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Zahran, Sammy | |||
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SOC 463 Junior Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 10:23 pm, May 12, 2009 |
2 of 2 people found the following evaluation helpful: Sammy's Sociology of Disaster class was highly informative and entertaining at the same time. He is so knowledgable and enthusiastic about the topic that it almost radiates back off the students. He is very willing to help all students outside of class (he is constantly in his office waiting to assist, and is willing to meet students at any other times) and he also creates a very comfortable and intimate environment within the classroom. He does not quit on students who may be a little shaky at first. The outside texts are a bit tedious and highly in depth, but they work well to bring detailed insight into disasters effects on societies. Overall, fantastic class with an amazing instructor. Was this rating helpful to you? |
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SOC 100 Junior Grade Earned: B Elective 2:11 pm, Dec 17, 2009 |
1 of 1 people found the following evaluation helpful: Sammy was very enthusiastic about the material. He was always excited to teach and present the material, and presented it in a fun way. He reminded me of good teachers you see only in movies. Overall, lecture didn't help me learn the material too much. Either I zoned out or didn't hit me well, but I ended up learning most of the material while studying. The textbook also wasn't too necessary. I read it for the first exam, but after that, didn't think that it was too necessary so I just skimmed through it. The class was comprised of three exams (worth roughly 70 percent of your grade), none of them cumulative, one exam on a book we had to read (The Tipping Point), three in-class assignments and five small paper assignments. I got a 90 on the first exam, but didn't do as well on the last two. They weren't too difficult, but there was some math equations we had to solve, which a lot of people complained about. He gives you the equations on the exam, and I didn't think the math was hard if you know basic math. The book wasn't difficult, and really you can just read the rubric of the assignment and read the improtant chapters. I thought the paper was graded pretty hard, though. The three in-class assignments are simple and are easy to get full credit on. The five other assignments also weren't too bad either. We were required to find an article on the Internet relating to sociology and basically analyze it in three paragraphs. At first I was confused by the assignment, but after the first one, it didn't take too long. Overall, the class wasn't that difficult and Sammy is a professor I'd recommend. Was this rating helpful to you? |
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SOC 320 Junior Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 1:43 pm, Jul 7, 2009 |
1 of 1 people found the following evaluation helpful: Best class I've taken at CSU. Dr. Zahran changed the way I think about the world. I highly recommend his demography class if you like statistics and data. Was this rating helpful to you? |
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SOC 311 Junior Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 1:10 pm, Feb 18, 2009 |
1 of 1 people found the following evaluation helpful: Sammy is a GREAT professor. He made learning about boring stats fun. I looked forward to his class everyday. He really knows how to keep your attention. I would recomend this class to anyone. PLUS he really helps you out if you go talk to him. He really cares about his students and will take the time out of his own personal life to help you out. Was this rating helpful to you? |
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SOC 320 Senior Grade Earned: A Elective 3:02 pm, Jan 30, 2008 |
1 of 1 people found the following evaluation helpful: Sammy is awesome. He is hilarious and energetic. Class is really interesting if you do the reading and participate. He doesn't cater to the student that wants the work done for them. In order to appreciate his humor you have to keep up and respect the material. Was this rating helpful to you? |
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SOC 100 Sophomore Grade Earned: N/A Elective 11:02 pm, Jan 16, 2008 |
1 of 1 people found the following evaluation helpful: I liked this course. Prof. Zahran is funny and smart. If you show up to class you'll do just fine. I thought the quantitative stuff was cool to learn. Was this rating helpful to you? |
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SOC 100 Junior Grade Earned: B General Ed 10:35 pm, Aug 25, 2010 |
I had Professor Zahran in my first semester of college and still haven't gotten over how much I disliked him. At first, he seemed really cool and engaging, but he was really self-centered. He talked about how hot his wife was and how good his hair was and went on tangents all the time during class. I found him hard to follow and frustrating to take notes from. He often put people down or made fun of them if they raised their hand with what he thought was a dumb question or the wrong answer to a question he asked. I thought he was immature and annoying and needed to try more teaching and less hamming for laughs. I wouldn't recommend him.
