Howard, Megan  

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PERSONALITY: It's hard to say really. I haven't been to any of her office hours, and it's hard to judge from listening to her lecturing 200 students. LECTURE: Not the most enthralling performance ever. There have been times where i began to nod off. However missing 1 lecture equates to missing 10% of the material, so don't do it since missing a lecture means missing the questions it covers on the midterm and final. That being said, the midterm came on week 7. That's really late into the quarter, which means more material is covered, however there is a bright side: about 60-70% of the multiple choice midterm is copy-pasted onto the multiple choice final. i kid you not. So study for that midterm, and you're 60-70% set for the final. FINAL THOUGHTS: It's a bio class specifically for engineering majors. i personally don't really care for it, but there isn't really a way to avoid it. my overall experience is Howard's class is a solid 'meh'.

Everyone needs to stop hating on Professor Howard. She's an amazing teacher that knows her shit. She's super helpful during office hours and actually makes sure you know it. Yeah, she asks difficult questions that actually make you apply concepts. I get it that this class isn't relevant to your major, but suck it up and take the class.

DONT TAKE HER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do not take this professor. By far the worst teacher I have ever had. She tells you to buy a book that she won't even teach out of. Her PowerPoint slides don't teach you what she expects you to know. She's condescending in office hours. She changes due dates hours before an assignment is due. She will never admit fault even it is entirely her fault. Make sure to keep all of your assigents if you do have the misfortune of taking her. I didn't and she lost half of my grades and said it was my fault because I didn't keep my assignments. If you are not one of her bio majors, she won't lift a finger to help you.

Don't take her. Take Bio 111 or something if you can. Walsh, who taught the Engr half, was amazing. She was a terrible teacher. Additionally, she has a strange grading system, no pluses or minuses. This can be helpful if you have an X9.50% in her class, but extraordinarily detrimental if you have an X9.49% percent. You get the same grade as someone who could have gotten up to 10% lower in the entire class. That is one shitty feeling.

Professor Howard is fine. She's a pretty good lecturer and great in office hours. The tests are difficult but doable with some effort. She also has a nice badonkadonk.

She thinks her class is way more important than it actually is. Pretty easy to pass, but boy is it the most annoying and completely boring class I have ever taken. Stay away if at all possible.

Dr. Howard is a pompous bitch and a terrible professor. She talks down to students, never accepts the fact that she made a mistake, and contradicts herself. You can't ask a question without her cutting you off and trying to make you look stupid in front of the class. Plus, she is incredibly lazy; she doesn't pass back exams or assignments. She expects you to go to her office hours to pick them up. Since Polylearn is new, she decided she was not going to spend the "24 hours" it would take her to figure out how to post grades, so she didn't. Also, she isn't even that knowledgeable! She measured a wavelength from peak to troph, butchered the nitrogen cycle,and said that cows have four stomachs!! You can pass her class easily, but she is nearly unbearable!

To add to the comment below: she also thinks NH4+ is ammonia and tried to tell us that human intestinal temperature is 10 degrees warmer than oral temperature. If she doesn't know the answer to a question she will make it up before admitting that she doesn't know or needs to look it up. And if you ask her a question that she doesn't know (happens a lot) you will make her very angry and she will act like you asked her something ridiculous when really it is something she should know as a professor of biology.

Dr Howard is a bit of a sassy professor, to respond to the comments below but she is NOT that bad! If you are from a science major and are taking this class you should have no problem. She is REALLY nice in office hours and really likes you if you go in and talk to her. She is an extremely intelligent person but she can be a bit scatterbrained in class. Her lectures are a bit unorganized but the book is great for any clarification. Don't let other people's reviews discourage you--this is a really interesting class, just have a positive attitude!

Annoying mannerisms, acts like a child by treating her students likes children. Constantly rubs her credentials in her student's faces. If you are reading this, Howard: NONE OF US CARE.

Prof Howard is new to cal poly and is by far the most egotistical, demeaning, and dramatic teacher that i have had. she publicly ridicules people in front of the class because they mess procedures up or answer questions wrong and no one answers questions because she makes you feel stupid. she yells and erupts at little things-usually because several students ask her questions individually (after we break from the lecture portion because they are scared of feeling dumb) eand she forgets to explain the lab at all. she does not give perfect grades, even if she really likes your slides/notebook etc. to top it off she has a very bitchy personality and mean sarcasm. point and case... i have never felt as intimidated, dumb, and inadequate in a class until this class. its not fun at all:(

Do not take her as a lab instructor! Take Hulbert or Barbier!!!

Dr. Howard is the shizzznit! She's so intelligent and well informed on the subject of microbiology, the pure passion she has for teaching the subject always made me feel very fortunate to have her as my professor. Microbiology is a tough subject but if you want to learn it the right way, in its entirety, you will select Dr. Megan Howard as your instructor!

