Truch, Nina  

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Professor Truch is an incredibly kind and caring person. I will warn you though that she is very unorganized and procrastinates on grading. She is a tough person to impress when it comes to speeches but it is possible to pass her class. Attempt the most points possible, practice your speeches and you're almost guaranteed a B overall.

Nina Truch is a very nice person. However, she is the worst teacher I have ever had. In this course she allows you to pick which type of speeches and writing assignments you want to complete which is nice, you get to talk about what you want for the most part. BUT she takes forever to grade, so for the whole quarter I had no idea what my grade would be, and there's like 20 speeches/writing assignments total that you'll do. Therefore, I was doing something wrong with my writing assignments the whole time and I had no idea and so I kept doing them the wrong way! She never tells you what you're being graded on and never gives you so much as a rubric, so you'll never know how to please her or what she's really looking for, and then at the end of the quarter you're going to end up with a random awful grade you'd never expect. AVOID TAKING HER AT ALL COSTS.

Other ratings have touched on this, but Professor Truch is definitely a nice woman who cares about her students yet is not a good instructor. She grades speeches too hard for a 100 level class and is not clear about her expectations for her students as she never gives us a rubric or list of standards or expectations. You don't get speech grades back early enough in the term and therefore never really know what you need to improve on. As a result, you end up with a crappy grade you didn't anticipate and probably don't deserve. Avoid if possible.

So Truch is a fairly easy professor to take for COMS 101, you just need to make sure you are on top of your game and you follow the dates she gives in the syllabus religiously. She is extremely disorganized, so dates will be pushed back for papers due and speech rounds, but she won't actually tell you about it. Our first writing papers were due for the first speech round and she hadn't brought it up AT ALL and so more than half of the class had no idea and didn't turn in their papers on time. She also did this with our midterm exam. She's also very big on assigning your speech the day before you do it, which is extremely frustrating, I stayed up until 1-3am working on her speeches and reference lists. She grades easy, she's a nice and sweet old lady, I got an A, but BE ON TOP OF YOUR SHIT. She also lets you choose your course outline.. so there are minimum and maximum points for each speech round (I chose maximum), and so you only have to complete the tasks that you assign yourself and she agrees on at the beginning of the quarter. It probably doesn't make sense on here, she explains it better in class.

Truch is awful!!!!! Avoid taking her class if possible. She is totally disorganized and sucks at public speaking (stutters her whole lecture) ironic because this is a speech class. She gives 3x as much work as the other professors teaching coms 101. She only gives Bs on speeches no matter how hard you try. Her final has Nothing to do with the coursework. WORSE teacher of my time at Cal Poly. AVOID!!!!

Nina is a cool person, and I genuinely enjoyed the class, but it is very confusing in how she has structured it. I earned low b's on my speeches, which is not completely unfair but a little discouraging for a first timer. Mid term was ridiculously difficult but that seems to be the trend among all coms 101 classes. If your in it for the experience, would absolutely recommend. If you're in it for an A, you may want to choose a different prof.

Actually one of the nicest ladies I have ever met. She really cares if you improve in your speech giving abilities, which I really did. The only problem is that her grading is kind of hard to pinpoint, a couple of people who should have gotten an A got B's (not me I deserved my grade), and others that should've gotten a C or B got an A. The class is super fun, you really get to know the people, and although there is a lot of speeches, that's all the work in the class. We had no outside work, and only one written test that was our midterm, which was only worth 75 points, less than some of the speeches. I only wrote my speeches the night before and practice a little and still got a B.

Truch is a sweet lady for the first x weeks of class. I honestly believe she really wants to help her students succeed, but many of her students seemed to be indifferent. Because of this she snapped and got angry at us a couple times, which made me and many kids in our class uncomfortable because it almost seemed spontaneous; like it came out of nowhere. She once was lecturing in a sweet tone one second and then suddenly frowned, slammed her hand down on the podium, and yelled, saying she was done and telling us to go home because we didn't seem engaged. Anyway, half of this class was giving speeches and listening to them and the other half was watching a video, doing a simple activity, or listening to her lecture. She does a flipped classroom so you're supposed to do all of your learning outside of class and come to class able to discuss everything. However I didn't really find reading the text to be that necessary. Watching the videos she assigns is though because they come up on her midterm, the only test in this class. Giving speeches was never fun for me, but I think that because of her feedback I did get better at public speaking. Overall, listen to what she tells you, try to make your speeches good quality, and don't seem disinterested to stay on her good side.

Nina is a really nice person... but she is really mean when it comes to grading. She grades speeches very very harshly. If she gave a speech, she would fail her own grading system. She says you don't have to memorize your speech, but if you look at your notecards once, you will be marked down a letter grade for eye contact. She does not teach very well, the whole class feels like she is stalling.

