Stern, Stephen  

By far one of the best teachers at calpoly. I took this class as an elective because i want to go to law school, and i though it was awsome. This guy really enjoys what he is teacher and always comes to class excited. Sometimes he brings coffee and cookies and breakfast food in the morning which was awsome. You have two somewhat big papers to do and while they are not the easist thing, he is a liberal grader. The test are hard if you do not understand how cases affect other situations. I will deff take this teaher again. The only reason i got a B was because it was at 7:00 in the morning and i had a million other things going on. If you put the effort in you will get the grade you deserve.

Stern in probably the coolest professor at Poly. He's an attorney, so he knows what he's talking about. He gave our class outlines for each test and he even eliminated one of our midterms. He is very approachable and easy to talk to. His class is structured around class discussions and what he calls "hypothetical"'s, which really help out the learning environment. He makes an effort to try and make you think about the material you are reading about. His tests are very straight forward. If you don't go to class, your grade will suffer. You have to obeserve a court trial and write a short paper about it. This guy is awsome. I highly recommend him. This guy motivated me to come to class and learn.

Stephen Stern is a very laid back type of teacher, a suprise considering he is an attorney. He is very knowledgable on the subject matter, and presents interesting hypothetical situations to get his points across. The class is based on group work, which really helps when you don;t understand a concept. A few suprises along the way, mostly to the favor of the students. There is little written homework (except you do read chapters) and a trial observation paper which isn't to hard (make sure you ask about the expectations, they can be ambiguous). Two tests, each 40% non cumulative. Overall, a good class to get an A or B in without an unbelievable amount of effort (work hard, though, and participate often). Take Stern if you can, it will be a rewarding quarter.

Best teacher ever! He is an amazing guy, great integrity, and captivating to listen to. I learned a lot. Easy lecture. I took it over the summer and the time went by like that. Definitely take him if you can!

Everytime I hear the term "law," I freak out because in my opinion, it is the most boring subject in the world. I decided to take it my first quarter at Cal Poly to get it out of the way. My low expectations were proven wrong when I enrolled in Prof. Stern's class. He is so good at making a horribly boring subject okay. You can easily stay awake through the lecture with only a single latte in hand. Stephan knows exactly what he is talking about and can immediately answer the student's, sometimes odd, questions and scenarios. This class is interactive and informative.

If you take this class, take it with Steve, he's great.

Stern is an amazing teacher. not only does he really know his stuff (since he actually is a practicing lawyer) but he sincerely cares about his students and does his best to make a potentially boring class interesting and interactive. he isnt the traditional teach out of the book lecture kind, he has a very unique teaching style which took me awhile to get used to. in the end it proved to be very effective because i learned a lot. his tests are fair but require a lot of memorization. its not an easy A class but well worth the work. i highly recommend taking him.

i would take this class again if i could. great professor. great ability. don't full around, take stern, he's fabulous and you won't regret it.

absolutely amazing! He was so welcoming. I had him over summer and it is by far the best class I have taken. His law office is right downtown so I went there to talk to him instead of his office hours. Take him! This was my first A at Cal Poly. He is so down to earth!

Stern is awesome. He is actually a practicing lawyer with his own firm so he knows his stuff. The grade is broken down between 4 things. Participation, 1 midterm, court observation paper, and the final. The final is essentially the 2nd midterm so it isn't too bad. I personally don't really know how I got a B in the course as I got an A on the final and should've gotten 100% in participation. Perhaps my observation paper sucked. Thats definitely the worst part of the class. Try not to wait until the last minute to go observe a trial at the san luis courthouse. I'm pretty sure he figures that out and marks you down because of it. But besides this, Stern is an awesome guy who explains stuff very well and applies things very nicely. If he's teaching any quarter, take him for 207 or any of his advanced courses. Way better than Parello.

It was really difficult in the room we had to see the board, and he would write really random things that we wouldn't understand how they related to the subject. Other than that, it was a fun discussion class. An opportunity for extra credit (that my group lost on a technicality, we were pretty bitter). Groups would take turns explaining cases to the class and the midterms were straight off the "daily doubles" (weekly chapter group quizzes for extra credit). One midterm, final not cumulative. Overall a very fair class. The trial observation paper was difficult because he gave us no guidelines.

