ENGL101H | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Katherine Joshi ENGL101H Expecting an A+ Anonymous 03/12/2024	She is an amazing professor I think that she does a great job teaching this course. She grades kind of hard but if you go to office hours or ask she to review your work before submitting you will do well in this class.
Sarah Goodson ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 02/22/2024	Professor Goodson is a very kind and understanding, and the work for her class is never overwhelming. That being said, there were some moments where the class felt pretty disorganized with assignment instructions sometimes being pretty unclear, and for all the major writing assignments (except the first one), she didn't give the grades & rubric back until the end of the semester. However, considering how easy the class usually is, this really wasn't a problem, and she was always very approachable if you did have some genuine question or confusion about something. She is also a very passionate person who's always excited to teach, so the classes will never be boring if you take her.
Sarah Goodson ENGL101H Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/20/2023	Very nice woman, super understanding. Her directions on assignments weren't always clear, but the work was never egregiously hard. She learns the names of all her students and engages with them during every class.
Katherine Joshi ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 12/18/2023	Joshi's class is not bad at all. I actually thoroughly enjoyed the semester with her. She's nice and willing to give extensions when necessary. As someone who doesn't like English, she wasn't a bad option at all. She is however, an extremely harsh grader. Although I don't like english, I believe I am a decent writer and produce good work. What you may think is good, may not be good to her. Every paper you write will be graded well and feedback is for the most part helpful, but not enough to help when writing the next paper. If your worried about the quality of your writing this may not be the class for you. Even still don't be discouraged and choose what's best for you.
Aubrey Zinn ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 12/15/2023	This class has to be one of the dumbest ones I've had to take. I get that this is for a GenEd, so chances are, it'll suck, but this was unbearable. The assignments are so boring, and sometimes I feel like the grades are way too harsh for what the class is. I love to read for fun, and I have always done well in English, but this was hard, simply because I was not engaged at all. Now, Professor Zinn was super nice. She was understanding when I couldn't make it to the lectures and would ask me if was doing alright when I was going through stuff. She is probably the best Professor for this dumb class. The only thing is she does take a while to grade, but I guess that can be expected in an English class.
Aubrey Zinn ENGL101H Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/06/2023	Fantastic professor, really kind and cares about her students. Gives a lot of extra credit. Readings are never discussed in class and are thus unnecessary to do.
Michael Kolakoski ENGL101H Expecting an A+ Anonymous 07/22/2023	I could talk about his teaching (he's pretty good! I'm not a humanities kid, but I enjoyed his class), but I will say if you can take his 101H class instead of a regular 101 class (with him or someone else), take it. I looked at the grade statistics for the essays/major assignments - Essay 1: 94mean, 95median. Essay 2: 92mean, 93median. Etc. etc. If you're not a big ENGL kid but you need a 101 professor who is kind, friendly, and understanding (gives extensions as much as you need without fuss as long as you don't push it), Kolakoski's great. Only downside is that I had him early in the morning and he called to cancel class all the time but only told us the day-of. This would be an upside, if I was more attendant to my emails in the morning and saw he cancelled before walking halfway across campus lmfao.
Sonney Wolfe ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 05/09/2023	Best Professor in the English Dept. Take this class she is the most caring and understanding person, gets to know her students and has fun with the class, and makes all of the papers as easy to understand as possible.
Sonney Wolfe ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 05/04/2023	- Gives extensions any time you need it - Will often take off one or two of the major papers if the class is behind (which is normal) - Made the class so easy for every student and will make sure you are supported to get a good grade on every assignment - Class load was also not bad whatsoever, just don't procrastinate your essays and this class will give you little to no stress with Professor Wolfe. - Take this class with Professor Wolfe, I am willing to bet there isn't a better professor
Anthony Batts ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 03/15/2023	Great professor , easy going and I earned a lot. Good feedback on essays.
Mike Kolakoski ENGL101H Expecting an A neesh1903 01/01/2023	This man is an angel. I never got below a B on any of his assignments. His rubrics are so clear and his assignments are supplementary to the major writing assignments we do. Also, this man literally canceled class once a week. Ill be like completely honest, I had this class MWF, but out of all the 16 weeks I had him, I never had a single week where there was class all three days of the week. It was beautiful
