Professor
Planning & Landscape Architect
PHD 1975 Univ of Wisconsin-Madison
71.8% of students reported.
It is difficult to learn from her slides. They are often loaded with text and it becomes difficult to know what is actually expected from you on the exams. I still suggest taking 381, but it will be a lot of independent work. There are no practice exams available, no note cards, and she usually answers students questions with another question :/
Prof Howell is such a frustrating teacher to learn under. Her grading criteria is stringent and not based in anything, just her objective opinion of the assignment. Her lectures are boring and are often screenshots of the textbook. She is difficult to access during her office hours and can be condescending to her students during office hours.
Evelyn was an okay professor. She could definitely use some help with technology as she sometimes messed up her slides, but it didn't ruin lecture. Her lectures were sometimes boring, but the material wasn't too hard and you don't have to read the textbook.
Incredibly nice professor. Lectures can be long at times but they present good information. Online quiz questions taken almost straight from the lecture, lots of papers and projects but they provide good additional insight into the topics. I came into the class just looking for filler credits, but thoroughly enjoyed the content of the class by her
LA250 is a waste of time that drained most of the interest I had in landscape architecture. TAs take months to grade 3-page papers, the lecture videos are dry & overly long, (sometimes the images on screen lag and don't even match up to the topic) and most of the assignments are needlessly complex. Good luck trying to gain anything from this class.
Nice person, but lectures were boring, disorganized, & frustratingly fast to the point that it was almost pointless to take notes, although the ecology content is easy. Lecture notes are detailed & thorough which helped for the exam. Grading criteria on p-sets/exams are not very clear, kind of harsh. In-class problems are graded for participation.
RIDICULOUS workload. Copious lecture notes needed to do well on quizzes. So many papers (citations needed from outside research). Tough grader. Assignment criteria often contradictory. Forum post deadline changed on a whim. Howell knows her stuff but not rational on workload for a 3 credit class. Grading NOT done timely. TA's fell behind.
Took Land Arc 250 online. Bad decision. So many projects, got at least 2 a week it seemed. Many are not due until a week or two later but they pile on top of each other. Defiantly would not take this class again.
Nice person, but mediocre professor. Lectures are boring, content is random facts loosely interconnected, and lecture notes are unorganized. Exam content is difficult to predict and can be graded ridiculously harshly. Textbook is a total waste of money and time. Material is easy, but grading is picky. Not the quality I would expect in honors class.
While I wasn't taking a Biology class, it's clear that she cares about her students and really loves what she teaches.
Prof. Howell had very detailed lecture notes which was helpful for when I was sick or couldn't make class. However, her lectures were often boring since she talked so fast that I wasn't able to handwrite. I usually printed her notes and annotated them. She is a very nice person and willing, and excited, to answer any questions that you might have.
Worst professor I've had in a while. She treats everyone like children and way over explains useless information. She also goes through slides like it's a race with too much on each slide. Good luck!
Don't waste your time reading the textbook for the ecology unit, everything on the test is lecture only. She lectures way too fast but posts the lecture notes online before lectures, so you can make it work. The material itself isn't that hard, she put me to sleep during almost every lecture and I still did fine. Sign up for peer mentoring!
So I'm going to lay it down nice and real for everyone looking to take Landscape Architecture 250 with Evelyn Howell. Stop looking to take this class. There are multiple 15+ page papers due in this class that are worth barely 15% each of your total grade. When the number of pages on a paper are higher than the % of your grade, stay FAR away.
Not my favorite professor but adequate at presenting material. Requires dedication to stay awake, but if you can manage that you'll make it.
Clear speaker with fair expectations. Posts lecture notes online. Material was boring and not too difficult (esp if you took AP Bio). Do NOT buy the EcologyEvolution text! It's quite useless (exams based only on lecture), pricy, and can't be resold to bookstore. The Genetics text is more useful, but try to get the cheaper International version.
Lectures are OK, notes are given but poorly organized and formatted. The book is a waste of money - Mostly useless, and you can't even sell it since its only a certain semester's edition.