Professor Truch was a very personable and approachable professor. Truch also was very good about allowing students to choose what kind of speech they wanted to give, and allowed broad topics for speeches. The structure of the class was great, however the grading for this class always seemed unfair. An A was almost unattainable when giving a speech, and it seemed like the whole class had B's and C's. For a basic Gen Ed class, this is unfortunate. As was said in another rating, Truch's speaking skills would earn her a B based on her own grading scale.

Professor Truch was overall not too bad, but just be prepared to do a lot of work. You get to choose the types of speeches you want to do which makes it nice, but she grades really hard so make sure that you cover everything that she wants you to talk about/include in the speech. With writing assignments, she takes forever to grade them and she grades hard on those too, which sucks because you don't get your overall grade until basically the last day of class. If you ever need help or don't understand something, she is really nice in her office hours, so go whenever you need to. Make sure to stay on top of everything!! She doesn't always remind you when stuff is due or when you are giving a speech, so check polylearn and the calendar for the major stuff and don't do any of the assignments at the last minute because all of them are very time consuming. She is really nice and approachable, but just make sure you do your work the best you can.

Terrible. She would grade your speeches and give you feedback right away, but you don't get your grades back until the end of the quarter! She will give you positive reviews and like one small thing to work on, making you think you probably got like a B, and then she hands back the papers AT THE END OF THE CLASS (like literally the day of the final) and you find out you got a freaking C-. She's relatively nice and her tests are easy, she's just terrible at grading and misleading about your grade too.

Truch is a super sweet lady like the other commenters said. She clearly cares for the well being of her students. That said, her class can be frustrating with the amount of work she gives for a 100 level GE and with how slow she grades. You won't be sure what grade you have in the class until week 9 or 10. I think the overall most frustrating from her class, however, was how poorly she gives you information in a way that makes sense. The few lecture days you have make literally zero sense what she's trying to teach you. With all that said, pulling a B in her class isn't too hard.

Kind of a hard grader but I really enjoyed her class. It is obvious she is passionate for teaching and she gets that across. Not an easy A but certainly passable. I think most of the ratings on here are unfairly harsh and do not reflect her teaching.

First off, as a person, Truch isn't the worst. She likes to talk about current events and politics which was nice (unless you're conservative...she's very left) when you got sick of her pointless lectures. As a teacher, she's kind of the worst. ****The most UNFAIR part about this class is that the best speakers will NOT get the best grades.**** The most improved kids will. I'm sorry, but college courses aren't preschool soccer where we all get participation trophies. I worked hard and gave better speeches than almost anyone in my class and ended with an 89%, and because Nina *****"doesn't believe in + or -,"****** (some nice stars for emphasis because its so stupid) I got a flat B. Guess who else got a B? The girl I sat beside who showed up to half of our classes, forgot about her speech days, and admittedly had a D+ heading into the last week. She went from being a really bad speaker to an alright speaker, so Truch rounded her on up. If you consider yourself an average or above average speaker, GET A DIFFERENT TEACHER. But hey, if your bad at speaking, she'll probably give you the Nina Truch "yay, you aren't awful at speaking anymore!!!" A.

Reading the other poly ratings, I thought she was going to be a terrible teacher. It turns out, she's not too bad. The work load isn't too bad, you just have to stay on top of your stuff. She makes the speech drafts due two days before your speech date, which really helps out. The quizzes that she has, she'll tell you in advance when it is, you just have to read the book and you'll be fine. Her grading is a bit harsh if you go over your time limit (my first two speeches were both a minute over and I went from A- to B+). Overall, good professor. If you're good at public speaking you'll get an A.

Nina Truch is a public speaking professor, however I believe she was terrible at public speaking herself. When she presented information to us, it was a little difficult to keep track of what she was talking about because she was so frazzled every time she spoke. She also is an unfair grader and bases a lot of her grading on how she feels about the student rather than how the student actually performed. Also, her quizzes are ridiculously useless. If the answer to the question is correct, however not in the way she would like it (meaning more in depth then what you provide) she will take points off. She will also not tell you why she took points off, because, as I believe, she only does this out of pride and doesn’t have a real answer herself as to why points would be taken off. Overall, she’s terrible and unreasonable. She is the most difficult public speaking professor and she’s an overall bitch. She gives a ridiculous amount of work for a GE and I wouldn’t recommend taking her.

