Richard Payne

This professor has taught: BSCI330, BSCI338A, BSCI353, NACS608

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Richard Payne BSCI353 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/25/2014	Dr. Payne has been my favorite professor since I have been here (7 semesters). I took BSCI330 with him as well and I love how passionate he is, and how he really wants us to work hard in his class. He is super quirky and is a stickler for the way you phrase a question (all in good intentions, but annoying when you want to understand a concept and not get boggled down by semantics), but overall I really enjoyed his lectures and he presented the material in a very interactive way One day we all brought in flashlights and practiced doing optical illusions. Advice: if you want to learn, and also enjoy interactive lecture series, go take Payne.
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting a B+ billnye2323 10/29/2014	Best professor ever for BSCI330! Takes exam questions straight from powerpoints. All you have to do is go to class and he hints which slides will be on the exam. Also he is so understanding when it comes to late assignments. Great man. And for the person who said he is awkward in office hours, that is not true. I spoke with Payne multiple times and he is very very polite to women and quite the gentleman when it comes to manners and doing his students a favor. I love Payne and cannot wait to take his BSCI353 class. He was a wonderful teacher and he truly understands that undergrad students do not want more work than they need in order to understand the concepts. He is awesome.
Richard Payne BSCI330 chris123 08/24/2014	I completely disagree with the review below me. His exams WERE DEFINITELY fair. He tested us ONLY on the material on his powerpoints, which is a big plus for me. I am a busy person, and I am sure many people are too, so I do not have time to read 40 pages a day for this class (I am sure every other BSCI330 proffesor makes you read). Reading from the textbook is difficult because it is so dense and there is no way a professor will test you on all of that material. Dr. Payne tells you on the first day of school that he includes only the most important material on his powerpoints, and his exams derive only from his powerpoints. All you have to do to get an A in Dr. Payne's class is to attend his lectures, pay attention, take notes, and NOT procrastinate. His powerpoints are about 40 slides each and there are about 10 powerpoints on each exam, so it is very difficult to memorize 400 slides the day before the exam. Trust me... I know... The only reason why I believe I got an A- and not an A was because I started studying for his tests literally 2 days before his exams. I actually started studying for the final a day before the exam... a horrible, horrible mistake. Anyways, if I managed to get an A- while severely procrastinating, it is definitely possible to get an A in his class if you have some sense of time management.
Richard Payne BSCI330 Anonymous 05/22/2014	God awful teacher. He is probably the single worst teacher I've had in all of my experience at UMD. His questions are beyond unpredictable, often testing on a single example he spends 2 minutes on as an essay question without even mentioning a concept he spents 40 slides on in class on his tests. Every detail he tests you on is as asinine as possible. If you are bioengineering, this is the worst possible class and is the polar opposite of any other class you take. He understands his stuff, but is a terribly dry lecturer whose lecture follows no cohesive format whatsoever. He only reads off slides making attending lecture borderline useless. Take it with Cao if you can.
Richard Payne BSCI353 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/30/2013	I'm sure it's been repeated enough, but to do well in Dr. Payne's class, you need to know everything on his slides. Practice tests are a good depiction of what you should expect on the tests. I thought he was a great teacher and his lectures were interesting.
Richard Payne BSCI353 Anonymous 11/15/2013	Sure, he can talk a lot I'll give you that. He knows the information he teaches quite well, but he comes off quite rude at times. Don't be fooled by your impression of him during lecture. I went to his office hours for help, and all he did was confuse me and make me feel like an idiot for wasting me time going to ask for help. He doesn't answer your questions during office hours, but instead consistently tells you that all the information is on the slides for us to work out. His exams are full of nonsense that test us on the details of his lectures. His exams are straight from the slides, but poorly written. He tests you on maybe 25% of everything we learn, so you can technically study over 80% of the material and end up getting a C. If his tests reflected more of what he taught, his class wouldn't be so bad. Thankfully, professor Quinlan taught the last third of the class. She wasn't bad at all.
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/29/2013	Dr. Payne is a below average teacher. He reads straight off of the slides, and usually bored those few of us in attendance to death. Doing well in his class requires knowing every word of every slide, so really do memorize EVERYTHING, as he really will test on anything on the slides/mentions in class. It's not 100% necessary to go to class, but I found that making that extra effort did help me somewhat when I was studying for the exams, as he usually doesn't test in much more detail than he goes in during lectures. Having recordings of the lectures also helped me immensely. The lab will help boost your grade, and Dr. Payne also has a very generous policy about the final exam. If you get an A or A- on the final exam, then that will be your grade in the class, regardless of what you may have had previously. I studied extremely hard for the final and ended up getting an A in the class. Overall, not an incredibly hard class, just a ton of memorization, but if you're really interested in Cell Bio then it isn't that hard to put up with.
