Jencks, Michael  

NR 323: Easy Class, professor just played videos in class and hardly ever lectures. Class consists of 4 essays and 2 tests. He grades easy too. But never responds to emails :/ Easy A! Professor doesn't even teach you anything, he just plays movies in class. Do not take if you actually want to learn something!

NR 323: One of the most disorganized professors I have ever had, but also one of the easiest. The class consisted of 5-6 quizzes (lowest score dropped), 4 papers, and a take-home final. If you do the reading and go to class, you will get 10/10 on the quizzes. If you read summaries of the reading online and go to class, you will probably get 7/10 or less on the quizzes. The quizzes consist of 14-20 questions but you only have to answer 10 and it takes 15 min tops. You can get A's and B's on the essays by doing online research pretty easily. He never lectures, he just plays TEDx talks, documentaries, and movies every class and you usually get let out early. All though the class was pretty easy, it was extremely disorganized...he didn't give us the course schedule until the middle of the quarter so everybody was behind 17 chapters when we got it finally, he would email us what the quizzes would be on the day before the quiz and usually was on at least 200 pages which is hard to read and remember so last minute, and constantly mixed up due dates and such so we never knew when papers were actually due. All in all, take this professor for a pretty easy A, but be aware you will be frustrated and clueless most of the quarter.

Awesome professor. Very highly recommend taking any class that he teaches.

Professor Jencks turned out to be my favorite professor at Cal Poly. I love his soft voice and down to earth presence. He is super kind and listens and cares about student feedback. His class recharged my love for learning! It wasn't a high pressure environment, which was not only super refreshing, but really conducive to the subject matter: the global climate crisis. I really felt like Jencks understood the modern day students' stress levels, and that he really cared more about our personal takeaway from the class, than being a harsh grader. On top of all that, his decades of real-world experience (being a lawyer, co-founding several ecological organizations, and more) inspired and instilled deep respect in me. He's connected to some amazing and influential people, and humble about it.

Here's what's great about Jencks. He isn't some ivory tower academic who only talks about taking action. He's a full time attorney who has tried cases in the Supreme Court. The class is interesting, and particularly if you are interested in the law. There is alot of handouts to read and reading judges comments can be difficult. Prof Jencks tests are tough because they require a synthesis of all the material, but he grades with a kind eye, and the final was a take home. Nice guy, a great professor, and approachable if you need some help.

You really have to work hard not to fall asleep due to Professor Jencks' voice, but the material is easy to get into and the independent nature of the class allows you to fit assignments into any schedule and, more importantly, allows you to explore topics that interest you. No notes, moderate amount of reading, easy tests and 3 papers with topics of your choosing. TAKE THIS CLASS!!!

Jencks is an awesome guy. I had the Friday 3 hour block and the length was kinda brutal but I enjoyed the material. He makes environmental law interesting and fairly straightforward. Sometimes he goes off on tangents but he has so much experience and knowledge, it's worth listening to. He'll play a lot of really awesome documentaries, like Chasing Ice and DamNation. Overall I enjoyed the class and highly recommend him! Assignments aren't too difficult, he understands it is a course for mostly non-law majors.

Jencks is an extremely perceptive person. He has a way of being able to tell when students are interested in something and adjusting accordingly. Jencks has had a lot of success being a lawyer, so if you're thinking about that path, he's a great guy to learn from.

Professor Jencks is awesome. He really knows his stuff and is sometimes overwhelming because the information he has is limitless. I would recommend this class to anyone interested in law, the environment, and just overall life because it gives you a great backgrond on environmental cases and why the system functions, or rather malfunctions, the way that it does. Take good notes, read the book before you come to class and study hard for his midterm though. the projetcs are hard but interesting and you will be surprised at how much you get out of it if you apply yourself.

Professor Jencks is the nicest man I've ever met and is an awesome teacher. His eyebrows might enable him to fly. Seriously easiest class I've taken. Recommend in every way

As an instructor, his lectures are really quite dull and long, and during my quarter, his lectures were once a week in 3 hour blocks, which made it particularly painful. However, if you do his readings and do his assignments and read over his slides, you should be looking at an easy A. His exam style is rather unique in that he allows you to pick which prompts and questions to answer. His final is a take home exam. Overall, you don't have to know everything in detail for his tests, so don't bother trying. Just focus on general topics and apply general knowledge and common sense to it. Overall, Jencks is an incredibly nice guy and seems to want to give students a leg up; he even goes as far as to say that he will keep your work for up to two years in the event that you want a letter of recommendation and will write about the work you do. He is experienced as a lawyer in his field and has a lot he can tell you. Easy class overall so long as you do your projects and assignments somewhat competently.

Jencks is so kind and full of great stories. He does not always use class time wisely however. You watch a movie a class I think. If you do a decent job on the assignments and study his posted lecture slides you should do very well. Not the most exciting class, but I did learn some things and he has a good heart.

I cannot believe this guy gets such good ratings. In my class he was a flake, never showed up on time, and did not reveal any of our grades until literally week 9. People would literally leave in the middle of lecture because he was so boring, and was a broken record with the issues he brought up. And when it came to water issues (this was a water law class), his opinions always followed a cliche, liberal progressive environmentalist outlook, and he is super anti-agriculture, and even spoke out against companies that fund CAFES! This might sit well with all the hippie environmentalists in the department... but when you consider that this man gets paid big money to go against this companies in court, you realize that he has his agenda too. The only reason he gets good reviews is because he just hands out A's at the end of the quarter because he is too lazy to do any work. If thats good enough for you fine, but just realize that is guy is a brain-washing scumbag who should not be a part of this college.

If you can get past the two big black caterpillars above his eyes and his monotone speaking that has the volume turned down to 2/100 then Mr. Jencks is actually a pretty nice guy. He smiles a lot and seems like a good person, but the dude shows two movies each class period and attempts a third but concludes that there isn’t enough time and just ends the class an hour early. Even if you’re sitting mid row you can’t hear dick. I guess he had a stroke a little bit ago, so I’ll give him the denefit if the doubt. But I think it’s about time to think about retirement cause he didn’t teach anything during lectures, assignments were assigned in an extremely inefficient manner (he would post them within announcements of poly learn and not within a “Topic Section” You you’d have to find the little tiny link all the way at the bottom of the left side panel), and the class in general just seems to have no sense of direction. And before the first midterm some student asked him if he could make it take home and he asked the class what they thought and we all concurred. The dude made it take home; goes to show how structured the class is. That test would’ve been insanely hard if it wasn’t take home as well. 10/10 would take again for an easy A in a class where 90% of the material overlaps in other waterscience minor courses.

It is hard to stay motivated when papers and tests are never returned, and I don't even know what grade I got on them. Prof. Jencks has a lecture style that is relatively slow, and rarely covers the material assigned for reading. Usually, assigned readings are e-mailed just a couple hours before class so there is no opportunity to intelligently discuss them in class. On the positive side, he is a really nice guy, that takes genuine interest in his students. If you're not interested in the law, I would recommend taking something else, if possible.

Jencks is a nice guy, but his lectures are dull and wander off topic. What takes him 90 minutes to lecture about could be taught in 45 minutes by a better professor. Assignments are never returned, and he does not seem to have his heart in this class. This is the only class that I have ever been in where I took less than one full page of notes for the entire 10 weeks! It was a midday class and I consistently nodded off, too. Don't take Jencks for Land Use Law unless you must.

BOYCOTT!!!