She means well, but definitely grades harder than every other coms teacher. She gives nice feedback after your speeches but then gives you a harsh grade. Try to get a different coms teacher

So Truch is a pretty hard professor for COMS. I went in really scared after reading reviews and honestly this class was doable, but it was NOT fun. It caused me so much stress all quarter long because I don't like public speaking, but also because Truch is so unorganized. She waits until the last minute to post the order for speeches, so I had to research, write, and memorize a 7 minute speech in about 4 days which was really difficult. The class is a lot of work and she is a hard grader. The one good thing about the class is you get to choose the speeches you do and you get to choose your topics. Tips for doing well: I managed to pull an A because I went to her office hours (and she actually is helpful in office hours and does care about her students which is good), but going to office hours showed her I cared which I think she liked. Also make sure you REALLY follow the outline that she provides for speeches and include ALL of the elements that speeches should have from the textbook. She grades hard on structure, so have all the necessary elements for an introduction, have good transitions/signposting, and clearly lay everything out. Make sure you actually do practice your speeches 10-15 times before presenting because I promise it really helps and you will be more confident. Overall the class is ok, and you can do well if you put in a lot of work.

Truch is the worst public speaker it amazes me that shes a coms teacher. This class isn't too bad. Maybe don't make it your first choice but if you have to take her don't fret about it.

Super sweet professor but she grades way too hard. You will only end up with a B no matter how hard you work.

Despite what other people have said, i didn't think nina truch was a bad professor at all. when people give her a bad evaluation, its not HER fault, it's the student's fault for not preparing adequately for the speeches. as long as you're willing to put in the time to write up a speaking outline at least 2-3 days before your speech is due and PRACTICE it, you'll be totally fine. nina is a very approachable person so it's up to you whether you want to do well in the class or not.

What a spastic whacko! She's just weird and I didn't really like her teaching style. She also gets really annoying when she thinks she's being funny. She seems to grade excessively hard for this introductory speech class. Ms. Truch promised that SCOM 101 would be our favorite by the end of the quarter. Ha! If it weren't for chem, speech would have been my least favorite!

She was my favorite professor i've taken at Poly! She makes the class evry interesting. She tells you exactly what she expects of you, and if you do it, you will get an A. I didn't study for the midterm or final and got a B on one and an A on the other. The two papers she asks you to write are extremely straight forward. I wrote them both the night before they were due and still recieved A's. Just give her exactly what she asks for. She is a very nice lady and is extremely willing to help you whenever you need it!

I hate to say anything bad about Nina because she is a very nice teacher, but she DOES NOT BELONG TEACHING THIS CLASS. She knows nothing about public speaking and is a horrible speaker herself. Because she doesn't know anything, she never has anything to say or teach you in class so she just rambles on and tries to waste time to make the full two hours. Make sure you read the book because the midterm is largely based on that. Don't expect to be prepared for any of your speeches either, you're going to have to figure all of that out on your own.

In my opinion, Truch was a good professor. There was a few written assignments that I would rather not have done in a speech class, but she was good. I think she really cares about teaching speech philosophies. Sure, she might stutter and say "uh" too much when talking to the class, but she cares. If you put effort into this class, like you should every college course, then you'll be fine, and you'll learn something. One thing I liked is that she did little things in class that you got you talking in front of people, it helped to make me more comfortable with the other people in the class. And yes, she probably won't give you an 'A'...........is that really the end of the world? This is college folks, you're not always going to get 'A's......... Truch is an okay professor. If you get her, it's not going to be the end of the world.

As you will see, the workload for this course is rediculous. There are pionts when you litterally have to give two speeches in a week. Her syllubus is so long that she doesn't make you print it out or read it. This teacher had like eight speeches planned out for the quarter and we only got to about six of them. She also grades the speeches hard. I would not take this teacher, don't stress yourself out over a GE. It's not worth it.

Professor Truch was the best speech teacher I've ever had. She grades fairly and encourages conversation. She is very likable and funny; she makes the often-boring material much more fun than it should be. She is also very flexible and understanding. Take her if you can!

good teacher. simple class

Nina is such a sweet person. She is definitely a little unorganized but completely understanding if you turn in a homework late. She makes sure you get to know your class and are comfortable with everyone before starting speeches which is great. Sometimes she does not make the speech assignments terribly clear but she is very easy to talk to.

nina is an extremely sweet person, it's just that her grading on speeches is unnecessarily harsh. reading off your speeches a little bit, less eye contact, monotone voice, etc. or any combination of the above guarantees you one letter grade less than an A. try not to take her if you can, you'll be guaranteed a B or C but you'll have to completely bust your ass to earn an A.

Nina is a nice woman. She is very lenient about grades. I feel like I did barely any work for this class and ended up with a B, almost like everyone else. I was able to speak better by the end, but I learned nothing about how to speak properly. She doesn't really teach anything. She's bad at managing time, because it takes about 5 days for a speech round that was supposed to last for 3 days. Can't complain about that though. Overall, easy class, but you'll probably get a B.

