BSCI440 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Joshua Singer BSCI440 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 09/05/2024	I'm glad that the more recent reviews have had a better time in this class than I did, and I hope if you have to take it you will too. I had to take this course during Covid and it was painful. The course itself is obviously rough and covers a lot, but the way Dr. Singer taught was also rough. He seems like a good guy, funny, but also has an ego. People would ask questions during lecture and he would go on long tangents that wouldn't really answer the question, or he would berate them and ask them why they don't already know something. It definitely gave the lectures a weird vibe because by the middle of the semester only 2-3 people were ever brave enough to ask questions about the material.
Colenso Speer BSCI440 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/08/2023	He is very unaccommodating to student needs. He tends to go very fast in each lecture and does not record even when many students asked him to do so. Each exam is graded extremely harshly and there hasn't been one time till now that anybody in the class got a 100.
Colenso Speer BSCI440 Expecting a B Anonymous 11/17/2023	I have worked so hard in this class, and as much as I love what we are learning, Dr. Speer consistently ensures that the exams are graded very strictly and seems to enjoy to see an average of 62 or below on each exam. Each exam is too long for the class time, and even if you follow everything he recommends and study even more, you still won't necessarily do well. He purposely doesn't record any lectures and does not allow any exam review sessions to happen on Zoom or be recorded, and honestly I think the review sessions almost purposely throw you off, literally punishing the people who want to do well. Making 50% of a class of pre-meds fail on each exam is honestly dangerous and reckless. Dr. Speer's exams have made me feel like I will never be good enough to be a doctor, a dream I have had my whole life, and so this semester is the one where I give up on that dream. Thank you Dr. Speer.
Scott Juntti BSCI440 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/25/2023	I liked the dude. He posted slides before class (no recordings). Spoke slowly so you had time to write notes. Took time to answer all questions. You have a bunch of Pearson HWs due before each exam. 4 exams and 1 cumulative final. Curved ~3% (I had 87.2% and got an A-). He curves the median to C+/B- boundary. Tests were pretty fair, 11-16 questions per test and MC was worth 5 pts and short answer 10 pts. TA's were very good and super helpful. I didn't really study until 1-3 days before each exam but material comprehension is different for everyone. Good teacher gets 4 stars and way better than Opoku.
Justicia Opoku-Edusei BSCI440 Anonymous 05/24/2022	Do NOT recommend her. One of the worst professors I had at UMD! Lecture: Her slides are dense and messy so reviewing them before the exam is nearly impossible. She narrates her lectures but it’s very hard to understand with her thick accent. She hand-writes her notes during lectures with unbelievably messy handwriting and a speech that is faster than typing. Opoku REFUSED to provide lecture recordings THAT SHE ALREADY HAS when I got COVID so you better not get sick during the 15-weeks of her lectures. Exams: Her exams are inhumanely long (8 muti-parts problems for 50 mins). Grading rubrics look for VERY specific phrases/explanations so you need memorize exactly how she explained in class. TAs take forever to grade and hand back exams. Since the majority of your grade (~80%) is exams and the final, getting one shitty exam grade is done. She does curve slightly (about 5%) for my semester. Discussion: Discussion and quizzes focus on different things than lecture. Very hit or miss depending on TAs. They are getting rid of it going forward so that’s good.
Justicia Opoku-Edusei BSCI440 Anonymous 05/14/2022	this class ruined my mental health. the rubrics were so specific she was basically asking us to read her mind. don't take bsci440 with her
Justicia Opoku-Edusei BSCI440 Anonymous 05/11/2022	If you are able to avoid this class with this Professor, do so. I have never gotten a C before. Now, I’m struggling to just pass this class and I’ve already done well in A&P . Her exams heavily focus on material she will show you 2 days prior to the exam. Also, the TA I had always rushed through discussion and ended up changing a quiz question after I took the quiz which then caused my entire answer to be wrong. So be careful.
Justicia Opoku-Edusei BSCI440 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/09/2022	She knows her stuff. Unfortunately she writes on a paper in extremely messy font, does not show all of the stuff she writes, and then moves forward without letting students capture the material. She narrates the content, but it is hard to follow and understand as she speaks way too fast and with an accent. Though I did well, exams are way too long, and are keyword based. Very disorganized overall, too specific, huge amounts of material, frustrating lectures.
Colenso Speer BSCI440 Expecting an A Anonymous 03/15/2022	Dr. Speer inspired my passion for medicine. He did a great job tying all the knowledge I had accumulated from biology, chemistry, and physics together, and made even the most difficult concepts make sense. Thank you, Dr. Speer, for your enthusiastic approach to teaching and for your warm, supportive mentorship!
Colenso Speer BSCI440 Expecting a C Anonymous 01/24/2022	Dr. Speer is a great lecturer. He was always interesting to listen to and he explained things very clearly. He was also always very approachable and would have discussion boards where people were free to ask questions about the material. However, I agree with the previous review below. I was constantly reading the textbook, I'd record the lectures and then listen to them and rewrite my notes based on exactly what he said and then before every exam, I'd rewrite my notes again/draw things out. In addition, I'd do all the practice problems in the textbook (both the ones throughout the chapter and the ones at the end of the chapter). Despite the detail of my notes and the amount of time I spent reading the textbook as well as answering questions, I still did poorly on most of the exams. After doing poorly on exams 1 and 2 (59 and 55), I reached out to him to ask for advice on how to study for exams. He sent me a long and detailed email about best study practices for exams and I followed them to a T. I did better on exam 3 (72) but I mainly attribute that to the fact that it was less material than the other exams because I again did terribly on exam 4 and the final (51 and 49). For both those exams, I followed all his advice and spent around 2 weeks studying for both but I still did badly. I'm not even sure what happened with the final because I actually felt decent about that one (expected like maybe a 70). BSCI440 is notoriously hard so I came into this class expecting to have to work hard but it was frustrating working as hard as I did to get such little results in return. Also, don't let people get in your head when they talk about this class having a curve to it. Whatever curve there is, its very little. My overall score was a 71.5% and I ended up with a final grade of a C. He's a great lecturer but I could never figure out how to study to be able to do well on the exams. My recommendation would be to ask someone who did well in this class (and had the same professor) what they did to study for exams and follow their advice because they clearly figured out what I couldn't.
Colenso Speer BSCI440 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 01/06/2022	Dr. Speer is in a hard spot with 440 as it is a notoriously hard course but given that he does "ok". However, I consistently found it near impossible to prepare adequately for exams in this class. On every exam there was at least 1 question (10 pts usually) that was outside of what any of us expected to be included. Through the entire semester there was not a single test average above 70% and despite attending office hours, asking questions and reading the textbook like it was gospel, I simply found it impossible to walk into class prepared for his exams. As an instructor, Dr. Speer is affable and kind but his exams and the class structure is enough to make an undergrad switch majors.
Colenso Speer BSCI440 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/23/2021	Dr. Speer is a fantastic professor for this historically difficult class. He tells you exactly what you need to do to be successful in the class and part of that is reading the textbook. The textbook is absolutely necessary to do well in this class. 50% of the points from his exams are textbook questions (written exactly as they are in the textbook). I am not much of a textbook reader and will avoid it if I don't view it as necessary, but this class is one where you are working against yourself if you don't use it. You also cannot cram for this class, there is A LOT of information to take in. You should be thinking critically about concepts as he is teaching and as you are reviewing. For example, if you are thinking about a neuron action potential, you should be able to identify what the impacts on the action potential would be if there was a defect in any of the channels involved. This class goes fast, but I found myself relatively comfortable with the pace. In all honesty, this class was not nearly as bad as people made it out to be and I never found myself terribly overwhelmed by it. Yes, it required more studying than any other biology class I had faced, but I adjusted. I thought all of his tests were completely fair. As long as you do well-enough above the average in all cases, you should be fine.
Joshua Singer BSCI440 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/19/2021	Don’t take this class w/ Singer unless you absolutely have to. He’s nice after class but his ego is pretty big at all other times. Don’t ask what your letter grade in the class is, you won’t know until after the final. The grade on ELMS was inaccurate as he didn’t weigh assignments correctly according to his own rubric, he just gave them an arbitrary point value. Exams are hard, but not bc the content itself is impossible. He’ll lecture about something for three classes but choose to ask a hard question about something he mentioned in passing for 2 minutes. Questions can be randomly specific or a mix from textbook chapter review questions. He said he assigns grades based off the median, and he uses the median after everyone drops the class. That means your grade “decays” weekly. As more people withdraw, the better performers stay in the class, raising the averages on the exams. Even the Chem profs don’t do that. So the only way to do good is to beat the curve, by A LOT, for the exams as they weigh the most on your overall letter grade. Exam averages trend from 60-70%. Check your exam points after you get your exam back. He has his younger daughter count your exam points for the total score you get. One time she miscounted mine and I had to get a regrade. He ended up taking more points away from my exam. Even regrades are risky to ask for. If you agitate him, it might not end well for you as he seems to grade depending on his mood. In summary, the class itself isn’t hard. Singer makes it harder for no reason.
