Beth Parent

This professor has taught: BSCI258, BSCI279B, BSCI330, BSCI338Z, BSCI339S, BSCI339T, BSCI348B, BSCI433, CPSF100, CPSF101, CPSF200, CPSP218L, CPSP249L, CPSP359I

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Beth Parent CPSF200 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/15/2023	consistent with other student's reviews,.. she belittles students and lacks empathy while preaching to be more "self-aware"
Beth Parent BSCI433 Expecting an A- juiceman 08/26/2023	1. Did you think the exams or other major assignments were fair? · The at-home assignments were fair, but the midterm exams were not as fair. They focused on obscure details that weren't always emphasized during lectures. · However, if you consistently study everything weekly instead of right before the exam, you can earn an A. I personally didn't put in enough time. — 2. Did you think the professor had reasonable expectations of the students in the course overall? · The professor had reasonable and clear expectations, except for the memorization of molecule/drug names and tiny details. · The projects were easy and fair. · It's worth noting that she does not curve grades at all. — 3. Were you a fan of the professor's teaching style? · I appreciated that the professor took the time to answer questions and did active learning "exam prep" questions. · I also found her requirements for regrade requests to be strict, needing to use the exact wording or ideas from her exam answer keys. · Sometimes she came off as condescending or harsh. · Memorizing what she said word for word was necessary. · Overall, the teaching style was fair but had some drawbacks. — 4. Was the workload appropriate for the number of credits? · Yes, the workload was light. However, the exams carried significant weight. Midterm was 63% of the grade. Final was 15%. — 5. Was this course a waste of time or was it beneficial in some way? · I did learn a lot about cancer and its mechanisms in this class. I would recommend it to deepen your understanding of one of the most common causes of death worldwide. It also helps enhance your knowledge of genetics. Memorizing drug names could be a valuable taste of medical school. — 6. How much support were you given throughout the semester (office hours, extra resources, etc.)? · The professor provided 2 hours of office hours per week and answered questions during and after classes. She was willing to schedule office hour appointments based on students' schedules. · While support for projects and papers was limited, she thoroughly answered questions about the material. · Only 1 practice exam per exam, so few practice problems. · She took the time to remember students and satisfy their curiosity. — 7. TLDR: If you don't mind studying a week or two ahead for exams, with 10-15 hours of preparation, taking this course with Beth is an option. You'll learn a lot, but be prepared to memorize the slides and what she says word for word.
Beth Parent BSCI433 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 07/10/2023	I thought Parent was a great lecturer. I enjoyed taking BSCI 433 with her and learned a decent amount about cancer in this course. You should be aware that Parent uses the key words approach when grading essay questions. While you might not know what words she will specifically be looking for in a given essay, as long as you write a somewhat intelligent answer (which does not need to be terribly long) that includes as many relevant key words that you can think of, you will get full points. In summary, just be sure you thoroughly answer the essay questions on each exam and you should be guaranteed an A.
Beth Parent BSCI433 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/27/2023	Dr. Parent is by far the worst biology professor I have had. I consider myself a strong biology student having no trouble doing well in hard classes like BSCI450 or BCHM463, but Dr. Parent's cancer biology class is just on another level... and not because it's hard. On the contrary, BSCI433 is one of the easiest classes content wise I have taken--I learned almost nothing new from the class that wasn't taught already in other biology classes. It's mostly a review of BSCI330 with a couple of details from BSCI222 and a couple new details sprinkled in here or there. Slides/lectures are recorded and are essentially taken directly from the textbook used in the class (which is also a very easy read and not long at all). In lecture, Dr. Parent is not too bad and I enjoyed her style of presenting. However, her knowledge of the material simply doesn't meet my expectation of what a professor should know for a 400 level class. Questions about concepts/ideas not directly found within her powerpoint are met with answers of "I don't know" or answers that avoid the initial question to begin with. In class, she's also very passive aggressive in a manner difficult to describe; she laughs at seemingly anything she says herself and tries to make everything sound "interesting" in a very artificial manner that is distinctly unconvincing. She herself states that her background is not in cancer biology and she is mainly just interested in the material which is why she teaches the class. While these points themselves do not warrant Dr. Parent 1 star, her exams change the story. Her exams are frankly not that bad content wise, but her rubrics are simply absurd. Short answer questions have points assigned for almost arbitrary strings of words you must say to earn points. For example, on one exam, I lost points for saying "only very few XXX occurs making it unlikely to cause cancer" rather than stating "XXX is rare." Other questions ask you to restate obvious basic 100-200 level biology concepts that you'd assume are already implicit given this is a 400 level class. For example you must state a carrier of a heterozygous recessive disease does not have disease--something that is evident in the first few weeks of BSCI222. This leads me to my second issue with Dr. Parent's exams. Arguing for points back is a nightmare. Throughout the semester, Dr. Parent passively aggressively sent announcements stating that regrades would not be accepted unless they exactly fit the rubric points being described; in other words, your answer could be perfectly correct in context of the question, but you had to have the answer Dr. Parent wanted or you would not get the points. She continually reminded us our regrade requests were invalid and asked us to refrain from submitting them. I found this unprofessional and unnecessary. Ultimately, I struggled to keep an A, because of these minor point losses that quickly add up. Overall, I learned almost nothing from this class, was constantly offended by Dr. Parent's remarks, and the exams were often vague or unclear in what was being asked. Even if you are interested in cancer, you are better off reading the textbook on your own and skipping the class!
