Favorite Undergrad Course?
The "us vs we" thread, as well as the Amy Winehouse discussion got me reminiscing about my time as a student in Ann Arbor.
Drugs of Abuse (Psych 436) was brought up, and let me tell you, that was the hardest course for me for whatever reason. It was worse than Orgo, worse than P Chem, it was just awful. Yet, I loved the content and have no regrets about loading up on the hardest classes I could take within my concentration (BioPsych/BBCS).
Having said all that, my favorite course was Sleep Neurobiology, or Psych 520, I believe. This was my first experience with rotating lecturers, as we had about 15 different speakers come in and address the class, including various big names at UMHS and the Chairs of Psychiatry and Psychology, and many visiting professors from other universities! It resonated with me strongly because, well, everybody sleeps (and poops), and I used to sleep walk and still do snore and talk in my sleep. I wish I had taken the course my freshmen year so I could have learned the pros and cons of all-nighters and daytime napping.
If all works out, I hope to get my MD and be involved in clinical sleep research.
That's my story, what's yours?
Yep, I actually kind of enjoyed MO 300 just because it was kind of a chill class and much different from all the other Ross courses. That said, I completely get where your coming from when you say the class is trying way too hard to be cool. It's funny to me that the Ross management program is number one in the nation. In regards to accounting, it probably would have been a better experience for me if I was more interested in the material. Although I woud definitely say that the two accounting classes were helpful in general, the tests were just a little shady. I'll definitely check out Phil 280 as I need 2 more humanities credits. Assuming that Phil 280 fulfills humanities...
I was an engineering major, but I thoroughly enjoyed my Cultural Anthropology 101 course from freshman year. Prof. Shryock made it so entertaining and informative that I hardly regarded it as a class when I was planning out my day.
ENG 250 (?) was a blast also. Prof. Geister and his antics up at the white/blackboard still amuse me to this day. Scotch and soda, baby.
is a great professor. I'm honestly not that interested in the subject, but he made the class entertaining each day, so I really enjoyed the class.
I had Geister for ME 250. Between scotch and soda and ORTHGRAPHIC VIEWS!, it was an interesting class.
You must have centerlines... IN ALL VIEWS!!!
the ME department shuffled Geister of to Aero to teach CAD. ans I swear the guy barely knows how to use a computer....
he's still hilarious though
taught by Prof. John Rubideau. Also, thermodynamics with Prof. Margaret Wooldridge. They both challenge you to learn by setting a high bar.
As one of Wooldridge's grad students, I may be a little biased, but ME 433 (Advanced Energy Solutions) with her was probably the best class I had at Michigan. I also had her for heat transfer.
Easily my favorite class was taken during grad school, my professor wasn't a fan of me taking it, but it was a special topics course and I just couldn't pass it up. It was IOE 591, with the topic being about Traffic taught by Barry Kantowitz a researcher at the UM Transportation Research Institute.
The class was a 3 or 4 hour "lecture" once a week, and it ended up being just me and one other student enrolled in it. It ended up being a 3 way discussion about different aspects of traffic and ergonomics for the entire time. Having a researcher with that much knowledge and being able to pick his brain about various aspects of traffic is just unbelievable. Learned a lot too. Absolutely recommend taking this class if he doesn't retire before he teaches it again. If not, read the NY Times Bestseller titled Traffic: Why we drive the way we do by Tom Vanderbilt. Riveting.
Full disclosure, I've had some weird fascination with traffic since I was young. Just like how sleep resonated with the OP, traffic has the same effect with me.
Drugs of Abuse with Terry Robinson was challenging but very worthwhile. As I mentioned in the Amy Winehouse thread, I was a very proud stoner at the time and Terry would often call on me for an "experiential" perspective to go along with the research presented.
The class on the Beat Generation was amazing. Tillinghaus, or something like that. He handed out the lyrics to the Grateful Dead's Jack Straw and sang along. Amazing experience.
Psychology of Religion (it was about religious cults, really--Lubavitch Jews, Mormons, and Hare Krishnas) with Dick Mann. He made us memorize each other's names in the first class, and had us request/justify our own grades at the end. I didn't put much work into it, so asked for and got an A-. If I'd have known better I would have asked for (and likely received) an A, which would have let me graduate with honors. Oh well.