This professor is far below par, definitely one of the worst teachers that I have had a CalPoly so far. She is the least organized professor I have ever seen. Not one speech was uploaded into Polylearn- our final is Friday and I still have yet to know a grade for a SINGLE assignment. She rips your speeches apart, never touches on the positive things you do, only points out every single negative thing that you do. For a communications professor, she is the worst speaker I have heard. She can't complete a sentence without "uhm" "uhhhhh" "ahhhhh" etc. To succeed in this class, honestly I don't really know. I'm expecting a B in this class but that's just based on what she has said to me and how I feel that I have done. You can't really take notes because she doesn't prepare any lecture that notes should be taken on. She never assigned reading then the week before the final said "all chapters that were assigned for reading would be on the final." Made it very difficult. It's coms- it isn't brain surgery. It is a very straight forward class. Do you speeches ahead of time, practice, and no matter what you do don't expect more than a B. Also, avoid her at all costs. She sucks.

I will do my best to be as informative as possible to future students.. Analysis/Review: 1) Gives lots of homework 2) Doesn't grade homework, speeches, tests, etc until the end of the quarter -no feedback 3) Harsh grader -Spent A LOT of time on this class only to get a C+ 4) Gives lots of speeches -You will often have to juggle two speeches at once 5) Odd grading patterns -When she does grade, everyone in the class seems to get the same grades If you HAVE to take her: 1) Read the book -Although she only mentions the book at the start and end of the quarter, you should remember to read it! 2) Manage your time -You have to realize when you're spending TOO much time on this class, and it will really hurt your other classes 3) Speaking outline -You have to speak off of an outline which are worth only 5 points! If you don't have time to memorize your speech, just print out your speech and practice it a few times. Overall (rant): Bad teacher, late to class. Late to office hours (if she even comes at all). Other teachers give you far less work for an intro level course like this (just memorize vocab for the finals for other classes). Steer clear, she has been getting these same reviews since 2004.

Nina is a nice lady, but a terrible teacher. She does not explain anything, she is extremely vague on all her assignments. you are basically left to try and figure out what she wants you to do. The speeches are pretty easy to prepare. She gives two exams which you are somehow supposed to figure out what the hell you're being tested on in public speaking. She takes forever to grade anything, so you don't know how to improve and whether or not you are doing something wrong. You won't know what you have in the class the entire quarter until after the final, which is bullshit.

Nina is like a really cute puppy but not potty trained. She is like a knight in paper armor. She is like chunky smoothies that isn’t quite ready to be served. All in all she is a nice person but sucks at teaching. She is not organized and her instructions are really freakin’ vague. I sometimes wonder, it would suck to be her husband. She would tell him to go get butter from the store. And when he comes back with salted butter, oh boy is he in trouble. She doesn’t give clear instructions, and when you go on polylearn and check your grade, oh boy, ARE YOU FUCKED. Don't take her unless you have no other choice

Truch is a nice professor and she gives good/detailed feedback for speeches. The type of speaking expected is extemporaneous which means it should sound like you're having a conversation with the class, so I found the easiest way to ensure I didn't sound too stiff was studying my speeches and practicing without looking at an outline. She only has you do a few reflections and there is a quiz and one exam near the end of the quarter that covers some book material, but not a lot. Don't bother with the online speech lab thing because she never used it even once in our class. The reason I would say she isn't a good professor is because she takes forever to grade and return things, and by the end of this quarter I had no idea what I had in this class. But I guess she saw how hard I was trying in this class and gave me an A- even though I got Bs on all my speeches. In the end she isn't a very good professor and I would recommend taking someone else if you can just because of the lack of regular feedback.

Worst teacher on earth.

My motto with Truch.. As long as I get a B I'm chilling

She is terrible. I loved the class initially, because she is a nice lady who seems to care a lot about her students, but as the quarter progressed I realized that she didn't care and was incredibly lazy. She was very unclear on what assignments were due and never returned them graded. When we asked her to post grades on polylearn she always responded with "they'll be up by the weekend." They never were. So between not getting any graded work back and no grades online, I had no gauge to what my grade might be until AFTER I took the final. I figured since she was always positive about my speeches I'd end up with an easy A or high B worst case, but no. Mid-range C. Avoid her class if you can. You will end up with a C if your lucky, and even if your failing neither you nor Nina will know until the class is long over.

As far as grades go, if you are not a naturally gifted public speaker, you have to put a lot more time into preparation and practicing your speeches if you want to get an A on your speeches. Most students (including me) did't really have the time to do that. Make sure to take notes on the couple days that she does lecture, and be familiar with terms from the book before you take her final. Her curriculum was pretty disorganized, be sure to talk to her in class, during office hours, or by email if you need to clarify an assignment or remind her to post guidelines for an assignment. On a day to day basis, her class was very enjoyable. This was the one class where I actually got to know my classmates and that was pretty neat. The workload is fairly light and I found listening to and critiquing speeches fun. Lastly, if you're going to buy the textbook, get it used. Most of the book is common sense but you do need to know the terms for the final. Also, it's on Library reserve so you can get by without buying it.

