Professor Taub is not only a great professor but also a super sweet person. It's easy to tell that she is very passionate about what she teaches and she is very willing to help students understand and learn the material well. There are frequent homework assignments and lecture attendance is taken through those homeworks, the assignments are all super helpful in understanding the material. The exams are not too challenging as long as you pay attention to lecture and ask Professor Taub if you have any questions. She'll go over it as many times needed too! She's great!!

IA STD 50
B+
Worst.
She is nice. But she was gone for 3 weeks and gave us midterm on week 6 saying "not all the things we covered in the class will be on the midterm."
One thing we did do in class a lot was watch documentaries which we were tested on.
WTF
She is extremely unorganized.
Her powerpoints slides are just sad.
She didn't even let us know our midterm grades until the final grades came out... so we didn't know how well we did on the midterm until we got our final grade.

Don't take any class with Bonnie.

I absolutely loved learning about Latin America, but I felt like Professor Taub's lectures were not super helpful towards the midterm and final. I enjoyed this class too because there was no discussion, which actually might have been helpful to have. In all honesty, you do need the textbook for this class. But don't fear. It should be on course reserves in the library. I didn't have to buy mine because of this. There is a lot of content to go over, but it isn't too understand. Professor Taub does create a brief study guide list. Most of the questions on the exams are pretty specific, therefore it is important to read from the textbook. I believe that for every lecture section (2x a week) we had to turn in a printed copy of a current news event on a country in Latin America and write a brief summary of the article and some thoughts. Professor Taub is very sweet, but she is a bit forgetful. She also never claims to know everything which is great compared to other professors. She also speaks a whole bunch of languages and has worked abroad. There is a pretty long essay we have to write where we interviewed someone who has lived in a country in Latin America and discuss their experiences and how they coincide with the events at that time. I recommend doing this as soon as possible because the essay does require a lot of time and research to be accurate. As long as you did all the readings (or just skimmed the main points) and the essay to your best abilities, it is highly likely that you will get and A.

Professor Taub is easily one of the nicest, most passionate professors I've had at UCLA. Her work in the field is super interesting and hugely diverse, and she has a lot to say about her experiences and is very knowledgable about the subjects covered in IA STD 50. A lot of the topics covered in this class are super interesting and will definitely open your eyes and make you think. That being said, there is a lot of reading for this class. The tests are decently in depth, and there is definitely a lot of material to understand along with a lot of things to memorize. The interview research paper also was a ton of work, and took a couple of weeks at least to gather all the facts and data you need, interview your subject, make sure of its accuracy, and actually write the paper. Even though this research paper was super involved and difficult at times, it was genuinely very interesting to learn from a first hand account. It makes you realize the themes and subjects you are studying in class are present in the experiences of someone right in front of you, and humanizes everything this class stresses over the course of the quarter.

Grade breakdown: 40% midterm paper 40% final exam 10% attendance 10% presentation on midterm paper

I found the class and content really interesting as someone who has taken previous courses about Latin America. I think giving us the space to explore Latin American countries and focus on the demographic and health issues and healthcare was a great part of the class.

However, I found the structure of the class a bit unfair. The exam holding 40% of our grade meant an emphasis on testing. However, the exam's longest portion was an essay worth 24% of the entire exam which was broken up into parts that called for multiple pages of writing and a longer focus on the essay. However, the multiple choice took less time and held a larger portion of the points. We were also told it would be a lot of matching & multiple choice. However, the "matching" section was more fill in the blank without options or a wordbank and it held almost the same amount of weight as the essay portion.

I think it would have been more fair to separate the essay to a separate assignment and hold a larger weight than the exam with multiple choices/"fill in the blank" portions. It also felt unhelpful that the exam was focused on small details that didn't focus on our understanding of the actual content. The explanation of the exam felt unfair as it was stated our understanding would be tested, not our ability to memorize small details and population numbers within different Latin American countries. We were also told that the slides wouldn't be much help or give us much direction and the exam was focused on lecture rather than the slides, but it was difficult since each session was 3 hours long and the lectures went unrecorded. We also were not given permission to take pictures or record which made it difficult to review lecture content.

Professor Taub is an expert in Latin American health studies. Her expertise provides wonderful insight to this course. Workload entailed a midterm essay on a health problem of our interest and take-home final assignment.

Textbook was interesting, but not necessary. Additional books, i.e. Farmer's Haiti After the Earthquake, however, were a fascinating read and very relevant throughout the class.

I took this class because I was considering a latin american studies minor, and this professor disencouraged me completely. Every class was kind of all over the place and I feel like I was learning nothing. The content was super vague and unheloful for the exams which were brutal. Something to know as well is that theres no technology allowed in class and you definitely have to take notes. In the exams theyre in class and written; multiple choice and essay questions. The content that we are supposed to memorize for the exams is super vague as well so its extremely difficult to study for. definitely dont recommend this class.