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Birthe Kjellerup Shirtliff ENCE489J Expecting an A Anonymous 03/28/2025	Note: the premise of this course is to prepare a sustainability based product or approach, and then present it at the Green Global Challenge in Denmark over the summer. I think the premise of this course is interesting it’s just taught quite poorly. Dr. Kjellerup seems to try to be so hands off that no one actually knows what is happening or what to do. We are over halfway through the semester and still don’t have decided upon groups or topics. We should theoretically have some sort of prototype or completed product something by the end of the semester though so we’ll see how that goes. Current course structure is as follows: The first four weeks are like a getting to know our classmates and student run presentations on like Danish food, movies, news etc pretty much every single class period which is fine but way too long to spend doing that. And all it seems to have taught the students is that they can just throw a presentation together in like 20 minutes at 10pm the day before. We also never actually receive grades for any of this or really know what she thinks of us so all we can do is hope she gives all As for just like showing up I guess bc I don’t know what else we’d be graded on. We did have like one guest lecture before break on biogas from a guy which was cool I guess but not really relevant to what I wanted to do. And then suddenly a week before spring break she’s like “oh shit, there’s actually a project” and tells us to form groups and think of an idea. So we did form groups and thought of some ideas. But pretty much all of it was way too big to be done by undergrads in half a semester but she refused to actually tell any of us that and let us go all of spring break trying to develop those ideas and then everyone gradually realized the topics weren’t good and we had a zoom call Thursday where we were all wanting to switch and she’s like okay but come up with new groups and your topic by Friday at noon (aka like 24 hours) which is absolutely wild. But we don’t really know what like some of the problems are in our chosen topics, what might be actually small and feasible enough to tackle in 7 weeks, etc. And we also have to somehow create an abstract for Undergrad Research Day in a week when we barely even know our general topic. Proposed class plan in case she actually reads this: Get into interest groups earlier. They should be formed by no later than 4 weeks. Start even before then by connecting us with people in Denmark with what problems they have, aspects of their life, etc. But actually give us time to ask questions, etc. Then after interest groups are formed help with her position as teacher and person with connections by connecting us to people and experts in those topics, specific Danish resources to check out, etc. And again able to ask Danish people what they think of our ideas, what aspects we should focus on within them, etc. Then we can start on preliminary trials, designs etc and have a fairly solid plan for the way forward by spring break. Now I do think Dr. Kjellerup is a nice person with good intentions which is why I am giving two stars instead of one. I hope she sees this feedback and improves for the future.