Karen Carleton

This professor has taught: BEES608A, BIOL608A, BIOL608D, BIOL708C, BISI610, BISI678B, BSCI207, BSCI338C, BSCI338V, BSCI402, BSCI403, BSCI426, HLSC207

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Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/09/2024	I would 100% recommend Dr. Carleton (She tells us to call her Dr. Karen instead) especially if you are a freshman. She is extremely kind, she caters to different issues you may have, and is honestly one of the best professors I've had. In terms of the course, we have 3 midterms, 11 HWs which are honestly free points as they are graded on effort, not whether you got the Q right, and 11 GAE quizzes which are online (She drops the lowest one of each). You also get a cheat sheet for all exams including the final. Overall 207 is a very challenging course but she made it passable.
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/06/2024	Dr. Carleton is super passionate about biology. She allows drops of some assignments (I forget how many) and 1 exam. I would say the content is a lot, as any other biology course, but it should be fine to learn if you study and commit time to the class. She records her lectures which was super helpful. It's super helpful to me because I rewrite and complete details into my notes that I might have missed in lecture. She is very kind, generous, and always hoping to make the class fun by making the class interactive. I would recommend her!
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/04/2024	Very nice, can tell she is very passionate about biology, easy grading, GAEs are helpful enough, fast paced but if you study enough you should be fine, you should take her if available
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/04/2024	Dr Karen is probably one of the best professors I could've taken as a freshman, I found it hard adapting to her teaching style at the beginning but I still ended up getting an 85% on her first test. I did go to GSS and made sure to study quite a bit, but she also drops the lowest midterm which is nice. I got an 85%, 90%, and 85% on the 3 midterms in order, and with all my hw's and gae's im sitting at a 95% in the class. On midterms you get a whole side of a letter paper to put whatever you want on. Sometimes she even allows both sides! Please take her if you are coming into BSCI 207 as a freshman or any other year, BEST TREACHER EVER! The only things that I would like to mention is that her class isnt the type where you write everything down, she focuses on concepts and main ideas. Throughout her lectures you'll like automatically understand what shes focusing on and its almost guaranteed to be on the exam. He lectures are on average like 60 to 70 slides so it is not worth it to write everything down. Focus on main ideas and her gae's. Also GSS for this class is a MUST, for us our gss leader posted her worksheets and answer keys so it was nice.
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/27/2024	Took this class as a junior because I was starting a microbio double major and this class was so easy. For freshman I imagine this course would be more difficult since it's a lot a lot of content. But the class is structured nicely. There are 3 midterms and one is dropped. The final exam is based on the last 10 lectures + the content that was covered in the first 3 exams (she said we should only study to make sure we knew what was on the exams, and she provides all exams + keys afterwards). Attendance is not required and all lectures are recorded. The exception is that there are 11 in-class activities that you should attend as 10 count for a grade. They are super easy though as it asks you to discuss questions with classmates. In these in-class activities, there were a lot of real-life examples that made it very engaging. She is very nice! During in-class activities she is understanding and if students say the wrong thing in discussion (in front of the whole class) she'll do her best to reword it such that it works or coach the student to achieve the right answer.
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting an A- Anonymous 10/15/2024	Yes, this is hard class, but Dr. Karen is a great teacher and really cares about her students. She gives you lots of resources that you will find useful for studying: GAEs, concept checks, homework, etc. She is passionate about bio and puts effort into making class fun when she can. She has been my favorite freshman professor.
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/20/2024	Dr. Karen is honestly the best professor I’ve had my freshman year. BSCI207 has a lot of content and memorization, but Dr. Karen makes it very palatable. The group activities (GAEs) are very helpful for learning the content and she lets us have a one-page cheat sheet on exams. The lowest midterm, homework, and GAE are dropped. This class does require a lot of effort and studying (review the GAEs and homeworks), but I strongly believe Dr. Karen makes it more enjoyable for us.
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting an A Anonymous 03/27/2024	Dr. Karen is the sweetest professor, who is extremely passionate about what she teaches and cares about her students a lot. I really enjoyed when she included a bit of outside information that connected to the topics and found it very interesting. The lectures are packed with information, so I would highly recommend rewatching the lectures to ensure understanding of all content. However, all the material needed for the midterms and exams is covered by the GAEs and lectures. The homework and GAEs are basically completion and still the lowest HW and GAE scores are dropped, same with the lowest midterm score. Also, a cheat sheet was allowed for each midterm, which really helped consolidate certain information. Overall, I really enjoyed Dr. Karen as a professor and the class.
