenarios. Classes involved readings before coming to lecture and an 8 point quiz, but you can retake the quiz once and everything was open note and open book.
Daniel Gruner BSCI361 rose11 12/26/2011	This class is not too difficult. A lot of the material is a review from BSCI106, but the material is very interesting. The course consists of two midterms and one final, which is not cumulative. There is also a term paper, which is graded leniently, and weekly online assignments for discussion. You must attend discussion because attendence is part of your grade. It is also important to attend lecture because there are usually clicker questions, which you get credit for answering (right or wrong). However, Gruner's exams were frustrating. He said that in previous years he gave out too many A's in the course, so perhaps he wanted to make it more challening. I did not think that this was very fair. I did well on the exams, but it seemed impossible to get an A on them. The average for my class on exams was a low B. I maintained an A in the course the entire semester, but dropped to a B+ after the final because I only received a low B on it. It was very annoying to do well in a course but then lose out because of the final. Gruner needs to reconsider his letter grading. Other than that, he is a very nice professor and very approachable.
Daniel Gruner BSCI361 Expecting an A TreeHugger90 09/02/2011	Excellent course on ecology. Good basis for if you're looking to do something worthwhile with your life and following your passion versus what your parents told you to do. His exams were fair, and we actually did better on them than he expected (go us!). Material was straightforward and from the book, nothing too tricky. I participated because I found the subject interesting, and really wouldn't have cared what grade I got because I left this class feeling like I learned some very valuable information. That's the point of education, no? I also realize there's no such thing as "too nice" but if dr. gruner could have that title, he would. Great guy. My only complaint was that it was sort of annoying having premed students asking about grades and curves all the time..
Daniel Gruner BSCI361 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 06/16/2011	AVOID THIS CLASS/AVOID DR. GRUNER. Okay, so granted Dr. Gruner may be a really nice young man, but he just can't teach, he can't write exams, and the class is a mess. I am a GENB major (pre-med) but unlikely all of my other Bio classes, this one is so heavily filled with weird Ecology/Evolution majors aka tree-huggers. They all know how these Ecology classes work so they did very well on the exams (averages were alwasy 82%+). Hence, there was no curve. Until at the end of the semester when he promised a 4-8% curve. But, he UNDERestimated how the class would do on the final (everyone did so well, not surprising) and so he "lied," he upset many students, ruined people's grades, and ended up curving a mere 1%, hence why I have a B+. I put a TON of effort into the discussion, you have to read dense/pointless articles, write summaries, and do a term paper. Dr. Judy Che led the discussion and she is so great/energetic, too bad she couldn't teach the course itself. Dr. Gruner put people to sleep, about 15 people showed up to every class sadly. And going to class doesn't help since he is TOO nice, and only puts things on the exam that is IN THE BOOK. I repeat, READ THE BOOK. He's not a good Bio professor, like Dr. Ades (and other seasoned faculty) who test on material mentioned, and on material outside of the book. Dr. Gruner is a straight from th ebook guy, but that doesn't help since the book is poorly written and there is WAY TOO MUCH material per exam. Overall, over this class and avoid Dr. Gruner. HE is a nice guy, but doesn't know the importance of grades for pre-med students. This is completely ridiculous, I got A's in classes like BSCI330, BSCI433, BSCI410, and pulled off a B+ in this supposedly joke class. Good luck folks!