STS 2620

I thought this was a great class!! Professor Louis makes it interesting and is generally a really nice guy. Weekly readings and papers every other week or so plus group work made up the work for the class. Participation in class itself is also important. The topics that we covered were very interesting and so the readings were easy to digest. I took the class over Zoom but in a classroom setting I'm sure it would be a lot better -- there is a lot of collaboration and discussion. It's also listed under Systems so it's interesting to get some risk analysis/ decision language exposure.

#tCFspring2021 Prof Garrick is an interesting lecturer. As for the class, if you already have background knowledge in public policy you should do well as long as you can write well too. I cannot stress this enough that this is a class where most of your grade depends on writing (on quizzes, biweekly papers, or final report). I thought the grading was a little inconsistent between the different graders but that could just be my luck. Also a major part of your grade is group-work, so make sure you know people (at least one other person) in the class who will put in the same amount of work as you will or you will suffer.
TLDR:
* lectures are pretty common sense if you have any background in public policy
* group work is a major part of your grade
* writing is a major part of your grade
* take this for your sts2xxx series credit if you are up for the challenge

This class wasn't the worst, but you definitely don't look forward to it. It isn't hard in the way that you don't have to study for it-- you just write the papers and then the weekly quizzes are just questions about the same topic you just wrote about. I don't think I really learned anything from this class though which just made it seem like a drag and Professor Louis's voice was just so monotonous and quiet. I had to go first for the group projects and my group didn't get a great grade, but after we presented Professor Louis provided more instructions for everyone else presenting for the semester. Our topic we were given was also something so specific we basically couldn't find anything on it (a very specific incident with water pollution) vs. other groups got subjects like Diversity in STEM and 5G Networks. It was pretty unfair because other groups were also given extra materials to use to help lead their research on their topics while we were given none. Also, the weekly quizzes ended up being outside of class and about an hour and a half per quiz which was kind of ridiculous. You would have to write an essay on Monday/Tuesday, then on Wednesday you have ~24 hours between when class ends to the next day to take the 1.5 hour quiz which you actually need all the time for. The quiz is also all made up of essay questions that might even have you research a specific topic. A lot of the information you can pull from his slides, but his slides are also not very descriptive so they are hard to review and a lot of the concepts he talks about you can't even find online which is frustrating if he won't further describe them in his slides.

Overall, not a hard class, but if you have the option to take another STS, take a different one. This one isn't interesting, it is time consuming, and the grades fell at around a B+ for most people.

All in all, the topic of this class is pretty interesting. You spend two weeks focusing on each of six or seven topics related to science and public policy. My main problem with the content is that the class is based on the assumption that we must use federal policy (as opposed to local policy or non-government action) to solve every problem discussed.

Heads up, this class is quite a bit of work. In all honesty I think it's about average for an STS elective, but it's all paper writing and groupwork, something that most engineers (like myself) do not usually enjoy. The grading is pretty hard too. I took the class for Credit/No Credit, but I think I put in quite a bit of effort and ended up around C+ level. Professor Louis is a nice guy and definitely cares about the class. He's not a bad teacher, but he's also not the best teacher I've had.

Cross listed as SYS 2620. This course is pretty low effort. Every week you cover a different public policy topic which keeps it interesting. You have to write a one-pager on the topic once a week with a partner and there are weekly quizzes but the material is pretty simple and interesting to learn.