Mike Kolakoski ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 12/22/2022	I would highly recommend him if he teaches ENGL101H again. As others have said, the class was canceled at least once a week, if not more. This was great, and it allowed me to focus on other classes. I feel that he takes into consideration that he is not the only professor students have, and lets his students know in advance when the workload will be heavier. He is a fair grader, and his comments on major writing assignments are helpful. Overall a great guy.
Katherine Joshi ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 12/22/2022	I had her for an 8am class, and I do not regret it. She is understanding if you need more time, and she will give you detailed feedback on your major assignments if you send them to her. Every assignment I sent to her (all but one), I got the highest or one of the highest grades in the class. The only reason I did not get an A+ is because I was unable to get detailed feedback for the position paper (the largest grade). I still got over a 95%, which is great considering I am a stem person.
Mike Kolakoski ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 12/10/2022	Very good professor. Fair grader and gives good feedback. Never gives 100% on major writing assignments but I've never gotten below a 95% because his expectations are so clear. A lot of pointless busy work but it helps with easy grades to boost your overall grade.
Mike Kolakoski ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 12/09/2022	Very nice and chill professor. He cancels class very often which is nice. You can do all his work online so you honestly don't really need to go into class. Fair grader and won't give you below an A as long as you do your work. He is always willing to meet to go over essays. Take him if you get the chance.
Michael Kolakoski ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 12/08/2022	In my opinion, he is a great option, since he's very accommodating and lenient on deadlines and clear what he expects from assignments. He gives a lot of options before the final deadlines to get help on assignments and get peer review and his review. To me, it wasn't a ton of work, but there are 4-5 major assignments between 5-10 pages each during the semester, so can see how it would be a lot of work for some people. I didn't think he was a super harsh grader, as long as you follow the rubric.
Mike Kolakoski ENGL101H Expecting an A brianburns44 12/06/2022	This guy is pretty cool. Fair grader and gives good feedback. As a STEM major, I'm happy with my English 101 experience. Part of this is because he canceled class at least once a week, which was perfect for me. He is very nice. Lots of work but that could be because I accidentally signed up for an honors section.
Mike Kolakoski ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 10/28/2022	Really nice, and gives decent feedback. Wouldn't say he is an above average professor, but he does make an effort for his students. I would totally recommend taking class with him. His grading tends to be fair, and he does value students who seek out help (like he is more sympathetic to your grades if you tried to get help), so if you take his class go to office hours and the writing center. However, he does not believe in giving 100% on essays. With that said, he does pack his ENGL101H classes with a lot of easy participation points (that does mean there is some busy and pointless work) which helps with grades.
Cheryl Spinner ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 12/27/2021	Good teacher. Very kind, understanding, an easy grader. Did not do the best job engaging students, but I want to give her a pass since the class is online and that makes being engaging extremely difficult. She seems to care greatly about what she is teaching.
Fatima Taha ENGL101H Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/18/2021	Great professor, gives good feedback and every opportunity to get an A. Incredibly responsive (like will email you back at like midnight like five minutes after you email her if she is awake). Also very willing to give extensions. Never had such a good English teacher before in my life.
Nia Crawford ENGL101H Expecting a B+ Anonymous 11/02/2021	She's definitely nice, but really particular. She grades very harshly and expects too much out of a gen ed english class. SO much work. Every week another huge project or essay. I submitted everything late and she never cared. Overall way too much work for no reason take a different professor !!
Tom Hatcher ENGL101H Expecting an A+ Anonymous 04/30/2021	He was an extremely nice and fairly laid-back professor. He was always extremely understanding with everything that was going on because of the pandemic. He also seemed genuinely interested in our writing and the topics we were interested in and clearly wanted to see us improve throughout the semester.
Sabrina Islam ENGL101H Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/09/2020	I BSed most of my writing and it was a pretty easy class. She isn't very authoritative and you can literally just not participate in any discussions in Zoom and still get by. Don't think I would have learned much anyways (?)
Katherine Joshi ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 11/10/2020	I loved her! really sweet and funny! She is super helpful and will go out of her way to assist you if you ask for it which kinda balances out the fact that she is a tough grader. Was really cool if people needed extensions or additional accommodations. I loved her and would definitely recommend her for a professor and I wish she taught professional writing so i could have her again.
Katherine Joshi ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 10/10/2020	She's very sweet and provides helpful feedback.
Steve Beaulieu ENGL101H kjmehta 05/17/2020	Fairly solid
