Jerre Collins

I think that Collins is a good professor, although sometimes i think he tries to sell his beliefs onto us more than we would like.

If you want your literature force-fed to you, don't come to Professor Collins' class. He is excellent at provoking you into thinking in new ways about controversial topics-- but only if your're already prepared. There are no chapter-by-chapter summaries here. Collins assumes that you're intelligent, you've read the material and you're ready to talk about the big picture. Yes, World of Ideas does include the Bible as one of the texts; however, he uses it as a contrast to Buddhism, Existentialism, Freud's theories and the Tao. He values ideas based on their merits, not on their history. I've had him for several classes, and he is truly the best professor I've ever had. If you're bored, you're either not paying attention or you fail to grasp the importance of a topic. Collins is subtle, he's not going to force-feed you ideas.

9 books! 9! It's only a 16 week course, how could you possibly require 9 books? And one of them is the friggen BIBLE!?!? Isn't it illegal for a publicly funded institution to force people to read the Bible? This guy is so damn boring and he expects a lot of work.

Prof. Collins isn't for everyone. At first I was afraid the class would be very dull, but I soon noticed Collin's enthusiasm and obvious love of literature. If you paid close attention, you could see his eyes twinkle when we hit on something good in our class discussions. This in turn, helped me to become excited about the class. I loved the grading conferences I had with Prof. Collins. He really helped me to understand and fine tune my writing style. If you just love reading and writing about literature then this class is for you. But if you need a lot of flashy stimuli to keep to keep your interest then I would suggest you get a different professor. Still he was the best English teacher I have ever had.