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/18/2013	He is a good teacher. You have to know all the slides and not just verbatim but how to apply them. I found tests to be pretty straight forward from lectures. I did bad throughout the semester but ended up with and A. Spoiler The final exam counts toward your overall grade! I mean, for that alone I would give him 5 stars!
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting an A Anonymous 03/19/2013	I got an A in his class, so I am not writing as a disgruntled former student. But I am writing to try to warn future students of Richard Payne. I will always remember Dr Payne because of how awful he is. He is fine if you ask questions during class but I am a girl and I went to him for office hours by myself. It seriously is one of the most uncomfortable experiences I have ever had at UMD.
Richard Payne BSCI353 terps010 01/02/2013	I have loved many biology professors and it pains me to dislike this one. He is a nice person but an AWFUL professor. He is terrible at explaining concepts and highly unprofessional. I sadly learned nothing from this man and wasted 3 credits. I was actually surprised when I saw how high his ratings were because I completely disagreed. Take someone else.. you will learn nothing. Class consisted of two tests and a final.
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 10/05/2012	One of the greatest professors I've ever had. Yes, there is a LOT of material and a LOT of detail, but this is a 300 level class- if you don't know if you like molecular biology at this point, you should have left a long time ago. His exams are extremely straightforward, he has an awesome regrade policy (he actually LIKES regrades unlike most teachers who see it as a hassle), is very responsive to student questions (on ELMS and in review sessions), and is all around a really interesting guy. As he says at the beginning of the semester, the grade you get out of the class is what you put in- he doesn't give extraneous work. If you love what you're doing, you'll want to learn because you want to- not because you need to be forced to. Great professor, highly recommend him for every class he teaches (be it cell biology or neurophys).
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting a B Anonymous 06/08/2012	Dr. Payne basically reads off the slides with adding a few words here and there. I thought this class was going to be really easy and just memorize stuff, but even though it was just that, it seemed like he sometimes chose weird stuff to test on. There could be 1 slide out of the set of lectures and it would be an essay question and if you don't know it perfectly you will probably not get any points on the essay. It seemed like sometimes he chose the less important stuff to test on if you thought the other stuff was more important. Lab portion is good if your TA is good. I tried hard in lab to boost my grade. I got an A in the lab portion which combined with the lecture grade averaged me to a B final grade. It is possible to get an A if you study the material everyday and start memorizing/ understanding the material at the beginning versus just a few days before.
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/21/2012	memorize the lectures and i mean EVERYTHING in the lectures. you dont need to go to lecture, he posts all his slides on elms. learn the course material like a 'story' as he described, not as straight facts. once i understood how to learn the material this way it made studying easier. tests are 2-3 multiple choice, about 20 short answers worth 4-6 points each and the rest are 10 point questions, you need to hit the key words for each pathway to get full credit. test averages were in the low 70s. there were a bunch of easy online quizzes which were just grade boosters. labs were not bad, a few were just spent wasting a lot of time waiting around for drugs to incubate but they were overall interesting and fun, especially because my TA David was awesome. 2-4 point pre-lab quiz in lab before it starts. you will learn a LOT of material in this course and be prepared to study every night to keep up with it. overall, a very interesting class though and Dr. Payne has a cool british accent.
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/19/2012	Professor himself is a nice guy and very knowledgeable. He cares about his students and has a sweet accent. He himself deserves a good rating. Now the class as a whole can be summed up with this: ZZZZZZZZZ. Lab isn't very much fun. Lots of sitting around and doing nothing, waiting for shit to work that never does. Waste of everyone's time. Thank God I brought flashcards from my other classes to flip through during lab. The material is straight up memorization, and is DRY as can be. Well, at least it seems that way at 9am...rarely could I pay any attention even with my daily cup of trusty diner coffee at hand. Third exam material was so boring I thought my soul was going to die. But the material is useful in research/grad school/professional-y type things and I really wish I had the attention span to absorb it. Oh well.
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/15/2012	The way Payne teaches this class, he is irrelevant. Everything is on the slides so you don't even have to go to class as long as you memorize EVERYTHING. There's no real learning here, just memorize and dump on the test. If you're BIOE this class will most likely suck.
