My Favorite Professors at Rutgers University

Beware: This is an extremely nerdy posting.

I really liked the majors I picked, English and philosophy, and I'm writing about my favorite professors from these departments. Even though I probably didn't have a tight bond with a lot of these professors, I really learned a lot from their lectures and will continue to remember them.

1. Professor Mark Colby. Professor Colby is a philosophy professor that I had for Marx and Marxism and Philosophy of Social Sciences. He is an amazing teacher because he was so thorough with whatever he was teaching. Aside from that, I like his teaching style because he is very straightforward. He doesn't try to coddle students and will declare you right or wrong. (I appreciate this because most philosophy students that I have come across are know-it-all's and have a smug attitude.) Aside from teaching style, he is an easy grader because the assessment isn't important to him, but the fact that you learned something. Another reason I like him is because he is a fan of Kantian philosophy. (Kant is my favorite philosopher :))

2. Professor Greg Jackson. Professor Jackson is an English professor I had for Shakespeare and Gothic classes. If you take him, be prepared to do A LOT of work. For both those classes, we had to memorize a time line with 60 dates on it. And for the Shakespeare class, we had to memorize the "To be or not to be" Hamlet soliloquy and the "Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow" Macbeth soliloquy. I think that this much work is a little unnecessary because no one will remember those passages after the class is over. (But he focuses on historic criticism, so it makes sense that he puts the novels/plays we read in a social context.) Even with all the work, the classes I had with him were great because he is a very enthusiastic lecturer. He takes time to meet with students too, and makes all his students meet him at least twice a semester, and I think this is a great idea because he was really trying to reach out to us. And of course, he's an easy grader.

3. Professor Larry Temkin. Professor Temkin is a philosophy professor I had for Intro to Moral and Social Issues. I had taken this class a long time ago when I was still a naive sophomore. Professor Temkin would add jokes and personal stories into his lectures to help illustrate different examples of moral philosophy. I found the topics and social issues i.e, abortion, euthansia, lying, etc., very fascinated. He never took sides on the issues either, which shows that he wanted his students to be as unbiased as possible. One of the main reasons I loved this class so much was because he introduced me to Immanuel Kant. (woo-hoo!)

4. Professor Lauren Neitzke. Professor Neitzke is a geology professor I had for Dinosaurs. I'm not a real big fan of sciences, but she made this class really fun. You can tell she wanted her students to do well because of all the extra credit opportunities and review sessions she would create. I think I liked her class because I just love dinosaurs so much!

5. Professor Figueria. Professor Figueria is a Classics professor that I had for Greek and Roman Mythology class I took during the summer. The class was extremely detailed but I really enjoyed it because of all the different stories I got to learn. He was a generous grader and his exams were pretty easy. (I guess he had to make it easy because we had to remember so many names and myths!) To be fair, I had taken this class during the summer, so I don't know how this class is like during a regular semester.

6. Professor Mathew Buckley. Professor Buckley is an English professor I had for 20th Century Drama II. I really liked this class because he focused on the avant garde movement during the 20's to the 40's. If I hadn't taken this class I would never have learned about dadadism, futurism, and surrealism in plays and novels.

So here are some of my favorites at Rutgers! I had a lot more professors and classes to discuss, but this will do for now. I'm really lucky that I had a lot of classes that were interesting and fun, and I hope you had classes like that too. Even though I had these amazing professors, there were many professors and classes I had that were awful. And I will definitely write about them in the future.