Esther Nzewi

I wrote another review several months ago, but for some reason the folks at Coursereviews will not display its contents because of the F grade that I assigned. I have written twice and received no reply, so now I'm re-submitting my review with a D- that should be read as an F.

Dr. Nzewi is a marginally competent instructor, though hardly worth the hyperbolic praise another reviewer offered. Her classes invariably consist of her transferring her written notes to the chalk board and mechanically lecturing. Despite teaching a math class, she would very seldom do in-class exercises. The only performance feedback we received was on graded assignments.

Dr. Nzewi, perhaps owing to cultural differences, frequently treated any question or request for more information as a challenge to her authority. She frequently belittled people for asking questions and explicitly said that it was childish to ask for help. In her eyes, the proper student would sit through the lecture silently, turn in the homework, and not require anything from her other than a mechancial regurgitation of material that any of us could simply read in the textbook.

The place where Dr. Nzewi fails utterly as an instructor, however, is in her disprespectful, belligerent, cruel manner. In the semester-long course I took with her, I counted numerous instances in which students were literally in tears because of the way that she spoke to them. She was hostile and terrorized the students. By the second week of class, students were literally prefacing perfectly appropriate questions with statements like "I know this will probably just make you mad, but..."

Dr. Nzewi ridicules students, she berates them, she insults them. Her teaching style is rigid and authoritarian, and god help you if she makes a mistake on the board.

Dr. Nzewi badly misconstrues her eggregious conduct as "tough love", which it most certainly is not. It is very difficult to learn under the oppressive conditions that she creates in her classroom.

Her grading style is equally arbitrary and unfair. I submitted a homework assignment that took me hours to complete involving dozens of equations, and I received a D- because the sections were not labelled the way she wanted. Every single equation was correct, but because the sections were not labelled properly, I got a D-! What the hell is that?

I entered her course with enthusiasm and a genuine interest in the course material. By the second week I was completely demoralized and depressed, and dreaded coming to the class, because of the horrible atmosphere she created and maintained. I have a college degree and have done significant graduate level work, and I can easily say that Dr. Nzewi is one of the two worst teachers I've ever had in all that time. My class with her stands out as one of the depressing low points of my education.

When I first wrote this review, I was baffled how a teacher whose classroom conduct is so obviously inappropriate could still be teaching. I see this in a new light, however, given that Coursereviews.com arbitrarily refused to publish my previous review. I can now see that the whole system disallows criticism.

Dr. Nzewi is one of the smartest professors I've had, and that's saying a lot considering that I studied with some really bright teachers at UC Berkeley. She is extremely knowledgeable and shares a wealth of professional anecdotes and thoughts on all the branches of psychology. Her lectures are straightforward, and her tests are pretty much taken straight out the book, so it's easy to get an A as long as you read the book and participate in a fun group project and write a basic 10 page paper. She's always willing to help and is very approachable. The only drawback to this class was the lack of engaging discussion by my classmates. I think a lot of my classmates were straight out of high school and hadn't figured out how to learn yet, so Dr. Nzewi was limited in what she could teach. Take her class and enjoy!