Barry Samuel Rothman

I thought Dr. Rothman was a good guy...he seemed eager to write a letter for me. Well, I had to remind him 3 times, and barely got it in before the deadline. As you might imagine, it wasn't very good either. He's ok as a professor I guess, but don't make the same mistake I did. Dr. Rothman is not trustworthy.

Dr. Rothman is a great teacher. Take a class offered by him if you are pre-med or pre-healthcare. He's really nice, he DEFINATELY knows his stuff, and he does a great job of preparing his class so that learning is facilitated. This class had very difficult material, but he was very good at breaking it down into bite-sized pieces. He let the pace of the class go at the speed that the students were comfortable with. Don't get me wrong, you REALLY have to work hard in his class, but it will pay off in the end. I really felt like I came away with an understanding of neuroscience. I likes to throw out corny jokes all the time, but it is good because some of the material can be dry.

This teacher does more than a good job of teaching everyone the concepts covered...but he doesn't exactly 'inspire' anyone to genuinely want to learn more about biology.

He does speak clearly in class, and you do get some little add-ins of information that's interesting...although has no real connection to the class or upcoming exam. Think of it as stuff that you never knew before, but may have wondered about...if you were really geeky. ok, j/k there...

Basically, he's everything you'd expect a college professor to be. He does know what he's talking about.

Word of Advice- it ticks him off when people come to class late...he'll say something if this becomes a problem and that just wastes the other students' time because instead of actually LEARNing...they have to sit still while he explains how rude it is to show up late.

A great teacher with full of energy to help students whenever they need it. I enjoyed his lectures a lot and have learned so much from his class.

Dr Rothman at first gives the appearance of a cool hippy dude sort of guy that is in to teaching for the love of students. The reality is he is a ego maniac that behaves inappropriatly with his young female students. On more than one occasion, he played amature therapist and had us talk about "feelings" and waisted about 3/4 of the workshop time droning on about his childhood. I personally have so little time, that I need my education to be more consistant than Barry Rothman has to offer. In addition to his unprofessional behavior in the classroom, it took him an entire semester to turn in the grades from our 1 unit science concepts class, with 6 students enrolled. The only way to finally have the RD removed from the transcripts, after no less than 8 visits to his office, was a conference with the chair of biology. If you still want to take this guy for class, good luck, you will need it.

Barry is dedicated to teaching and advising. His strengths are in organizing material extremely clearly and in clearly outlining his expectations for the class, in a way that few teachers do. The only downside of this from my point of view is that the approach of absolutely sticking to the outline and going through overheads in order is that it can sometimes be a little plodding and not as exciting as it might otherwise be. Still, in a class with this much material (bio 230) I would prefer organized to exciting, and Barry is certainly friendly and interesting in the context of this very structured presentation style. The exam prep materials he gives clearly outline his expectations for what you should study--but you better know it in detail, so don't just take the superficial answers to these guidelines as what you should know.

As an advisor, Barry is quite good. He is friendly without sugarcoating things, and I've come to actually appreciate him more and more as an advisor--when I first started, I didn't believe some of the stuff he told me, but I've had to admit gradually that he was much more often right than wrong. It's also worth noting that his office hours always have lines of students waiting for him, a sign that many share a high opinion of him.