Colenso Speer BSCI440 Anonymous 11/19/2021	I am still in the process of taking BSCI 440 with Dr. Speer and he seriously is the best professor I've ever had at UMD. He's great at explaining things and will slow down the entire class if he feels like kids are struggling with certain concepts. 4 exams total and a final, with quizzes a week before each exam to get you prepared for the exam. Homework assignments are due before every exam as well but you have 3-4 weeks to work on those. He wants his students to actually understand the material being taught and will accommodate to make sure that is happening. He is also extremely knowledgeable. This class is super challenging no matter what so complaining about his exams or the density of his lectures or material really doesn't matter; with a class this hard, a good or bad professor will make or break your grade. He does a great job at teaching hard concepts. Still, make sure to read the textbook though no matter what! It's impossible to have everything that you are expected to know for exams be taught to you in a 50 minute or 75 minute lecture. He will make you work for the A but he does a great job in trying to get you there. Highly, highly recommend.
Scott Juntti BSCI440 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/23/2021	Juntti is an amazing lecturer! He was always willing to answer questions and help during office hours. Exams were fair, definitely go to the discussions and TA reviews. Although reading the textbook is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, and I found it super useful for reinforcing the topics and better explaining things from the lectures.
Scott Juntti BSCI440 Anonymous 03/23/2021	AMAZING!! He is a great lecturer and really receptive to questions. Reading the book helps a lot with the class, but i find that reading the books after watching lectures helped best to retain info
Joshua Singer BSCI440 Expecting a B Anonymous 03/22/2021	Alright so I took him last semester (Fall 2020) and he was definitely not as bad as people make him out to be. I think people thought that they were going to get away with a lot more bullshit since it was online and Dr. Singer really wasn't entertaining that. He made himself super accessible via Zoom and he held discussion-like twice a week in addition to about 3 longish lectures per unit. Overall there was a lot of material and a lot of detail but there were a lot of resources available to help us succeed- he even went through old exam questions with us that were pretty similar to the actual exams. This class was definitely not easy and he caught/reported roughly 20% of the class blatantly cheating on our exams so that wasn't fun but he wasn't being unreasonable or anything. I would say that this class definitely requires a full 12-15 hours a week of studying regardless of who you take it with (the other section was Speer and their averages were actually lower than ours).
Joshua Singer BSCI440 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/13/2020	Open ended questions without much guidance, rough semester especially for neurodivergent students. Avoid if possible.
Joshua Singer BSCI440 Expecting a B Anonymous 11/21/2020	If you have another option, take them instead.
Scott Juntti BSCI440 Expecting an A Anonymous 10/13/2020	Great guy in general. Speaks very gently and very clearly. Gets straight to the point, speaks chronologically and logically. Honestly gives a super relaxing vibe in a class like Mamphys which can at times be overwhelming. Reading the textbook along with review of the powerpoints is sufficient for doing well in this class.
Scott Juntti BSCI440 Expecting an A- Anonymous 03/26/2020	great guy, speaks slowly and clearly answers questions fully and takes his time to do it thoroughly. Fair grader. Minimal assignments - cuts the b.s this class is just about learning the material and being prepared for announced exams/quizzes. Incredibly nice in person. Occasionally makes jokes in light hearted and subtle manners. handsome likeable fair dude overall.
Colenso Speer BSCI440 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/01/2019	I took BSCI440 with Dr. Speer during fall 2018. The man is a great lecturer in my opinion. He explains concepts slowly and clearly, so it's easy to keep up in class. You can tell he's passionate about the material too, and I have a lot of respect for that. Lecture assignments consisted of four exams and a final. All of them were primarily free-response, with a bit of matching and multiple-choice. A few problems would be straight from the textbook (which he let us know) - but I personally never used the textbook. Discussion assignments consists of four group quizzes. The quizzes were case studies that related to lecture material. My only problem with the class was that grading seemed inconsistent - points would be taken off for what seemed like no good reason, and sometimes people would earn or lose points for the same answer. But this falls on TAs, not so much the prof. Overall, this was one of my favorite courses that I took at UMD. You'll learn a whole lot about human physiology, and if you're really interested in pursuing medicine then this is a class you should enjoy.
Colenso Speer BSCI440 Expecting an A Anonymous 03/30/2019	Honestly I’m only writing a review as a response to the previous review because it’s just wrong .... First of all, mammphys is a hard class no matter who you take it with. There is a lot of material and the questions are mostly case studies so you need to know how to apply what you learned not just memorize. Sooooo, when you get a question like how do frogs breathe (given that they are positive pressure breathers and don’t have a rib cage important detail and we are negative pressure), you should be able to figure it out. And the astronaut question was mentioned in class AND in the book so .... can’t get any more fair imo. And speaking of the exams, he told us from the very start that every exam will have questions from the book and they did. And when I say questions from them book, I mean literally copy pasted questions from the back of each chapter. About 1 page of every exam was book questions which was easy points if you read the book and did the questions. The rest was case/application questions from lecture and the lecture covers pretty much everything in the chapter so I guess you could say from the book as well....(also I never really read the book for any class but I did for this one and I would totally recommend doing so cuz it’s really well written and actually very helpful) The grading was a bit of a mess for one of the exams and you really needed to go for a regrade and get a bunch of points back. so to me this just showed that the TAs didn’t know how to grade/were too strict cuz when you go for the regrade which Speer himself does, you got your points back. So I don’t really see how he’s to blame here.... He was a great lecturer in my opinion. He seemed really interested in the topic and the enthusiasm showed and was contagious. Explained everything pretty well and was engaging with the students and asking question etc. At the end we got a nice curve too. Overall, it’s a hard class so you have to have to put in a lot of work, sit in the front, and start studying early and you’ll be fine. I would def recommend him.
Colenso Speer BSCI440 Anonymous 03/29/2019	I took Speer during the Fall 18 semester which was his first time teaching this class (unsure if he's taught other classes before). I have a lot of complaints about the class so brace yourself. 1. In the beginning of the semester no one knew what he was saying. It wasn't because of an accent or anything, just his volume of speaking. It was so low that you frequently had incomplete notes. Asking him to speak up resulted in a slightly louder tone for about 5 minutes, after which he reverted back to the low volume. This is even when he was using the mic in the ESJ classroom. 2. He refuses to record lectures. Instead he says you can record them yourself. I and many others asked him to reconsider since his voice was so low and the material was difficult and plentiful. He still refused. I began recording lectures on my phone soon after, but even when sitting in the second or third row, his volume was so low that even my phone mic could not pick it up. I had to buy an external mic off Amazon to get any use of my recordings. 3. His exams focus very heavily off the book, not the lectures. He frequently outright copies questions from the book. I have no problem with this, but he gave us the wrong impression on what to know during lecture for his exams when in reality nothing he mentioned showed up. It made matters worse when he said in office hours that his exams are not heavily book based compared to someone like Opoku. 4. Exam grading is completely arbitrary. He gives you the answer key, but the TAs have a different answer key that they use that isn't even provided to you (except for one instance for us). If you take this class, get a regrade for every single exam because it is guaranteed you will get a higher grade back. There is no leeway when a TA is grading and if you don't put the right key words in your short answer response, you lose significant points. An example of this is that someone got 0 credit for a question (was posted to the class Groupme). The explanation written by the TA was that this could be correct but is not the answer on the key. In his syllabus he states that grading is not based on key words, but on correctness of the response as a whole. This is not true even in the slightest and I have several examples of this on my exams. One last note about exam grading is for regrades, he will look over the whole exam, even for questions you didn't ask for a regrade on. He will also deduct points if he thinks you got too many for a question, but 95% of the time you will end up with a higher grade even after the deductions with the other points you get back. He did get more stingy on regrades towards the end though. 