Dr. Howard has clearly taken on too many tasks to handle. She is barely able to get assignments back, and seems to be constantly out of breath when she gets to lab after hustling up from whatever else she's doing (which she'll tell the whole class about as if the rest of us aren't busy too). She says we need to be adults about studying and papers, which is fair, but she needs also needs to be an adult and only take on what she can handle. I'm going to give her a partial mulligan on this because she does seem decent when you talk to her individually, so I'll say the horribly structured lectures (at least an hour each lab, more in depth than we do in lecture but leave you feeling confused and upset) and awful comments to students are due to her being stressed and tired. Dr. Howard - chill out with other engagements and focus on being a teacher...cause right now you're failing. I'm sure you can do better, so readjust your focus, structure your lectures, and please treat the students with respect. Everybody else - avoid this teacher unless you're interested in making a fun lab a complete pain in the ass.

Dr. Howard isn't as awful as she is made out to be in previous ratings. Her class is very difficult and from what I've heard much harder than the other lab professor's classes, but this doesn't make her an awful teacher. I found her to be really easy to talk to individually, and I think she really does care about her students. Sometimes it's a little scary to ask her questions though because she definitely can make you look dumb in front of the class. I would recommend her to people who are very serious about biology and are planning on going to med school. For everyone else, I would recommend a different teacher-Howard is a tough grader. That being said, it's not impossible to do well in her class. Just study regularly and keep up with your lab notebook and you should at least pass. Very hard to get an A though.

Bitch. Egotistical bitch. Compulsive liar. Thinks she is the shit. Just go to her office hours and ask her a lot of questions. You have to word things exactly as she says them to get credit on the exam. Also, sometimes she says things that aren't true (regarding microbiology, she's always full of shit), and then you lose points on the exam for writing it down. This is especially true for names of microbes. She mixes them up all of time.

I'm not gonna say this because I want to "rip" this professor, this is just an objective review. She is.......A BITCH. I'm not even joking, she is a complete bitch. She doesn't teach you anything and the lab is just hell. Worst I've ever had at poly, even though hopefully I'm gonna end up passing it. Here's an example: She gives me a 6.75/10 on my notebook grade, but she says I can get it re-graded if I turn it in within a week has passed. So ok, cool, no problem right? WRONG. I have to re-write EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY PROCEDURES AND CONCLUSIONS. The procedures because they weren't in past tense and the conclusions because they weren't in paragraph form.....Well, I suck it up and do it. Over 15 pages for it all, but I get it done and turn it in for a re-grade. I get the notebook back, she's given me .25 points back, so a 7/10. WHAT THE FUCK?! Really?!?! Yeah. And why? Because I hadn't written what I was corrected, so she just say the dates I had added to the different labs and assumed thats all I had bothered doing. Then I pointed out to her how in the tables of contents I had written "Re-written Procedures" and "Re-written Conclusions" and given their page numbers. She just replied, "Oh, I saw that, I just didn't understand what it meant." Now you tell me if I'm right in calling her a bitch. DO NOT TAKE HER, WORST PROFESSOR I'VE HAD AT CAL POLY. We had another professor sub once, and the lab was soooooo much better. He could have been an average professor, nothing amazing, but in front of her, OMG, he was God. Don't take this bitch. DO. NOT. TAKE. HER. I suffered, you don't have to.

I had Dr. Howard last quarter for MRCO 224 lab and I loved her. Although I struggled in the class, I still enjoyed it. She lets you correct your lab notebooks for a better score every time they get graded, which is really nice of her (take advantage of this!!). She's always willing to talk to you during her office hours and I could tell she genuinely cared about me and how well I did in the class. It kinda pisses me off how badly everyone is talking about her, maybe they weren't clear on some of her grading policies or maybe she has just improved over the past few quarters, but I found her very motivational and understanding (especially when I kept messing up my gram stain haha). If you're used to taking science classes then you know you have to put in a lot of work during labs (before and after) no matter who is teaching. I found her lectures in the beginning of class very helpful and then when we broke off into our lab groups she was always walking around the classroom asking each table if they needed help, and allots her time at each table equally. I would love to take another lab with Dr. Howard if I can.

I'm leaving this review in hopes that prospective students don't look at the other reviews and decide not to take her course. Dr. H is by far one of the best biology faculty members at Cal Poly. She is fair and clear with what she expects from her students and she is very knowledgable on the subject. I'm thinking that maybe the reason some students rated her so poorly is because they were all underclassmen, because I found this class to sway almost towards the easier side. The notebook did take a lot of time, but other than that, a one night study sesh before each of the exams was sufficient enough to earn me an A. For those kids that thought this class was hard, just wait until you have to take upper division level biology courses, you will look back at this class and realize it wasn't that hard! Like I said before, don't take what the other negative reviews said seriously, if you are a biology or microbiology major, this class will prepare you for upper level courses. I ended up loving this class so much, that I was considering switching to micro as my major!

I learned that if I were to take up hunting, I should shoot deer, not bears, because a bear will hunt me back if I successfully wound it. Fascinating! I didnt know that the key to production and operations management was so brutally simple!