Julie Aldcroft

School: Central Washington University
Department: Psychology
Location: Ellensburg, WA
Overall Rating
rated by 2 students
Helpfulness
Clarity
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Rating Comment
Overall
Helpfulness
Clarity
Easiness
I took sociology with this teacher. If it weren’t for how tedious the assignments were, I would have enjoyed the class a little more and would’ve been able to overlook some of my issues. Number one is the workload. I don’t think I’ve ever had a teacher assign this much work for me before, and the worst part is that it’s all due at 9AM, which has proven exceedingly difficult for me to work with due to working full-time outside of school. The last two weeks included a “discussion” (essentially 5 mini essay questions that required you to watch/listen to over 3 hours of videos and podcasts with APA citations and no personal pronouns/opinions allowed) and a paper all due within 24 hours of each other. Number two is the quality of the supplementary material. The reason I took this class was to better understand why people commit crimes. She opts to very vaguely follow the content of the textbook — by that I mean all of the headings on each module is named after a chapter in the textbook, but there’s no clear connection as to how the supplementary material fits in with the chapter. All of the supplementary material is from heavily biased secondary sources. I’m lucky enough that my views align with her views for the most part, but for a student that isn’t as liberal it’s probably extremely difficult to complete assignments because she expects a very specific answer to her questions. All material is from NPR, BBC, New York Times, and Netflix documentaries. For a criminology class, you’d at least expect to be referencing raw data from the UCR or department of justice, but we haven’t at ALL. Not to mention that most of these materials are not HOH/deaf/ADHD friendly due to most of the podcasts and videos not having CC’s/transcripts. The quality of the professor-provided content is less than substantial. The content she provides is through PowerPoints, which are riddled with grammatical errors and some spelling mistakes. For how much she drills you for grammar and citing sources in the class, she doesn’t seem to take her own advice. The lectures are very heavily biased and have a lot of personal anecdotes disguised as facts. Some of the information she provides is blatantly false — in her lecture on capital punishment, she says that African Americans disproportionately represent those who have been executed on death row, which is not true at all and easy to fact-check. This lecture is also a source she expects you to use when writing your opinion paper at the end of the quarter on capital punishment. Number three is the learning in general. Criminology is such a broad field to discuss why murderers commit murder, why people resort to prostitution, why people commit cybercrimes or high profile white collar crimes, but all of that is ditched to discuss the same topic over and over. This class really drills into you that crime is ONLY caused by poverty, the people most affected by poverty are POC individuals, and that POC individuals are abused by the criminal justice system. All supplementary material for different “crime theories” revolves around the same topic; black children in impoverished homes, black children in broken homes, impoverished black communities riddled with crime, cops are the new slave catchers that disproportionately incarcerate black people, gang violence, I could go on and on. Point is, it is very fixated on one particular group of people and very specific types of crime. Despite it being a big part of violent crime, mental illness is never discussed within the scope of this class. I was really hoping there would be a unit discussing FBI profiling of serial killers or discussing motives of crime that are outside of the aspect of economics such as politically motivated crime. Again, my views align with hers very well, but some of the stuff we were required to read is ridiculous for what the class is supposed to be about. We watched documentaries on impoverished neighborhoods in Milwaukee and Detroit (okay), read articles discussing whether or not we should defund the police (why?), podcasts about how police have implicit biases that lead them to deploy lethal force on minority groups (sure, that’s the cops committing crime, but the focal point was the victims rather than the perpetrators)… this is stuff I typically enjoy discussing, but NONE of these things had a clear connection to “why do people commit crimes?”. These are all separate social issues that are in the criminal justice system but have no significant ties to the study of criminology. The best way I can put this class isn’t “criminology”, but more “the study of a small group of criminals and why they are actually the victim”. I had high hopes for this class but it proved to be tedious and repetitive. The teacher herself is nice enough; as long as you’re communicative with her she will be reasonable with you. The first time I missed the 9 AM deadline because of work and I contacted her, she reopened the assignment so that I could complete it. She replies with pretty meaningful feedback if you try your hardest, although sometimes she can come off as blunt and catty if she’s unimpressed with your work. The class could significantly improve if there was a healthier balance between textbook learning and supplementary learning, and if the supplementary material included a mix of both primary and secondary information. There definitely needs to be less of a reliance on listening/watching activities. The best structure I could see for this class is: weekly quizzes WITHOUT long answer questions, 5 written assignments throughout the quarter using supplementary material (“mini essays”, a few discussions that allow students to have opinionated debates on topics discussed throughout the week, and the final paper, with all assignments being due at a more reasonable time (probably no earlier than 8 PM)
Overall
Helpfulness
Clarity
Easiness
i had to withdraw from her class due to failing her class even after calling, texting and emailing her asking for help. she was a hard on grading when it came to citing. even after using the tools she provided, she still said my citing was wrong. i could not understand how she could provide us with her tools and yet still didnt receive help on how to correct the issue. i was so lost with her

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