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting an A Anonymous_2018 01/22/2024	Dr. Karen is one of the professors who wants students to actually learn and appreciate the wonders of the content. BSCI207 was a bumpy but enjoyable ride despite the absolute whirlwind of information. However, Dr. Karen accommodates that by providing everything you possibly need to succeed in this course, from providing practice questions, recording lectures, and having office hours online to allowing a cheat sheet for every exam! She even drops the lowest midterm and provides extra credit opportunities twice in the semester. Homework and GAEs are basically exam preps and graded for completion. However, still put the effort in and compare with answer keys to test your understanding. Although lectures were a little hard to follow, Dr. Karen is still one of the best professors at UMD I've had so far. She genuinely cares about what she's teaching and her students.
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/20/2023	Dr. Karen is the nicest professor I have had so far at UMD! She was super accommodating when I got a concussion and had to make up an exam weeks later. She was always so encouraging and gave great, in-depth answers during office hours. A lot of the exam questions pull from the homeworks, GAEs, and concept checks so doing/reviewing those is a great way to study. She drops the lowest exam of 3 and also gives some extra credit. Her final was very fair and I was able to guess most of the topics that would appear. Her lectures are very dense material wise so I would definitely look over them afterwards to make sure you know what's happening in each one. Take her!
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/19/2023	Dr. Karen was an incredibly kind and intelligent woman, and a great teacher. Regardless, BSCI207 is a very difficult class (at least it was for me - I was a freshman who placed out of BSCI160 & 170, so I jumped straight in). There is SO much content that it gets very overwhelming. She drops one of three midterms, which is very nice though! I found it kind of hard to follow her lectures, but I am not sure if that had anything to do with her or if it's just because the class is hard. She also has office hours in person and on zoom! All lectures are recorded and posted on canvas as well.
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/15/2023	She is easily one of the best professors I've had so far and potentially one of the best I will ever have. She is not only very experienced with teaching this class but is also genuinely invested in the content and her students. This was the first biology class I had taken in 2 years (AP bio junior year, freshman at the time of writing this) and she made the daunting amount of information in this class extremely manageable and interesting. I will say her lectures are very content packed and we didn't finish all of it every lecture but I think that's just the nature of the class and is difficult to work around. There's also GAE classes which are in-class group activities that essentially force you to make study friends which I really appreciated as I probably wouldn't have gone out of my way to talk to people there otherwise. Her exams are completely fair and not too difficult if you adequately prepare for them and she lets you make cheat sheets for them. She does not curve the class (I don't think it needs too) but she drops the lowest exam, the lowest homework grade, and the lowest GAE score. That said, the homework are for completion, the GAE activity, and the GAE pre-quizes are open note so you'll basically guaranteed to ace them. Overall, I would HIGHLY recommend taking 207 with her.
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/06/2023	Dr. Carleton is very kind and tries to make the class interactive by asking students to answer the questions and there’s an activity once a week where you work with others. Her lectures are recorded and she posts the slides with the content. If I didn’t have her at 9am I would’ve gone to class more often lol, but she’s a good professor. She also allows a cheat sheet for exams
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 04/25/2023	Dr. Carleton is one of the best teachers I have had. She broke down the content into well-organized lectures. She was very clear with what will be tested and made the memorization-heavy content digestible. She allowed us to make and have a cheat sheet which was a lifesaver. DO THE CONCEPT CHECKS! The concept checks are going to be very helpful. She genuinely is a good teacher and wants you to do well.
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 03/12/2023	I loved Dr. Karen. She is the sweetest professor I've had so far and she clearly cares about what she's teaching. The only reason I took off a star is because classes are boring and she kinda just reads from the slide. I also had a hard time telling what to study or telling how specific the exams would get about the content. But other than that it was chill. There are concept checks that are ungraded practice DO THEM literally like 30% of the first exam multiple choice I already knew because I did the checks. Could have gotten an A if I studied more and went to class :/
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/27/2022	Like everyone says, she’s a kind and sincere professor. I just feel the lectures are her reading off the 50 or so slides where we don’t even have time to write much of anything down. Each lecture is pretty loosely related to each other so it doesn’t really matter too much if you skip one because you can watch the recording. I felt she was an alright prof and attribute most of my success to the cheat sheet for exams and just reviewing lecture recordings because I skipped a decent amount of lectures.
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/16/2022	Very nice professor! Lectures are very easy to understand if you pay attention. She records her lectures and posts her slides so that students can look back on whatever we missed, which is really helpful for when we review for exams. She had 3 exams and dropped the lowest one, so she keeps the best 2 exams. For exams, she lets us have a cheat sheet which is really helpful because it forces us to actually review the material. For the first 2 exams, she gave us opportunity to bring the score up by a couple of points. I always went to office hours and she would always be very helpful and breakdown anything I was confused about. She's probably my favorite professor!
