Justin Khorana-Medeiros (1L) with files from Alex Carmona (3L)
You’ve painstakingly and heart-wrenchingly filled out hundreds, if not thousands of Scantron forms this past year. Where do they all go? How does it all add up? Does Professor Alarie feed them to Blue J Legal to stop it from killing us all? I always figured they were excuses for intense self-reflection: after all, in evaluating the profs, aren’t we really evaluating ourselves? (That last line to be read in Werner Herzog’s voice.)
It turns out that course evaulations are compiled into a handy data set that future students can use to guide their course selection. For some reason, the admin has made the process of accessing this data set equal parts bizarre and draconian. Fortunately, through the heroic efforts of UV staff, the results have been compiled in digital form and we’ve used this data to make a list of the top ten classes being offered next year:
- Intensive Course: Who Belongs? Dilemmas of Citizenship and Immigration, taught by Ayelet Shachar
- Crime and Punishment: Mandatory Minimums, the Death Penalty and other Current Debates, taught by Nader Hasan
- Aboriginal Law and Policy, taught by Bob Rae
- Franchise and Distribution Law, taught by Adam Ship
- Advanced Constitutional Law: Security and Remedial Issues, taught by Kent Roach and John Norris
- Capstone Course: The Role of the Judge, taught by Robert P. Armstrong
- Advanced Legal Research and Writing, taught by Sara Faherty or Neil Guthrie
- Class Actions Law, taught by Ranjan Agarwal, Michael Eizenga, Michael Rosenberg, and Garry Watson
- Secured Transactions, taught by Anthony Duggan
- Citizenship: Inside and Out, taught by Karen Knop and Audrey Macklin
Scores are created from an average of the only two important questions on the evaluation: (1) Overall, the instructor is an effective teacher, and (2) Overall, this was a good course. Teachers and courses are scored from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree). Click here to see the rest of the course evaluation averages, including for clinics and first year courses.
*Note: Classes with less than 10 students were discounted, and professors teaching more than one class had their scores averaged between the two equally (no weighted averages based on class size, because I’m a law student, not a damn statistician).
