Historical instructor

Gay Seidman

Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 3.68/5 from 28 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

What students say

Original student reviews · all captured dates

C&ESOC/SOC 630
Quality 3/5Difficulty 3/5
Professor Seidman is very approachable and wants you to succeed. At the same time, she teaches from a very limited perspective and doesn't really introduce alternative viewpoints and perspectives. Powerpoints are a jumble of article summaries and pictures without clear progression. Often goes on tangents and is generally just hard to follow.
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C&ESOC/SOC 630
Quality 5/5Difficulty 3/5
Professor Seidman is very intelligent and has a genuine passion for teaching. It was one of the bests classes I've ever taken. I always left the class with so much knowledge. If you do not go to class it is hard to catch up since her class is mostly discussion-based.
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C&ESOC/SOC 630
Quality 3/5Difficulty 3/5
Professor Seidman was super nice and always in a good mood to teach. You can tell she is very knowledgeable and loves what she does. However, the lectures seemed a little disorganized at times and she downgraded me for not knowing things/"reflecting completely" on things that weren't discussed in class.
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C&ESOC/SOC 630
Quality 5/5Difficulty 4/5
This class was definitely different compared to other sociology courses I have taken. Dr. Seidman was very clear on her grading rubric and very flexible as well as responsive to questions on clarifications. Lectures are heavily discussion based and there were lots of readings for class assignments.
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C&ESOC/SOC 630
Quality 5/5Difficulty 4/5
Right from the beginning, it is clear that she knows much about the subject. She values student input and encourages participation. The class atmosphere was very relaxed, and the majority of the weekly work was to complete online readings. Grades were determined by written exams and papers, all of which had generally loose prompts and good feedback
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C&ESOC/SOC 630
Quality 5/5Difficulty 3/5
Prof Seidman was very exciting, lively, and passionate about the topics. She clearly cares about her students and wants them to succeed. She even brought snacks for us to the midterm and final exams! Lectures are interesting. overall pretty good class and experience.
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Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.

Classes with Gay Seidman

No teaching recorded in Fall 2026.

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Recorded teaching history

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Teaching history may be incomplete. Course pages contain course-specific feedback and citations.

Instructor identity & provenance
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