Judith M. Ekstrand

She was late a lot and one time was even missing on a midterm day. She knew the material fairly well. One of the problems was that she gave limited time during the quizzes(and midterms, for that matter). She makes up for her tardiness by sometimes lecturing until 5 minutes after the class is over, so if you have a class across campus right after, you're pretty much screwed. I found her homeworks and quizzes to be fair, but I had problems with her midterms since they seemed to focus on details, of which I wasn't totally clear on. Her grading is pretty lenient.

Dr. Ekstrand is very good at what she does and appears to have a passion for it -- I think this is a good quality if you want to learn from an instructor.

She is a decent lecturer and explains the material well.

She did not have a midterm, but there are weekly quizzes and homework assignments that can really affect your grade, so you must keep on top of your homework.

There is one project you are responsible for doing and it is due by the end of the semester. She gives you almost half of the semester to complete it and if you are prepared at the assigned check points, you can only do well.

The style of her final is very similar to her quizzes. I also suggest getting a hold of old quizzes/exams through the mathematics dept./archives (or a friend) to get a feel of her testing style.

She does have a tendency to miss her classes -- no explanation, but I honestly found it refreshing once in awhile. Beware, if you are a marginal student, it will affect your ability to learn.

Finally, she does a lot of homework assignments with a computer program -- get comfortable with Minitab and Excel. Trust me, you will be happier in the end.

Dr. Ekstrand is a fabulous teacher... when she is there. What she lacks in accountability (brings her grade down to B- )(yes, it's pretty bad), she makes up in her lectures, relatively easy homeworks, easy grading curve. Her quizzes as well as her final are challenging. There are no "exams" or "mid-terms." If you keep pestering her in her office, you will be able to know your personal progress. Otherwise, you might not get the feedback you desire.

The previous reviews pretty much said it. At the beginning of the semester she did not appear to be that bad. She had a clear schedule telling us what would be covered in each leture, when every assignment was due and when each quiz and exam was to be given. And at first she was able to follow the schedule, explain things quite clearly and give back our homework on time. But the biggest problem is that she's so often late without reasons, including three absences in this semester so far. Because of her being late, from around the middle of the semester, the class was so way behind her original schedule that the schedule became virtually useless and she had to start cramming stuff altogether without going into clear explanations. We had to read the textbook real hard in order to understand what she skimmed over in her lectures and to even do the homework, which she always assigned before she actually covered the material. Although the semester has not ended yet, it's pretty obvious that we will be missing a lot of what we should have learned from this class. I just hope that what I missed from this class will have a minimal impact on my understanding of the material in my future courses. P.S. I'm thinking of doing my final project on "The distribution of the number of minutes Prof. Ekstrand is late for classes", which I estimate should lead to a very skewed result--toward a number around 20.

I thoroughly did not enjoy this professor. Not only was she 30 mins late the first day of class, but for the 4 weeks, I was in the class, she was that late at least once a week- without an explaination. I felt disrespected and recieved an F because it was my first semester and though I asked for her help (all she did was confuse me), I did not drop the class correctly, leaving me with a damaged GPA... mostly my fault, but if she hadn't confused me I would have done it the right way. I probably would not have done much better if I had stayed anyway. If you are a math dolt and want to get through your math requirement this is NOT the class for you. Take ISED 160 with Dr. Fraenkel instead.

If there was ever a class with not enough time to take a test, this is it. Her tests are actually easy but without time they are impossible. finally, I believe she has a subconscous hatred and extreme anger toward human males. A two year old boy or an old man, it does not matter--men are evil to her.