And the crowd chants "STEPHEN STERN! STEPHEN STERN!" No but in all seriousness this guy is great. Loves what he does, cares about his students, teaches the material well and gives you a chance to do well in his class. For a subject that could be considered dry, I found the Supreme Court cases and other things we learned pretty interesting. He's definitely the best teacher for the job.

Professor Stern is really kind guy. He makes sure his students understand the material. If the class average for an exam is low, he is willing to curve the grade for it. Your grade depends on your participation/ attendance, one midterm, one paper on a court visit, and one final. This class is very manageable. Make sure you get a good group in the class for a chance to get bonus points that will help boast your grade! Take him if you can!

By far my favorite professor so far at Cal Poly. He is really funny and he makes the class really interesting by telling the class about his own cases as a lawyer. He is a really kind grader and wants everyone to succeed. Couldn't have had a better experience with him!

I'm glad I got Professor Stern for business law. Not only is he very knowledgable in his field, but he is a very nice guy at heart. I was frustrated going in to the first final before I started studying, but I realized after I took the test that I had learned a lot from his unconventional way of teaching. It was effective for me, and less complicated than the way many other teachers test their students. Highly recommended.

LOVE THIS CLASS. YOU ARE SO LUCKY IF YOU GET STERN!

Absolute Legend. Take the daily doubles seriously and early on and you will get an A no doubt.

LOVED STERN. His class is more than doable and he is such a fun guy. He presents interesting cases and brings candy to the final.

Definitely my favorite teacher! Mr. Stern is very captivating and makes his lectures very interesting! If you do not understand a term, he gives an example of everyday life so you can understand it better. He grades very fairly and gives a bunch of extra credit opportunities! He's also very cool and energetic and talk about his different businesses with such passion! Favorite teacher I've had so far!

Stern is an amazing professor. His teaching style is a little different than most but effective. Your grade is made up of a midterm, a paper, participation, and a final. Every class you do a set of "daily double" questions. These questions make up a majority of the exams so know them well and you'll be fine. Also, whatever group in class gets the highest score on the most daily doubles gets 25 extra credit points which makes all the difference. The textbook is essential so be sure to get it. Stern is not only a cool dude but very knowledgable about the legal field. He cares about his students as well- a few have gone on to intern for him or take is 404 class later on. His class is also smaller than the other bus law classes which, in my opinion, created a better learning environment. If you have the opportunity to take his class, do it.

I loved prof stern! Attendance is mandatory but Stern makes the class interesting so I didn't mind going. Midterms and finals are the exact questions taken off the daily double plus a do-able short essay question. You do have to go to a court case and write a paper on it, but everyone usually gets full credit on their paper. Prof stern rounded up everyone's grades at the end of the quarter which was SUPER nice. Overall he's a very interesting professor and I would strongly recommend him.

Study daily doubles and definitions from the textbook. Stern's a cool guy.

Stern is the BEST! He's really funny and his lectures are incredibly engaging. I learned so much and actually looked forward to going to this class twice a week!

Study daily doubles, good luck on the midterm and final though, pay close attention in class

Stern is a great professor and you can tell he really enjoys teaching mass media law! You get to choose your own group that you will be in for the rest of the quarter and those are the people you take his "daily double" quizzes with that do not go toward your grade but if your group does the best on them during the whole quarter you get extra credit. There is one midterm and a final that is multiple choice with one short answer and is made up mostly of daily double questions. If you do the reading and memorize the daily double questions you should do just fine!

Prof. Stern was an alright professor, but didn't really seem like he had his shit together. He told us false information a few times when students would challenge him about something, and would then apologize to us the next class. He was pretty unclear about expectations, but I found the tests to be pretty challenging. Daily Doubles are "quizzes" at the end of every class period that you get to do with your group and if you win the most the entire quarter, you get extra points on your final, which is cool. Other than that, all of the information is online and the tests pretty much follow that. He wears fedoras and tries to be hip; nice guy, not the best professor I've ever had.