Megan Howell ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 12/30/2019	Megan is super nice! She is always available and willing to talk about assignments and concepts. Sometimes due dates in ELMS were incorrect, but that is probably due to the design of a gen-ed class. Nothing that an email to her wouldn't fix.
Megan Howell ENGL101H Expecting a B Anonymous 12/03/2019	She has no idea what she is doing. She graded everything super late. She had no idea how to use ELMS and was constantly moving and changing due dates. She made everything due at 12:01 AM which looks like it is due the day after it really is. Constantly contradicted herself in class. Not good.
Andy Yeh ENGL101H Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/23/2018	Thought he did a really nice job. I thought Andy was a little tough on grading at the beginning of the year, but he was always willing to help me whenever I had a question. The coursework sometimes felt like a lot, but I believe that is more a product of the demands of the course rather than the instructor.
Emily Lyons ENGL101H Anonymous 03/29/2018	She grades based on her own style, so god help you if you decide to use passive voice for two sentences in a row.
Emily Lyons ENGL101H Expecting an A- Anonymous 03/29/2018	She goes by Emily Flamm in class. She is very, very boring. In addition, she does not provide consistent critiques. Flamm is constantly changing the style she wants and does not realize she is asking for different things.
Justin Lohr ENGL101H Expecting a B Anonymous 12/20/2014	First I'll give you the good: He's an excellent teacher and a fun guy. Lectures are generally interesting and you can tell he really cares about teaching you writing, and he's definitely really passionate about it himself. He outlines what he expects from you fairly clearly and the activities we do in class are really relevant to the course material. The homework helps also, though it's a little excessive. The class is interesting in general, and you get to pick your own topic to write about, which is nice. Now the bad: He's an evil grader. He literally never gives higher than an A- and only 2% of his students even get that much. I wanted a 4.0 for this semester and this class ruined my chance at that, otherwise I would have gotten it. I worked like hell for this class too, I spent six hours just editing some of my papers, I don't even know how long I spent writing them. Like I said before the homework is also excessive, it helps for the most part and most of it ties into the bigger assignments but there's way more than any other section gets. When you have four other classes it's hard to fit in that much extra stuff, even if they're smaller assignments. I'm a bio major, I want to focus most on my other classes more related to my major but this class takes up so much time. Even if I didn't do A level work, I know some of the other people in my class definitely did. It's just plain mean to outright not give anything above an A-. In summary: If you really need to get better at writing and you're not too worried about your gpa, this is a good class. But otherwise stay far away from it, it's far too much work for little pay off.
Justin Lohr ENGL101H Expecting a B+ econterp 12/14/2014	Take Lohr if you are looking for: an exciting English class that allows you to follow your interests in-depth and become a truly better writer. You will feel like you learned a lot about writing and improved tremendously over the course of the semester. Don't take this class if you are looking for: An easy A and a manageable workload. Lohr is a harsh grader (w/ justification given for why he takes points off always) that demands a lot in his assignments. Lots of essential reading to do every week and the big projects take serious time to do well. Overall, it depends on what you are looking for. If you have the attitude of wanting to learn over getting a 4.0 GPA, then Lohr is your guy - the class, I am confident, will help in the long-term much more than any other ENGL101 class.
Justin Lohr ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 12/15/2013	Lohr was by far the best and most caring English teacher I have ever had. Granted, his class had a significant amount of more work than other sections had, but the work rarely ever seemed completely pointless. In other words, just about every single assignment he gives is geared to hone your skills in a specific area of writing. His lectures are always crystal clear, and he covers all the main points in the reading out of Engagements for each class. Also, he is so helpful in his office hours and is very generous in the amount of time he gives up to help students - you can even email him over the weekend and he'd get back to you in no time. He basically handed me my ideas for my final two papers. Finally, he has some of the best character traits I have ever seen. Not only is he very nice and respectful in class, but he also responds to joking and side topics very positively - to a reasonable extent, of course. And his mannerisms are always entertaining, to the point where it becomes fun to joke about what a character he is outside of class with other classmates. Finally, he reads every single word of your papers and is always willing to write comments in the margins, sometimes even stretching from the top to the bottom of the page. And his love notes at the end are always pleasant, following the format: "Dear ---, thank you for submitting this draft. In it, you....Work on these skills in future projects. I look forward to reading them". Overall, great guy, great teacher, great class. I highly recommend him. Oh, and PS: He does grade fairly harshly, but it is very manageable to get a high grade in the class as long as you put in a fair amount of effort. Don't let that 2% A distribution scare you away.