5. Discussions are a mess. The TAs as a group made these awesome slides to help learn the material because the lecture slides which he posts are not as useful when trying to understand. However, he refused to allow the TAs to share the discussion slides with us. I have no idea why this rule is in place, but this basically forced the students to take a picture of every single slide instead of listening to the explanation by the TAs for the material. To make matters worse, some TAs broke the rule and just sent the slides to their students after class while some refused to break the rule. Luckily my friend was in a different discussion section and was able to provide me the slides. 6. Studying for exams was incredibly difficult due to the lack of material provided. His lecture slides were mediocre, most didn't have discussion slides, and no practice exams/study guides/example questions were provided. I think this will get better as time goes on and past exams are then floating around from previous semesters. The best thing to do was probably to know how to do every single question in the corresponding chapters in the book. 7. He throws in a curveball question on almost every exam that would be almost impossible to study for unless you somehow had prior knowledge of the topic. An example is how does a frog get air into its lungs? I'm not an expert, but I didn't know that a frog was considered a mammal and we were required to know this for an exam when the class is called mammalian physiology (in reality should just be called human physiology). Another curveball was something like what happens to heart rate when an astronaut in space comes back to Earth. 8. Scheduling of different assignments was a nightmare. For the first 3 exams they were spaced out a pretty good (every 2.5ish weeks). Each of the first 3 exams also had a relatively manageable amount of content compared to the 4th exam. The first 3 you had to learn about 2 chapters each and then we took a huge break and the 4th exam came up with material that covered 4 chapters. In BSCI440, this is a significant amount of material and was basically like a final before the final. The final then occurred after about 10 days after the fourth exam. I know that having an exam right before the final is super common for many classes, but the amount of content the last exam covered was huge. Also, some of the exams were scheduled for a Wednesday which forced Wednesday discussions to be canceled. Speer told anyone in the Wed discussion to go to a Mon or Tues discussion instead, but this isn't always possible. Scheduling all the exams on Friday would have made the most sense so all discussions had the chance to review. This may seem like a lot of ranting but I just wanted to point out some of these serious flaws so you could be better prepared if you have to take him. This was his first semester teaching so things could better in future semesters but it's hard to know. There were no other professors to choose from when I took him so there really wasn't a choice unless you had time to wait for the following semester. This class is already difficult enough as it is, and Speer just makes things harder. Good luck
Joshua Singer BSCI440 Expecting a B- Anonymous 01/02/2018	Is a weedwhacker with a poor personality, not horrifying, but not recommended. Record lectures if you have him, and don't expect an easy semester.
Joshua Singer BSCI440 Anonymous 12/14/2017	Terrible lectures, hard exams, shitty personality. Avoid like the plague
Sergei Sukharev BSCI440 Expecting an A impart 08/04/2016	Pros: -Reuses old exam questions. Get some from your friends and buy the purple book for $10 at the book store. -Explanations of concepts were not bad though. Teacher engaging with good sense of humor. Heavy Russian accent and very noticeable stutter. -Teacher receptive to student concerns and flexible. Available during office hours -Usually gives you back points on exams if you argue for it Cons: -Slides are disorganized. Titles on first slide should be continued throughout presentation to divide the slides up. -Little context given for material. We all felt like large volumes of information were being explained and tossed at students without good context to memorize them. -Teacher arrived late, started class late, and ended class late, which was inappropriate and not good for students who had a class afterwards. -Reviews for exams were disjointed. Consisted of professor speeding through slides and realizing that it was a lot of material unfairly given to us. There should have been a better emphasis on big picture and better organization. -Many errors in answer keys and poorly designed, reused questions. Always had to get points back for every single exam. Disaster.
Sergei Sukharev BSCI440 Expecting an A Anonymous 06/29/2016	Extremely knowledgable profesor but not a good instructor. You will get used to his "uh's and um's" but you will not get used to his lecture style. His transitions between slides are poor and the way he presents the material is not ideal. Literally, all the TA's told me that they do not understand how we are learning from this guy because of the way he teaches. He is a very nice person though and if you go to his office hours, he will make sure you understand the material. And like the reviews below, yes, Dr. Sukharev does re-use questions from old exams. He re-used a lot of them for the second and third exam. They were pretty much identical actually so if you have old exams, you will get an A. The final exam was incredibly difficult. I pulled an all nighter studying for the final and I guessed on approximately 70% of it. luckily, the exam was out of 200 points but had 230 possible points. He also does not do the +/- system so you have to aim for that 90%. Overall, if you want an A on your transcript for BSCI440 then take Sukharev. If you actually want to learn the material and be prepared for medical school/MCATS, then take Singer.
Sergei Sukharev BSCI440 Expecting a B Anonymous 06/08/2015	Solid professor. You learn soooooo much information and it's really cool to be able to apply it in real life situations. He doesn't curve at the end. But there are built-in curves with his exams. There are 4 exams (3 mid-terms and 1 final). Each are 200 points (so total of 800 points in lecture). With each exam, he gives extra buffer points (i.e. for the final, he only counts it out of 200 but there was a total of 253 points!!!! which helped soooooo much in boosting my grade). Discussion is 200 points (based on an individual 20 minute presentation, 4 quizzes, attendance, and participation). So there are a total of 1000 points. No curve. So 900 is an A, 800 is a B, 700 is a C. He doesn't do plus/minus either. Super, super, SUPER generous with regrades (but make sure you use pen!). Basically look at the answer key he posts outside his office and then go to his office hours and explain why you think you should get more points, and he is super generous with giving back points. He doesn't regrade the entire exam like most professors, but only looks at the questions you ask him which is super nice. This was definitely one of my favorite classes at UMD (the other one being BSCI330 with Dr. Ades).
Sergei Sukharev BSCI440 Expecting an A Anonymous 06/03/2015	This class is no joke. I spent sooo many hours studying for it, and in the end it was worth it. The material is interesting beyond belief and is incredibly relevant for premedical students. It is the sheer magnitude of material that makes it difficult to wrap your head around, but if you are diligent and keep up with lecture it isn’t too bad. The material itself is not hard to understand, it’s merely the ordeal of memorizing it is what makes the class hard. Sukharev isn’t the best lecturer but his exams are fair and he is very generous with giving back points if you see him after an exam (do try to have a valid argument for why you should get points back though, nobody likes the kid who just wants points back because he just thinks he deserves them, and he’ll call you out for it). Sukharev is straightforward in his exams, which are very memorization-oriented, unlike Higgins and Singer, who are more application/case study based. Sukharev likes details and will ask you to recall things like the pressure value of the valves going in and out of the heart. He also doesn’t give out +/-‘s for final grades. He will give out extra points on exams so it is possible to get over 100%. Go to discussion, I got lucky and had a ballin TA (yay Amol!) and you can usually get freebie points in discussion for showing up and giving a decent presentation. Quizzes in discussion are also given, which are harder than exam material but my year the last two quizzes were allowed to be taken in groups. This class is a ton of work though; be aware when going in that this class will and should take up most of your time during the semester. Khan academy helps tremendously, but keeping up with (and attending) lecture will take you a long way.
Sergei Sukharev BSCI440 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/27/2015	Honestly one of the best professors at UMD. He is very receptive, extremely fair and understanding. Lectures are great and he does a great job of keeping everyone's attention. Go to office hours and use the purple manual. ever exam has a built in curve so they don't curve the class at the end. he also doesn't do +/- grading so be mindful of this. his exams are straight from his slides and the things he says in lecture - so go to class! very generous with extra credit on the final - i pulled up my grade by 4% just because of the final and got an A in the class. prof sukharev is the bomb! take bsci440 with him!
William Higgins BSCI440 Expecting an A StellaJ 09/21/2013	The class is not too challenging, an easy A. I took this class while working as a postbac at NIH, where he works as a counselor. While he behaves pleasantly in front of a large class, he is a different character when serving as a counselor. He treated me very poorly there. Without offering any constructive criticism, he simply judged my career goals and even my hobbies. I thought his attitude was very unprofessional and abrasive. He made sarcastic sneers about certain hobbies I have, and I just could not believe how unfriendly the atmosphere was. When I spoke to a coworker who had also sought "Dr" Higgins' advice, he said he also had a negative experience. Beware of the types who are friendly when under public eye, but hostile in private "counseling" sessions...
William Higgins BSCI440 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/23/2013	I have never written a review for a professor but I pretty much had to for Professor Higgins. Ya it's a tough class but he is very generous with giving points back on exams and giving the class extra credit, not to mention he curves on top of that (I think for our semester an A was an 87%). He's also always willing to help you outside of class or his office hours if you need it. He definitely lives up to his reputation.
