Unofficial UC Davis, School of Law Informational Website
Piecing together a workable course schedule is an amazing feat in management, allocation, prioritization and restraint. Not unlike choosing a law school, it takes time, introspection and a great deal of careful research to figure out what is best for your goals, limitations and personality.
Despite the obvious importance of a course schedule that works, many 2L’s and 3L’s pick courses in a cavalier manner, preferring to rely solely on a friend’s opinion, gossip, and the rather thin descriptions in the course bulletin. Few of us actually take the time to discuss the course with the professor or sit in on a class session before signing away the next sixteen weeks to the great unknown. As a result of our uninformed choices, the classes often fail to meet our expectations and we must endure the consequences – tedious courses and ineffectual teachers.
This problem is compounded by the limited course selection offered by King Hall. The administration often protests that it is doing all it can with King Hall’s limited resources. This may be true, but the administration does little to lessen the burden placed upon the students to choose wisely. If your schedule is constricted by a clinical placement or employment, only a few courses will work with your schedule. If you find yourself in over your head in a course, the other few courses you could have taken are likely now full.
Frustrated by the amount of tuition squandered on poorly chosen courses, we hope this report will offer, if not a solution to the course-selection problems at King Hall, at least some assistance to students as you struggle to schedule courses from amongst next year’s meager offerings. Most students at King Hall are unaware that statistical summaries of all student evaluations for over 20 years are on reserve in the library. Each evaluation contains a valuable snapshot describing how our past classmates at King Hall ranked the course itself and the professor’s performance. To create this consumer guide we compiled the data from the past four years of student evaluations (Spring 1998 - Fall 2001) and attempted to present the data in a usable, practical layout.
As you’ll recall, the student evaluations contain nine quantitative categories in which students are asked to rank a professor’s performance on a scale from five (excellent) to one (unsatisfactory). The questions include, in part, mastery of subject, respect for students and accessibility. All student responses are then compiled and overall averages for each category are tallied by computer.
Because the snapshot from each course is best understood in relation to other courses, we took the last 8 semesters of the upper-level courses and focused on only two of the averages: the overall evaluation of the course, and the overall evaluation of the professor. We only focused on the upper-level courses, because we assumed none of you wanted to retake the first year courses.
The first chart lists each tenured and untenured faculty who has taught a course over the past eight semesters and shows in rank order how he or she fared in comparison to all others teaching courses over that time period. The scores are based upon his or her mean average student-assigned score for every class that professor has taught during the past eight semesters.
After we determined the rank, we used the new and improved forced curve the professor’s use on us to determine their overall letter grade. Twenty percent of the professors received an A+, A or A-. Sixty percent of the professors received a B+, B or B-. The remaining twenty percent received a C+, C, C-, D+, D, D- or F.
Based on this report, the highest ranking tenured professor is Dean Johnson, who received an A+. The lowest ranking tenured professor is Professor Gandara, who received a C.
Interestingly, the draft schedule posted in the hallway indicates that Professor Gandara is scheduled to teach Contracts next year. When Professor Gandara last taught this critically important class, he was severely lambasted in the September 1994 issue of the King Hall Advocate. If you’re interested in reading the article, ask a law school librarian for a copy.
The second chart lists each course taught over the past eight semesters. Beside each course is a listing of all the professors who have taught it along with their overall course score and overall professor score. As you can see, some professors improve after teaching the course more than once. Others don’t.
Finally, in case you’re curious, we’ve also included a list of the current faculty and their salaries. The information is publicly available to anyone upon request. For further information, contact Lynette Temple, the Information Practices Coordinator at UC Davis.
Some courses and professors are not included in our reports. Classes taught by professors now retired or deceased are excluded, and evaluations for many 400-level courses are not made public. Other courses have also changed over time; to the best of our ability, we have grouped courses together if they appeared similar, but segregated them if they appeared different. A course number with an (x) indicates that the number has changed over time.
We hope you will find this consumer guide useful and fair. By sorting the data in various ways, hopefully you’ll make more informed choices about the courses you should take. But your research should not end here. Take advantage of the course-advising fair. Talk with professors. Look at the complete student evaluation reports available in the library and balance your personal and professional needs with the skills you’d like to develop. Good luck!
2. Click Here to see the grade students gave a professor for a particular course
3. Click Here to see the salaries of various professors
The King Hall Student Action Committee is a group of law students who seek to help other law students in ways that are not traditionally offered yet both relevant and important. The information is offered with malice to none, and with the sincere desire that it will help students select their future courses and professors thoughtfully and with access to all relevant information. KHSAC can be contacted through e-mail: kinghallinformation@yahoo.com