But my favorite was Affective Neuroscience with Jaak Panksepp, visiting prof from Bowling Green. He wrote the textbook on the subject, and it was a grad level class with a bunch of grad students and Elliot Valenstein (prof emeritus) sitting in. Proudest I've ever been to get an A in a class, and inspired me to go get a phd in psychology. Dude was preachy, and I loved it. Every subject (lecture and in the textbook) relates back to implications that could improve our lives and society.
I took a joint English/Film course with Peter Bauland that was called "Great Comic Masters" or something along those lines. We had passes to go to the Michigan Theatre once a week and watch films by Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Hal Ashby and I think one other director. It was pretty cool.
Hard grader, but one of the most interesting people one could ever meet. He's the one professor I've had where I really enjoyed office hours, the dude just is fun to talk to. He's like the wise old Grandpa I never had.
I took "Understanding Film" with him, and we watched a wide range of mind-bending films at the Michigan Theater. Next semester I'm taking a course on him that encompasses every Kubrick film. I couldn't be more excited.
Taught my favorite class too. 20th Century Literature. He's a great lecturer and runs great discussions, and also picks really interesting course material.
I had another class that was the history of Weimar Germany between the World Wars. Really interesting stuff too but I can't remember who the teacher was or what the class was called.
Scott Spector's course on the Weimar Republik and the origins of the Nazis' rise?
Herb Eagle. He was far more Herb than Eagle.
He learned me some Polish film history. dobrą osobą.
It's just such an awesome name for a quirky little cartoon character of a man. His TA's at the time sucked, but he was a good instructor.
He learned me some Polish film history. dobrą osobą.
SHIT I PRESSED "REPLY" INSTEAD OF "EDIT"!!! IM MAKING IT WORSE!!!
I can feel my street cred falling away...
You never had any street cred, Pilgrim.
Hell yeah. And as far as my favs: anything in the RC
Herb Eagle is awesome. I ended up minoring in Film and he taught me Slavic Film, or something like that. My favorite class was also a film class taught by Hugh Cohen. Freshman year I took SAC 216 (??? maybe 232) "The Art of Film" because I liked movies. Loved the class. Hugh was the lecturer and I'd sit front row. The problem was it was right after lunch and that semester I'd routinely be up until 3am doing French homework. Well, in that class Hugh would show a lot of slides or play short portions of films. The moment the lights went out, I went out. I always felt bad for falling asleep in such a cool class.
Fast forward 3 years and in my last semester I take "SAC 455: Religion in Film" with none other than Hugh Cohen. Awesome class, especially for someone very non-religious, like myself. One of my most memorable UM moments will be a paper I wrote on a lesser known Alfred Hitchcock film where I noticed and wrote about a point in the film and Hugh - a film expert of decades - wrote "I never noticed that!" Unfortunately, I missed the obvious connection in the film to what I was writing about and only got an A-, haha.
Anything by Juan Cole.
America & the Middle East Wars, Modern Middle East, etc. Anybody interesting enough to be illegally wiretapped by the Bush administration is definitely going to produce some quality lectures.
Yes I too enjoy classes where the professor expresses so much disdain for the United States, the hate really encourages learning.
<br>-Chet
I remember one time his cell phone went off in class and his ringtone was my humps by fergi
John Bacon's "The Rise and Fall of the American Sports Writer." Leaps and bounds better than the College Athletics course.
Ken Mikolowski's RC poetry seminars.
The "Rock Kills Communism" Polish mini-course with Piotr Westwalevicz. All about Polish rock music in the 70s and 80s. Completely awesome.
Didn't Bacon only teach the American Sports Writer class one semester? I took in Winter 2008 and thought that was the only time he tought it.
Yep, only taught once. And it was awesome.
In order:
--Dinosaurs and other Failures. I kid you not. Offered for 2 credtis back in the early 90s. Mostly it was about identifying Dinos.
-Psych 101 with Drew Westin. He was full of himself, but pretty entertaining.
-Calculus at U of M Dearborn--summer session. The credit and grade transferred.
OP mentioned Orgo. My sister got one grade less than an "A" or equivalent her entire life (including Med School) and it was a "C" in Organic Chemistry at Michigan.
I know people who took it as a freshman 1 credit seminar.
I actually took Dinosaurs back when I was there. I took all those 1 credt geo classes (Waves and beaches, National parks etc) as a break from the orgo's and biochems.
Nor sure how I didn't take Dinosaurs...must have been at a bad hour. I would have loved that class.
