Richard Toth

This professor has taught: COMM231, COMM232, COMM331, COMM498B

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Richard Toth COMM231 Anonymous 05/20/2013	If you don’t need to take it, AVOID THIS CLASS AT ALL COSTS. Unfortunately, if you are a COMM-PR major, then you are out of luck, because it is required and there is no way out of it. Sorry. I NEVER rate classes on this website, but for this class, I had to make an exception. First of all, for a COMMUNICATION teacher, the least you would expect is a teacher who is vocal, outspoken, and knows how to COMMUNICATE. Not the case here. Professor Toth mumbles, and speaks in his low, monotone voice for the entire two hours. You must also be alert and pay attention to everything he says. Oh, you lost focus for about 30 seconds because he’s just that boring? Well guess what? You just missed a very important statement about something you need to know for your upcoming exam or paper. Guess what else? It won’t be repeated again. He writes everything in abbreviations, and doesn't explain what they mean. You are just expected to know them. He also needs to be introduced to the enter key or how to indent. All of his "specs lists" for his assignments are so crowded and he fills up the WHOLE ENTIRE PAGE, single-spaced, to write everything that he wants from you, without a line to spare. It takes more time to read and try to interpret his abbreviations on his specs list than it does to write the actual assignment. When you think you’ve figured out what you need to do for the assignment, more likely than not, you will have done it wrong, and you will get your paper back replete with indistinguishable, illegible marks. Have fun figuring them out. The TAs can’t even understand them. Toth is also the most miserable man I have ever met. He is always grumpy, and just plain rude. Good luck asking him for help without his making you feel like you are a complete idiot, and that you are wasting his time by even bothering to stay in his class. This is an introductory course to PR, yet he expects us to already be experts in the field. This class should not be a 200-level course. I have never spent so much time for a class, and tried so hard for it, and managed to get such bad grades. Many people need to retake this class because he grades so harshly on all of the assignments. It’s sad that this class sucks so much because it could have had a lot of potential. By the end of the semester, you will have definitely improved your writing and you will have learned a lot of useful skills that you’ll have to apply later in the PR world. Just make sure that, if you can, you take this class in the summer with a different professor to avoid the headaches, mental breakdowns, and tears that will come of this class with Toth.
Richard Toth COMM231 Anonymous 04/22/2013	Don't take this class unless you are a PR major and have to because it is a requirement. Even then, try to take it over the summer because R. Toth is a TERRIBLE teacher. He spends two hours mumbling and speaking in a monotone voice, so quietly, that only the front row can hear him. If you ask him to speak up, he will, for about 30 seconds. He trails off at the end of almost every sentence so you have no idea what is going on. He takes simple assignments and unnecessarily turns them into assignments from hell. For a communications teacher, I have never met a person so bad at communicating. Every assignment/syllabus/pp slide has multiple colors on it, unnecessary pictures/graphics, and way more writing then can fit the page. The hardest part of the class is reading the papers/emails he gives you. Good communication is CLEAR and easy to understand. Everything Toth writes is confusing and misleading. Toth abbreviates words for no reason so you don't even understand what he means. He actually abbreviates the word "between" so it says 'tween--that is literally ONE character less than the full word. Why abbreviate it?? This class has so much potential and is actually something many students would love to take and learn about, but unfortunately with Toth as the teacher you come out having wasted your money and possibly a worse student then before you took the class. Toth does not allow his students to email him so you must communicate with your TA. Good luck with that because my TA answers me either three days later or just ignores my emails altogether. Toth is extremely rude and unhelpful to his students. He does not care about them at all. I don't understand why he even teaches if he doesn't care about his students-what's the point? At the end of the day, it wouldn't matter how rude he is if he was a good teacher, but HE IS NOT. You must teach yourself all of the material and even then you will get terrible grades because he will take off points. You can't even learn from Toth's revisions because you can't read his handwriting (this includes the TAs because I've asked them and they have literally said I can't read his writing so "I don't know"). He also circles random words and doesn't write any explanation so you don't know what is wrong with it. Save yourself the headaches and time and take this class over the summer with a different teacher. I only gave him 1 star because 0 wasn't an option. I'm not trying to be dramatic-this class is actually this bad. Most students who have taken it before/with me said they had mental breakdowns MULTIPLE TIMES because of the class. I truly feel I would have learned more from a dead gerbil teaching the class then from Toth.
Richard Toth COMM231 Anonymous 12/03/2011	I took this class with Professor Toth last semester and learned more than I've learned in any college class so far. He is a hard professor to get used to, but once you learn how to read his assignments, you realize he's there to prepare you for future classes and writing in general. My writing has improved immensely from taking this course with Toth. If you are willing to put in the time and effort, you will gain a lot from this course.
Richard Toth COMM231 Expecting a C Itzahckret 11/21/2011	Toth is by far the worst professor teaching at UMD. He goes out of his way to make things confusing for you, like his 15 page syllabus with a million abbreviations you never understand. It is true that you learn a lot from this class, but you are also stuck with hours of homework that you learn nothing from and are just tedious and are never even really graded. If you take this class just make sure you spend a lot of time on what really matters, like grammar which is 1/3 of your grade.
Richard Toth COMM231 Anonymous 03/30/2011	I remember reading these reviews and not truly believing what people thought, but when it comes to COMM231, Toth is definitely the worst educator I have ever encountered. He disregards students' workloads in other classes and doesn't properly prepare students for assignments. His expectations are extremely high yet he doesn't take the time to teach. His class is extremely intimidating and his TA's grade and comment assignments very harshly. For this being a prerequisite for other COMM classes, I would have expected more of a warm welcome into the field. All PR track COMM majors, unfortunately, this mandatory class WILL bring you hell.
Richard Toth COMM231 Expecting a C Anonymous 04/15/2008	Honestly one of the worst professors. I rarely dislike a professor, but Toth was HORRIBLE. Not only does he teach everything in a very confusing way, but he also is a really mean man. He seems very unhappy because he truly tries to make your life much harder. He believes his class is the only one you're in that matters. Avoid him at all costs.
Richard Toth COMM231 Anonymous 12/30/2007	Richard Toth is one of the worst teachers I've ever had in my entire life. He's completely disorganized and never got anything back to us on time--many times if I had known that I had done certain things wrong on one assignment, I didn't find out about it until I had already made the same mistake on other assignments. He's in his own world much of the time, and could not teach the class without the help of a TA, who could answer all of our questions while he couldn't. There didn't seem to be any structure to the course, many of the assignments were completely irrelevant to what we were learning, I don't feel like I learned anything valuable. AVOID THIS MAN AT ALL COSTS, I'm not kidding.