William Higgins BSCI440 Expecting an A typicalterp 05/19/2013	This is a challenging course, because there are a lot of small details to be understood and memorized. Dr. Higgins is really helpful, especially if you go to his office hrs. Don't feel intimidated, because if you go to him a couple of times and ask good questions, then you will find him to be pleasant guy to talk to. He has been teaching this for ages, so he knows the stuff like the back of his hand. He goes super FAST! If you do not keep up then studying for exams would be stressful. For our semester, 87% was the B+/A- boundary, but then he also awards bonuses (for class and charity participation, etc), and we got 18 pts, so 85.2% was an A-, which is doable if you work hard and actually understand the main concepts!
Ricardo Araneda BSCI440 Anonymous 10/12/2012	This is by far the worst professor I have had in my 7semesters at UMD. Im a cell bio and molecular genetics major and I love this stuff. I loved the content of the class but he is a terrible professor. I cannot stress more to never take this guy. He cant teach. He expects you to know everything and doesnt explain well, if at all. I stopped going to lecture after the first exam because I got so mad at how every other sentence he would say, "Do you guys know that? (2 second pause) Well you should. Look it up." That got me so angry I just stopped going. I read the book and things made sense. That's how I passed the class.
Ricardo Araneda BSCI440 Expecting a 74 Anonymous 09/26/2012	I made it a point to go to every single lecture at the start of the semester. 9 am class. After a week, I realized how useless they were. But I still went. 3 weeks in, I gave up. Lectures are pointless. He doesn't clearly explain things, he goes over things that don't show up on the exams, and he glides over important parts of the book. So Just read the book. If you want to do well in this class, you have to be vigilant about learning everything yourself. There was a curve at the end though. The discussions were useful in that you could ask questions to TAs who've taken this class before and have a better idea of what's important to cover. Exams were difficult because the material is so dense, the only way to do well is to read the chapters over and over and try your best to synthesize the stuff with his slides. Also, there's stuff that's covered that's not on his slides or in the books, so yeah, enjoy if you're lucky enough to have him. Teaching is not his calling.
Sergei Sukharev BSCI440 Anonymous 01/24/2012	One of the most receptive professors I have met at this university. Unlike with other teachers I've had I felt as though he cared about his students and really just wanted them to learn the material. It can be kind of intimidating to speak with professors, but he is always willing to meet with you. The class is by no means easy, there is a lot of material to cover and you will be asked about everything. But there are no tricks and Dr. Sukharev is very open to discussing mistakes made and giving points back when deserved.
William Higgins BSCI440 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/01/2011	Don't let these statistics fool you- Higgins is the BETTER professor. He works at NIH as well and his class is the class to take if you're interested in pre-med / taking the MCAT's. He's taught many of the medical professionals in state. He's really got his lecture down to a science and doesn't ramble- I HATE powerpoints but his lectures were enjoyable and got my interest more than most of my other classes.
William Higgins BSCI440 Expecting an A Biology Major 05/27/2010	Most of what the previous reviewers have said is correct about the class. Dr. Higgins speaks too fast, skips slides, very critical. However, he IS very helpful. If you go to his office hours, or write questions on the discussion board, he is sure to answer then or direct you to the place in the text where you can find the answers. His tests are challenging b/c there isn't much partial credit. An annoying thing about the tests is that there are always mistakes on the practice tests and practice answer keys. So two exact questions have different answers, and it is hard to decipher which one is the correct answer. The TAs are not helpful either. Make sure you check your tests after you get them back. The reason is that the keys might be wrong too. The one boring part of this course is the part that is taught by Dr. Araneda. He lectures from the back of the room, so people in the front cannot hear him. He spends an entire lecture focusing on one slide, and expects you to know the rest. The tests written by him are confusing. But reading the book and looking at the CD for Araneda helps a whole bunch. For Higgins, GO TO CLASS!!!!
William Higgins BSCI440 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/19/2010	Yes, Higgins is pompous and rude and arrogant and makes you feel like an idiot. But, after spending a semester with him, the thing I dislike most about him is his disinterest in students. He arrives late to class, he ignores student emails, he avoids opportunities to actually discuss issues with students, and he is not sympathetic to their problems. You might enjoy the lecture, but all the learning has to be done on your own - prepare to spend your life on this class or take someone else for BSCI4440.
William Higgins BSCI440 Expecting an A hyeung1 03/05/2010	Intimidating person. Not very helpful. Sometimes funny. Makes you feel stupid and worthless all the time. He will have a ppt slide up and then talk for twenty minutes about things that are on the next two slides. Then he'll skip the next two slides because he had already talked about them, so you'll never "see" what hes talking about... exams...yuck mostly increase and decrease...if A increased what would happen to B...if B happened...what would happen to D... hard matching questions GRAPHS!! he loves graphs...he'll ask you to draw a graph that describes a relationship for 12 points (no partial credits of course). and theyre not easy graphs. he won't tell you that he is curving so he leads you to believe that you are getting a C for the entire semester until you get your final grade...so at that point you dont know if you should thank him for giving you a B or hate him for making you stress out all semester.
William Higgins BSCI440 Expecting a B Anonymous 02/07/2010	Very pompous and rude. Full of himself. Yells at you instead of actually teaching. The course material is already a little difficult to master, and he does not do a good job of teaching it and frankly makes it harder to learn. Do not reccommend him as a professor, but I did learn a lot from the textbook and lab.
Sergei Sukharev BSCI440 Anonymous 12/20/2009	I really enjoyed having Dr. Sukharev. He's a really great lecturer and even manages to get a few chuckles in the middle of a class filled with tense students trying to copy down everything he says! I can't believe he covered all that information in one semester. He's very fast paced but is very responsive to students. So don't hesitate to ask a question during or after class, no matter how hurried he seems, he'll take the time to answer. He may not smile much but he's very fair and has a very good sense of humor. Plus he cares, he's not one of those professors who would just give you the basic facts, he wants you to understand why (even the circuits part of neuron excitation. I loved that part of his teaching style though. As a student who can't memorize, I think that helped a lot for me. You can also tell that he really cares about his students learning, which is always a fantastic thing to have in any professor. He uses lecture slides with summary topics he makes himself, when he could've saved himself the trouble and just gotten them from the book. But that means it's reciprocal as well. If he took the time to make the slide, you should take the time to appreciate and learn it! Plus its pretty much certain that the subject is going to be on the exam in one way or another. Did I mention that he doesn't like to "dumb it down" too much? Its something that is really important in a processor, that means he's not given up on our learning capacity (yet)! A sign that he truly respects his students and would rather see them try than give up and hand out free points. Of course, this means I didn't do as well as I would have liked on my first exam (too much memorization for me) but I saw myself improving through my efforts in the class, which is pretty rewarding really. If you want to learn physiology, you should definitely take 440 with Dr. S!!
Sergei Sukharev BSCI440 Expecting an A rbterp 03/08/2009	Dr. Sukharev is a good professor - don't be scared off by his accent at the beginning of the semester. Focus on his notes and past exams rather than the book. Take good notes, as his slides are mostly just pictures and he will explain the important concepts verbally. There is a lot of memorization (esp. the receptors, circulatory system responses, etc) but just use the study aids provided by the TAs to help you memorize. This class is extremely helpful for the MCAT, and is very interesting, even if there is a lot to memorize!
Sergei Sukharev BSCI440 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/28/2008	Nice, funny, makes lecture entertaining sometimes. Exams are fair and doable, not many surprises.
William Higgins BSCI440 Expecting an A dmd 12/21/2008	Higgins is a great lecturer. He really makes you understand the material and is good at explaining difficult concepts. He really prepares you well if you are willing to put in time to learn the material. His lectures are entertaining and his class demonstrations keeps everyone awake. However, he's been teaching mamm phys for 30+ years and he lets you know. He likes to talk about himself and about all the current doctors, deans, and professors who have been his student at some point in time. If you want to learn, take Higgins..he knows his stuff!
Sergei Sukharev BSCI440 Expecting an A spanishpearl05 10/26/2007	Professor Sukharev is an extremely engaging and straightforward teacher. He is adorable and makes jokes during lecture to keep the class entertained. He stutters sometimes but always gets the point across clearly. His exams are difficult but doable if you study exactly what he tells you to. Extremely willing to talk to you and is fair with regrades. Highly recommend!!
William Higgins BSCI440 Expecting a B pinklacepajamas 10/21/2007	Engaging lecturer who knows how to keep a class of around 200 awake at 8 am. He explains everything very clearly. His exams are doable, although difficult, as they require that you thoroughly understand the relationships, cascades, and pathways. One drawback about him is just that he is pretty pompous and elitist.

