Winstead, Candace  

Winstead usually teaches microbio and I don't suggest taking her for anything else. In 161, her notes were scattered and only covered the surface of topics while here tests asked questions on even the most in depth of details. It made for a frustrating quarter so if you can take someone else for this class, do!

Winstead was really enthusiastic. She talked a lot about her kids, and had a lot of difficulty with showing us youtube videos of \"Cell processes\" but you could tell she really wanted us to understand. I would recommend taking the SCM with this class if you aren\'t really into biology and don\'t want to do the reading because her lectures are kind of scattered and she always covers the most difficult material really quickly at the end of her lectures. there were almost no homework assignments, and the quizes before midterms were open book/note.

So luckily i was pretty good at bio, and for anyone who took bio AP in high school then this class will be a breeze. but for all the others. sorry. she isnt the best teacher and well is quite moody sometimes. But she is really helpful and tries to answer questions to the best of her ability...i think.

Class was pretty easy overall. The grading for the course was set up so that there were 2 midterms worth 15% of your grade each, HW & Quizzes worth 15%, lab worth 25%, and a semi-cumulative final worth 30% of your grade. The midterms were mostly multiple choice with a small short answer section. HW was either handed out in class or was essentially taking attendance. Quizzes were online quizzes through Blackboard. The final was entirely multiple choice and taken both individually and in groups. Whichever grade was higher was used to calculate your final grade. I neither bought nor read the textbook and still got an A in the class. I just printed out the PowerPoint slides she posted on Blackboard and took notes on them during class. As long as you keep up in Lab and pay attention despite how boring the lectures are you\'ll be fine.

She was a very good teacher. Sometimes her lectures were a little boring and it was hard to pay attention, but she did a good job explaining the material and always answered student questions as best as she could. She also seemed to care about us learning it because she would ask us sometimes at the end of class what the "clearest and muddiest" points were so she could go over the harder points better.

Super nice, but didn't feel like I had to be in class to pull off a B. barely paid attention and just read the book the night before and did fine.

Dr. Winstead is super nice. Most people seem to agree with that, but I'd say that she is also a very good lecturer. I got an A-, but only because my lab instructor was evil and my lab grade dragged lecture down. Bio-161 with her is enjoyable and relatively low-difficulty. Great!

Dr. Winstead is a teacher that can connect well with her students. The grading in this class is very fair. She allows students many chances to make good grades. Overall she is one of the nicest teachers you will have in your college career.

Windstead was a really nice teacher and always excited about the class and the material. Her notes came mostly from the book, and the text explains everything in detail if you don't understand the material. The only thing is, is that she cannot write tests at all, they are really tricky! There is a problem when the avg is a 68% after the curbe. And she also gives online, open note quizes before each midterm to help you out, but you have to study for them, they aren't easy at all. I failed 2 out of the 3 and the average was around 66% after her curve. Otherwise than that, as long as you do well in lab which is worth 40% of your grade you should come out okay.

Dr. Winstead is the absolute greatest professor I have ever had, and I wish I didn't just have her for lab. I don't know what to say other than I LOVE her and hope that she will be teaching one of the courses I take in the future. She is super nice, understanding, helpful, and especially empathetic. Her grading is super fair, and her exams are not hard if you know what you're doing in the lab, which you should. She doesn't try to trick you, and all of her "pop" quizzes were announced. 10/10 would recommend taking Dr. Winstead for a lab, lecture, as your adviser, as a mentor, as your second mom, ANYTHING because she's just that awesome!

Dr. Winstead is super nice and enthusiastic about teaching. It was her first time teaching this class, so she was kinda unorganized and her lectures would be a bit scattered, but all in all she was fair. Her midterms weren\'t bad, she had an online quiz before each one and there were some HW assignments, which are just easy points. She also gave out 4 exams (the final being the 4th), and you can drop your lowest, no final for me!

Dr. Winstead is the best professor I have had at Cal Poly. Her Medical Microbiology lectures and labs were extremely well organized and fair. She was always willing to answer students' questions and if she didn't know the answer she would take the time to research it and get back to us. This class is not easy, there are a lot of pathogens to remember. You need to work hard to do well but Dr. Winstead is always there to help.

Dr. Winstead is an incredible professor she is a little sporadic but I feel like I am that way too so I am able to follow what she says. She really does her best to explain difficult topics and she always finds a way to help you remember important information. She is a huge advocate for her students! Do not hesitate to go to her office hours and get to know her. She is genuinely an incredible human being and a really gem within the biological sciences department!

Winstead obviously meant well and wanted to be able to make everything clear for us, and she was very enthusiastic about the subject, but her disorganization, lack of clarity, and the inconsistency between her lectures and her midterms made this class a waste of time and effort. Many topics that she breezed over and even some minute details that she made clear would NOT be on the test ended up as big topics on the tests. Her Powerpoints were just diagrams from straight out of the book, and all she did was read off of them. In fact, there was nothing in her lecture that was not from the book. I literally learned everything that quarter from the reading and only went to lecture because I didn't want to disrespect her. In fact, I stopped taking notes after the third week because following her lecture in my notebook left me with a totally confused and random thought process on paper. However, to her credit, she is a very nice woman who does care a lot about her students and really tries to spread her enthusiasm for immunology.

