Natalie Chwalisz

I liked that the class could be reoriented towards the topics that the students found interesting during discussions. Natalie was a good professor overall, although she would speed through the lecture slides.

There are 2 papers and a presentation that are extremely easy to get good grades in and make up most of your grade. However, the papers were uninspiring, and the heavy-lifting was weaving a nuanced connection between the prompt and class material (because there was little to none). The lectures themselves were often boring and disorganized, and although Professor Chwalisz claims to "love discussion" her opinions on most issues seemed very black and white (the same opinions she chose for readings). The worst part of this class was the fact that she would give us pop quizzes once a week, and every single week there was at least one answer to a question that the majority of the class thought was wrong, which lead to half of the lecture being tied up in arguments between students and the professor. The content itself is enthralling, but probably only to someone like me who finds political structures and theories incredibly interesting, and it's only interesting if you are very self-driven. You will get an A in this class, but it's not awesome... mostly because of the professor.

There are 2 papers and a presentation that are extremely easy to get good grades in and make up most of your grade. However, the papers were uninspiring, and the heavy-lifting was weaving a nuanced connection between the prompt and class material (because there was little to none). The lectures themselves were often boring and disorg …Read more

The course material is very interesting, but Professor Chwalisz's teaching style was poor. You cover topics like drug trade, terrorism-drug nexus, human smuggling, human trafficking, and more. There are lots of readings, but you don't really need to do all of them - just enough to participate in class. Some of the material seems outdated. Over the semester, we had to write three 2-page memos, one resource write-up, lead an hour-long class discussion, and an 8-page final paper with an associated policy brief and presentation of findings.

The course material is very interesting, but Professor Chwalisz's teaching style was poor. You cover topics like drug trade, terrorism-drug nexus, human smuggling, human trafficking, and more. There are lots of readings, but you don't really need to do all of them - just enough to participate in class. Some of the material seems outd …Read more