Joshua Singer
BSCI440

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
09/05/2024

I'm glad that the more recent reviews have had a better time in this class than I did, and I hope if you have to take it you will too. I had to take this course during Covid and it was painful. The course itself is obviously rough and covers a lot, but the way Dr. Singer taught was also rough. He seems like a good guy, funny, but also has an ego. People would ask questions during lecture and he would go on long tangents that wouldn't really answer the question, or he would berate them and ask them why they don't already know something. It definitely gave the lectures a weird vibe because by the middle of the semester only 2-3 people were ever brave enough to ask questions about the material.

Colenso Speer
BSCI440

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/08/2023

He is very unaccommodating to student needs. He tends to go very fast in each lecture and does not record even when many students asked him to do so. Each exam is graded extremely harshly and there hasn't been one time till now that anybody in the class got a 100.

Colenso Speer
BSCI440

Expecting a B
Anonymous
11/17/2023

I have worked so hard in this class, and as much as I love what we are learning, Dr. Speer consistently ensures that the exams are graded very strictly and seems to enjoy to see an average of 62 or below on each exam. Each exam is too long for the class time, and even if you follow everything he recommends and study even more, you still won't necessarily do well. He purposely doesn't record any lectures and does not allow any exam review sessions to happen on Zoom or be recorded, and honestly I think the review sessions almost purposely throw you off, literally punishing the people who want to do well. Making 50% of a class of pre-meds fail on each exam is honestly dangerous and reckless. Dr. Speer's exams have made me feel like I will never be good enough to be a doctor, a dream I have had my whole life, and so this semester is the one where I give up on that dream. Thank you Dr. Speer.

Scott Juntti
BSCI440

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/25/2023

I liked the dude. He posted slides before class (no recordings). Spoke slowly so you had time to write notes. Took time to answer all questions. You have a bunch of Pearson HWs due before each exam. 4 exams and 1 cumulative final. Curved ~3% (I had 87.2% and got an A-). He curves the median to C+/B- boundary. Tests were pretty fair, 11-16 questions per test and MC was worth 5 pts and short answer 10 pts. TA's were very good and super helpful. I didn't really study until 1-3 days before each exam but material comprehension is different for everyone. Good teacher gets 4 stars and way better than Opoku.

Justicia Opoku-Edusei
BSCI440

Anonymous
05/24/2022

Do NOT recommend her. One of the worst professors I had at UMD! Lecture: Her slides are dense and messy so reviewing them before the exam is nearly impossible. She narrates her lectures but it’s very hard to understand with her thick accent. She hand-writes her notes during lectures with unbelievably messy handwriting and a speech that is faster than typing. Opoku REFUSED to provide lecture recordings THAT SHE ALREADY HAS when I got COVID so you better not get sick during the 15-weeks of her lectures. Exams: Her exams are inhumanely long (8 muti-parts problems for 50 mins). Grading rubrics look for VERY specific phrases/explanations so you need memorize exactly how she explained in class. TAs take forever to grade and hand back exams. Since the majority of your grade (~80%) is exams and the final, getting one shitty exam grade is done. She does curve slightly (about 5%) for my semester. Discussion: Discussion and quizzes focus on different things than lecture. Very hit or miss depending on TAs. They are getting rid of it going forward so that’s good.

Justicia Opoku-Edusei
BSCI440

Anonymous
05/14/2022

this class ruined my mental health. the rubrics were so specific she was basically asking us to read her mind. don't take bsci440 with her

Justicia Opoku-Edusei
BSCI440

Anonymous
05/11/2022

If you are able to avoid this class with this Professor, do so. I have never gotten a C before. Now, I’m struggling to just pass this class and I’ve already done well in A&P . Her exams heavily focus on material she will show you 2 days prior to the exam. Also, the TA I had always rushed through discussion and ended up changing a quiz question after I took the quiz which then caused my entire answer to be wrong. So be careful.

Justicia Opoku-Edusei
BSCI440

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/09/2022

She knows her stuff. Unfortunately she writes on a paper in extremely messy font, does not show all of the stuff she writes, and then moves forward without letting students capture the material. She narrates the content, but it is hard to follow and understand as she speaks way too fast and with an accent. Though I did well, exams are way too long, and are keyword based. Very disorganized overall, too specific, huge amounts of material, frustrating lectures.

Colenso Speer
BSCI440

Expecting an A
Anonymous
03/15/2022

Dr. Speer inspired my passion for medicine. He did a great job tying all the knowledge I had accumulated from biology, chemistry, and physics together, and made even the most difficult concepts make sense. Thank you, Dr. Speer, for your enthusiastic approach to teaching and for your warm, supportive mentorship!

Colenso Speer
BSCI440

Expecting a C
Anonymous
01/24/2022

Dr. Speer is a great lecturer. He was always interesting to listen to and he explained things very clearly. He was also always very approachable and would have discussion boards where people were free to ask questions about the material. However, I agree with the previous review below. I was constantly reading the textbook, I'd record the lectures and then listen to them and rewrite my notes based on exactly what he said and then before every exam, I'd rewrite my notes again/draw things out. In addition, I'd do all the practice problems in the textbook (both the ones throughout the chapter and the ones at the end of the chapter). Despite the detail of my notes and the amount of time I spent reading the textbook as well as answering questions, I still did poorly on most of the exams. After doing poorly on exams 1 and 2 (59 and 55), I reached out to him to ask for advice on how to study for exams. He sent me a long and detailed email about best study practices for exams and I followed them to a T. I did better on exam 3 (72) but I mainly attribute that to the fact that it was less material than the other exams because I again did terribly on exam 4 and the final (51 and 49). For both those exams, I followed all his advice and spent around 2 weeks studying for both but I still did badly. I'm not even sure what happened with the final because I actually felt decent about that one (expected like maybe a 70). BSCI440 is notoriously hard so I came into this class expecting to have to work hard but it was frustrating working as hard as I did to get such little results in return. Also, don't let people get in your head when they talk about this class having a curve to it. Whatever curve there is, its very little. My overall score was a 71.5% and I ended up with a final grade of a C. He's a great lecturer but I could never figure out how to study to be able to do well on the exams. My recommendation would be to ask someone who did well in this class (and had the same professor) what they did to study for exams and follow their advice because they clearly figured out what I couldn't.

Colenso Speer
BSCI440

Expecting a C+
Anonymous
01/06/2022

Dr. Speer is in a hard spot with 440 as it is a notoriously hard course but given that he does "ok". However, I consistently found it near impossible to prepare adequately for exams in this class. On every exam there was at least 1 question (10 pts usually) that was outside of what any of us expected to be included. Through the entire semester there was not a single test average above 70% and despite attending office hours, asking questions and reading the textbook like it was gospel, I simply found it impossible to walk into class prepared for his exams. As an instructor, Dr. Speer is affable and kind but his exams and the class structure is enough to make an undergrad switch majors.

Colenso Speer
BSCI440

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/23/2021

Dr. Speer is a fantastic professor for this historically difficult class. He tells you exactly what you need to do to be successful in the class and part of that is reading the textbook. The textbook is absolutely necessary to do well in this class. 50% of the points from his exams are textbook questions (written exactly as they are in the textbook). I am not much of a textbook reader and will avoid it if I don't view it as necessary, but this class is one where you are working against yourself if you don't use it. You also cannot cram for this class, there is A LOT of information to take in. You should be thinking critically about concepts as he is teaching and as you are reviewing. For example, if you are thinking about a neuron action potential, you should be able to identify what the impacts on the action potential would be if there was a defect in any of the channels involved. This class goes fast, but I found myself relatively comfortable with the pace. In all honesty, this class was not nearly as bad as people made it out to be and I never found myself terribly overwhelmed by it. Yes, it required more studying than any other biology class I had faced, but I adjusted. I thought all of his tests were completely fair. As long as you do well-enough above the average in all cases, you should be fine.

Joshua Singer
BSCI440

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/19/2021

Don’t take this class w/ Singer unless you absolutely have to. He’s nice after class but his ego is pretty big at all other times. Don’t ask what your letter grade in the class is, you won’t know until after the final. The grade on ELMS was inaccurate as he didn’t weigh assignments correctly according to his own rubric, he just gave them an arbitrary point value. Exams are hard, but not bc the content itself is impossible. He’ll lecture about something for three classes but choose to ask a hard question about something he mentioned in passing for 2 minutes. Questions can be randomly specific or a mix from textbook chapter review questions. He said he assigns grades based off the median, and he uses the median after everyone drops the class. That means your grade “decays” weekly. As more people withdraw, the better performers stay in the class, raising the averages on the exams. Even the Chem profs don’t do that. So the only way to do good is to beat the curve, by A LOT, for the exams as they weigh the most on your overall letter grade. Exam averages trend from 60-70%. Check your exam points after you get your exam back. He has his younger daughter count your exam points for the total score you get. One time she miscounted mine and I had to get a regrade. He ended up taking more points away from my exam. Even regrades are risky to ask for. If you agitate him, it might not end well for you as he seems to grade depending on his mood. In summary, the class itself isn’t hard. Singer makes it harder for no reason.