The midterm and finals are not that hard considering 50% of each test is straight memorization of the daily doubles. For the first 45 minutes of every class is a review of the class before, which get redundant. I never read the book once expect to look for a little vocab word for my chapter blogs. Overall Stern means well and wants to help the students but he thinks people care more than they do about what he's teaching.

Stern is allright. His grading is a little weird, and he didn't really know what was going on because he had never taught the class before but it wasn't too bad.

I really enjoyed Stephen's class. His lectures were very interesting and he only used the book in class as supplemental information. He did have quiz questions (daily doubles) every class that came directly from the chapters but you work with three or four group members to answer them. This is a group intensive class. You research and present topics each class and at the end of the quarter your group presents a big business project complete with a 15 page paper. The tests were fair and straight forward. Most of the questions come from the daily doubles. I recommend taking this class with Steve. He's a great professor and you will enjoy going to his class every day.

Stern is one of the better teachers I have taken at Poly. His class is very interesting and he doesn't do boring powerpoints! there's one big project and two tests. It's pretty easy and he is the nicest, most helpful person ever!

This class requires a ton of reading. This past quarter he formatted his class differently. He didn't use a text book, which was good. He tries to apply everything to every day life. His midterm is okay, but he curves. I think his final was kinda hard. The group project is fun and a great experience. He is soo chill and very understanding.

He is the nicest little man ever!!! He's super understanding and his lectures are amazing!! Definitely take him!!!!

So I feel the need to write this since the reviews are mostly positive as I ran through the Poly Ratings for Stern and when I registered this class I consulted them. The truth is, I love classes with intellectually stimulating topics, discussion, and learning everything there is to know about business. However I must say I hate classes where the teacher uses this as an excuse to not teach. I am currently enrolled in this course so I cannot be a complete judge yet but for our first midterm the material on the exam did not reflect what was being taught in the class. Stern's way of presenting the material focuses on him assigning topics to the the different groups in class that then present the material to the rest of the class. After the person speaking finishes, he simply nods his head in agreement, scribbles a few notes on the board and moves on to another topic. And come midterm time, he says he won't test you on the details but the questions are (surprise) detail oriented. I am a pretty good student, 3.5 GPA and I love taking challenging courses in finance, accounting, economics, etc. But what I hate is studying like crazy for a class in which in the end the professor screws you over by throwing curve ball questions and playing favorites when grading your essay. If you value hard work and intelligent conversation and you are the type of person I am that gets pissed off when you know you should have gotten that A and a teacher gives you a B+ then take another teacher. I would recommend Perrello, now he knows his stuff and you will learn a great amount. My two cents, thanks for reading.

Stephen Stern is a nice guy who knows a lot about law and business, he is a lawyer as well as being a CP professor. He loves hanging out with his students so much that he organizes a class beach day for the class to hang out together. The class involves 2 midterms (no final), weekly reading, a book report, and a group paper written about a country. The group paper also requires a presentation. I found the group paper and presentation to be relatively easy and straight forward. It is not hard to do well in this class if you go to class and study for the tests. You also must participate in class discussion, which isn't hard because he assigns groups questions to answer in class.

Prof. Stern is certainly one of the better teachers I have had at Poly. As mentioned before, he is a full time lawyer and teaches part-time at night. I found his class really easy. I don’t get A’s very often (maybe one a year) though I was able to get on in this class. He makes the class interesting and assigns “team assignments” in which your team studies what is assigned and tells him briefly what it was in front of the class. It’s pretty chill in that you just talk from your seat. Most groups switch off who does this so you will probably only have to do this as an individual twice. While you’re talking he scratches notes on the bored while you’re talking, will help you out if you need it, and then he goes into more detail. The end paper is straight forward. If your team splits it up it should only take a couple hours each. These are INSANE extra credit opportunities in this class. The class is out of 500 points and there was more than 100 points that could be earned through extra credit by doing things like seeing a movie at the Palm, going to an event on campus, having the best team presentation, or doing the best on the team quizzes (quizzes aren’t a part of your grade – so if you do bad, no big deal). This is why I received an ‘A’ in the class and a ‘D+’ on the midterm. Take him for sure if you can!

