| Information | Review |
|---|---|
|
Mary Chey
FIRE120 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/18/2025 |
I had Dr. Chey for Fire120 and I thought it was a pretty good class. Sometimes it was a little confusing what she expected from the assignments but if you ask shes always willing to clarify and answer questions. Her grading was also really nice. |
|
Mary Chey
FIRE398 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/16/2025 |
FIRE398 is someone who is a PRM and has likely been in the stream for awhile, so take it from me Dr. Chey is one of the best instructors I have ever had. Over the past two years working with her through 198 and 298 as well she has always had my best interest at heart and cared about my learning. I will say she makes it difficult to learn about the research content but honestly that was so important because it pushed me to be a better researcher. She will help you to learn content and genetics if you reach out to her and she will help you with questions and procedures. You definitely won’t just get the answer handed to you, but again that’s just what research and even life is. You are going to be pushed to reach deadlines and it is going to seem hard but I promise that you can accomplish it. Don’t expect this content to come easy and don’t expect to be given hand outs of information. Research is hard and this program helps people to get prepared for research, and I will confidently say that I am prepared to go into other research after having worked with Dr. Chey. |
|
Mary Chey
FIRE298 Anonymous 12/09/2025 |
If you're able to decide which FIRE stream to do, DON'T do gene silencing. It's a super interesting course but the professor is so terrible. This is the most unorganized class and by far one of the hardest (for no reason). Dr. Chey knows a lot about what she does, it's impressive, but she has absolutely no ability to teach. There are no rubrics and she expects everyone to understand what she's been studying for years. Save yourself the hardship. |
|
Mary Chey
FIRE198 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 06/25/2025 |
As a bio major, this stream was a really cool opportunity for me to get into a wet lab, and it helped me to get into another bio lab. Dr. Chey is a really sweet professor and can be very understanding. As someone with a disability, I also wouldn't call her ablist. She was understanding towards me, considering it's important to stick to a timeline when working with organisms. Her office was always open for questions, and I could have great conversations with her. At the same time, it's obvious that she's a researcher, not a teacher. We spent the first week of class talking about basic genetics, then all of the sudden got a ton of complex genetic information thrown at us. She didn't prepare us well for our projects, and gave us terrible grades when we didn't meet the expectations she never outlined. I wouldn't choose this stream if you're not interested in bio. |
|
Mary Chey
FIRE198 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/13/2025 |
This is honestly one of the most awful teachers/professors I've ever had. She knows all the content perfectly well, but she struggles to actually teach the content in a digestible manner, leaving the ENTIRE class confused on what we are doing at all times. The first few weeks of class feel utterly useless then tons of information is thrown at you at once and you're expected to already have a PHD in worms. It seems like she purposefully targets those who don't know the content, as she will cold call on you and god-forbid you have the wrong answer because she will literally wait until you guess the right one. The assignments are confusing and without the help of the TAs/PRMs (even all of them but one don't know what is going on or how to do anything in this horrendous lab) holding our hand our group would've been so lost. I joined this stream as a Computer Science major with promises of coding in R, but we literally have only done an introductory online course on it and NOTHING so far in the lab. If you wanted a good lab experience going into college or are attending the University of Maryland because of FIRE, don't go into the Gene Silencing Stream. TLDR: Don't ever take this horrendous professor. |
|
Mary Chey
FIRE198 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/13/2025 |
This is honestly one of the most awful teachers/professors I've ever had. She knows all the content perfectly well, but she struggles to actually teach the content in a digestible manner, leaving the ENTIRE class confused on what the fuck we are doing at all times. The first few weeks of class feel utterly useless then tons of information is thrown at you at once and you're expected to already have a PHD in worms. It seems like she purposefully targets those who don't know the content, as she will cold call on you and god-forbid you have the wrong answer because she will literally wait until you guess the right one. The assignments are confusing and without the help of the TAs/PRMs (even all of them but one don't know what is going on or how to do anything in this horrendous lab) holding our hand our group would've been so lost. I joined this stream as a Computer Science major with promises of coding in R, but we literally have only done an introductory online course on it and NOTHING so far in the lab. If you wanted a good lab experience going into college or are attending the University of Maryland because of FIRE, don't go into the Gene Silencing Stream. |
|
Mary Chey
FIRE198 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/13/2025 |
This is honestly one of the most awful teachers/professors I've ever had. She knows all the content perfectly well, but she struggles to actually teach the content in a digestible manner, leaving the ENTIRE class confused on what the fuck we are doing at all times. The first few weeks of class feel utterly useless then tons of information is thrown at you at once and you're expected to already have a PHD in worms. It seems like she purposefully targets those who don't know the content, as she will cold call on you and god-forbid you have the wrong answer because she will literally wait until you guess the right one. The assignments are confusing and without the help of the TAs/PRMs (even all of them but one don't know what is going on or how to do anything in this horrendous lab) holding our hand our group would've been so lost. I joined this stream as a Computer Science major with promises of coding in R, but we literally have only done an introductory online course on it and NOTHING so far in the lab. If you wanted a good lab experience going into college or are attending the University of Maryland because of FIRE, don't go into the Gene Silencing Stream. |
|
Mary Chey
FIRE198 Anonymous 04/28/2025 |
Awful professor. She uses outdated material to teach R. Her slides are walls of texts that are physically painful to parse. She does not adequately prepare the class for the level of genetics concepts that she teaches, resulting in confusion. Class assignments often have frustratingly vague or outright unclear instructions. On top of all that, she's ableist. |