Study the problem sets, exams are the same format Do peer mentoring (but it depends on who you get as mentors) Do NOT buy the textbook. Nothing from the textbook will ever be on the exams Exam content is hard to predict Attend lecture for iclicker points, but do other homework during lecture. Study from lecture notes. Good luck
Decent class, obviously rushed and trying to cram far too much material into a short period of time. Lectures are awful for note-taking, because she gets sidetracked on something useless, and then speeds through important things. Refuses to put lecture slides up after class. Cannot make Iclicker work either.
Poorly organized lectures. Knows her material fairly well, but uneducated in other areas. Not very friendly out of class.
She's such a nice person, but such a poor instructor. Her lectures are not conducive to note-taking. She spends 5 min talking about a picture, then throws up 3 paragraph-long definitions, reads through them, and moves on without giving anyone a chance to keep up. Her explanations tend to make concepts more complicated than they actually are.
She's a nice person, but a poor lecturer, because she just reads off of her ppt slides. And then she puts her lecture notes (which are the text from her ppt slides) online, so there's really no reason to go to class, or to listen to her if you did go. I spent most of her lectures studying for another class...
One of the worst professors I have had to endure, other than Phil Simon who unfortunately is also a Bio301 professor. Lectures are boring and pointless, don't bother trying to take notes. Her powerpoint slides are terrible with organization and clarity. I am pretty confident that a 5th grader could give a better ppt presentation.
Not the most engaging lecturer and covers a lot of material very quickly, but she is a very kind person and likes to talk with students.
She covers a lot of information in a short amount of time, but I loved having her as a professor. She is such a sweet lady! You can really tell that she loves Biocore. Don't bother reading the long chapters that she assigns because they are not very helpful.
She reads everything right off of the powerpoint slides, which inevitably makes lectures kinda dull. Memorization of lists of information is a must for the exams. However, it is obvious that she loves teaching for Biocore.
She tries to cram in A LOT of info in a very short time, so that's annoying, but she's pretty funny and biocore is definitely worth taking
She's nice, but her lectures are boring. maybe that's because I don't really like evolution or ecology, but I often found she was just reading the slides. Not interesting at all.
Evelyn is a nice lady who genuinely seems like she wants her students to understand. Most of the ecology material was self-explanatory, so it wasn't necessary to read the textbook. However, exam grading is STRICT- you lose tenths of points so beware!
I kind of liked her...She was kind of interesting...but her tests were not at all what was covered in lecture...wasnt horrible and wasnt great
Her test questions were bizarre. Didn't have much to do with what we covered in class. Nothing to do with homework. Hard to know what to study. Not very helpful. Is this real science or pseudoscience.
Overall impression was a negative one. She is very interested in understanding and trying to make the class atmosphere postitive (asks for feedback, etc.) but her information is uninteresting (could just be me) and her questions on multiple choice exams were really out there. She seems to really pride herself in being a pyromaniac...
A decent professor, but Biocore is tough.
Yeah, its pretty true that Biocore absorbs your life, especially the lab (302). But if you are serious about what you are doing, and genuinely like biology, the class is really cool. Small class sizes are awesome and the TAs are really helpful. If you really value your social life, you should probably take zoo 151.
Evelyn does a good job lecturing, but the ecology unit is really uninteresting and the exam is really hard. Overall, Biocore 301 isn't a bad class. 302 is what makes your life a living hell.
Easily the worst lecturer I have had at this university. She does not even seem to follow presentation guidelines set by her own program for its students (as in, not reading directly from powerpoint slides). But, since you do not learn much, she is not a difficult professor.
If you want to completely dedicate your life to two classes (biocore 301, 302) go ahead and take them. They are hardcore. Tons of outside work and hard exams. Lectures are just so-so because they cram so much information into a semester. Most people in this class hate it. So beware!
biocore is the worst crlm. ever, don't take it, no school even thinks its any diff. from reg zoo/bot, test blow, cover minor detail barely mentioned in lec. and all short answer, plus they take like .3 pts off adn stuff, so you never get full credit, I'm going to go kill myself now
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Got crazy with the ecology stuff. Had online outlines for lectures, so that was nice. Good lecturer, but boring subject.