Erna Kelly

She's challenging alright, but way too challenging for an Introductory Class. She involves students in every lecture only because she needs someone to make look stupid. If you comment in class chances are she will keep asking you questions about your comment that are totally unrelated and then make you feel dumb for not knowing the answers to her questions. I went in and read example of A/A- papers (she doesn't give A's only A/A- and records the lower score)and decided she doesn't know what she's talking about when she grades papers. Her essay prompts are confussing and too long and I think you'll do better on papers if you write them right before you go to class without proofing them at all. She's always late for class and always has some lame excuse abou why. She's unfocused and just generally not a great teacher.

She's smart as can be, but incredibly unclear and overly critical. Gives VERY little help if asked for, and often makes students feel bad for making mistakes rather than helping to correct them.

Erna is in her own erudite world which only coincides with the student world by accident. I think she is very uncomfortable teaching and tries to cover that with being either calculatedly strict or strangely whimsical. The course for which I had her was a seminar course, so a great deal of the course was meant to be student driven, but it was never clear who had the reins. Also we read our papers to the class, which is just not engaging - most people are highly uncomfortable reading and it detracts from the understanding of what they are saying. If we had been encouraged or allowed to do multimedia presentations or shorter synopsis of our papers rather than reading them for upwards of half an hour it could have been a more engaging class. Erna has worthwhile knowledge to share, but she does not coddle in any way shape or form and is often moderately disorganized.

She's flipping nuts! Avoid her at all costs.

She will never make eye contact with her students. She always stares at the ceiling.