Colenso Speer
BSCI440

Anonymous
11/19/2021

I am still in the process of taking BSCI 440 with Dr. Speer and he seriously is the best professor I've ever had at UMD. He's great at explaining things and will slow down the entire class if he feels like kids are struggling with certain concepts. 4 exams total and a final, with quizzes a week before each exam to get you prepared for the exam. Homework assignments are due before every exam as well but you have 3-4 weeks to work on those. He wants his students to actually understand the material being taught and will accommodate to make sure that is happening. He is also extremely knowledgeable. This class is super challenging no matter what so complaining about his exams or the density of his lectures or material really doesn't matter; with a class this hard, a good or bad professor will make or break your grade. He does a great job at teaching hard concepts. Still, make sure to read the textbook though no matter what! It's impossible to have everything that you are expected to know for exams be taught to you in a 50 minute or 75 minute lecture. He will make you work for the A but he does a great job in trying to get you there. Highly, highly recommend.

Scott Juntti
BSCI440

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
05/23/2021

Juntti is an amazing lecturer! He was always willing to answer questions and help during office hours. Exams were fair, definitely go to the discussions and TA reviews. Although reading the textbook is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, and I found it super useful for reinforcing the topics and better explaining things from the lectures.

Scott Juntti
BSCI440

Anonymous
03/23/2021

AMAZING!! He is a great lecturer and really receptive to questions. Reading the book helps a lot with the class, but i find that reading the books after watching lectures helped best to retain info

Joshua Singer
BSCI440

Expecting a B
Anonymous
03/22/2021

Alright so I took him last semester (Fall 2020) and he was definitely not as bad as people make him out to be. I think people thought that they were going to get away with a lot more bullshit since it was online and Dr. Singer really wasn't entertaining that. He made himself super accessible via Zoom and he held discussion-like twice a week in addition to about 3 longish lectures per unit. Overall there was a lot of material and a lot of detail but there were a lot of resources available to help us succeed- he even went through old exam questions with us that were pretty similar to the actual exams. This class was definitely not easy and he caught/reported roughly 20% of the class blatantly cheating on our exams so that wasn't fun but he wasn't being unreasonable or anything. I would say that this class definitely requires a full 12-15 hours a week of studying regardless of who you take it with (the other section was Speer and their averages were actually lower than ours).

Joshua Singer
BSCI440

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/13/2020

Open ended questions without much guidance, rough semester especially for neurodivergent students. Avoid if possible.

Joshua Singer
BSCI440

Expecting a B
Anonymous
11/21/2020

If you have another option, take them instead.

Scott Juntti
BSCI440

Expecting an A
Anonymous
10/13/2020

Great guy in general. Speaks very gently and very clearly. Gets straight to the point, speaks chronologically and logically. Honestly gives a super relaxing vibe in a class like Mamphys which can at times be overwhelming. Reading the textbook along with review of the powerpoints is sufficient for doing well in this class.

Scott Juntti
BSCI440

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
03/26/2020

great guy, speaks slowly and clearly answers questions fully and takes his time to do it thoroughly. Fair grader. Minimal assignments - cuts the b.s this class is just about learning the material and being prepared for announced exams/quizzes. Incredibly nice in person. Occasionally makes jokes in light hearted and subtle manners. handsome likeable fair dude overall.

Colenso Speer
BSCI440

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/01/2019

I took BSCI440 with Dr. Speer during fall 2018. The man is a great lecturer in my opinion. He explains concepts slowly and clearly, so it's easy to keep up in class. You can tell he's passionate about the material too, and I have a lot of respect for that. Lecture assignments consisted of four exams and a final. All of them were primarily free-response, with a bit of matching and multiple-choice. A few problems would be straight from the textbook (which he let us know) - but I personally never used the textbook. Discussion assignments consists of four group quizzes. The quizzes were case studies that related to lecture material. My only problem with the class was that grading seemed inconsistent - points would be taken off for what seemed like no good reason, and sometimes people would earn or lose points for the same answer. But this falls on TAs, not so much the prof. Overall, this was one of my favorite courses that I took at UMD. You'll learn a whole lot about human physiology, and if you're really interested in pursuing medicine then this is a class you should enjoy.

Colenso Speer
BSCI440

Expecting an A
Anonymous
03/30/2019

Honestly I’m only writing a review as a response to the previous review because it’s just wrong .... First of all, mammphys is a hard class no matter who you take it with. There is a lot of material and the questions are mostly case studies so you need to know how to apply what you learned not just memorize. Sooooo, when you get a question like how do frogs breathe (given that they are positive pressure breathers and don’t have a rib cage *important detail* and we are negative pressure), you should be able to figure it out. And the astronaut question was mentioned in class AND in the book so .... can’t get any more fair imo. And speaking of the exams, he told us from the very start that every exam will have questions from the book and they did. And when I say questions from them book, I mean literally copy pasted questions from the back of each chapter. About 1 page of every exam was book questions which was easy points if you read the book and did the questions. The rest was case/application questions from lecture and the lecture covers pretty much everything in the chapter so I guess you could say from the book as well....(also I never really read the book for any class but I did for this one and I would totally recommend doing so cuz it’s really well written and actually very helpful) The grading was a bit of a mess for one of the exams and you really needed to go for a regrade and get a bunch of points back. so to me this just showed that the TAs didn’t know how to grade/were too strict cuz when you go for the regrade which Speer himself does, you got your points back. So I don’t really see how he’s to blame here.... He was a great lecturer in my opinion. He seemed really interested in the topic and the enthusiasm showed and was contagious. Explained everything pretty well and was engaging with the students and asking question etc. At the end we got a nice curve too. Overall, it’s a hard class so you have to have to put in a lot of work, sit in the front, and start studying early and you’ll be fine. I would def recommend him.

Colenso Speer
BSCI440

Anonymous
03/29/2019

I took Speer during the Fall 18 semester which was his first time teaching this class (unsure if he's taught other classes before). I have a lot of complaints about the class so brace yourself. 1. In the beginning of the semester no one knew what he was saying. It wasn't because of an accent or anything, just his volume of speaking. It was so low that you frequently had incomplete notes. Asking him to speak up resulted in a slightly louder tone for about 5 minutes, after which he reverted back to the low volume. This is even when he was using the mic in the ESJ classroom. 2. He refuses to record lectures. Instead he says you can record them yourself. I and many others asked him to reconsider since his voice was so low and the material was difficult and plentiful. He still refused. I began recording lectures on my phone soon after, but even when sitting in the second or third row, his volume was so low that even my phone mic could not pick it up. I had to buy an external mic off Amazon to get any use of my recordings. 3. His exams focus very heavily off the book, not the lectures. He frequently outright copies questions from the book. I have no problem with this, but he gave us the wrong impression on what to know during lecture for his exams when in reality nothing he mentioned showed up. It made matters worse when he said in office hours that his exams are not heavily book based compared to someone like Opoku. 4. Exam grading is completely arbitrary. He gives you the answer key, but the TAs have a different answer key that they use that isn't even provided to you (except for one instance for us). If you take this class, get a regrade for every single exam because it is guaranteed you will get a higher grade back. There is no leeway when a TA is grading and if you don't put the right key words in your short answer response, you lose significant points. An example of this is that someone got 0 credit for a question (was posted to the class Groupme). The explanation written by the TA was that this could be correct but is not the answer on the key. In his syllabus he states that grading is not based on key words, but on correctness of the response as a whole. This is not true even in the slightest and I have several examples of this on my exams. One last note about exam grading is for regrades, he will look over the whole exam, even for questions you didn't ask for a regrade on. He will also deduct points if he thinks you got too many for a question, but 95% of the time you will end up with a higher grade even after the deductions with the other points you get back. He did get more stingy on regrades towards the end though. 5. Discussions are a mess. The TAs as a group made these awesome slides to help learn the material because the lecture slides which he posts are not as useful when trying to understand. However, he refused to allow the TAs to share the discussion slides with us. I have no idea why this rule is in place, but this basically forced the students to take a picture of every single slide instead of listening to the explanation by the TAs for the material. To make matters worse, some TAs broke the rule and just sent the slides to their students after class while some refused to break the rule. Luckily my friend was in a different discussion section and was able to provide me the slides. 6. Studying for exams was incredibly difficult due to the lack of material provided. His lecture slides were mediocre, most didn't have discussion slides, and no practice exams/study guides/example questions were provided. I think this will get better as time goes on and past exams are then floating around from previous semesters. The best thing to do was probably to know how to do every single question in the corresponding chapters in the book. 7. He throws in a curveball question on almost every exam that would be almost impossible to study for unless you somehow had prior knowledge of the topic. An example is how does a frog get air into its lungs? I'm not an expert, but I didn't know that a frog was considered a mammal and we were required to know this for an exam when the class is called mammalian physiology (in reality should just be called human physiology). Another curveball was something like what happens to heart rate when an astronaut in space comes back to Earth. 8. Scheduling of different assignments was a nightmare. For the first 3 exams they were spaced out a pretty good (every 2.5ish weeks). Each of the first 3 exams also had a relatively manageable amount of content compared to the 4th exam. The first 3 you had to learn about 2 chapters each and then we took a huge break and the 4th exam came up with material that covered 4 chapters. In BSCI440, this is a significant amount of material and was basically like a final before the final. The final then occurred after about 10 days after the fourth exam. I know that having an exam right before the final is super common for many classes, but the amount of content the last exam covered was huge. Also, some of the exams were scheduled for a Wednesday which forced Wednesday discussions to be canceled. Speer told anyone in the Wed discussion to go to a Mon or Tues discussion instead, but this isn't always possible. Scheduling all the exams on Friday would have made the most sense so all discussions had the chance to review. This may seem like a lot of ranting but I just wanted to point out some of these serious flaws so you could be better prepared if you have to take him. This was his first semester teaching so things could better in future semesters but it's hard to know. There were no other professors to choose from when I took him so there really wasn't a choice unless you had time to wait for the following semester. This class is already difficult enough as it is, and Speer just makes things harder. Good luck