Sarah Pleydell ENGL101H Expecting an A- milk 05/09/2013	For an ENGL101 class, I would avoid this teacher. She's a (sort of) nice lady who means well, I gave her an extra star, but that's the only reason why. This class is much more work than it's worth because Pleydell takes ENGL101 too seriously. At the beginning of the semester, you don't really know what you're getting yourself into, you only know that she expects that you work your butt off for an A. Her guidelines and expectations for assignments were always unclear; I never knew what I was supposed to be writing until I reread her assignment sheets multiple times. She changed the rubric all the time, which basically made it all the more confusing. She also doesn't take criticism very well... our grades were almost compromised because of this. This class had almost no foundation and nothing seemed to be set in stone, syllabus and all. I think she wanted to accommodate to our needs but it ended up just being a confusing class that had me doing more work than I ever wanted to for low-level English.
Justin Lohr ENGL101H Expecting a B- Anonymous 04/29/2013	Lohr made me like Englich class. All throughout high school I hated English so much and had an awful foundation in writing, etc. Lohr made the class so engaged and current that I actually (for the first time ever) looked forward to going to English. He is a bit of a tough grader, but it was Honors; that's to be expected. I definitely could have put forth more effort than I did, but I feel that I got the grade I deserved. Lohr is an amazing professor, and is very approachable. I highly recommend him to anyone in the Honors College!
Sarah Pleydell ENGL101H Expecting an A- Anonymous 04/12/2013	I initially did not care for her, but as the semester went on I liked her more and more. She can be a difficult grader, and sometimes her expectations are unclear. She also teaches material that interests her, and may not exactly be best for the class. That being said, she is a great person and very approachable. She is great for conferences and definitely helped me to improve my writing ability.
Sarah Pleydell ENGL101H Expecting a B+ Anonymous 01/08/2013	Although I didn't love this class, it did help me with my college-level writing. The whole class is focused around writing your final paper, which is sort of a compilation of the three papers you write before that (all on the same topic). Pick a topic you're really interested in because it gets so boring after the second paper... There's also a group project on rhetoric that my group and I had no idea what we were doing with. Pleydell doesn't give you clear instructions to what she wants (at least they weren't clear to me) so you spend a lot of time confused, trying to figure out what she wants in this paper or project. It wasn't the worst class, but not the best either.
Justin Lohr ENGL101H Expecting an A- Anonymous 01/01/2013	Lohr's class was more difficult than most writing courses I've taken in the past, but he made it generally pleasant. While he graded somewhat harshly, I was more driven to put significant effort into my essays, and I think my writing improved as a result. Interestingly, he never particularly cared about the tiny details of formatting or citations, nor was he particularly harsh regarding style. He graded essays mostly based on their content and arrangement, rather than anything else. Overall, he kept class fairly interesting. When I'm next forced to take a writing class, I'll try to find one that he teaches.
Justin Lohr ENGL101H Expecting a B Anonymous 12/07/2012	Lohr is a great teacher. You will learn a lot and improve your writing. I felt like he was the only professor who cared about teaching me the entire semester. That being said, he is a harsh grader. Do not expect an A unless you are Shakespeare. I would recommend him for improving your writing and a pretty worthwhile class, but not for raising your GPA.
Sarah Pleydell ENGL101H Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/01/2012	As a disclaimer, I didn't really click with Professor Pleydell so this isnt't the most unbiased review. That said, I wouldn't recommend her class because I don't think she does a great job of communicating her expectations and what we're supposed to be doing - I often had the problem of going to her with a simple question and coming back from the conversation more confused than I was to begin with - and a lot of students I talked to from the class shared this feeling. She's a nice enough person and really tries to help, but I didn't ever understand what was going on in this class so I wouldn't recommend it to those who can avoid it.
Elizabeth Fixsen ENGL101H Expecting an A Anonymous 01/22/2009	She's a nice person, but her class was a pain. There are a lot of reading assignments, but you don't really have to read because she goes over it in class anyway. There are also a bunch of other busywork assignments and she tends to nitpick on grading for those, and for the essays, she grades much harder than most other ENGL101 professors, but she's generally fair. You can get an A in her class if you work hard enough for it (or at least an A-), but I'd recommend another professor if you don't want to do a lot of work.
Elizabeth McClure ENGL101H jmartin1 04/23/2008	she was straightforward for the most part, and wasnt difficult at all.
Elizabeth McClure ENGL101H Expecting a C johngreen 10/22/2007	If you like extremely picky teachers who think that writing class discussions on the bored is teaching, this is the one for you. Her grading is inconsistent, slow, and does not fit a rubric.

