STS 1500

This is just a class you have to get through. Though some topics were interesting, it boils down to writing your papers according to what the TA wants. You may have to take notes during lecture if Berne says she will collect a journal at the end of the semester. Overall I did not like this class because it took up time I could have dedicated to other classes.

Lectures could be very engaging depending on the day. This is one of the few engineering classes I've taken where discussion is encouraged which was nice.
The writing assignments were very structured and it took me a while to figure out that receiving a good grade meant following the instructions to the letter.
Best part of the class was the writing groups but that certainly depends on who you are placed with.
All in all, I didn't learn much but got to meet people, and Professor Berne has plenty of wild ideas to share.

The class had potential but was disorganized and the grading was unfair. A different TA would grade a student's paper each week which led to fluctuations in grade and limited ability for feedback. The essays were very formulaic and writing papers felt less like intellectual works and more like trying to fill checklists and guess at what the grader wants to see.

There are two parts to this class: the lecture (with Rosalyn Berne) and the discussion (with two other teachers). The lecture isn't bad. Berne is a character so it's pretty interesting to hear her speak. She's a bit of a new age hippie, I guess, so you'll hear a lot about the environment and robots (she has a thing for robot sex I think, the topic will come up more often than you think it would). The sci fi stories and movies are entertaining and its fun to to hear the interpretations of what it means and the implications for our future. Her book is pretty good, although I wouldn't read it of my own accord I was able to finish it in a day.
The discussion is run by two teachers from the college and I would imagine the experience is different depending on who's running it. But across the board, the discussion is where you discuss the sci fi story you read for homework, get your writing assignments, and review your writing with your group. I had Ben Laugelli and Mary French and although the stories and discussion with my group was fun, they were a fiasco. It was all Ben talking and Mary just sat there like a stone. I've maybe heard five words from her and that's just because she was the grader for my group and we had to meet with her for one of the papers. Ben was kind of condescending and basically told us "You're engineers which means you suck at writing" and we had to go over basic grammar and sentence structure which was SO painful. I was offended and after him saying that on the first day, and it sort of set the tone for the rest of the semester. Yes we are engineers which means we like science. But we got in to UVA which means most of us ALSO got excellent scores in AP Literature, AP Language, or the IB equivalents. So that's my rant about Ben. Besides that, don't expect A's on your papers because they do grade it thoughtfully and at a college level based on the strength of your argument and ideas (NOT your ability to put a sentence like "See Jane run." together which is what Ben was teaching us). I ended up hovering around the B-/B range which I thought was fair.

This course sucked, plain and simple. It is a requirement for engineers though so if you are an engineer you're just going to have to bear with it. Now the teacher matters a lot, and Ms. Berne, though a good person, was hopeless as a teacher. I would much prefer the engineering writing requirement that is STS just got replaced with ENWR's altogether for college and e-school kids. Doing well in this course was not well defined at all and Ms. Berne went back on her word of curving the class at the end anyway...

As mentioned by others, this is a pretty standard engineering writing course, on the topic of science fiction. To do well in this class, you just have to follow the format of what they expect from you, which means lots of deep analysis of the text. Just do exactly as the TA's tell you to do, as they are the ones grading the class.

The lectures were very dry, and didn't really seem to pertain to engineering as a whole, despite Professor Berne's best intentions. The reading material borders on engaging to boring, usually the latter.

Terrible class. Always ironic being taught about technology and its downfall by a woman who can't operate a powerpoint and TAs who are history and religious studies graduate studies. Don't expect to learn anything in this class. Also, if you're a great writer, expect to get a B- on every paper, because the TAs make up random reasons to mark you down based on random guidelines that they make on the spot. Have fun!

This is basically the engineering english class. The reading assignments that come from the collection of short stories are pretty good, and the discussion sections were sometimes interesting, but overall this class was not at all enjoyable. Sometimes during discussion the TAs would act like students did not know anything about the english language and act like they are lecturing elementary schoolers. Professor Berne is one of the most ridiculous people I have EVER seen; she is a horse whisperer and her book is absolutely terrible. Waiting in the Silence doesn't just have a bad plot, but is full of plot holes, typos, and grammatical errors. Anyone who has the chance to take this class under a different professor should consider themselves incredibly lucky.

Berne isn't the worst lecturer I have ever had, but she is rather strange at times. Her lectures were mildly interesting, but they don't relate to what we were graded on that well. The most valuable information comes from your discussion groups with your TA.
This class is effectively a first year engineering writing class, and the grading is mostly based on essays written on various reading assignments. The essay structure they want you to use is rather formulaic, and they are graded rather harshly. It helps if you meet with your TA to talk about your essays. The reading assignments come from an anthology of short stories, Michio Kaku's Physics of the Future, and Berne's Waiting in the Silence. I found Kaku and the short stories to be pretty good, but Berne's work wasn't that great. Overall, it's not a very fun class, but it's manageable.

I actually really liked this class. There wasn't a final last semester, so you didn't have to worry about taking notes. You could just listen. And the teaching team seems pretty responsive to student feedback. I switched into the engineering school from CLAS, so I took this as un upperclassmen. I think a lot of the negative reviews here are people who aren't really use to what writing classes in college are like. It is true that they are definitely looking for you to use the structure they taught at the beginning of class, but that the structure isn't something they made up out of whole cloth, and there is still plenty of flexibility in how you express yourself. There are a couple group papers that can be a little frustrating if you haven't written a group paper before.

tl;dr It's not as bad as everyone says. You should enjoy it, because you probably have to take it.