Janet A. Randall

Dr. Randall knows her stuff. She loves her work. Her lectures are long and full of info. We did not have a book, so attending class is important. She does give out handouts of her lectures that are a big help. We had 8 field trips..two outside of class time. All required some traveling, some a great distance. For 3 units this class is a lot of work. The tests cover too much material and are mostly short answer and essay. This class is for non-bio majors, which she tends to forget. You have to do a a ten page paper that is near professional. Be prepared to devote lots of time to this class. You can only miss one class before it starts lowering your grade. You can learn a lot, but it is too much info.

I took Randall's Nature Study class to fulfill SFSU's bio requirement and I was not disapointed. The class was fairly easy on the technical side of things and heavy on the hands-on, first hand experience. I had to sacrifice several Saturdays to this class for field trips (the class goes all over the place from Moss Beach, to the SF Zoo, to Muir Woods, and many more places.) If you like to be out in nature I highly recomend this class. It is not too dificult and Randall is a very intelligent proffessor, although her lectures can be a little tedious. She is an avid nature lover (she has studied the kangaro rat for 15 years) and is very well educated.

I took Professor Randalls Bio 600 - Animal Behavior. As a teacher, she has strengths and weaknesses. As for strengths, she is intelligent and very well-equipped to teach this class. Her knowledge of the subject matter is profound and she is able to articulate tricky concepts clearly. Also, she makes the subject fascinating and also is quite good at fostering class discussion. In addition, she has first-hand research experience in the area. We took some field trips that were both enjoyable and applicable. If you take this class you will undoubtedly learn a lot - but be prepared to work your tail off. Dr. Randall usually only teaches part-time and this allows her to place extreme demands upon her students. I thought her requirements bordered on being outright unfair. Im a good student but found my other classes to be suffering just to keep up with the requirements of her class. She offers 4 credits for 8 hours of class time. The lab accounts for 1 credit of that but it takes up 6 hours per week. And there really is no lab - its just discussion and lecture about different material. Just being in class that long is difficult, especially when you consider there are 8 hours less you have in a week just because of that one single class. And that isnt even considering the rather impressive amount of material you are expected to read and comprehend thoroughly outside of class. Her tests were set up a bit like math problems. She presents you with some research findings and then expects you to interpret them. If your logic is good (you employ sound evolutionary theory) but you reach the wrong conclusion, you get burned. You fare much better if you reach the correct interpretation but employ faulty thinking in arriving at your conclusion. If you do a paper or a presentation (we did both) you will be expected to give one that is every bit as good as one a professional would give. Also, without any prior experience she expects you to do animal research which is almost good enough to be publishable. Again, she is very intelligent, knowledgeable and articulate but she sets high very high standards. You can learn quite a bit from her but be prepared to make some fairly large sacrifices in return.