Katherine Joshi
ENGL101H

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
03/12/2024

She is an amazing professor I think that she does a great job teaching this course. She grades kind of hard but if you go to office hours or ask she to review your work before submitting you will do well in this class.

Sarah Goodson
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
02/22/2024

Professor Goodson is a very kind and understanding, and the work for her class is never overwhelming. That being said, there were some moments where the class felt pretty disorganized with assignment instructions sometimes being pretty unclear, and for all the major writing assignments (except the first one), she didn't give the grades & rubric back until the end of the semester. However, considering how easy the class usually is, this really wasn't a problem, and she was always very approachable if you did have some genuine question or confusion about something. She is also a very passionate person who's always excited to teach, so the classes will never be boring if you take her.

Sarah Goodson
ENGL101H

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/20/2023

Very nice woman, super understanding. Her directions on assignments weren't always clear, but the work was never egregiously hard. She learns the names of all her students and engages with them during every class.

Katherine Joshi
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/18/2023

Joshi's class is not bad at all. I actually thoroughly enjoyed the semester with her. She's nice and willing to give extensions when necessary. As someone who doesn't like English, she wasn't a bad option at all. She is however, an extremely harsh grader. Although I don't like english, I believe I am a decent writer and produce good work. What you may think is good, may not be good to her. Every paper you write will be graded well and feedback is for the most part helpful, but not enough to help when writing the next paper. If your worried about the quality of your writing this may not be the class for you. Even still don't be discouraged and choose what's best for you.

Aubrey Zinn
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/15/2023

This class has to be one of the dumbest ones I've had to take. I get that this is for a GenEd, so chances are, it'll suck, but this was unbearable. The assignments are so boring, and sometimes I feel like the grades are way too harsh for what the class is. I love to read for fun, and I have always done well in English, but this was hard, simply because I was not engaged at all. Now, Professor Zinn was super nice. She was understanding when I couldn't make it to the lectures and would ask me if was doing alright when I was going through stuff. She is probably the best Professor for this dumb class. The only thing is she does take a while to grade, but I guess that can be expected in an English class.

Aubrey Zinn
ENGL101H

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/06/2023

Fantastic professor, really kind and cares about her students. Gives a lot of extra credit. Readings are never discussed in class and are thus unnecessary to do.

Michael Kolakoski
ENGL101H

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
07/22/2023

I could talk about his teaching (he's pretty good! I'm not a humanities kid, but I enjoyed his class), but I will say if you can take his 101H class instead of a regular 101 class (with him or someone else), take it. I looked at the grade statistics for the essays/major assignments - Essay 1: 94mean, 95median. Essay 2: 92mean, 93median. Etc. etc. If you're not a big ENGL kid but you need a 101 professor who is kind, friendly, and understanding (gives extensions as much as you need without fuss as long as you don't push it), Kolakoski's great. Only downside is that I had him early in the morning and he called to cancel class *all the time* but only told us the day-of. This would be an upside, if I was more attendant to my emails in the morning and saw he cancelled before walking halfway across campus lmfao.

Sonney Wolfe
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/09/2023

Best Professor in the English Dept. Take this class she is the most caring and understanding person, gets to know her students and has fun with the class, and makes all of the papers as easy to understand as possible.

Sonney Wolfe
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/04/2023

- Gives extensions any time you need it - Will often take off one or two of the major papers if the class is behind (which is normal) - Made the class so easy for every student and will make sure you are supported to get a good grade on every assignment - Class load was also not bad whatsoever, just don't procrastinate your essays and this class will give you little to no stress with Professor Wolfe. - Take this class with Professor Wolfe, I am willing to bet there isn't a better professor

Anthony Batts
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
03/15/2023

Great professor , easy going and I earned a lot. Good feedback on essays.

Mike Kolakoski
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
neesh1903
01/01/2023

This man is an angel. I never got below a B on any of his assignments. His rubrics are so clear and his assignments are supplementary to the major writing assignments we do. Also, this man literally canceled class once a week. Ill be like completely honest, I had this class MWF, but out of all the 16 weeks I had him, I never had a single week where there was class all three days of the week. It was beautiful

Mike Kolakoski
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/22/2022

I would highly recommend him if he teaches ENGL101H again. As others have said, the class was canceled at least once a week, if not more. This was great, and it allowed me to focus on other classes. I feel that he takes into consideration that he is not the only professor students have, and lets his students know in advance when the workload will be heavier. He is a fair grader, and his comments on major writing assignments are helpful. Overall a great guy.

