PPOL 3200

Awesome class. Volden is a funny and nice guy, and his lectures are very informative and interesting. He is also very friendly and helpful in office hours. Lectures consist mainly of powerpoint presentations, in which Professor Volden breaks down critical political issues and analyzes potential policy solutions. He makes sure to stay non-partisan and focuses more on government policy and less on partisan politics. He can be a little monotone and sometimes the information can get dry, but I found the lectures fascinating as a whole. Homework consists of weekly readings, which deal largely with political philosophy and theory. Volden also has you read a book on the policy process, though I think the book is most useful to people seriously considering the Batten School or an MPP. (For reference, I did about half of the weekly reading and almost none of the policy book and I got an A-) I found the most interesting and informative reading by far to be the CQ Researcher, which specifically breaks down political issues and formulates solutions using facts and data. Grades consist of a policy memo (written in 3 drafts), an open-book midterm taken in class, a group presentation, 3 insight memos written about other groups' presentations, and an open-book, take-home final. The work is not that difficult, especially if you find the topics interesting. I found the group presentation work to be kind of fun, though it does take up a significant amount of time at the end of the semester. And by the way, he keeps attendance using a clicker system of sorts. Lastly, Caitlin was an excellent TA- she's very approachable and helpful, and her discussions were enjoyable. Bottom line: I would highly recommend this class to anyone interested in politics, policy, or government in general. This class is not limited to Batten students, though it is obviously a required course for their curriculum. I took it as a first year and found the work-load to be completely reasonable. Highly recommend the course, the professor (Volden) and my TA (Caitlin).

Professor Volden is an amazing lecturer. If you have any interest in the world of policy/politics, I would definitely recommend this class. The workload isn't terrible. There are readings for every class but they mostly aren't directly incorporated into the exams, so it's definitely possible to skim through many of them. There is a policy memo to write, but there are multiple drafts and TA's can offer a lot of guidance. There is also a presentation for your entire discussion section to complete during a lecture together. There's a midterm and a final. Both are open-note and the final was take-home. Overall, this was a fun class, and if you make sure you understand how to use and apply each framework, and work hard on the memo, the grading shouldn't seem too bad. Volden is awesome so take this class!

Mike Bock is an awesome TA and Varon's a really interesting lecturer. There's quite a bit of outside group work with your discussion section but not a big deal. Kind of a lot of reading but both the midterm and final are open note so it's an overall easy, awesome class

The most frustrating part about this class was the lack of curve. While the content is not at all difficult to grasp, the TA's have to find ways to lower your grade in order to even out the grade distribution. Overall, I would not say this is the best class to discover whether or not public policy is the best field for you. I would go to an upper level course that delves deeper into course content.

Really not a good course. As an Econ and Politics major this class is honestly just dumb. Overly simplistic too the extent that it is often ridiculous and even worse the "frameworks" you learn are treated like some sort of holy-grail. Volden is knowledgeable and a good lecture but the class content is tedious and useless. I have never felt like I honestly learned less than in this class. Overall, the grading can be highly subjective just because most of the class is formed on fluid frameworks graded very rigidly by TA's whom I found unqualified. Hope to see Volden teach a different course as he is quite talented, but would never recommend this particular course.

Overall, I enjoyed this class. I don't know how accurate the grade distribution thing on course forum is because averages on most assignments were significantly lower than an A-, but overall pretty easy to get an A-/B+. To get an A you definitely need to put in the time on your memo and group project as well as study hard for the midterm (average was a 75%). I really enjoyed my discussion and if you take this class and he TA's again take it with Connor Maxwell as your TA he was great. For the memo grading it can be frustrating because you will lose points on things on the second and third drafts that were never mentioned on the preceding drafts as being a problem, but overall i think the average memo grade turned out to be an 85 or so. I also liked the subject matter although you hit a lot of different topics and only scratch the surface on each. Overall would recommend but you will often feel uncertain in your grade in most cases and not a ton of people get a straight up A.

I really enjoyed this class. Volden is a great lecturer (albeit a bit dry) and concepts are easy enough to understand if you attend all the lectures and take notes. All the powerpoints are posted online, but they slides themselves won't help you very much. And honestly, you don't need to do the readings to do well here (I hardly did any of them and snuck away with an A-).

Make sure you know what you're getting with this class. It is NOT a politics class--it's a policy one. You'll learn how people interact with and create laws. This is a MUST if you think you'll apply to Batten.

Prof Volden is a great lecturer. He's got a dry sense of humor and is engaging. There are 3 memos (1 actual memo, 2 response memos), a group presentation, a midterm, and a final. He is a tough grader on the tests and memos but the curves the class in the end so the average is about a 90. Would recommend this class if you are looking for a wide variety of policy samples and tools for examining and creating policy! This is a Public Policy class, but you don't have to be in Batten. If you're interested in public policy, go the first day and see what you think- it is a ~200 person class!

I went into this class with high expectations. I was not satisfied; the reviews on CourseForum were different from how I felt about this class. Volden was an extremely tough grader (his TAs, technically). His rubric for the memo is extremely specific. His midterm was unfair. I felt that the work I was putting into the class was not well reflected from my grades. This may be how people were motivated to push it out, but I found myself feeling more frustrated with each grade. This class also gets extremely dry as the semester went on. The frameworks become more broad and Volden does not thoroughly explain how they apply to policy. I wish that I enjoyed this class, but I am afraid that it just drives people away from Public Policy.

Volden is a good lecturer for the most part, sometimes a little boring. The content of the class for the first half is interesting and applicable, after that it gets too theoretical and Volden's examples become more and more tenuous. The readings get less and less important as the semester progresses. The midterm is fair but toughly graded. The problem with the class is the policy memo and how it's graded. For the first draft, you get a useless rubric and little to no information about the content or format from your TA and Volden. The average for the first draft of the memo is around a 70. For the second draft, you get a much more specific rubric, your TA actually tells you what it should look like, and the average grade goes up to an 80. For the final memo, you just make the edits your TA suggests from the second draft, and the average is a 90. Volden and the TA's claim that this grade increase is the result of the students getting better at writing memos, which is not the case. My memo from draft one to final product barely changed in content, mostly in visual appearance, but my grade went from a 68 to a 95. You just have to hope that you beat the predetermined average for each draft if you want a good grade. If you like classes where you are provided with the tools to succeed, or that your grade is a reflection of how hard you worked, this class is not for you.