Karen Carleton HLSC207 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/07/2022	Super nice professor who really cares. Lets students have cheat sheets for the exams (which is great considering the class is straight memorization), and decided to drop an exam at the end of the semester.
Karen Carleton HLSC207 Expecting an A- marinalfrancis 05/05/2022	Great professor, and even dropped an exam for us when it was not originally in the syllabus. Even though I was not a fan of the content of the class (basically all straight memorization), Dr. Karen made the information as bearable as it could be. If you have to take 207, take her.
Karen Carleton HLSC207 Expecting an A- Anonymous 02/05/2022	Super sweet professor!
Karen Carleton HLSC207 Expecting an A- Anonymous 01/25/2022	Definitely a great professor in terms of teaching and compassion. However, I feel that the course itself was just too dense and that preparation for exams could have been easier with a simple study guide or more direct review sessions. I still would def recommend to anyone on the fence on taker her.
Karen Carleton HLSC207 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/05/2022	She is SUPER KIND. She is super understanding. She really couldn't help that the class itself is just jam-packed with information we have to learn, but she does give support in learning all of it. Some class periods consisted of more than 60 slides. But, for my class, she had recordings of the lectures which really helped to absorb all of the information. She basically did everything in her power to help you on the test. Very good teacher, but I think me section was the last section fo HLSC207 that was ever going to be given, so if you have to take BSCI207, take her.
Karen Carleton HLSC207 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/24/2021	Dr. Karen is one of the kindest professors, and she knows her stuff. HLSC207/BSCI207 is just an information dump, and thus the exams are the same. There's not much to complain about... the lectures were very fast paced, but all slides were posted after the lectures, and most of the times, recordings were too. Dr. Karen also provided many resources to help understand the knowledge and do well on the exams, including concept check quizzes (zero points) and the homework assignments. I believe my semester was the last semester of the HLSC section, but if you are going to take BSCI207, I highly recommend Dr. Karen!
Karen Carleton HLSC207 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/21/2021	Dr Karen is honestly the only reason 207 was tolerable. The class itself is not conceptually difficult but there is a LOT of information you have to learn. Dr Karen allowed us to have a cheat sheet for every exam which was super kind of her. Her exams were always fair, and she truly wanted her students to learn. She ended up dropping out lowest midterm score which was also a really nice surprise. If you have to take 207 take it with Dr. Karen!
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/18/2020	Wow, probably the best teacher I've had this semester and that's even though it was mostly asynchronous. It's definitely not an easy class, you really have to work for it if you want a good grade. I don't mean that there were a lot of difficult assignments, I mean that the material itself is quite difficult, but I learned so much from it. She has each lecture (approx 50 minutes) broken up into 3-4 different smaller videos which is so awesome. It makes it so much easier do digest and absorb the material because of the smaller bite sized lectures. Dr. Karen is also just very nice. She gets back to emails relatively quickly, and she also is just a very sweet person. I really enjoyed the class and definitely recommend it. I've heard that the BSCI207 teachers are generally very good, but Dr. Karen was just awesome.
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting an A sfrail 01/02/2016	I took BSCI207 with Dr. Karen and with Dr. Eric Haag and I already aired my grievances about the class itself over in Dr. Eric's reviews but I just wanted to drop by here and say that Dr. Karen can teach neurons really darn well. I properly understood one unit in this whole class and it was the neurons unit and it was her doing. One review says her slides are long and this is true, I wish she just had more classes to teach her stuff. But she makes the slides so you can understand them when you go back through them, which is nice because that's pretty much the only way to study for this class from the fiery depths. Dr. Karen is very nice and I think a good teacher when she's not forced to teach the 207 material.Overall not a bad professor to have a course with.
Karen Carleton BSCI207 Expecting a B Anonymous 01/01/2014	Wayy to much information on her powerpoint slides. Over 50 slides for each of her presentations for a 50 minute class. She's really nice but not a great teacher
Karen Carleton Expecting an A Anonymous 01/31/2011	Dr. Carlton is an amazing professor! She was happy to answer questions about assignments and really knows her stuff! She keeps things interesting and opens up the class mainly to group/peer discussions. This was a 2 credit class but I found the work-load very reasonable. Besides the few homework assignments there is a midterm project and final project. The final project was easy because you get to choose your own topic. All in all, this class is perfect if you like a small class size ~20 people, and a really intelligent, helpful professor.
Karen Carleton Expecting an A Anonymous 12/18/2009	For a 2 credit class, this class was more work than I had expected. We had homework assignments every week and a midterm and final project. The class was small, only about 20 kids. She's very enthusiastic about the subject, and tries to make lecture interesting. She's insanely nice and is always around to get help with homework assignments and projects and will basically walk you through everything. But overall, she's a great professor and really knows her stuff.