| Information | Review |
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TJ Rainsford
INST490 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/08/2025 |
For someone who supposedly loves efficiency and hates wasting time, Rainsford wastes an incredible amount of time bragging about his experience, how many positions he's held (CTO is a favorite, despite it being at a company with only about 30 employees), how many people he's hired or fired, et cetera. Rainsford has mentioned a few times how we may notice that he "talks like a person with a PhD," and that he is a PhD candidate; he tries his best to compensate for his lack of a PhD. Rainsford has an enormous ego, and seizes every opportunity to talk about his "experience," which usually is not pertinent to the task at hand. If you have a question, there is a high probability that he will flip it so that you feel bad for asking it. He never grades, rarely utilizes ELMS, is late to respond to emails, and acts extremely arrogant. I expected Rainsford to have worked for Goldman Sachs with his attitude, but in actuality has never been employed by a company with more than 200 employees (excluding UMD and Mount St. Mary's). I started off the semester like a few of the reviewers here; I thought Rainsford was knowledgeable (which he partially is), but realized that he's rude, arrogant, inefficient, and a pedant. I rarely leave reviews for professors, but Rainsford killed my enthusiasm for the course (INST490 can be fun, and is rather straightforward) to the point where I dreaded being forced to raise my hand in order to avoid another 10 minute monologue surrounding the laziness of the entire class, or some other insignificant flaw that only a select few students possess. If no one raises their hand to answer a question, the odds of Rainsford launching into a long monologue shoot up to 90%. I encourage you to raise your hand no matter how "stupid" your answer/response feels - you’ll save everyone time by avoiding one of his tangents. |
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TJ Rainsford
INST490 Anonymous 02/27/2025 |
TJ is the GOAT. He's really knowledgeable about what he does and is always willing to set you up for success in the long run, not just for class. |
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TJ Rainsford
INST490 Expecting an A- Anonymous 01/07/2025 |
Yaps in Class for no reason and gives assignments he never grades. The class INST490 isn't hard per say, but he has a bad grading system. |
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TJ Rainsford
INST335 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/25/2024 |
I had TJ for INST 335 and thought he was pretty good. Lectures were optional as a lot of people stopped showing up for a lot of them but he would occasionally assign in-person class work that counted as extra-credit for people who were there. There was not a lot of assigned work in this class, so it's important to do good on the few papers that he assigns and the final group project. There are also two exams that are given right before midterms and finals but they are in the format of answer in a paragraph and no multiple choice, it's also take-home exams. |