Steven Goldstein

This guy does not want to teach undergrads--like at all. I seriously have no idea why he is teaching a 40 person lecture that is taken by all DEES majors if he hates undergrads as much as he does. Try to take the class in the fall when he's not teaching it. That said, he's a smart person and does seem to enjoy the field trips which are fun. There's nothing wrong with the course we just cover basic earth processes and spend a lot of time looking at rocks.

This course is very disorganized and all of the work is put on the students for teaching. Steve needs to be more educational in the classroom. He is too lax about the course but then expects too much out of us. The actual trip itself was very disorganized. Parts of the trip felt endangering and neglectful. It is really hard to judge this course. I really liked the experience of being in Barbados and learning about rocks, but there were so many things that happened that ethically make me upset about the way the course works. The requirements are not very clear, and the amount of stress that some of us had with the disorganization and endangerment felt uncomfortable. If you really like Geology go for it, I guess. The course was essentially: present on what we are going to see on the trip, go on the trip, present on what we say, write about what we saw -- it is quite boring in class, and we often got let out late. I thought the course ended at 9 PM, not 9:20 PM. The last day was left out exceptionally late.

I HATE THIS CLASS Do not TAKE IT unless your some kind of rock nerd (trust me, don't think you can just be a convert) it is MIND NUMBING the amount of homework and lab you can be assigned seriously this class is like a cult: you either LOVE it or you hate it and it will ruin your gpa and your semester

First of all, as a science major in Columbia College, I was warned that Frontiers of Science does not favor our science background at all. In fact, it might be to our disadvantage that we already know some science. I was kind of doubting such pessimistic views when I first started taking Frontiers last semester. I mean, how difficult could the class really be? But oh my was I wrong! It was not only impossible for me to digest everything that Frontiers of Science threw at me during their tedious long lectures where most people choose to sleep, but on top of it all, Goldstein was a terrible, absolutely terrible teacher. I had no idea why I did not transfer to another class but remained in Goldstein's class. But I wish I did because I learned nothing! He is the type of teacher who probably knows a lot but can't find a way to teach it to the students effectively. He is really awkward to talk to. He is terse as well. So if you go up to him to ask for an explanation, he will give you a best a one sentence answer. You will be sitting there, looking at this man and wonder to yourself how much more awkward and frustrating this class is. What is even worse about Goldstein is that he actually grades the midterms and finals as if they are senior thesis! He even takes off points for a bonus question which is suppose to help you out. What kind of teacher does that do his students? And he al…

I DO NOT recommend this course unless you're genuinely passionate about geology, otherwise it'll be incredibly boring and super miserable with the amount of field trips that you need to go on just to look at rocks. This class has two professors, Steve and Sid, and Sid is so much better. Steve is super unapproachable and felt like he was always trying to mansplain to Sid even though she's the other professor. Sid is incredibly kind and very approachable. On top of that, one time we had to give presentations during lab and Steve kept yelling at all the students to speak louder after they literally spoke one word and it felt so rude. The course also just felt incredibly repetitive and I think we spent an insane amount of time learning the same stuff over and over again. For this course you're basically never allowed to miss a single lab because they're field trips to look at rocks around New York so if you miss it, you actually won't be able to do the lab or make up for it because the stops are not clear at all. Overall, this course was super bad and boring and I would NOT recommend. One good thing about the course is that the TAs for the most part are actually passionate about the topic and can answer your questions.

Presentations were not bad but we didn't really know what was expected of us.

Even though Frontiers is a crappy class overall, Goldstein manages to make it interesting. He doesn't waste a lot of time with stupid and pointless activities. In fact, he summarizes the lectures and explains them in ways that we can understand (which is nice when the main lecturer isn't as good.) He is accessible, and makes a lot of resources available to his students via courseworks. And, he lowered the number of required lecture questions and dropped the lowest WIA. If you have him for Frontiers, you'll be set!

honestly just kind of mean and not at all understanding for students. there was a day when we had to give presentations and he was just yelling at people for mispronouncing terms that we had just learned when he himself was mispronouncing certain words. he does write out all the info you need to know on his slides. they're honestly kind of confusing because they encourage you to work in groups and then will accuse you of cheating if your sentence is too close to someone else's in the class even if you were answering in a complete sentence to the same question so that's why it was the same.

Frontiers of Science was a horribly stupid class to begin with. That being said, Goldstein was pretty fair. He wasn't organized (he took forever to hand back graded homework) and he was not very good at orchestrating discussion within the class. However,he did a decent job in reviewing important material from the lectures. He made good review slides and was good at going over "habits of mind" concepts that were not completely explained in the book and you were just kind of expected to know. Overall decent professor, and with experience will probably improve. His workload is annoyingly more than most other discussion sections.

rock formation and types then the geologic history of the world around us specifically NYC