Disorganized beyond belief. Had to email her about two different mistakes in my grade and she still hasn't fixed it. Was unclear about due dates and would always forget things in her office. Didn't learn much in the class either. Avoid her.

Very nice teacher who is genuinely interested in her students. HOWEVER, she is the most unorganized teacher I have ever had in my life. Do not take Truch. She cost me a full grade point in this class because she messed up my grades at the deadline to submit and gave me a much lower grade than I actually had. She forgot to put into the grade book a 75 point speech that would have given me an A in this class. Instead I scraped out a B-. Do not take her if you are looking for an easy A in a Coms class. She won't give it to you.

Good god, do not take her. I think out of all our assignments I got 2 back (out of at least 15) and by the end I had zero idea what my grade was. She is incredibly scatter brained and unorganized. The class itself was fun, the students became like a little family, and I made so many friends. Overall, I thought it was only a good class because of my peers. I do not recommend her class.

She is an extremely nice person, who does care about her students, however, her teaching is quite bad. It takes her a long time to get you back your speech results and she grades extremely hard and plays favorites. I would never take her if you could avoid, however, if you could only get into her class, just take it another quarter. There was a lot of work to do for speeches, that took her the entire quarter to grade, which means that I was never able to realize what I did wrong until it was too late. Just as a whole she is probably one of the worst professors I have ever had, but if you want a better grade, just talk to her a lot, and you should be better off.

Truch is a really nice professor. She does a good job of making the class feel comfortable with one another, and the first week is literally just getting to know the other people in the class. COMS is mainly just sitting and listening to other people's speeches, & Truch lets us pick the topics for all our speeches. Her presentations could be better, but they're not bad. The textbook we read from is super easy to comprehend with relatively short chapters. The 4 quizzes we take can't be made up, however, so don't be late on those days. She records our speeches & we have to build a website & write a reflection on how we did after each speech. Part of the course requires us to meet outside of class with our "team," a group of 4-5 other students in our class. It was actually pretty chill & nice to get to know people in a more relaxed setting. We have to write about each of our team meetings on the website as well, & we give a group presentation at the end of the quarter about an activity of our choice our team did (mine cooked pancakes, others did yoga or rock climbing). The group presentation was very informal than the other speeches, although kinda pointless. She requires outlines to be submitted 2 days before you give all your speeches (bullet points with short sentences & the entire transcript). However when I submitted an outline, I never included a transcript, wrote all my speeches the night before & did fine in the class. The research for the persuasive & informative speech is 8-10 articles & a lot of printouts about it which is annoying.

Nina Truch was a great teacher. I had her for COMS 102, and she actually made the class enjoyable. I hate public speaking, and at first was dreading the class, but now I'm glad I took it. She was really nice and on several occasions let me turn in assignments late. We had 4 speeches and a couple page or less written assignments. This class was easy, take it with the Truch.

She is a great teacher for coms really relaxed and lets you turn in things whenever but she is really really unorganized and I am always confused on whats due when!! It is a really fun class!

Truch was an excellent professor. She interspersed the lecture with activities, in order to keep our attention. I have taken other speech courses before, and I still learned many things in her course. The next quarter she enthusiastically helped me by writing a reccommendation. She is very friendly and willing to help students. If you can take her- do.

She was a friendly professor but that's about it. She had sooooooo much work due in her class- 3 major speeches, 3 "quizzes" that were actually like midterms, 2 4 page papers, self evaluations. It was a lot of work for one class. Her quizzes were all on lecture and hardly on the book. Also, she's a really hard grader on speeches. I don't know anyone who got an A in our class. She's picky about certain things and marks you down for it. Nina's an okay instructor. I don't know how other speech teachers conduct their classes but I thought the biggest downfall was all of the work. WAY TOO MUCH for a GE.

There wasn't much work, despite what other evaluations say, I got a B and I didn't do crap compared to other 4 unit classes, but I still got a lot better at speaking. I really couldn't imagine a better teacher for a speech class, she's really supportive and stuff. she gets an A.

DO NOT TAKE THIS TEACHER.The work load was rediculous. I was taking freshmen english, and stat 252 and was spending 99% of my time on this class. IT IS A GE. I could not concentrate on anything but my four page papers, my multiple page speech outlines, my five or so speeches, my three quizes(tests/midterms), and my one page self assessment after each speech. If the work load is not enough, the grading is extremely strict. I got no higher than a "c" on my papers and speeches. I was given a b- in the class and also sacrificed my other grades just to get this b-. Avoid this teacher.

There were spurts where I'd try hard for this class, and then I'd half ass it. The best way to get good at speeches is to give lots and lots of them...after a while I just got bored of putting lots of effort into speech preparation and getting B's. Nina is a fairly lively teacher, and when she lectures, it's easy to pay attention. I just found this class on the whole, very boring.

