Joseph E. Illick

This professor is a terrible teacher, and at some point his views can be considerd as being borderline racist. his lectures are lost within meaningless antecdotes as well as a extremely closed minded lecture that vary significantly from the subject. DO NOT QUESTION this man or his lecture as they are the BIBLE, your grade will suffer dearly. Earning an A in the class can be accomplished by telling this man exatly what he wants to hear...his own words repeated, oh and not taking offense to racially charged remarks.

He is very knowledgeable in this area, and the readings and lectures are very clear. The only thing that I can really critize is that the lectures follow the readings a little too closely. If you do your readings, and he demands that you do for each class, you will not hear anything new in class. It is more like a summary of what you read, and I guess that makes it easy to follow the course, but it also makes it a little boring. The exams are long essay-exams, and you really have to know the material. But if you do the supplied study-question (in the reader), you will do fine. Study=good grade. Oh, and it's a very interesting class!

Mr. Illick is a very knowledgeable person in the subject of history. BUT he is a TERRIBLE teacher. His lectures are hard to follow, and are mainly his opinions about what happened. His exams ask arbitrary questions that can be answered many ways, but will receive a good grade if they AGREE WITH HIS OPINIONS. He constantly says that the readings are small and only take 30 minutes to read, when they actually take 2-3 hours. He is COMPLETELY out of touch with the students. He treats the 121 level class like a 600 level class, and expects that all students are interested in the subject, even though it is a GE course, and, by show of hands at the beginning of the semester, there are only about 5 people out of th 40 or so in the class that actually care about the subject. We watch films, and haphazardly relate them to content that may or may not be relevent to the area of study. I have not learned anything in the class. I don't care about history, and Mr. Illick just reinforces my dislike of the subject. This 121 course is the hardest class that I have this semester. Even if I could actually retain the information from the book (a dry US history book), I would still be getting the bad grades that I am. Again, Mr. Illick grades on whether or not you agree with his position, but not actual knowledge. I would NEVER recommend him to anybody, and seriously belive that the history department should review his performance as a teacher.

Illick is obviously knowledgeable and intelligent, yet his syllabus and lectures are lacking. He had admitted to never having taught this course, and this is reflected in poor instructions, readings that do not correspond or correlate with the assigned films, and a lack of focus on the topic covered. His complete departure from normal HISTORY writing protocol, that is writing for an intelligent rather than the usual UNintelligent audience, along with his poor instructions has an entire class floundering for guidance. He is available during his office hours, but this is not helpful, as he can not offer explanations for his grading determinations. Moreover, his grading style seems subjective and arbitrary. When an assignment specifically asks for a student to focus on one aspect of the reading, he grades you on the aspect on which you were not asked to write. Also, a Senior Pro Seminar course is supposed to reflect a greater period than that of 1945-1959; a period completely alien to most of the class, but not the professor. The mores, values, and interests of the post World War II generation neither appeal to nor reflect today's social mores, values, and interests. The class has the potential to be quite interesting, but Illick fails at producing a Seminar type learning environment or guidance in what is supposed to be the culminating experience of undergraduate studies.