Katherine Joshi
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/22/2022

I had her for an 8am class, and I do not regret it. She is understanding if you need more time, and she will give you detailed feedback on your major assignments if you send them to her. Every assignment I sent to her (all but one), I got the highest or one of the highest grades in the class. The only reason I did not get an A+ is because I was unable to get detailed feedback for the position paper (the largest grade). I still got over a 95%, which is great considering I am a stem person.

Mike Kolakoski
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/10/2022

Very good professor. Fair grader and gives good feedback. Never gives 100% on major writing assignments but I've never gotten below a 95% because his expectations are so clear. A lot of pointless busy work but it helps with easy grades to boost your overall grade.

Mike Kolakoski
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/09/2022

Very nice and chill professor. He cancels class very often which is nice. You can do all his work online so you honestly don't really need to go into class. Fair grader and won't give you below an A as long as you do your work. He is always willing to meet to go over essays. Take him if you get the chance.

Michael Kolakoski
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/08/2022

In my opinion, he is a great option, since he's very accommodating and lenient on deadlines and clear what he expects from assignments. He gives a lot of options before the final deadlines to get help on assignments and get peer review and his review. To me, it wasn't a ton of work, but there are 4-5 major assignments between 5-10 pages each during the semester, so can see how it would be a lot of work for some people. I didn't think he was a super harsh grader, as long as you follow the rubric.

Mike Kolakoski
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
brianburns44
12/06/2022

This guy is pretty cool. Fair grader and gives good feedback. As a STEM major, I'm happy with my English 101 experience. Part of this is because he canceled class at least once a week, which was perfect for me. He is very nice. Lots of work but that could be because I accidentally signed up for an honors section.

Mike Kolakoski
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
10/28/2022

Really nice, and gives decent feedback. Wouldn't say he is an above average professor, but he does make an effort for his students. I would totally recommend taking class with him. His grading tends to be fair, and he does value students who seek out help (like he is more sympathetic to your grades if you tried to get help), so if you take his class go to office hours and the writing center. However, he does not believe in giving 100% on essays. With that said, he does pack his ENGL101H classes with a lot of easy participation points (that does mean there is some busy and pointless work) which helps with grades.

Cheryl Spinner
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/27/2021

Good teacher. Very kind, understanding, an easy grader. Did not do the best job engaging students, but I want to give her a pass since the class is online and that makes being engaging extremely difficult. She seems to care greatly about what she is teaching.

Fatima Taha
ENGL101H

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/18/2021

Great professor, gives good feedback and every opportunity to get an A. Incredibly responsive (like will email you back at like midnight like five minutes after you email her if she is awake). Also very willing to give extensions. Never had such a good English teacher before in my life.

Nia Crawford
ENGL101H

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
11/02/2021

She's definitely nice, but really particular. She grades very harshly and expects too much out of a gen ed english class. SO much work. Every week another huge project or essay. I submitted everything late and she never cared. Overall way too much work for no reason take a different professor !!

Tom Hatcher
ENGL101H

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
04/30/2021

He was an extremely nice and fairly laid-back professor. He was always extremely understanding with everything that was going on because of the pandemic. He also seemed genuinely interested in our writing and the topics we were interested in and clearly wanted to see us improve throughout the semester.

Sabrina Islam
ENGL101H

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/09/2020

I BSed most of my writing and it was a pretty easy class. She isn't very authoritative and you can literally just not participate in any discussions in Zoom and still get by. Don't think I would have learned much anyways (?)

Katherine Joshi
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
11/10/2020

I loved her! really sweet and funny! She is super helpful and will go out of her way to assist you if you ask for it which kinda balances out the fact that she is a tough grader. Was really cool if people needed extensions or additional accommodations. I loved her and would definitely recommend her for a professor and I wish she taught professional writing so i could have her again.

Katherine Joshi
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
10/10/2020

She's very sweet and provides helpful feedback.

Steve Beaulieu
ENGL101H

kjmehta
05/17/2020

Fairly solid

Megan Howell
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/30/2019

Megan is super nice! She is always available and willing to talk about assignments and concepts. Sometimes due dates in ELMS were incorrect, but that is probably due to the design of a gen-ed class. Nothing that an email to her wouldn't fix.

