COMM 2020

A very rude and disrespectful woman. As a teacher, not totally unfair in terms of grading but a horrible lecturer. I did quite well on both midterms and not quite as well on the final but still did okay. However, you will have to teach everything to yourself in this course and then sit there in lecture and listen to her subpar explanations of only a few of the homework problems. As a teacher, she needs to restructure her class to make students more engaged during her lectures. Mary Erickson did a great job with the structure of her financial accounting class and I would advise that Middleton takes a couple notes on her class. As a person, Middleton straight up sucks. Even though she can use the argument that "the real world is tough so grow up," she is simply rude and disrespectful to nearly all students. That is not how the real world is. Very arrogant and unapproachable. I advise her to humble up and go to church or something like that

Professor Middleton has easily become one of my favorite professors at U.Va. She's tough--don't get that wrong. She's demanding. But she's there to make sure you understand the material. She holds extensive office hours while assigning a good amount of homework, but all to make sure that you understand the material. While she's tough, she's easily one of the nicest, most kind people I've ever met. Highly recommend her class to anyone.

For all the bad reviews Professor Middleton has received on this site, I came into this class scared that I would not be able to understand the material. As a student who wants to concentrate in Accounting within the Comm School, I can honestly say that Professor Middleton is one of the hardest working professors at UVa and she tries her absolute best to make sure her students understand the material. Since last semester, Professor Middleton completely redesigned the course to make sure she taught concepts, assigned online homework to ensure student comprehension of material, and to make herself more available to students outside of class. Personally, I spent hours working on my homework in her office after lecture and she would help me whenever I needed help. Additionally, she completely understood the technical glitches of the ConnectPlus system even once allowing us to skip an entire homework assignment because the system would not accept our calculations. She gave us her personal cell phone number to call her when we had questions outside of class! To the students who claim Middleton is unprepared for class, that is an unfair accusation because even though she does have forgetful moments at times, she always had course material prepared and was ready to lecture. Moreover, it is unfair to characterize her as unprofessional when she is simply trying to enforce the rules she sets for her classroom (no phones or laptops). If you hate accounting or love it, Professor Middleton will do everything she can to help you and is a very fair grader making sure every student succeeds in her class.

Professor Middleton is hands down the most approachable professor at UVA. Aside from extended office hours and driving from Richmond to CVille when you need her to, she gives you her cell phone number if you need help with homework on the weekends. Furthermore, it is a weed out class for the comm school, so yes the course will be hard; but if you put in the work it's very attainable to do well. The TA's also helped when hands on learning was needed to understand a concept when Professor Middleton was not around. Overall, I would suggest going into the class with a positive attitude ignoring all the old posts about how awful she was. I can guarantee now she has made the proper adjustments to the course that the people of Spring 2015 thought was a problem. If you find yourself struggling, just go to office hours, trust me it helps.

Professor Middleton has completely changed the course from Spring 2015 for the better. She explains concepts well and is always available to help - whether by holding long office hours, email, or cell phone. She is also open to student suggestions and is accommodative of technology issues and other circumstances. She is definitely spunky in class, which makes for an entertaining hour and 15 minutes. Her life lessons are great and she really does care about her students. Not really sure what happened last semester, but I personally enjoyed class and learned a lot!

When I started taking this class I came into this class thinking that the class was very hard and that the professor is going to be very mean and hard. When I got to the class this belief was totally wrong. The professor was very nice and a fun professor. She made the class fun, was enthusiastic about the material, and helped students with questions that they had. She is very nice and helped students during her office hours, through email, through phone and even stayed after office hours if students were going to come. She was very helpful and made herself approachable and easily able to meet with students to help them with their questions. Before exams she would stay in her office for long periods of time so that students could ask her questions and get help if they needed it. This class is can be difficult but she helps with questions and makes sure you understand the material so that you can do well in the class. She is a great professor and nice person also who is very helpful.

Since the fall semester class was smaller than the spring I think the class was a better run. Middleton added a connect plus online homework portion that helped drill the concepts learned in class. I highly recommend studying the chapter overviews she hands out in class with the study guide workbook. Class is mostly spent reviewing the textbook problem and the learning comes from doing the assigned problems.

I absolutely positively loved this course. Mary is one of the most amazing professors you will ever have. At the beginning of the year when she told us to go get a binder with dividers I was making fun of the class. I felt as though I was returning to middle school. However, I slowly found out that Mary knows what she is talking about. That binder saved my life when it came time to study for the final. Everything was in the same place and I hadn't lost anything (which is a miracle). Mary is so funny and is amazingly helpful. Her sense of humor made class very fun and exciting. I loved going to class and I learned so much.

After having a positive experience in Professor Middleton's COMM 2020 course this fall, I would say that some of the negative statements about her as a person and as a teacher (before this past semester) are either inaccurate, unfair, or both. As far as her being "rude," I'm guessing that this is from the jokes that she says in class, but she doesn't intend for them to be harmful in any way, and she even tells you this on the first day of class. In fact, she'll tell you that if she's picking on you, it's because she likes you. During lectures, she does spend a lot of time going over homework, but since part of her exams are conceptual, and some of the homework is conceptual, understanding the homework is quite important in this class. Also, she'll tell you that anything not covered in lecture won't be tested on the exam, so it's also helpful to go to class so that you know what will and won't be tested on, since the textbook and her outlines can sometimes go more in depth than the concepts covered by professor in class and on the exams. She'll tell you that the workbook is highly recommended to help prepare for the exams, and I did find this to be true. During lectures, she will sometimes give her “life lessons” or go on other tangents, and personally I found these rather funny and perhaps even helpful. On an average week, you'll probably spend around 1-2 hours reading a chapter in the textbook (while following along to her chapter outline), 2-3 hours on written homework for the two classes a week, and then probably another 2 hours on the online homework due at the end of the week. I recommend going to her office hours if you’re having trouble with certain concepts. I found that not only was she very helpful, but she is a great person as well. She truly does want her students to succeed, and if you put the work in, you will.

To be honest, Middleton still needs to make some major changes to this class. This class was very frustrating for me because I found myself self-teaching the whole semester. Middleton is a good person and very accessible for questions and concerns, but I don’t think structures her class well. You’ll pretty much only go over HW in class and have to learn the concepts of the class on your own. The class material is not very difficult, but the book is too long-winded, ConnectPlus is riddled with technical flaws, and Middelton needs to spend more time teaching the course content.