Joshua Singer
BSCI440

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
01/02/2018

Is a weedwhacker with a poor personality, not horrifying, but not recommended. Record lectures if you have him, and don't expect an easy semester.

Joshua Singer
BSCI440

Anonymous
12/14/2017

Terrible lectures, hard exams, shitty personality. Avoid like the plague

Sergei Sukharev
BSCI440

Expecting an A
impart
08/04/2016

Pros: -Reuses old exam questions. Get some from your friends and buy the purple book for $10 at the book store. -Explanations of concepts were not bad though. Teacher engaging with good sense of humor. Heavy Russian accent and very noticeable stutter. -Teacher receptive to student concerns and flexible. Available during office hours -Usually gives you back points on exams if you argue for it Cons: -Slides are disorganized. Titles on first slide should be continued throughout presentation to divide the slides up. -Little context given for material. We all felt like large volumes of information were being explained and tossed at students without good context to memorize them. -Teacher arrived late, started class late, and ended class late, which was inappropriate and not good for students who had a class afterwards. -Reviews for exams were disjointed. Consisted of professor speeding through slides and realizing that it was a lot of material unfairly given to us. There should have been a better emphasis on big picture and better organization. -Many errors in answer keys and poorly designed, reused questions. Always had to get points back for every single exam. Disaster.

Sergei Sukharev
BSCI440

Expecting an A
Anonymous
06/29/2016

Extremely knowledgable profesor but not a good instructor. You will get used to his "uh's and um's" but you will not get used to his lecture style. His transitions between slides are poor and the way he presents the material is not ideal. Literally, all the TA's told me that they do not understand how we are learning from this guy because of the way he teaches. He is a very nice person though and if you go to his office hours, he will make sure you understand the material. And like the reviews below, yes, Dr. Sukharev does re-use questions from old exams. He re-used a lot of them for the second and third exam. They were pretty much identical actually so if you have old exams, you will get an A. The final exam was incredibly difficult. I pulled an all nighter studying for the final and I guessed on approximately 70% of it. luckily, the exam was out of 200 points but had 230 possible points. He also does not do the +/- system so you have to aim for that 90%. Overall, if you want an A on your transcript for BSCI440 then take Sukharev. If you actually want to learn the material and be prepared for medical school/MCATS, then take Singer.

Sergei Sukharev
BSCI440

Expecting a B
Anonymous
06/08/2015

Solid professor. You learn soooooo much information and it's really cool to be able to apply it in real life situations. He doesn't curve at the end. But there are built-in curves with his exams. There are 4 exams (3 mid-terms and 1 final). Each are 200 points (so total of 800 points in lecture). With each exam, he gives extra buffer points (i.e. for the final, he only counts it out of 200 but there was a total of 253 points!!!! which helped soooooo much in boosting my grade). Discussion is 200 points (based on an individual 20 minute presentation, 4 quizzes, attendance, and participation). So there are a total of 1000 points. No curve. So 900 is an A, 800 is a B, 700 is a C. He doesn't do plus/minus either. Super, super, SUPER generous with regrades (but make sure you use pen!). Basically look at the answer key he posts outside his office and then go to his office hours and explain why you think you should get more points, and he is super generous with giving back points. He doesn't regrade the entire exam like most professors, but only looks at the questions you ask him which is super nice. This was definitely one of my favorite classes at UMD (the other one being BSCI330 with Dr. Ades).

Sergei Sukharev
BSCI440

Expecting an A
Anonymous
06/03/2015

This class is no joke. I spent sooo many hours studying for it, and in the end it was worth it. The material is interesting beyond belief and is incredibly relevant for premedical students. It is the sheer magnitude of material that makes it difficult to wrap your head around, but if you are diligent and keep up with lecture it isn’t too bad. The material itself is not hard to understand, it’s merely the ordeal of memorizing it is what makes the class hard. Sukharev isn’t the best lecturer but his exams are fair and he is very generous with giving back points if you see him after an exam (do try to have a valid argument for why you should get points back though, nobody likes the kid who just wants points back because he just thinks he deserves them, and he’ll call you out for it). Sukharev is straightforward in his exams, which are very memorization-oriented, unlike Higgins and Singer, who are more application/case study based. Sukharev likes details and will ask you to recall things like the pressure value of the valves going in and out of the heart. He also doesn’t give out +/-‘s for final grades. He will give out extra points on exams so it is possible to get over 100%. Go to discussion, I got lucky and had a ballin TA (yay Amol!) and you can usually get freebie points in discussion for showing up and giving a decent presentation. Quizzes in discussion are also given, which are harder than exam material but my year the last two quizzes were allowed to be taken in groups. This class is a ton of work though; be aware when going in that this class will and should take up most of your time during the semester. Khan academy helps tremendously, but keeping up with (and attending) lecture will take you a long way.

Sergei Sukharev
BSCI440

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/27/2015

Honestly one of the best professors at UMD. He is very receptive, extremely fair and understanding. Lectures are great and he does a great job of keeping everyone's attention. Go to office hours and use the purple manual. ever exam has a built in curve so they don't curve the class at the end. he also doesn't do +/- grading so be mindful of this. his exams are straight from his slides and the things he says in lecture - so go to class! very generous with extra credit on the final - i pulled up my grade by 4% just because of the final and got an A in the class. prof sukharev is the bomb! take bsci440 with him!

William Higgins
BSCI440

Expecting an A
StellaJ
09/21/2013

The class is not too challenging, an easy A. I took this class while working as a postbac at NIH, where he works as a counselor. While he behaves pleasantly in front of a large class, he is a different character when serving as a counselor. He treated me very poorly there. Without offering any constructive criticism, he simply judged my career goals and even my hobbies. I thought his attitude was very unprofessional and abrasive. He made sarcastic sneers about certain hobbies I have, and I just could not believe how unfriendly the atmosphere was. When I spoke to a coworker who had also sought "Dr" Higgins' advice, he said he also had a negative experience. Beware of the types who are friendly when under public eye, but hostile in private "counseling" sessions...

William Higgins
BSCI440

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/23/2013

I have never written a review for a professor but I pretty much had to for Professor Higgins. Ya it's a tough class but he is very generous with giving points back on exams and giving the class extra credit, not to mention he curves on top of that (I think for our semester an A was an 87%). He's also always willing to help you outside of class or his office hours if you need it. He definitely lives up to his reputation.