Stern is a nice guy. He's a practicing lawyer who is very knowledgable and, i would assume, good at his trade. He is not, however, a teacher. He prepared his notes before class outlining everything he wanted to say and he did a good job saying that. Unfortunatley, either because of his profession or personaily, he was not really able to answer any questions with new material, or anything different from what he had just said. The class was very interesting and I learned a lot. I would recommend him as a good teacher for 404

I've never written a review for a teacher before, but studying for the first midterm at week 5 has persuaded me enough to share. I enrolled in this class because of the Polyratings and now I'm regretting it. The class isn't necessarily difficult, but it is difficult to sit through. Stern is a great guy. He cares about the material and is passionate about his class. However he is extremely opinionated and leaves no room to have your own thoughts. Politics is a discussion about how a country should be run. However Stern seems to believe there is only one way to run it. His material constantly criticizes Capitalism to a fault. Some of the material taught in this class brings up great points; it discusses faults in our system that need change. On the other hand, there are many views presented that are so extreme that it distracts me from the course material. While I have enjoyed this class so far, I cannot help but disagree with the material I am taught. It's frustrating to study material that is based in opinion rather than fact.

Great professor. He even brought food for our midterm and final.

Make sure you sit next to people that seem like they will work hard until he assigns groups as this will heavily impact your grade. There are group quizzes every class, but it really only affects your grade if you're the team that gets the highest score on every quiz as you get a 7.5% grade boost. There is a large group project at the end of the quarter- a 20 minute presentation and a 15 page paper and the group that does the best gets a 4.5% point grade boost. That's a ton of extra credit. His test are doable as the questions are mostly directly from the daily double but you have to study a lot for the written portion of them. His class is interesting because he teaches by showing you different cases instead of just reading directly out of a book the whole time.

At first, stern was really intimidating and his class seemed like it was gonna b really hard. but as the quarter went on I got to know him as a really chill dude who cares about his students and wants you to do well. His class basically grades on attendance(try not to miss class), participation(not a big deal as he made it sound the first day), a presentation, a midterm, and final. they were all pretty painless to do and you also get to work on them in groups so youre not alone and the workload is split up(so make sure youre in a good group-ull b stuck w them all quarter. luckily i had a bomb ass group). If you have a hard time with a certain subject, stern is not the professor to tell u off or mkae it your fault. he is the type to consider if he didnt do a good job presenting and teaching the material for a student to struggle with it-which i appreciated. the midterm and final were easy af- they were questions taken directly from the daily doubles at the end of class, so his exams are all a memorization game which is a breeze. you can find the answers on quizlet too. I thought this was going to be my hardest class this quarter because it's my first 400 lvl class, but it wasnt that bad, i didn't dread going to class, and learned some useful stuff that im going to remember even after his class is over.

Such a chill guy and easy class. He has so many extra credit opportunities that help your grade so much. I got a C+ in the midterm and still ended with an A. His final isn’t cumulative and 60% of his tests are word for word questions from practice questions he gives in class. Take stern! He’s a cool guy and an easy class/grader!

I love Stern. I took him for BUS 207 as well, which was really helpful because I knew the format of his class. He divides the class into groups of about 5. These groups present different cases to the class (everyone presents one case sometime during the quarter) as well as complete a final project at the end of the quarter. Do the reading so you can do well on the daily doubles (which are basically ungraded group quizzes that can lead to extra credit) because his tests rely heavily on the daily doubles. USE QUIZLET. I find the classes super interesting because he mostly just focuses on different cases.

Stern is wonderful. I don't think anyone could dislike his teaching style or personality. He is very engaging, but in a way that not only makes the class interesting but legitimately fun too. His discussions have a flow that is easy to follow and keeps students interested. He has excellent comic relief. He makes it easy to learn the subject material without making the class overly difficult.