Dr. Winstead is a nice woman. As a teacher, she simply is not one. She will read power point slides to the class from images straight from the text and contradict herself consistently, mixing up the material. She would like to know immunology in as much depth as the text covers, which is why she tests at this level. The problem is she cannot and does not teach at that level. To succeed in this class you MUST read the book (every page). The lectures are unhelpful and a waste of time. This \"teacher\" needs to quit. Yes, it is THAT bad. If you can take another teacher. DO IT!

Dr. Winstead really is a nice woman and very enthusiastic. Unfortunately, that's about the only positive thing about taking this class. As other people have said, every lecture is a powerpoint filled with figures from the book (except they are usually from a book that she said you don't need to buy or from the old edition of the text so the figure numbers don't match up). There is no helpful or additional words on the slides. Just figures. What she says to "explain" the figures is basically word-for-word what is on the figure itself. The material doesn't follow an organized and logical path, so it just seems like you get to class and receive a slew of disjointed, random facts about immunology. Even trying to read the book and study from it is difficult because there is a ton of detail in the book that you don't need to know, so you have to try to sift through to find what you need. If I'm being honest, I think Dr.Winstead needs to take a hiatus from teaching in order to LEARN how to teach and then come back. She has a good attitude and is intelligent, but she is most definitely a horrible teacher.

Dr. Winstead is an incredibly nice woman that is obviously passionate about immuno and nobody will deny that. However, that says jack diddly shit about how she is as a teacher! Her lectures follow the textbook, but 90% of the figures that she talks about in lecture are not even from the REQUIRED TEXT. She uses the Kuby Immunology book for nearly all of her figures (mostly just a bunch of random looking shapes with fancy acronyms for names that she expects you to memorize even though she says you don't have to) when the actual ASSIGNED TEXT for the class is the Janeway's Immunobiology. That makes absolutely no sense to me. She just reads off of her slides and just names all the fancy shapes without really emphasizing the point that she is getting at so you really walk out of class with just random, scattered information. Then her tests look literally nothing like anything she talked about in lecture. Her multiple choice will get you, as she puts a lot of "a and b", "a,b, d but not c", and "all of the above" crap so you basically have to memorize everything from the assigned book, even though literally everything she talks in class is from the supplemental text (Kuby). And then her short answer is pretty much all hypothetical laboratory application of clinical data, and I honestly have absolutely no idea how anyone in the class knew how to do it when she never explained it once unless they'd taken a similar class before (which is how it was in most cases). I can go on and on about how much this course was sucked the life out of me but that wouldn't be helpful. Look up the Kuby text online and study from there. The course material is interesting if you really look at it. But all the mumbo jumbo from lecture really discourages any type of effort to really grasp the material beyond the surface.

super sweet lady, but ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE TEACHER. she's scatter brained and lectures are a struggle to get through. i learned more from reading, but her midterm is based on lecture, which is unfortunate b/c hardly anyone can follow what she's saying. her thoughts are all over the place and she practically reads off the slides so fast that you can hardly catch anything she says. lab is even worse. her lab handouts are vague and only those who have had experience with those tests and procedures know what theyre doing. i took this class because the lab techniques that we were supposed to learn about would be invaluable in the workforce, but it was a disappointment because i had no idea what was going on half of the time. she doesn't know how to teach or instruct, but she must be amazing at research or else there's no way she'd still be teaching at this school.

Love love Dr. Winstead as a person. She is very nice and willing to help you out. That said the course material is innately tough so naturally the class going to be tough. KEEP UP WITH THE READINGS THEY WILL SAVE YOUR GRADE!! It will make your life so so much better. I usually read after lecture and filled in some clarifications in my class notes. Also make sure to answer her lab questions as fully as you can aka don't be lazy or wait till the last minute. She's helpful in office hours if you know what your talking about so if you do the questions ahead of time you'll be able to get some good feedback. Yeah the class is difficult; yea it's a lot of work but I learned soo much and feel very prepared for any health field I choose to go into!!

I took this class awhile back and I just wanted to let future students know to NOT take this class with Dr. Winstead. I thought I had made it through Cal Poly with all great biology professors UNTIL her. She was completely scattered with the course material and most of figures she presented on were not from the required text. Instead she would use other textbooks or older editions. Also, don't use outside information (ex: current research papers) for this class on tests because they often conflict with what she "wants" to see as answers. Instead, you need to memorize most of the textbook and then choose the least worse answers on her tests. While she may be a nice person, I don't believe she should be in education when she cannot clearly teach, ask, and answer questions.