Harold Avery

School: Drexel University
Department: Biology
Location:Philadelphia, PA
Overall Rating
rated by 20 students
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Rating Comment
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 Pros: Straightforward
Nice guy
Easy exams
Cons: Not really there for office hours
He is an ok lecturer liked how he was to the point and that he never went the whole hour and half for lecture. His exams are pretty easy if you study/memorize his slides. He has a tendency to ask questions about the words that he highlights in red. Much easier than Spudich. Not a hard grader and friendly guy.
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 Pros: always willing to answer questions
always posts lecture slides online
knowledgeable about his subject
Cons: Tests are based on lecture, so skipping lecture is not the best idea
notes are somewhat disorganized
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 Pros: - Very nice professor
-Very Clear in teaching
- Good Powerpoints to study for and gives a lot of review material
Cons: - Can be slow at grading exams
Great Professor!
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 Pros: super nice guy who is always willing to help out- very clear with expectations. go to his office hours for help, he's very understanding and patient
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 Pros: Really interesting and engaging professor, enthusiastic about subject, extremely knowledgeable, nice guy
Cons: None!
Study hard from the slides and pay attention in lecture and you're good!
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 Pros: Brilliant
Funny
Adorable!
Passionate
Cons: Seems a little distant from his students
He's a great guy with a great personality. He talks a lot about turtles though..haha.
His exams are terribly difficult and I failed a couple of them, but overall he's awesome.
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 Pros: Really nice guy
Is an effective lecturer
Cares about his students and what he is teaching and it really shows
Cons: On exams, a lot of the answers are "E" where there are multiple parts to the answer and this can be confusing at times
Just make sure you go to lectures!
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 Had Avery for first half of Vertebrates course - wasn't bad. Not best, not worst lecturer. Exam was easy. Spudich's half of the course was much harder.
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 Pros: The subject material is interesting, and he was really into it.
Cons: He's boring sometimes, can be monotone.
The tests were pretty easy. They were essay style, and basically you just needed to be able to have the general understanding of what was discussed in class to do well on them. There was also a research paper and presentation. You got to pick your topic, so it was pretty painless to do, and they were graded pretty leniently.
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 Really good teacher who knows his material very well. Also, he connects what we learn in lecture to real life application. He's a fun guy, but definitely put in the work when studying for his exams. After all, this is a biology class.
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 Pros: Easy Grader
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 You can tell that this professor loves what he teaches. He is very passionate about the information involved in this class, which is a good thing. There is A LOT of reading involved in the class and the research paper/oral presentation takes a lot of time to prepare, but overall it is a very interesting class.
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 Dr. Avery is one of the nicest and most caring professors I have had a Drexel. His test was a lot like last year's exam, and was directly from the lecture. He is excited about the material, but sometimes doesnt seem like he knows what hes talking about... but great none the less. Why can't they all be like this???
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 I think a lot of the people on this site who have bad-mouthed Dr. Avery are probably the type of people who only study for an hour the night before an exam and then are surprised when they don't do well.
Bio 123 was split between two teachers, and Dr. Avery's was markedly easier than Dr. Rich's portion. Yes, the "homework" is busy work, and yes there are many mentions of turtle, but Dr. Avery is a very nice person and genuinely cares for his students. He is one of the few professors I've met that remembers faces and makes an effort to say hello and ask how you're doing if he sees you outside of class. It's a shame that some people have used this site to make personal attacks on him.
Go to class and lab, take notes, study the lecture slides... it isn't rocket science, it's a freshman level Bio course.
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 This guy is just a Spotila suck up, always kissing his butt and obsessed with turtles. He gives oviously wrong information sometimes and contradicts himself. Highly disappointing. If you like turtles though, go for his classes. His slides are highly repeditive and though the material is easy, he is nit-picky so knowing the material does garentee you an A. He will take off lots of points for small writting errors. He usually lets class out early, though it always feels like it ran over. The most interesting part of the class was listening to other peoples presentations at the end on a HUGE paper that we had to do. I would not take his class again, but his research is fun to do if your willing to put up with his utter stupidity and annoyingness in talking to himself and thinking he knows everything. The turtles are great. :-)
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 This guy is just a Spotila suck up, always kissing his butt and obsessed with turtles. He gives obviously wrong information sometimes and contradicts himself. Highly disappointing. If you like turtles though, go for his classes. His slides are highly repetitive and though the material is easy, he is nit-picky so knowing the material does NOT guarantee you an A. He will take off lots of points for small writing errors. He usually lets class out early, though it always feels like it ran over. The most interesting part of the class was listening to other peoples presentations at the end on a HUGE paper that we had to do. I would not take his class again, but his research is fun to do if you’re willing to put up with his utter stupidity and annoyingness in talking to himself and thinking he knows everything. The turtles are great. :-)
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 This guy is a brainless class A idiot.
I rated him 2/10 because he can't be entirely blamed for the dull and insipid material..Dr. Rich is also responsible.
however if you want to do well, make sure you complete the labs meticulously and do all the non exam work.
for exams i recommend studying the notes, the book is mostly useless.
don't bother kissing ass to this guy either, he's too busy kissing his own.
good luck
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 We had a weekly work which seemed more like busy work more than anything for the test he told us to study fromt he book but nothing was from the book. most of the class got terrible grades on the tests c d f and it is not curved. it is very hard to know hwat to study and the test is a vey low number of questions that are very specific.
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 Dr. Avery is a really nice guy and honestly cares about how students are doing. He offered a re-test after there was an error with accessing the notes. Tests are not that bad either.
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 I would take him again. He always lets class out early. Grades reasonably fair. He doesn't really sound excited when he talks about the stuff, but how exciting is bio really??

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