William Higgins
BSCI440

Expecting an A
typicalterp
05/19/2013

This is a challenging course, because there are a lot of small details to be understood and memorized. Dr. Higgins is really helpful, especially if you go to his office hrs. Don't feel intimidated, because if you go to him a couple of times and ask good questions, then you will find him to be pleasant guy to talk to. He has been teaching this for ages, so he knows the stuff like the back of his hand. He goes super FAST! If you do not keep up then studying for exams would be stressful. For our semester, 87% was the B+/A- boundary, but then he also awards bonuses (for class and charity participation, etc), and we got 18 pts, so 85.2% was an A-, which is doable if you work hard and actually understand the main concepts!

Ricardo Araneda
BSCI440

Anonymous
10/12/2012

This is by far the worst professor I have had in my 7semesters at UMD. Im a cell bio and molecular genetics major and I love this stuff. I loved the content of the class but he is a terrible professor. I cannot stress more to never take this guy. He cant teach. He expects you to know everything and doesnt explain well, if at all. I stopped going to lecture after the first exam because I got so mad at how every other sentence he would say, "Do you guys know that? (2 second pause) Well you should. Look it up." That got me so angry I just stopped going. I read the book and things made sense. That's how I passed the class.

Ricardo Araneda
BSCI440

Expecting a 74
Anonymous
09/26/2012

I made it a point to go to every single lecture at the start of the semester. 9 am class. After a week, I realized how useless they were. But I still went. 3 weeks in, I gave up. Lectures are pointless. He doesn't clearly explain things, he goes over things that don't show up on the exams, and he glides over important parts of the book. So Just read the book. If you want to do well in this class, you have to be vigilant about learning everything yourself. There was a curve at the end though. The discussions were useful in that you could ask questions to TAs who've taken this class before and have a better idea of what's important to cover. Exams were difficult because the material is so dense, the only way to do well is to read the chapters over and over and try your best to synthesize the stuff with his slides. Also, there's stuff that's covered that's not on his slides or in the books, so yeah, enjoy if you're lucky enough to have him. Teaching is not his calling.

Sergei Sukharev
BSCI440

Anonymous
01/24/2012

One of the most receptive professors I have met at this university. Unlike with other teachers I've had I felt as though he cared about his students and really just wanted them to learn the material. It can be kind of intimidating to speak with professors, but he is always willing to meet with you. The class is by no means easy, there is a lot of material to cover and you will be asked about everything. But there are no tricks and Dr. Sukharev is very open to discussing mistakes made and giving points back when deserved.

William Higgins
BSCI440

Expecting an A
Anonymous
09/01/2011

Don't let these statistics fool you- Higgins is the BETTER professor. He works at NIH as well and his class is the class to take if you're interested in pre-med / taking the MCAT's. He's taught many of the medical professionals in state. He's really got his lecture down to a science and doesn't ramble- I HATE powerpoints but his lectures were enjoyable and got my interest more than most of my other classes.

William Higgins
BSCI440

Expecting an A
Biology Major
05/27/2010

Most of what the previous reviewers have said is correct about the class. Dr. Higgins speaks too fast, skips slides, very critical. However, he IS very helpful. If you go to his office hours, or write questions on the discussion board, he is sure to answer then or direct you to the place in the text where you can find the answers. His tests are challenging b/c there isn't much partial credit. An annoying thing about the tests is that there are always mistakes on the practice tests and practice answer keys. So two exact questions have different answers, and it is hard to decipher which one is the correct answer. The TAs are not helpful either. Make sure you check your tests after you get them back. The reason is that the keys might be wrong too. The one boring part of this course is the part that is taught by Dr. Araneda. He lectures from the back of the room, so people in the front cannot hear him. He spends an entire lecture focusing on one slide, and expects you to know the rest. The tests written by him are confusing. But reading the book and looking at the CD for Araneda helps a whole bunch. For Higgins, GO TO CLASS!!!!

William Higgins
BSCI440

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/19/2010

Yes, Higgins is pompous and rude and arrogant and makes you feel like an idiot. But, after spending a semester with him, the thing I dislike most about him is his disinterest in students. He arrives late to class, he ignores student emails, he avoids opportunities to actually discuss issues with students, and he is not sympathetic to their problems. You might enjoy the lecture, but all the learning has to be done on your own - prepare to spend your life on this class or take someone else for BSCI4440.

William Higgins
BSCI440

Expecting an A
hyeung1
03/05/2010

Intimidating person. Not very helpful. Sometimes funny. Makes you feel stupid and worthless all the time. He will have a ppt slide up and then talk for twenty minutes about things that are on the next two slides. Then he'll skip the next two slides because he had already talked about them, so you'll never "see" what hes talking about... exams...yuck mostly increase and decrease...if A increased what would happen to B...if B happened...what would happen to D... hard matching questions GRAPHS!! he loves graphs...he'll ask you to draw a graph that describes a relationship for 12 points (no partial credits of course). and theyre not easy graphs. he won't tell you that he is curving so he leads you to believe that you are getting a C for the entire semester until you get your final grade...so at that point you dont know if you should thank him for giving you a B or hate him for making you stress out all semester.

William Higgins
BSCI440

Expecting a B
Anonymous
02/07/2010

Very pompous and rude. Full of himself. Yells at you instead of actually teaching. The course material is already a little difficult to master, and he does not do a good job of teaching it and frankly makes it harder to learn. Do not reccommend him as a professor, but I did learn a lot from the textbook and lab.

Sergei Sukharev
BSCI440

Anonymous
12/20/2009

I really enjoyed having Dr. Sukharev. He's a really great lecturer and even manages to get a few chuckles in the middle of a class filled with tense students trying to copy down everything he says! I can't believe he covered all that information in one semester. He's very fast paced but is very responsive to students. So don't hesitate to ask a question during or after class, no matter how hurried he seems, he'll take the time to answer. He may not smile much but he's very fair and has a very good sense of humor. Plus he cares, he's not one of those professors who would just give you the basic facts, he wants you to understand why (even the circuits part of neuron excitation. I loved that part of his teaching style though. As a student who can't memorize, I think that helped a lot for me. You can also tell that he really cares about his students learning, which is always a fantastic thing to have in any professor. He uses lecture slides with summary topics he makes himself, when he could've saved himself the trouble and just gotten them from the book. But that means it's reciprocal as well. If he took the time to make the slide, you should take the time to appreciate and learn it! Plus its pretty much certain that the subject is going to be on the exam in one way or another. Did I mention that he doesn't like to "dumb it down" too much? Its something that is really important in a processor, that means he's not given up on our learning capacity (yet)! A sign that he truly respects his students and would rather see them try than give up and hand out free points. Of course, this means I didn't do as well as I would have liked on my first exam (too much memorization for me) but I saw myself improving through my efforts in the class, which is pretty rewarding really. If you want to learn physiology, you should definitely take 440 with Dr. S!!

Sergei Sukharev
BSCI440

Expecting an A
rbterp
03/08/2009

Dr. Sukharev is a good professor - don't be scared off by his accent at the beginning of the semester. Focus on his notes and past exams rather than the book. Take good notes, as his slides are mostly just pictures and he will explain the important concepts verbally. There is a lot of memorization (esp. the receptors, circulatory system responses, etc) but just use the study aids provided by the TAs to help you memorize. This class is extremely helpful for the MCAT, and is very interesting, even if there is a lot to memorize!

Sergei Sukharev
BSCI440

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/28/2008

Nice, funny, makes lecture entertaining sometimes. Exams are fair and doable, not many surprises.

William Higgins
BSCI440

Expecting an A
dmd
12/21/2008

Higgins is a great lecturer. He really makes you understand the material and is good at explaining difficult concepts. He really prepares you well if you are willing to put in time to learn the material. His lectures are entertaining and his class demonstrations keeps everyone awake. However, he's been teaching mamm phys for 30+ years and he lets you know. He likes to talk about himself and about all the current doctors, deans, and professors who have been his student at some point in time. If you want to learn, take Higgins..he knows his stuff!

Sergei Sukharev
BSCI440

Expecting an A
spanishpearl05
10/26/2007

Professor Sukharev is an extremely engaging and straightforward teacher. He is adorable and makes jokes during lecture to keep the class entertained. He stutters sometimes but always gets the point across clearly. His exams are difficult but doable if you study exactly what he tells you to. Extremely willing to talk to you and is fair with regrades. Highly recommend!!

William Higgins
BSCI440

Expecting a B
pinklacepajamas
10/21/2007

Engaging lecturer who knows how to keep a class of around 200 awake at 8 am. He explains everything very clearly. His exams are doable, although difficult, as they require that you thoroughly understand the relationships, cascades, and pathways. One drawback about him is just that he is pretty pompous and elitist.

Reviews for BSCI440