Venise Wagner

This teacher works hard and tries hard. She is very quick to respond to emails. She is also very smart. But with her abrasive personality and unwillingness to even slightly bend her scheduling, she made me so nervous that she ruined my journalism studies for me to the degree that I dropped the major. I feel that she was not understanding at all when something came up and I could not fulfill an assignment excatly as she wanted to, and she nearly snapped my head off when I asked a question that was not up to her standards or ethics. I was a new student then and so discouraged that I gave up on journalism (and I am now a student with a GPA of 3.98. All I needed is some encouragement which I found somewhere else). I feel that a teacher should be an encourager.

Her class was not hard at all. If your a passive student than you will find her class boring, and any other class you take to be boring. I too was passive with Science classes, and found it boring. A tactic to succeed in her class is: BE ON TIME, DO THE READING,TO NOT MISS CLASS, DONT LEAVE DURRING CLASS, PARTICIPATE, AND DONT TALK WHILE SHE IS TALKING. DUH!!! Her questions for exams are not tricky, they answer the question to the reading.

Great teacher boring class. She's a really smart woman and really easy to listen to. She takes what would be a REALLY BORING class and makes it livable. The class itself isn't that hard, there's a lot of busy work and pointless exams. There's about six people who do all the talking and most everyone leaves after the test. I would take her again for a different class.

Quite a nice personality, she is a little rushed at times. I like her energy, she is cheerful and not coarse. However, she needs to help people more with problems in accessing "Blackboard", I am visually impaired--I have really struggled with this. I also think that she does not further her look as a professional if she doesn't help people with this. Having said this, I highly recommend her.

Venise is a horrible lecturer and does not know how to teach a class. At first the discussions seem interesting but after a while the only people actually involved in class are Venise and the brown-nosers. She is the most boring lecturer and rarely welcomes new ideas. There are quizzes every week which are hard even if you do the reading. There is a midterm and a final paper which are both not so bad if you plan for them ahead. Sometimes she has been said to come off a little racist, although I do not want to make that assertion personally. She does not seem very friendly or willing to help a confused student. Journalism can be fun but she completley ruined it for me.

The quizzes are tuff, but the papers which are worth most of your grade are easy as long as you pay attention to what shes looking for. Pretty good class overall.

My experiance with Venise Wagner was a very positive one. For Media she was an engaging lecturer who inspired and sought open classroom discussions. She presented a strong portrait of what modern western media has become, with a particular emphasis on it's commericialization. While she does at times appear critical of these trends, she is not over-liberalizing. Her opinions, while presented, are balanced and obviously stem from personal and proffesional experiance. She is also very approachable and kind. As a grader she is somewhat on the easy side, and it would'nt be difficult for anyone to get an A if you tried.

I completely disagree with the review above mine. Ms. Wagner does not make fun of, or degrade white people at all. The truth is she offers a perspective from a women of color, which many people can appreciate being that it is so seldom offered. She does not censor or edit the truth about racism in the media and has worked as a pro. journalist herself. However she only spends a small portion of the semester addressing race and ethnicity, but when she does she does not candy coat it. It's a very interesting class if you want to learn more about mass media. However I do agree that the weekly quizzes can be a bit much, but if you read the material they are easy.

She looks at everything from only one point of view and if you disagree with her, she makes you feel small and stupid. She gives reading every week and a quiz on the reading and maybe some current events, buther lectures are useless. She never quizes on her lectures so there is no point in staying past the quizes, besides her lectures are long, boring, scattered, and pointless. She allows students in the class to ramble on and on to the point were others in the class have to tell them to shut-up. She rarley says anything intelligent and usually is wrong on statistics that she gives out.She is also very discriminatory in her views. She will lecture on and on about how white people are horrible and put others down and basically SUCK. She does so to the point that white students in her class will make fun of themselves, it is disgusting. There are two papers, the midterm and the final, which are extremely easy, even when you don't try at all. One last thing, the people that take this class suck too. They are not living in reality, but instead a completely fantastical dream world so you have to excuse their dumbass comments; which of course is hard when the teacher agrees with them. Don't take this class unless you are a jour major and you HAVE TO. Oh, and good luck.

My first reaction to this class was that it was overly difficult when you consider the scope of a journalism degree. Studying the history of journalism should be offered in a course that requires much less time since the journalism writing classes are so intense; however, thanks to Venise Wagner the class was interesting overall. She assigns a lot of reading from a large course reader. The book is expensive and is a collection of photo-copied excerpts from various texts. The quality of the photo-copies can be really poor, which proved frustrating when the price I paid for the book is considered. Venise Wagner's passion for teaching is made very obvious in her lectures and in her willingness to make herself available before and after class hours. She is one of those exceptional teachers who obviously WANTS to teach. The class is hard, there is a LOT of reading and a research paper to write. Her exams are all essay, which she grades thorougly and fairly. These types of tests are much more difficult for a teacher to grade, but they allow students to full demonstrate what they've learned in the course. Kudos to her for putting in the extra effort of grading essays rather than taking the short cut of giving a tricky multiple choice exam. So do the reading, participate in class, get your research paper done before the end of the semester and you should get a great grade in this class.