Professor Truch is an excellent teacher. She's very enthusiastic about public speaking, and is a pretty understanding and lenient person. The workload for the class is nowhere near as bad as others have claimed. Speeches are graded very loosely, be enthusiastic and well-organized when you're up there and you'll be fine. The mid-term and final are extremely easy. A highly recommended professor.

Professor Truch is very considerate towards her students and maintains an active and interesting environment. However, I found her expectations for speeches and other assignments to be quite ambiguous as far as grading is concerned. Class was also somewhat disorganized, but she is a fun, friendly teacher who is interested in her students. Also, you get to work your way up from smaller to larger speeches. Not a bad choice for a speech teacher.

Professor Truch is an awesome speech teacher to take. She turns one of the most dreaded GEs into one of the most enjoyable that I have taken. She is extremely friendly and approachable; the type of person that you can walk up to and have a good chat with any time. The best thing about her is that she encourages us to talk about what WE want, and what interests US the most, in our speeches. As long as you follow the proper format and grammar in presenting it, you will do well in the class. There are two relatively easy midterm tests, and a "final" speech which is actually the easiest speech of all to make, becuase (1) It's about your personal character and beliefs, and (2) You will have already done three to four other speeches in the class so you already feel comfortable. Anyone who's been dreading speech classes but have to take them anyway, take Professor Truch! It'll be the most fun speech class you've ever taken.

She's a very easy teacher. we only had one speech that was really long, all the other speeches ranged from 2 to 6 minutes. She lets you use notecards, and sometimes records your speeches. She only gives one test, and it's really easy, everyone usually does really good on it.

she was an alright teacher, but she didn't seem to get the point across of what she really wanted us to learn. Make sure you read the handbook because I didn't bother and the midterm ended up having random questions for the handbook on it. The community service project helped because it was easy points, but she does grade fairly hard on speeches.

Nina is great! There is very little work given in her class and she's super chill. Only one exam all quarter (no final) The exam is super easy just do the very little reading and review the notes. We wrote 1 paper and had to prepare 2 speeches. Plus we do a class community service project that can be really fun and we get credit for it. If you're nervous about speaking and want to improve in an environment that teaches w/o being overly critical take NINA! (No grade b/c quarter isn't over yet)

If you look at the Polyratings, the last "A" a student received was in 2004. Yes, it is nearly impossible to get an A in this course. She told us that, on average, only 1 or 2 students will receive A's per quarter. I am of Junior standing and this is the first, and only class, I have received anything less than an A in. I have had straight A's in all my major classes, GE's, everything, except in her course. She gave us more written assignments than I received in my argumentative writing course. Her speech that she gives for us was full of stutters, stammers, and riddled with "uh's". I don't feel she is properly prepared to give this class when she is not the best public speaker herself, or even a decent one. I like her as a person, but come on... the class is far too much work for being an entry level speech course. Grad schools only see the B and don't realize that a B in her course is like receiving an A in any entry level speech course at Poly. I felt her presentation of the material was inappropriate for a SCOM professor as was her courseload.

I know I'm not a good public speaker to begin with, but I know for a fact that her class did nothing to improve it. Overall she's disorganized and doesn't follow her own syllabus. Don't take her class if you can avoid her.

I agree with everyone who said that the work load for this class was a little extreme. Not to toot my own horn, but I am pretty good at public speaking, and I never got higher than a B on any of my speeches. I think that she also really played favorites with the brown-nosers of the class. After listening to their boring speeches and found out that they got a higher grade than me, I was a little annoyed. I am just glad to have gotten yet another boring GE class out of the way.

Nina is just be the dumbest teacher I've ever had. She ripped us for all of our grammatical errors, then started listing the most common ones on the board. Tough break for everyone when she couldn't explain which was the wrong way and which was the right way. Her activities are a complete joke and a waste of time. Her lectures make no sense and are completely useless, but always last the entire time. That being said, I wrote every speech the night or morning it was due and got an easy B in the class. If you can deal with stupid people, this class is for you.

Nina Truch is a decent teacher. She is nice and seemingly cares about the students. However, she is definitely a hard grader and overall, a semi-hard teacher. The one thing i really enjoyed about her class was that we could pick literally any topic we wanted to (there were speeches ranging from marijuana to south park to sports to anything you can imagine). Attendance does count in this class so be there if you want to pass. She is always willing to help students and give advice on how to structure a speech when you may be stuck for ideas. I would recommend her to any student who wants to take speech with a teacher that is flexible in her policies and willing to help.

Nina is overal a decent teacher I suppose... Just be ready for non-stop speeches. She grades fairly hard (if you are trying to get an A in the class). Her lectures contain about 10 minutes of material, but she manages to drag it out to fill the whole 2 hours which is anoying. I personaly did not think she was a good public speaker herself, or had the ability to teach anyone to become a good public speaker. Shes nice, she just doesnt have much input on how to be a better speaker.

