Leticia M. Marquez-Magana

This professor took some very difficult material and made it easy for even the least scientifically inclined to understand.

Her class style was more reminiscent of an elementary school class than a typical college class. There were a lot of in-class activities involving things like stringing together paperclips representing base pairs or matching paper cut-outs of amino acids with paper cut-outs of tRNA. This might not sound appealing to someone who hasn't set foot in an elementry school in ten years, but it was actually a lot of fun, and I think I learned a lot.

If you have a lot of prior knowledge about the subject matter, a class with this professor might seem too slow and repetitive, but I would recomend her to anyone unfamiliar with genetics.

Prof. Marquez-Magana is deeply committed to teaching and bringing out the best in her students, and her curriculum and methods support this. She effectively presented complicated scientific material to a group of students who were mostly non-science majors (including myself) while encouraging questions and open discussion. This class has been one of my most stimulating and exciting at SFSU and the course material is HIGHLY relevant.