Megan Howell
ENGL101H

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/03/2019

She has no idea what she is doing. She graded everything super late. She had no idea how to use ELMS and was constantly moving and changing due dates. She made everything due at 12:01 AM which looks like it is due the day after it really is. Constantly contradicted herself in class. Not good.

Andy Yeh
ENGL101H

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
12/23/2018

Thought he did a really nice job. I thought Andy was a little tough on grading at the beginning of the year, but he was always willing to help me whenever I had a question. The coursework sometimes felt like a lot, but I believe that is more a product of the demands of the course rather than the instructor.

Emily Lyons
ENGL101H

Anonymous
03/29/2018

She grades based on her own style, so god help you if you decide to use passive voice for two sentences in a row.

Emily Lyons
ENGL101H

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
03/29/2018

She goes by Emily Flamm in class. She is very, very boring. In addition, she does not provide consistent critiques. Flamm is constantly changing the style she wants and does not realize she is asking for different things.

Justin Lohr
ENGL101H

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/20/2014

First I'll give you the good: He's an excellent teacher and a fun guy. Lectures are generally interesting and you can tell he really cares about teaching you writing, and he's definitely really passionate about it himself. He outlines what he expects from you fairly clearly and the activities we do in class are really relevant to the course material. The homework helps also, though it's a little excessive. The class is interesting in general, and you get to pick your own topic to write about, which is nice. Now the bad: He's an evil grader. He literally never gives higher than an A- and only 2% of his students even get that much. I wanted a 4.0 for this semester and this class ruined my chance at that, otherwise I would have gotten it. I worked like hell for this class too, I spent six hours just editing some of my papers, I don't even know how long I spent writing them. Like I said before the homework is also excessive, it helps for the most part and most of it ties into the bigger assignments but there's way more than any other section gets. When you have four other classes it's hard to fit in that much extra stuff, even if they're smaller assignments. I'm a bio major, I want to focus most on my other classes more related to my major but this class takes up so much time. Even if I didn't do A level work, I know some of the other people in my class definitely did. It's just plain mean to outright not give anything above an A-. In summary: If you really need to get better at writing and you're not too worried about your gpa, this is a good class. But otherwise stay far away from it, it's far too much work for little pay off.

Justin Lohr
ENGL101H

Expecting a B+
econterp
12/14/2014

Take Lohr if you are looking for: an exciting English class that allows you to follow your interests in-depth and become a truly better writer. You will feel like you learned a lot about writing and improved tremendously over the course of the semester. Don't take this class if you are looking for: An easy A and a manageable workload. Lohr is a harsh grader (w/ justification given for why he takes points off always) that demands a lot in his assignments. Lots of essential reading to do every week and the big projects take serious time to do well. Overall, it depends on what you are looking for. If you have the attitude of wanting to learn over getting a 4.0 GPA, then Lohr is your guy - the class, I am confident, will help in the long-term much more than any other ENGL101 class.

Justin Lohr
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/15/2013

Lohr was by far the best and most caring English teacher I have ever had. Granted, his class had a significant amount of more work than other sections had, but the work rarely ever seemed completely pointless. In other words, just about every single assignment he gives is geared to hone your skills in a specific area of writing. His lectures are always crystal clear, and he covers all the main points in the reading out of Engagements for each class. Also, he is so helpful in his office hours and is very generous in the amount of time he gives up to help students - you can even email him over the weekend and he'd get back to you in no time. He basically handed me my ideas for my final two papers. Finally, he has some of the best character traits I have ever seen. Not only is he very nice and respectful in class, but he also responds to joking and side topics very positively - to a reasonable extent, of course. And his mannerisms are always entertaining, to the point where it becomes fun to joke about what a character he is outside of class with other classmates. Finally, he reads every single word of your papers and is always willing to write comments in the margins, sometimes even stretching from the top to the bottom of the page. And his love notes at the end are always pleasant, following the format: "Dear ---, thank you for submitting this draft. In it, you....Work on these skills in future projects. I look forward to reading them". Overall, great guy, great teacher, great class. I highly recommend him. Oh, and PS: He does grade fairly harshly, but it is very manageable to get a high grade in the class as long as you put in a fair amount of effort. Don't let that 2% A distribution scare you away.

