| Information | Review |
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Chengri Ding
URSP668A Expecting an A Anonymous 05/07/2025 |
This class, which was about megacities, could have been so interesting. However, lectures consisted of watching a broad overview edutainment Youtube video about a particular megacity each week and then the professor would read off slides. The content from the slides was usually lifted from 1-3 journal articles which could have just been assigned as readings, and repeated the same few concepts over and over from class to class. The syllabus did list readings, but we went off-schedule fairly early in the semester and it was clear that we were not expected to do them; they were never discussed and were usually the same Youtube videos we watched together in class. To try and facilitate "discussion" the professor would just ask "What did we learn?" after every video and ask us to repeat back the information from the video that we had all just watched together. The professor would often go on tangents about politics or history that had very little to do with the class, and often he would make it clear that while he was talking about U.S. policy (like regulations or legislation; I'm not talking about his political opinions here) he knew very little about these things. The time it stood out the most to me was when the class covered climate change and megacities; the professor obviously didn't know much about climate change and only covered basic ideas like the urban heat island effect and did not go into interesting case studies or potential solutions to the many issues that rising temperatures pose to highly urbanized areas. Then he proceeded to go off on a tangent and said at first, "I think it's too late to do anything about climate change" which is, as someone who's studied it for four years, untrue, and then said "I took an earth sciences class when I was in school and the Earth's climate fluctuates naturally. How do we know climate change is really caused by greenhouse gases and not by natural fluctuations?" These things are not true, and it is basic knowledge, especially in an academic context, that climate change is caused by humans and an issue it is possible to address to various extents. There were two assignments, just a presentation and paper, and they were both about the same megacity, so I was only pushed to learn details about one singular megacity. Otherwise, I was never pushed to apply any concepts we learned in interesting or novel ways. He graded easily--honestly didn't seem to care very much--and said he wanted to make the class not a heavy burden for us, but as an undergraduate student who went out of my way to take this graduate course and had positive experiences in previous ones, I felt like he didn't care about what we learned. I honestly didn't learn very much in this class that hadn't been covered in my other (undergraduate) courses. I don't like to leave bad reviews, but I would not recommend this class or this professor if he is the same in his other classes. |
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Chengri Ding
Expecting an A- Anonymous 01/15/2021 |
Dr. Ding is clear, passionate, and knowledgeable. He has an inquisitive spirit and is amazing all around. His syllabus was comprehensive and the course readings were easy to find. |