Grace Spatafora

This class was a deep dive into the immune system, and Professor Spatafora made it both rigorous and rewarding. You cover a lot—from the basics of innate immunity to the complexity of adaptive responses, with an emphasis on molecular and cellular mechanisms. The material can be dense, but it's incredibly well-organized and builds logically over the semester. Professor Spatafora is incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about immunology, and it shows in her lectures. She explains difficult concepts clearly, but you'll still need to stay on top of the material—there’s a lot of terminology and detail to memorize. Expect a moderate workload (a few hours each week plus heavier exam prep), but if you’re interested in human biology or going pre-med, it’s totally worth it. I’d definitely take it again if I could—challenging, but one of the more rewarding classes I’ve taken at Middlebury.

This class was a deep dive into the immune system, and Professor Spatafora made it both rigorous and rewarding. You cover a lot—from the basics of innate immunity to the complexity of adaptive responses, with an emphasis on molecular and cellular mechanisms. The material can be dense, but it's incredibly well-organized and builds log …Read more

I really enjoyed cell bio with Spatafora! She has very expectations for her students and you must know and understand the content well in order to get a good grade in her class but she was a very clear and effective lecturer and had lots of quizzes and homeworks that I found to be super helpful in improving my understanding. She was also really great at explaining things in office hours providing lots of examples to make sure the information stuck! I think she gets a bad rap because you cannot succeed unless you truly understand and know the small details of the content, but there are lots of ways to get there and I learned a lot from her!

I really enjoyed cell bio with Spatafora! She has very expectations for her students and you must know and understand the content well in order to get a good grade in her class but she was a very clear and effective lecturer and had lots of quizzes and homeworks that I found to be super helpful in improving my understanding. She was …Read more

I enjoyed Professor Spatafora's cell bio class. I thought that the bi-weekly quizzes actually made me learn the material. The lectures were a little slow, but were effective in transmitting material. As a whole, I think that people rate it more difficult than it actually is!