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SOC 100 Sophomore Grade Earned: A Elective 12:38 pm, Aug 11, 2010 |
Awesome professor! I didn't think I would like this class, but he made it really interesting and a lot of fun! The class had an appropriate work load---was moderately challenging but super interesting. Zahran was really engaging and willing to help students out of class.
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SOC 100 Freshman Grade Earned: B General Ed 5:58 pm, Mar 3, 2010 |
Sammy Zahran makes this class intriguing and fun to go to. He has a very animated personality and often makes fun of himself. There are 3 tests, which can be difficult, but he puts his powerpoints on RamCT and gives you a study guide. There are also five short and simple data assignments, as well as a longer paper (which is not that hard to write) based on the book The Tipping Point. Overall, Dr. Zahran makes you want to go to everyday, and I would highly recommend this class.
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SOC 100 Junior Grade Earned: A Elective 9:05 pm, Jan 10, 2010 |
Mr. Zahran is such an amazing teacher. He is so passionate about the information and is so excited to teach it is impossible to not pay attention. He gives study guides for the test and if you go over each one its easy to get A's on the tests. He is entertaining and really the best teacher ever.
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SOC 100 Freshman Grade Earned: A Elective 3:24 am, Dec 25, 2009 |
He was my favorite professor in my first semester of college ever. I loved and understood what he taught and because of this class, I'm most likely going to declare Sociology as my minor!
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SOC 100 Freshman Grade Earned: B Elective 11:44 pm, Dec 6, 2009 |
This course isn't too bad. The study guides are pretty lengthy but if you find a group of people to split up the work in studying you will be fine on the tests. The homework load is small, there is one assignment due every few weeks. Dr. Zahran is pretty entertaining and although he talks a little too much about how great he thinks his hair is and how "hot" his wife is, he'll do a good job at keeping you from falling asleep during lecture. He always sounds really passionate about what he is talking about
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SOC 463 Senior Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 9:11 pm, Jul 7, 2009 |
Sammy is amazing! I'd even take his classes at 8am (and actually go).
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SOC 100 Freshman Grade Earned: A General Ed 1:45 pm, Dec 21, 2008 |
I dont know what these guys are talking about! Zahran was a funny enthusiastic professor that knew what he was talking about. I dont know why having little to no homework every night is hard. Wrote the essay and barely read the book and got a 14/15 on it. The class is sooo easy. I guess I am lazy.
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SOC 100 Sophomore Grade Earned: A General Ed 3:28 pm, Dec 14, 2008 |
This professor is a very funny, enthusiastic person but he is not very good at being a professor. He makes his classroom environment very enjoyable, but he gets off track easily and never gets through all of the intended information. My suggestion would be to not bother taking notes because he goes through them so fast, and he will post the notes later. Listen to what he is saying to get an understanding of the material and then go back and look through the slides and notes when you study. If you spend the whole time trying to write down every word on the slides you won't really get a good understanding for the material. I think that his class is worth taking, but don't expect him to ever be available outside of class, he will just direct you to one of his 6 TAs. There are 3 exams, 5 in-class data assignments, 5 out of class small writing assignments and 1 essay. You will probably have to put a lot of outside effort into reading the book to understand the material covered on the tests because he doesn't get to a lot of it in class, but you still have to know it for the exams. Just know how the class is run and then decide if it is worth taking.
