Swanson, Clifton  

Very boring and hard to follow but tries to keep students attention. Very soft spoken. Musical background helps in the class. Can not miss class or you wont understand whats going on in class.

Clif Swanson is an extremely nice man and he really cares about his students. He wants to teach students all he can because he cares so deeply about music. His strong points are that he places a lot of focus on listening with listening tapes for homework (about 4 hours for the quarter) and he plays lots of music in class, he gives excellent study guides which take forever to complete but they highlight EVERYTHING you need to know about music history, and he is very knowledgeable. However, his teaching is not effective. His tests do NOT reflect the study guides. In fact, they sometimes test on peculiar details mentioned in passing during lecture (for example WHERE Vivaldi died). They are also LONG and tedious. It seemed to me like he prides himself on giving ridiculous tests. He assigned four 4-page papers which required research, two of which he assigned topics with one week's notice. That really was unfair. He also does not plan his lectures well (if at all) and often skips around randomly. We spent 1 and 1/2 weeks talking about Bach and barely metioned other major composers (Telemann, for example). I love music and this should have been a wonderful class, but Clif did not inspired me in the least to learn about music history.

Dr. Swanson was one of the best teachers I have ever had. Granted I loved the subject matter, he made each day of class enjoyable. Very aproachable and caring towards his students. I give my highest recommendation for this class and professor.

Dr. Swanson is very caring and gives his students every opportunity to succeed in his class. He will give you partial credit on his exams if you just show that you cared to try, even if you didn't get the exact answer he was looking for. He is soft spoken but loves the material and tries to keep his students interested. I have never taken a music class and should have taken the prereq but he got me through it and I got an A. That's the measure of a good teacher.

Cliff is an excellent instructor. His classes include the right amount of information, trivia, and humour. There was minimal homework (listening assignments), we were required to write one paper (5-6 pages), and read the small textbook. The exams were very easy, providing one spent time with the study guide he provided. There were no "surprises" on the exams. Cliff is very approachable and most days, there were several students who waited to speak with him. Cliff never acted rushed or annoyed. I highly recommend his classes to anyone, music lover or not. You won't be disappointed