Comments:BIC 2344 - I absolutely cannot stand Professor Cummings, she is actually so condescending and rude. Her teaching style is all over the place, some days we may take notes from a powerpoint which she never reads through before we start so it's just a jumbled mess of information, and others we have a socratic seminar style class where she talks over everyone else. Not to mention she is very rude. If I could drop this class and take another professor, I would  - Grade In Class:A

Comments:PSC 4334 - If you have any interest in the Middle East/North Africa region, you HAVE to take Dr. Cummings! She does have an unorthodox class style, but it is not difficult whatsoever to adjust. She is extremely helpful, but does leave the country or visit her grandkids 1-2 times (honestly fair). She is super flexible and wants everyone to learn how to think and process the ME from different perspectives. The commenter below made the impression that the "rants" are her personal opinions and that it is hard to learn. Not true at all, anything she says comes from more than 30 years of service and if anything else challenges your current world view. I cannot see how you can just not learn while spending time around Dr. Cummings. Take!  - Grade In Class:A

Comments:4315 - This class is a breeze, but it is not worth the massive headache. Professor Cummings spent most of her career working in the State Department so she's very knowledgeable, but her teaching leaves something to be desired. Her lectures are really just her personal ranting hour where she almost always gets way off topic and you end up feeling like you're not learning anything at all. She did not publish a syllabus the entire semester and it felt like she was just making it up on the fly as she would frequently change major aspects of assignments, especially at the end of the semester. She is nice, but I don't feel like I learned much at all. The daily discussion board posts are not hard and you really just have to talk every so often to keep her happy. There was no midterm and the final was open note, open book, and no lockdown. You also have to do a presentation on a topic of your choosing, but make sure you understand every part of it as she would frequently grill people who didn't know everything about some minor part of the presentation that she thought was important for some reason. Overall, she was a mediocre professor and I would not suggest you take her.  - Grade In Class:A

Comments:4379 - This class was called Islam & Democracy and it was pretty interesting. Cummings is very smart and draws from a lot of personal and field experience (she grew up in the middle east and was an FSO there for a while). She is very nice and welcomes students to ask questions. She's pretty liberal but she says it at the jump. That being said she is good at having conversations and hearing out all perspectives. Wasn't the most organized professor which was kind of annoying and she didn't always follow the syllabus. I often didn't really know what we were supposed to be doing. In the middle of the semester, we kinda shifted to only talking about the October 7 attack; I enjoyed that she applied what we were learning to present-day conflicts. At the end of the semester she kind of went off track in terms of how grades were weighted (presentation ended up being worth an additional 90pts from what the syllabus said). SHe also struggled with grading things in a timely manner as I often didn't know what my grade was. That being said, as long as you did your assignments it's a pretty easy class. Also, in the middle of the semester our classes were remote for a few weeks b/c she had to go train people at the state dept. She's nice and very smart but not a really good prof, she doesn't really know how to teach well. Her teaching style is like a rough draft, there's potential and some good parts, but at the end of the day, it kinda of doesn't make sense and should be edited. finished with an A-  - Grade In Class:A

Comments:PSC 4334 - Quick, straight-forward. All you really needed to do was skim the readings, write a quick 100-150 word discussion post, and speak occasionally in class. Dr. Cummings has rich experience as a FSO, is a great mentor, and teaches through anecdote. There are few professors who are experts in their field like her who are able to teach at such a high calibre.  - Grade In Class:A

Comments:PSC 4343 - Best professor I have ever had. It's a 4000 level class, so come in with that expectation. For our class, she expected us to read 1 chapter from 2 books, and do discussion posts with questions about the readings for each week. Sure, it was challenging to do the readings at times as they were 80-100 pages, however, they can largely be skimmed. Dr. Cummings was a FSO previously and her great experience shows, she tells great stories about her time overseas and makes it easy to understand the historical and modern context of the Middle East. She grades fairly and to score well, one needs to understand the general concept rather than all the dates. She wants you to understand what is going on and make inferences from it rather than memorizing who did what, when they did it, and how they did it. I greatly enjoyed this class and the professor and highly recommend her.  - Grade In Class:A

Comments:PSC 3345- Foreign Policy - This class exemplifies the idea that not everyone with experience is fit to be a teacher. Dr. Cummings was an FSO for her whole career, yet she can't teach foreign policy and diplomacy nearly as well as Dr. Clinton, who has never served in the foreign service. We read a chapter for each class and wrote reflections about them, yet almost all of class was her ranting about random topics in foreign policy. Interesting stories and discussions, but not on track at all. The quizzes focus on material from the reading that we usually didn't go over in class, or if we did, you forgot about it because it was for the last five minutes of class after she finished talking about the random topic of the day. Her teachings are infected by her political leanings, and when student's bring up contradictory claims, she hyperfixates on them to try to back them into a corner. It makes everyone uncomfortable and less willing to discuss. Overall, this class added little value to my major and I would have rather taken anything else. (Grade not finalized yet).  - Grade In Class:A

Comments:4379 - This Islam and Democracy class was the most work I've ever had to do in my entire 4 years at Baylor. We had to write 5 topic papers that were about a week apart, 8 pages at least, totaling about 50 pages throughout the semester. Every single class you have to write a discussion post about the readings, and they are worth 20% of your grade. There are no tests, only the final which is 3 essay questions. There is an insane amount of reading that is never covered during class. The lectures are mostly her talking about what she finds interesting about Islam and doesn't have much structure. The nice thing is that she grades easy and is super available to talk to. We didn't receive feedback on any of our papers until they had all already been turned in and finished for the semester. You also have to give a presentation about your topic papers at the end of the semester. Overall, there is very little structure to the course and even less direction with your essays. If you don't have several hours to read and write for a class I suggest not taking it.   - Grade In Class:B