[ASTR BC1754] Stars, Galaxies, and Cosmologies

Are you an art or humanities major? Do you need to fulfill your science requirement? Didn't get into a psych lab? Don't like the idea of environmental science? Like stars? Maybe this class is for you! Yay!

This class was fine. I wish I could give a rave review or brutal critique, but it was just so blah. Professor Kay has a genuine interest in the subject, is clear and organized, and occasionally makes some funny (if incredibly geeky) comments, but somehow, none of that helped.

I think the class lacked energy because so many of us were there to fulfill a science requirement, and Professor Kay knew it. And she was very open about it. I have never had a professor tell me it was OK that I was pass/failing her course, or that getting a C was enough. It's upsetting to me that she didn't care. If she had come into the room with the goal of convincing us that we should be astronomy majors, I feel like the class would have had been much more engaging.

On the other hand, she knows who her audience is (English, Film, Theatre, Art History, Philosophy, and Architecture majors), and teaches accordingly - lots of pretty pictures. One lecture had absolutely no math, but tons of political issues and whatnot.

About half the class only showed up for the midterm, quizzes, and to turn in homework. Professor Kay puts all the PowerPoints online, and if you purchase the textbook, you're set for the all of the homeworks. Somewhere around spring break she started showing a lot of videos every class, mostly melodramatic documentaries/interviews with astronomers with Morgan Freeman narrating.

Oh, last but not least: On the first day of class, she ok'd food and drinks, but banned laptops. By the end of the semester, there were usually about 3-5 people on laptops in every class. Just something to note.

Prof. Kay is great; she's pretty funny, brings in toys during quizzes, and shows a lot of movies. She posts the powerpoints on CourseWorks so you can easily get away with missing a class, but I found myself hardly every wanting to skip her class. Life in the Universe is particularly interesting towards the end of the semester, when she covers alien abductions and UFO sightings. Stars, Galaxies, and Cosmology isn't too hard and it covers some of the same material as Life in the Universe so some of it is just review.

Professor van Gorkom is an extremely friendly and accessible professor who is eager to help her students. She loves astronomy and can get students excited about the subject matter. That said, I was often frustrated at the fact that the lectures did not prepare us AT ALL for the difficulty of the problem sets. The problem sets were heavy on the math and physics, while the lectures involved fun discussions about pretty pictures of stars. You walk away from the lectures thinking the class is a breeze, and then you get hit with a problem set from hell. She is more than willing to help you sort it out, but that's not always enough. This tests actually aren't nearly as bad, though- they focus more on the concepts you read up on in the book, which are simple enough to grasp if you devote the necessary time and effort- which is quite a bit. All in all, the lectures are clearly pretty useless, so if you don't understand her through her accent, don't worry. And seriously, the accent isn't quite as bad as some of the previous reviews suggest.
Basically, although I think van Gorkom is a sweetie who really knows her stuff, for a liberal arts student like myself, taking this class is a source of unnecessary stress.

I love Laura Kay! She's funny, interesting, and takes her class seriously, even when most of the other students don't. Her power points were useful, especially to bring to the quizzes or to fill out the "cheat sheet" for the final. I wish I had taken my first semester with her instead of Patterson, but thankfully I had enough sense to switch over spring semester. Stop debating and DO IT!

She would post all her notes online, and in her class she would just go through them. Some classes were super-interesting and some very super-boring. The problem sets are easy beyond imagination, but her tests are amibigious and too general.