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/07/2012	This is straight memorization. Literally, requires no thinking. His lectures are extremely boring. All he does is read off the slide. You don't really have to go to lecture or read the book. Just memorize every slide for the tests. When I say memorize every slide, I mean EVERY slide. He'll ask a 10 poing question on something that takes about half a slide. Its kind of ridiculous.
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting a B Anonymous 03/29/2012	I personally did not click with Dr. Payne and his teaching style. Maybe it was the material, but this class required a great deal of memorization. Further, I often found it difficult to focus in lecture and end up trying to memorize everything right before the exams (Dont do this). Instead, start memorizing as soon as possible. His exams are mostly short answer questions and partial credits are inconsistent. But if you know everything on the powerpoints, then it's simply a matter of reiterating it on the exams. Lab, for a 300-level class, is very easy. Never touched the book. No curve, but a few EC were given. Easy to get B, work to get A.
Richard Payne Expecting an A Anonymous 12/29/2011	Dr. Payne is a fun lecturer and definitely kept me engaged through the entire class period. You don't need the book for this class if you take good notes. His exams are straight from lecture. For this class, he is more interested in how well you understand the experimental evidence for EVERYTHING. Not just memorizing the experiments that were performed, but you have to understand how you could manipulate each experiment to test different parameters. You have to understand those experiments! He tends to say A LOT during lecture. He'll put up a slide and then talk about it for like 15-20 minutes and sometimes that would lose me. I did go to his office hours and surprisingly he wasn't very friendly which caught me off guard because he comes off as really fun and approachable during class. He's really cool about re-grades and he especially likes it if you can argue a good case. Overall he's a fun lecturer. I like how he presents the material in a way that keeps me interested.
Richard Payne Expecting a B Anonymous 12/24/2011	Terrible professor! His class has two quizzes worth 15 points each. The quizzes are worded in a way so that you will get them wrong, they do not test on what you actually take away from the scientific article. There are two midterms worth 75 pts each. He forces you to learn all the material and tests you on less then half, so if you learn the wrong half then you are screwed. The final is worth 120 pts. Quinlan taught the last third of this class and she wasn't bad, I wish she taught the entire course. Luckily, 50 pts on the final came from her, while 70 pts came from Payne. His portion on the final tested you on one common theme and then a bunch of nonsense. Quinlan gave you a set of important questions to understand before the final and then tested you on those ideas which was great! The class had a total of 300 points, the curve was set at the beginning of the class which is stupid if you ask me because you don't know how people will perform before you test them. A 255 was an A, 225 was a B, 195 a C, and so on. Take this class with someone else instead of Payne if your looking fo learn the material better. He has an accent too which can also be difficult to understand at times. He might have been a good professor at one point, I can definitely see that, but it might be his time to retire now because I don't think he has it anymore.
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting a B pat 10/30/2011	Agree with previous reviewers. This class is a huge memory dump, and I feel like it was kind of a waste of money because of that. If you are a memorization jockey, you will be in hog-heaven, otherwise it's going to be really rough to remember every little detail from the slides (HINT: his tests are just that). Bought the book, read it in the beginning, aced the first test. Studied pretty much the night or two before on the last 2 tests and final and did fairly poor. Came out with a B despite my minimal efforts. If you keep up with the material, an A is incredibly doable here. Payne is the man. He tried, and is pretty fair with everything grade-wise. He occasionally pushed things back because he felt like we were "swamped." I hear horror stories from every other cell bio teacher. Get this guy and do yourself a favor.
Richard Payne Expecting an A trex 12/23/2010	Very good lecturer. If you listen to his lectures and take notes, you will not need the textbook. He makes the material very interesting and easy to understand. One of my favorite professors at Maryland. His tests are fair and reasonable. If you review by reading notes from lecture and read his slides, you will do fine.
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/23/2010	Dr. Payne is a nice professor who definitely cares about his students. He's fair when it comes to regrades and his exams aren't terribly hard -- all you really need to do is know what's on the lecture slides. Though the book can help for supplemental understanding of the material, knowing everything in his lectures is key. I do mean everything -- he can ask 10 point (/100) open-ended questions on a single topic and if you don't know it well - you're grade will drop 10 points on the spot (though he's good about partial credit). Our class average was terrible for the second exam because of the snowstorms so Dr. Payne offered to allow us to make up for it by adding 15 extra points to the final. The lab portion of the class was not too bad (it was with Dr. Parent) especially if you're coming from taking those Orgo I/II or Gen Chem II labs; a grade booster if anything. Be sure to look at previous exams and his other questions before exams to know what Dr. Payne may be looking for. Going to class is not needed as he posts all of his lecture slides on blackboard...but if you do go, you'll get to enjoy his bubbly personality and awesome accent.