You don't learn anything in this class. We did some community service project that went from here to nowhere. She grades kinda hard on speeches but just pay attention. I do not recommend her though.

If you want to sit in a totally unorganized meaningless class for a quarter then take Truch. She did not teach me anything new, and was a completely unfair grader. She expects us to speak so well, when she herself does not set a fine example. She tries to be funny, but is annoying.

When she talks its really pointless. she can be funny and nice and its a neat idea to do community service projects. But the lectures are tedious. they are random material that she puts together. im not really sure, bvut it gets annoying. she alos holds her hands weird, which is only a pet peve because she criticized me on the way i moved my hands during one of my speches. when i think her hands are really distracting. the mid term was not too bad because i skimmed the reading but i think the average was about a 55%

I just wasted how many dollars on a book for this class that we never used?

Where to start with professor Truch. Well, first of all, she is a very nice lady, but her class and grading are very hard. She gives a load of work, and on top of that you have to do a community service assignment. Throughout the whole quarter, everyone i talked to had a C. She really likes to give Cs. This was probably my hardest class simply because of the amount of work we had to do. And she randomly gave us a quiz of 20 chapters she never reminded us to read.If you like staying up late and writing full sentence outline, five page papers, annotated reference lists, and topic outlines, then this is the class for you!

On the first day she asked us all to call her Nina, she is super nice and she tries to be funny and tells good stories. There is not a ton of learning and most of us had no idea that there was going to be a final based on the reading, so nobody in the class read because we thought she forgot about it, watch out for that one. Other then that though it really isnt hard to pull a b. I did not really practice any of my speeches but got one. The stuff she writes on your speech grading sheets is really helpful. In one of her activities we got to spy on a pair of people and document it, which was actually really fun. Take her, she is a tough grader but she gives b's pretty freely as long as you try.

Nina is a woman who cares a lot about her students but does not seem to know how to effectively teach her material. I do not feel like I have finished her class a better speaker. Also, I worked very hard and still received only a B. What I DID love about her class: the first week was spent on a bunch of ice breakers and other activites that let us know/judge our classmates. If you take her class, you will know what I mean by "judge." One time I forgot to bring an assignment to class and she was understanding and let me email it to her later in the day. The fact that she makes us do service hours is annoying but semi-rewarding in the end.

Nina Truch, where do we start. Let me say that Truch is disorganized and hardly follows her syllabus (in fact, just throw it away, its practically irrelevant). If that bothers you, take someone else... With that said, I WOULD recommend her for SPC 102. The first two weeks you do nothing but activities to get you acquainted with your classmates so that when you give a speech you feel a little more comfortable, and this did help. You have a total of 5 speeches all quarter, but really only like 2. Let me explain... the first is a 2-minute "Introduction Speech" about a classmate. Piece of cake. The second is an under 3-minute "Oral Interpretation" where you pick a piece of literature/what-have-you, and read it with the intended emotion from the author. You do not have to have it memorized. Easy. The bigger ones are the Informative and Persuasive Speech. The Informative is pretty straight-forward (6-8 minutes, a lot of written work, cited sources, etc) and the Persuasive Speech is done in groups of 4. Its based on a hypothetical fundraiser and you're broken into categories (Sponsors, Accounting, Marketing, etc.) and you have 25 minutes as a group to explain why you're ideas for your category are logical/economical/good. This didn't go too well in my class, so I don't know if she'll continue this. We were supposed to do an "Impromptu Speech" but it was cancelled. The final is a 3-minute "Life-Philosophy" speech with no written work. Just come in, give it, and be done. A lot of people winged it. About mid-quarter there is a multiple choice test based on the lectures and the readings, its pretty easy. I ended up being 5 (out of like 700) points away from an A-. And that would be my main complaint with this class... in speech there is always something you can improve on, so its tough to get an A, but pretty easy to get a B.

Its really hard to fail her class unless you dont do any of the assignments she assigns. There is a lot of stuff for this class besides the speeches and it is somewhat time consuming. You have 4 reflections, community service, 5 speeches, essay exam, and a midterm. Towards the end of the course she will not have a lot of stuff graded so she just gives you a random grade. Like for the reflections she actually graded it and I got an 8 out of 10. The last 3 reflections I did not care for and got a 10 out of 10. Essay exam, BSd it and got a 55 out of 60. Midterm is about random stuff from the book and she does not even apply the stuff we learn from the book to the class. This class is just really random. The only advice I would give if you are taking this class is that the first 5 weeks are really slow paced and most of the stuff is due the last 5 weeks so watch out!

