POLS W3210

as much as you determine it to be--a lot of reading that nobody, I mean NOBODY does. One reading summary, a policy analysis, a presentation, a research paper, and a final.

Midterm, group (4-5 people) paper (20 pages) and presentation (30 min), optional final

Too much reading, disorganized, and very harsh grading.

I took Power, Politics, and Policymaking with Kimberley Johnson and she is one of the worst professors I've ever had. Avoid her class at all costs. I never like writing scathing evaluations of professors because they are people too, but she was horrendous. She assigned a lot of reading that literally nobody did. She is completely inarticulate and the lectures are word-for-word definitions of terms from the readings. She is incredibly boring and I struggled to stay awake in her class. Her assignments are unclear and she will not be around to help you with them or answer any questions. I learned absolutely nothing--as it is now, this class should not exist. She turned me away from PoliSci forever. Really, do a favor for yourself and don't take her class.

Let me first say that I found the content of this course engaging and sometimes fascinating and the professor to be a good lecturer and a nice man. However, I have two serious complaints. First, the pace of the course was incredibly slow. He was always willing to answer students' questions in detail, which was fine. but it did slow things down. Plus he belabored the most obvious of his points, explaining them much more thoroughly than was necessary and waiting for someone to provide an answer to every question he asked, especially the easiest ones that no one felt it was necessary to answer. We also lost time to the fact that he was always 10 minutes late, believed class ended at 10:20 instead of 10:25, and constantly has technical trouble. My second complaint is that the man is lazier than any professor I have even met. He claimed he would write the textbook for the course as he taught it and post it to the class website. He wrote one chapter. He was often unprepared for class, having not bothered to make up the Power Point lectures he used. He returned the midterms on the last day of class. He made the final optional, in my opinion simply so that he would not have to grade so many. It is really a shame. He knows what he is talking about and is interesting to listen to, but I feel like I could have gotten so much more out of this course. I wouldn't recommend you never take th…

Should have listened to the other reviews. Don't make the same mistake I made. save your GPA and your sanity by avoiding this class.

Huge, but I didn't do any of it. One paper, one in-depth research paper, an oral presentation, a policy memo, and a final exam.

Not too bad, not too much reading and not necessary to do. the Project required a fair bit of research but nothing unmangable, about a 20-30 paper( split between 5 people); Midterm, Final( which he made optional)

Readings are mostly unnecessary to be honest, as long as you review your notes carefully before the midterm and the final, and pay attention in class. There's also a 10-20 page research paper (10-15 for individuals, 15-20 for groups), but spend enough time and effort on discussing the politics behind whatever you're talking about, and it'll be fine.

Kimberly Johnson is one of the least articulate, boring, repetitive professors I have ever had. She cannot function without her power points and the majority of the class just does their other coursework during lecture. 15% of your grade is participation but the questions she asks are typically one-word, too-obvious-to-be-real responses. She assigns an unbelievable, impossible amount of reading--I gave up half way through the semester. That being said, her standards are unbelievably high for not explaining her prompts or the format of most of the papers. I was really disappointed in her teaching. Like another review before me, let me just say, this class should be called The American Bureaucracy. Even the interesting sections on crime and obesity politics are made boring by the long-winded, static lectures.