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<br>I took Westin the very last time he did it, even though I had probably close to double digit psych courses of higher levels before it. But even though (or maybe because of) he had won the Golden Apple Award like 3 years in a row (they still have that?) he wasn't getting tenure. I remembered thinking "meh, overhyped".
I took dinosaurs as a 1 credit mini course my junior year and it actually wasn't that great. It was more about fossils and geological time than actual dinosaurs. I remember being disappointed by the lack of dinos in that class.
whaaaat, my grade from calc 3 at UM dearborn definitely didn't transfer! i wish it did though.
Social psych (intro),
<br>Linguisitics (language and discrimination)
<br>RC Spanish
<br>Public Speaking (Sport MGmt 101??) A MUST!
First, I very much enjoyed Astronomy 111. It's an introductory seminar taught by different assistant professors. I found it extremely interesting because they taught about all of the cosmic goings-on and made it fun to learn about. Obviously the math gets more difficult and complex as you advance in astronomy, but as a pre-med guy who grew up watching Star Trek a lot, I found this class to be awesome.
The other two classes are Classic Civilization 375 and 376 taught by David Potter. 375 covers the development of civilization in Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece and everything in between up to the Roman Republic. 376 is about the emperors of Rome. What makes this class is Professor Potter, one of the most entertaining, intelligent men I've ever met. He is known worldwide for his research on Rome and his passion for the subject shines in his lectures. I also felt cultured learning about Roman government and laws hehe.
Another benefit of his classes are the disparaging comments about our sports rivals including gems about OSU's affinity for hairless nuts, ND's affinity for a drunken stereotype and Catholicism and how the brutish spartan dullards couldn't manage to make more of an impact on world affairs than preventing the Athenians from progressing western civilization. He blends some of the boring historical material with contemporary examples and entertaining stories from the times in a way that made him very entertaining. I highly recommend taking his classes for whatever major you're pursuing.
I thought Potter was a great professor, I paid more attention in his class than in the rest of my classes that semester put together.
Took Classical Civ 372 (Sports in Ancient Rome) taught by Potter and remember it being a let down because I had heard such awesome things about the man. Maybe he was writing something important that semester and wasn't giving it his best effort. The only vivid memory I have from that class was when some of the BAMN (By Any Means Neccessary) pro-affirmative action protests spilled into the lecture, complete with smoke bombs. That was the late 90's and I have no idea if BAMN is even still around for you youngins out there.
Sociology (301, I think) The History of Race in America. It was taught by Eduardo Bona Silva (sp). This guy was one hell of a professor. It didn't matter if you were white, black, red, yellow, green, etc, you were gonna be engaged in this class. The guy could flat out teach and had us students look at things from an angle we most likely never have. It was a shame he left UM right after my class. Circa winter 99'. I think he moved to UT in Austin.
A special class taught by (retired now, I think ) professor Kammash in the nuclear engineering department. The topic was advanced spacecraft propulsion, including far-out concepts like anti-matter drives and the like ( I was an aerospace major ).
Outside of that I found most classes difficult, that's what I get for taking engineering...
I believe he is retired, but he actually came back this past Winter semester and taught that class again. I had a colleague take that class, and he didn't have as high of praise for that class as you have and we're both spacecraft propulsion people.
I actually loved ME 450. That's senior design right? My team's project was pretty easy and we got to drive up to my teammate's house in Bay City and grill out while we built it on the university's dime because there wasn't adequate woodworking equipment in the ME shop.
1) My History Colloquium "World of the Ship" with David Hancock. He also teaches a freshman level history course (I think its US history or something similar) which peolple I've talked to didn't care for. I know that he doesn't really like teaching it either, but he has to. His Senior level colloquium, though, is fantastic. If you're a history major I highly reccomend taking it if it's available.
2) Education 222 "Video Games and Education" with Professor Fishman. It's about video games. Need I say more? (actually, not only is the class really fun, but I actually learned a lot about educational theory.)
His American Revolution class is tough but amazing. If you think you know anything about the Revolution, you're wrong.
I took "World of the Ship". I attempted to write my paper about the first America's Cup race and the first winner of the race, America. He was really forgiving on my paper because the subject itself was such a challenge to write about due to a lack of solid source material.
I also took his 160 course sophomore year. Jeff Kaja was the GSI and was excellent. I had a small discussion group which allowed for a good learning experience. I liked both classes quite a bit.
I did mine on the early Great Lakes trade, specifically as it regarded to Detroit and Fort Michilimackinac.