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/22/2010	He is an amazingly nice guy who cares about students, although the material was dry. He tried to make it as interesting as possible, but I just could not bring myself to pay attention. Even though there is no "curve," there were enough cushy points built in to the class to allow for an a A with moderate effort (and without attending lecture). All lecture slides are posted online, and tests are ONLY based on the lecture slides, so reading the book is useless unless you want a more in-depth explanation of something he put on a slide because you didn't go to lecture.
Richard Payne BSCI330 Anonymous 05/17/2010	Payne is an awesome professor! Definitely take him! His tests are based completely on his lectures, but he posts lecture notes, so you know exactly what to study. The exams are also very, very straightforward. He's a good lecturer, and he's just a really good teacher. He wants students to ask questions at any time during the lectures, and he's really receptive in general. This was probably the best bio class I've ever taken.
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting an A hippoterp 05/17/2010	Dr. Payne is a good professor in that he certainly knows his stuff. But he's not as dynamic of a lecturer as Ades, the other 330 professor. Going to lectures is completely unnecessary since he reads directly off the slides most of the time and the stuff that he does say that's not on the slides he doesn't test you on. He is funny though, so it's fun to listen to him in lectures. He is a REALLY nice guy. It is crucial to have a good lab TA- lab is supposed to be easy with minimal effort (I lost 1 point the entire semester in lab). He is really fair. Make sure you look over the old exams he posts, especially for the final which is cumulative and has A LOT (A LOT) of material on it. Take this class-- you will certainly learn a lot. Also, when you're taking his exams, make sure you are thorough he is picky with points.
Richard Payne BSCI330 Anonymous 05/01/2010	Great professor!! Dr. Payne really cares about his students and grades fairly. He's willing to help you granted you apply the right amount of effort and he responds often to student concerns and questions.
Richard Payne BSCI454 Expecting an A Anonymous 02/07/2010	Dr. Payne is an awesome professor. He is very nice and fair. Lectures are interesting, he is very energetic! He teaches the material by first teaching you about how something was discovered or came to be. At first this can be tedious but you will soon realize that this method of teaching actually instills the information in you on a much deeper level of understanding. Exams require some preparation but he always holds helpful review sessions and has review questions and previous exams available to students. He can be pretty funny at times too :)
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting an A sova 08/26/2009	Dr. Payne is an excellent professor all around - engaging, witty, organized, and extremely knowledgeable. His exams are well-written and fair, often including research-oriented questions rather than straight memorization (ex. propose an experiment for testing whether x is a consequence of y). Plus, he has a cool British accent - can't beat that!
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting an A rbterp 03/08/2009	Dr. Payne was a fair professor that knows the cell biology material well. He focuses a lot on research methods at the beginning of class and often asks the class "how would you prove this or investigate this" because he is a researcher himself. There is a lot of material to learn, but just study the slides and do his practice questions and exams and you'll be fine.
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting an A Anonymous Terp 04/30/2008	Dr. Payne is great - good, solid professor that is interested in his students. Oh yeah, he's from England, so he's got a cool accent. I really enjoyed his class, and it was great prep for the MCAT. His lectures for BSCI330 are PowerPoint and usually consist of about 30 slides, which makes the material manageable. It's important to understand and go to lecture since that's what he tests from. He is very fair when it comes to regrades and answers student submitted questions on BlackBoard. The grading breakdown is as follows: Lecture - 68% (500 points) Lab - 27% (200 points) Web quizzes - 5% (40 points) A+ = 698-740 A = 767-697 A- = 655-675 B+ = 630-654 B = 606-629 B- = 581-605
Richard Payne BSCI330 Expecting an A+ scroofoo 10/23/2007	Good lectures- alot of it is a review from BSCI105. Once you get into signal transduction pathways, Payne really shines. I learned more from this class than any other bsci course. Great prep for the MCAT too. Work consists of 1 lab/week and 3 midterms plus a final. Midterms were essay so be ready while the final was more fill-in the blank, matching, and short answer.