She is a really unorganized teacher. She assigns stuff due on mondays(assigned fridays) and doesn\'t even post the assignment details on blackboard til monday mornings. I guess she\'s too busy partying over the weekends to post the details. She did this for every assignment due mondays. And she assigned a written final exam (viewable via blackboard) that we only had two days to complete (posted friday, exam disappears sunday night and is 15% of class grade). And get this. She didnt even talk about the exam EVEN ONCE in class. That\'s right. So no one in our class knew except for me and this other girl. So sent Truch an email on saturday (when we found out the exam existed) letting her that no one in the class knew about it. And no response. Once again, busy partying. We get a mass email from her at 10:30 on sunday night. First off, very unprofessional behavior. Second of all, she said in the email that she talked about the exam and sent an email about it. What a liar. She didnt mention it all. And get this. She says \"ill extend the deadline to monday night so all of you can finish the exam.\" Well truch your not doing a favor. It\'s your fault no one knew about it. And all this is happening the weekend before finals week. Truch, your comps102 is not even close to important to me compared to my other classes. I have more priorities. So stop being a pain in the butt.

She\'s a great person, but a horrrrible teacher. She is very unorganized, there is many (dozens) assignments due that you would never know about unless you can manage to find your way through the maze that is her blackboard. She never says when anything is due, and grades rather hard on top of that. You don\'t really do anything for the class until finals week when you have to write two speeches, take the written exam, and finish about four hundred assignments that you didn\'t know about until the last day...

She\'s an okay professor, but a really hard grader. The requirements for speeches aren\'t very clear, she only puts the instructions up on Blackboard so it\'s up to you to go over them because she doesn\'t do it in class. She is a hard grader too, and the midterm was pretty ridiculous because it was on some material we had never gone over in class. But she\'s pretty nice and chill most of the time. There are probably better teachers, but she\'s okay.

Professor Truch is kind of a nice lady occasionally, but she flipped out on our class once and started crying and complaining about how we looked bored and weren\'t participating enough. It was weird, and a bit alarming. No to mention extremely unprofessional. The class was easy to get a B in without doing much. There weren\'t too many speeches, and she isn\'t good at time management so we ended up having less speeches than the syllabus said we would have. Unfortunately, she didn\'t give us any graded speeches back until the very last day of class, so I made the same mistakes on all 4 speeches because I didn\'t know what she wanted me to improve upon. I got the highest grade on the midterm and still got a B in the class. It\'s an easy B, but I don\'t know of anyone who has gotten an A.

For COMS 102: Very nice woman and gives very good speeches in class. I liked the topics we had to speak about but she tries too hard to incorporate quizzes and tests. We never really go over much in the class and DO NOT BUY THE BOOKS. They\'re a waste of money and I probably opened mine twice - not to mention the bookstore won\'t buy them back. She sends you to the internet to look up the stuff anyways. She doesn\'t cover the info. for tests and quizzes very well anyways, so the internet is your friend for this class.

I loved Professor Truch. She explains exactly what you have to do to do well on the speeches. If you follow the guidelines, you should get an A on the speech. The only thing is if your not good at public speaking and really nervous, quiet, monotone, etc. then you might have some difficulty because she does grade off that. She gives plenty of time to do the speeches. But don\'t buy the book! Waste of money, you only open it for the midterm which is a joke because it is random questions from the book. But overall, its a good class.

Nina was so great! shes super nice, and the class wasn't that hard. i wrote my speeches either the night before or the day of and got a B in the class. she let me turn in stuff the next day when i forgot it, and she really cares about her students. yeah, she was kinda unorganized and a little frazzled, but not worse than any of my high school teachers. everyone in the class became friends too, she made it a really comfortable atmosphere.

Alright, well, the woman is terribly unorganized and grades extremely inconsistently. I am always down to do all the work assigned in classes, and I've only ever received A's here at my time at Poly, but she is going to be my first B. the grading literally makes no sense. it's like she sits there and randomly thinks of a grade to give. if you want an easy class, take this; if you want an A, don't. it's not hard stuff and for the most part it was really fun, but i found myself rolling my eyes at a lot of the stuff she said and every time i got a grade back.

Truch is not the best professor to take. Avoid her if you can. She does not help you learn how to give speeches and she gives everyone Bs (literally everyone got Bs). She takes off points for no reason. She wrote on my comments "Great visual aid. Really enhanced your presentation," then took off 3 points. 4/6 speeches I got an 85 and there's never a clear explanation of why. If you want to get an A, take another professor.

Nina seems like a nice teacher, but she grades extremely hard for no reason. She will duduct a lot of points if you go a minute or two over your speech time, and she doesn't explain her reasoning for her grades. I thought I did very well on one of my speeches and all my peers felt the same, and she gave me a C because I "read off my notes". Thing is, I was giving an informative speech that was 8 minutes long...so its a given I would be reading somewhat off of my notes. I wouldn't take this course if you expect an A, but if you want a B or a C, take it.