Sarah Pleydell
ENGL101H

Expecting an A-
milk
05/09/2013

For an ENGL101 class, I would avoid this teacher. She's a (sort of) nice lady who means well, I gave her an extra star, but that's the only reason why. This class is much more work than it's worth because Pleydell takes ENGL101 too seriously. At the beginning of the semester, you don't really know what you're getting yourself into, you only know that she expects that you work your butt off for an A. Her guidelines and expectations for assignments were always unclear; I never knew what I was supposed to be writing until I reread her assignment sheets multiple times. She changed the rubric all the time, which basically made it all the more confusing. She also doesn't take criticism very well... our grades were almost compromised because of this. This class had almost no foundation and nothing seemed to be set in stone, syllabus and all. I think she wanted to accommodate to our needs but it ended up just being a confusing class that had me doing more work than I ever wanted to for low-level English.

Justin Lohr
ENGL101H

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
04/29/2013

Lohr made me like Englich class. All throughout high school I hated English so much and had an awful foundation in writing, etc. Lohr made the class so engaged and current that I actually (for the first time ever) looked forward to going to English. He is a bit of a tough grader, but it was Honors; that's to be expected. I definitely could have put forth more effort than I did, but I feel that I got the grade I deserved. Lohr is an amazing professor, and is very approachable. I highly recommend him to anyone in the Honors College!

Sarah Pleydell
ENGL101H

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
04/12/2013

I initially did not care for her, but as the semester went on I liked her more and more. She can be a difficult grader, and sometimes her expectations are unclear. She also teaches material that interests her, and may not exactly be best for the class. That being said, she is a great person and very approachable. She is great for conferences and definitely helped me to improve my writing ability.

Sarah Pleydell
ENGL101H

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
01/08/2013

Although I didn't love this class, it did help me with my college-level writing. The whole class is focused around writing your final paper, which is sort of a compilation of the three papers you write before that (all on the same topic). Pick a topic you're really interested in because it gets so boring after the second paper... There's also a group project on rhetoric that my group and I had no idea what we were doing with. Pleydell doesn't give you clear instructions to what she wants (at least they weren't clear to me) so you spend a lot of time confused, trying to figure out what she wants in this paper or project. It wasn't the worst class, but not the best either.

Justin Lohr
ENGL101H

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
01/01/2013

Lohr's class was more difficult than most writing courses I've taken in the past, but he made it generally pleasant. While he graded somewhat harshly, I was more driven to put significant effort into my essays, and I think my writing improved as a result. Interestingly, he never particularly cared about the tiny details of formatting or citations, nor was he particularly harsh regarding style. He graded essays mostly based on their content and arrangement, rather than anything else. Overall, he kept class fairly interesting. When I'm next forced to take a writing class, I'll try to find one that he teaches.

Justin Lohr
ENGL101H

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/07/2012

Lohr is a great teacher. You will learn a lot and improve your writing. I felt like he was the only professor who cared about teaching me the entire semester. That being said, he is a harsh grader. Do not expect an A unless you are Shakespeare. I would recommend him for improving your writing and a pretty worthwhile class, but not for raising your GPA.

Sarah Pleydell
ENGL101H

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/01/2012

As a disclaimer, I didn't really click with Professor Pleydell so this isnt't the most unbiased review. That said, I wouldn't recommend her class because I don't think she does a great job of communicating her expectations and what we're supposed to be doing - I often had the problem of going to her with a simple question and coming back from the conversation more confused than I was to begin with - and a lot of students I talked to from the class shared this feeling. She's a nice enough person and really tries to help, but I didn't ever understand what was going on in this class so I wouldn't recommend it to those who can avoid it.

Elizabeth Fixsen
ENGL101H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
01/22/2009

She's a nice person, but her class was a pain. There are a lot of reading assignments, but you don't really have to read because she goes over it in class anyway. There are also a bunch of other busywork assignments and she tends to nitpick on grading for those, and for the essays, she grades much harder than most other ENGL101 professors, but she's generally fair. You can get an A in her class if you work hard enough for it (or at least an A-), but I'd recommend another professor if you don't want to do a lot of work.

Elizabeth McClure
ENGL101H

jmartin1
04/23/2008

she was straightforward for the most part, and wasnt difficult at all.

Elizabeth McClure
ENGL101H

Expecting a C
johngreen
10/22/2007

If you like extremely picky teachers who think that writing class discussions on the bored is teaching, this is the one for you. Her grading is inconsistent, slow, and does not fit a rubric.

Reviews for ENGL101H