Beth Parent BSCI433 Anonymous 05/17/2023	why are the tiniest details from 1 slide made into 10% of the exam? When it was covered for 1.5 minutes during lecture? she is a little condescending during office hours, can be harsh when asking questions, but she does know the names of a lot of her students. If you want to learn the material, she does answer questions fully and you will learn. She is very knowledgable about her craft, and you can tell she enjoys teaching this course. To get an A, you should regularly review the material and more because she expects very specific details and reiterate the question being asked. You have to write EXACTLY what she wrote on the key to get credit for the question... she gets mad about "invalid" regrades... Proceed with caution... take Cantemir Stone instead if you want an easy A.
Beth Parent BSCI433 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/15/2023	Dr. Parent is by far the worst biology professor I have had. Her lectures are uninteresting, basic, and uninformative; essentially just reviewing BSCI330 in context of cancer. Her lectures are essentially copy-paste from the textbook without any additions. She is condescending in class and tries to "act nicely" but comes across as extremely belittling. Furthermore, her qualifications make her ill-suited to teach this class. She does not have a background in cancer research; rather she only is "interested herself" in the topic. If someone asks her a slightly higher level theory question, she just responds "I don't know" or simply echoes what she saw in the textbook. However, by far the worst aspect of this class are her exams. Points are weighed extremely strangely with 1 multiple choice question being worth the same amount as 1 longer essay questions. Her exams are extremely nitpicky and ask for specific language that she does not make clear. You could state something completely accurate, but because she isn't looking for that answer, gives 0 points. I would consider myself a strong biology student with no trouble following tough biological concepts--but has been tough for me this semester to maintain an A due to this almost arbitrary grading scheme. This class treats an upper level like a basic 200 level class and asks me to repeat obvious biological concepts learned in the 100s and 200s levels classes that should be self evident to earn points. I learned almost nothing from this class and would not recommend anyone take this class as long as Dr. Parent is teaching it.
Beth Parent BSCI330 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 04/11/2023	her tests are fair. just study her notes and you will get an A.
Beth Parent BSCI330 Expecting an F Anonymous 05/31/2022	Lacks human empathy for students with serious medical problems.
Beth Parent BSCI330 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/14/2022	Beth Parent is probably the word professor ive had in my life. She mumbles first off. She word vomits. She goes on tangents. I would never ever take this class with her unless you want to see what med school is like. I absolutely hate this class and she is probably the worst teacher in the world. Not evens saying this because i think the class is hard, as a bio major this class is basically everything you need to know, its just her teaching stile thats absolutely horrible.
Beth Parent BSCI330 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/06/2022	Makes a hard class enjoyable. Sets clear grading and learning expectations, tests you on them and if you did the thing you will do well. Super friendly during office hours and seems to really enjoying teaching/discussing during her lectures. Would highly recommend her to anyone.
Beth Parent BSCI330 Anonymous 05/04/2021	She really cares about her students and the subject. I had her during an online setting and felt that her lectures were very clear and informative. If you studied the lectures then you would do fine on her exams. She was very helpful and responsive through email as well. Lab for this class was very easy but that might be because I had an amazing TA
Beth Parent CPSF100 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/09/2020	Seems like a kind person who cares for her students. I did not speak with her much but overall is just an easy class. Minimal workload.
Beth Parent CPSP218L Anonymous 11/25/2019	I'm in Scholars so I had Dr. Parent for both semesters of freshman Colloquium and for first semester Scholars Colloquium. This will pertain to sophomore colloquium, CPSP218L, taken Fall 2019. This was a half semester course, meeting once a week, for seven weeks. Workload was super reasonable - we read a book with 12 chapters, each on a different disease that changed the world, and each group of 2-3 students gave a 30 minute presentation on their chapter/disease. After presentations there were short write-ups on the presentations or discussions. Presentation was graded more than reasonably and was not overly difficult. Being one of the earlier groups to present made the workload heavy because we had little time to prepare, but we made that choice ourselves (we chose presenting on an early chapter). My advice would be to do the same - it's a lot of work for a week but then you have no/minimal work for the rest of the semester and the assignment is not hanging over your head. Besides, you don't have a lot of work in the first week of classes anyway. The write-ups were easy points and she asked decently interesting questions. You should get an easy and interesting A out of this class. She is strict on phones: asked us to put them away and told us we'd lose a lot of points if she saw them. Was serious about it. She was also serious about being on time, since the class met so few times. She's good about answering emails. FYI, read the syllabus, it's worth it.
Beth Parent CPSF101 Expecting an A Anonymous 06/09/2019	Don't procrastinate and take note of upcoming assignments and due dates - this is where people might lose points. It's an easy A if you show up on time and stay on top of the week's agenda.
Beth Parent CPSF100 Expecting an A Anonymous 06/09/2019	Just do the assignments and you'll have fun :) LS4L
Beth Parent Anonymous 08/28/2015	She's highly rude. I asked for help and i didn't even badger her. Never have i seen a professor that straight up says "don't email me until you do x and x". Just left me speechless.
Beth Parent BSCI330 NeuroSciX 12/15/2012	Dr. Parent was a good instructor, but don't let last year's 50% A's sway you into thinking this class will be easy. Because the reality is that this semester she stepped up the intensity and reduced the distribution to 30% A's. I personally got out with an A, but many of my friends did not despite putting in their best effort. But that being said I'd still recommend the course.
Beth Parent BSCI330 Expecting a B- Anonymous 07/21/2010	She's a really great bio professor. But I heard as the lab coordinator during the Spring and Fall she will "murder your lab grade." As a lecturer, she is very straight forward and great on relaying information. She reads/tests directly from the slides but in class she will tell you what she is more likely to test you on so it pays to attend lectures. She doesn't curve and she grades you like this: 89.998 is a B. There is no hustling for that 0.002% to get an A. Also, the TA during the summer is a gift from bio lab heaven. He gave everyone a 100% in lab. Bless him. :o)