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SOC 100 Sophomore Grade Earned: A General Ed 3:45 pm, Dec 12, 2008 |
The class seems really easy at first but Proffessor Zahran doesn't ever teach about anything. He gets off topic every class period talking about parties, drugs, and his hair. He uses Powerpoint slides but its so difficult to know what to take notes on. He's here, he's there, he's everywhere except teaching what he wants you to know. His study guides are the poorest quality study guide I've ever recieved. Studying for his tests was impossible
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SOC 100 Freshman Grade Earned: N/A General Ed 8:16 pm, Sep 11, 2008 |
He's really enthusiastic but it's hard to know what's important to know and what he's just thrown into his powerpoints to make a colorful presentation. He uses HUGE graphs a lot and spends time talking about them but then says we don't have to know them. The assignments are also vague.
He seems like a cool guy and he's pretty funny but as a teacher he's just ok.
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SOC 101 Sophomore Grade Earned: B General Ed 4:38 pm, Feb 20, 2008 |
Sammy Zahran was a fun guy, but bad professor. Never any homework, just data assignments that you do during class that the TA's help you with. Tests are all multiple choice. Just do the study guide and it's not too bad. During lectures, he reads directly off of the powerpoint slides which are eventually put on RamCT, and you can do the study guide from there. Going to class is pointless, and there's really no need to buy the book. If you actually want to learn something, don't take this class with him. And don't buy the book.
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SOC 100 Freshman Grade Earned: C Required (Major) 4:47 am, Feb 1, 2008 |
He is nice and helpful !! take classes with him
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SOC 100 Senior Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 4:42 pm, Jan 10, 2008 |
Prof. Zahran is an enthusiastic but inexperienced instructor who seems to lack true devotion to his students’ education...
His lectures consist of powerpoint presentations with the material in un-bulleted format, so that it’s basically a list of sentences rather that key points. He reads from a scripted lecture most of the time. This is hard to follow because he’s essentially reading an essay written with unnecessarily confusing vocabulary. Taking notes is nearly impossible, especially since the powerpoint slides aren’t available for printing until after the class. (However, even if they were since they’re so unstructured and don’t emphasize key points they need serious improvement in order to better communicate the information.)
Many classes were completely wasted on busy work—data assignments which didn’t effectively teach us the logic of the formulae we worked with. It was just plug-and-chug work that I hardly understood (because they were poorly explained) and which we weren’t required to understand—just as long as the answers were correct. At the very least they should have been assigned as homework rather than “filler-time” in class.
The study sheets for the exams are problematic. They are practically giving away the answers since they list every term/concept one needs to “know”—basically, just memorize the answers to each. It requires minimal actual understanding of the relationships between terms and makes it unnecessarily difficult to actually learn about the concepts contextually. They’re just listed in long, long lists, with key concepts/words like stratification a couple lines below something as trivial as the name of the world’s longest living female. And even more ridiculous if the fact that the entire class periods preceding the exam is essentially wasted on people asking for the definitions to the terms because they hadn’t gone over powerpoint slides or looked them up in the book. Even though I hadn’t started studying either these reviews were a complete waste of time because they didn’t summarize any key themes or emphasize terms which would have been helpful to actual understand or learn something at a big-picture level (which is needed to do well on the test but especially if you want to learn and not just memorize information).
Overall, an unsatisfying and frustrating class if you want to learn, made much too difficult (because of poor organization and communication) considering it’s an intro class and that I learned so little, and remember even less. I could have learned much more had I read the book rather than attended class. Also, this instructor’s emphasis on statistics and quanitative analysis was disappointing.
Even for slackers, who might not care about how “fulfilling” a class is, it’s not like the class is easy per se—it’s made difficult enough to maintain that nice bell curve of student’s grades (and the instructor’s credibility). It’s just that the difficulty has little to do with intellectual challenge and more accurately reflects the result of ineffective teaching methods...
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S 100 Freshman Grade Earned: B General Ed 1:16 pm, Dec 23, 2007 |
This teacher really works to make the course work interesting! You don't get homework but you have a few in class data assignments but Prof. Zahran and his TA's help you out and it's not to hard. The tests were all multiple choice and not bad as long as you do the study guide and I would recomend looking over the graphs and tables on the power point slides because he takes a lot of questions off of them.
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