At first I found the topic boring, but Porter really knows how to make the information soak into your head. Though his lectures can be confusing at times, he really makes you think and draw conclusions based on what he talks about. I often left lecture thinking about what I had just learned.
His assignments were challenging, but definitely not impossible if you started early.
Go to his office hours! Porter is very friendly and willing to answer any questions you may have. He is quite brilliant.
Long story short, this class is interesting if you actively participate. It would probably be horridly boring if you didn't make an effort to participate.

He is not a good lecturer, and he doesn't make good powerpoint. But he is definitely a nice guy, and tries hard to make students more engaging, occasionally he makes some good jokes. I have to admit I fall asleep more than I did during the fall quarter.

Very interesting and not hard GE class. To get an A - attend the class, participate in lecture discussions, essay -get guidance from your TA, check with writing center for mistakes, for midterm questions remember your TA's name, and pr will give you exact questions he will ask (no surprise). I really enjoyed the class, not sure how proff got this some what poor rating.

I'm not sure why or how the reviews have reflected this professor and his class the way they have. He was not a bad lecturer at all. I guess you could say he was a bit mono toned, but he made an honest and respectable effort to get the classroom engaged. The slides were well organized, easy to read, and delivered all the pertinent information for quizzes and papers. Readings were pretty dense, as they were mostly original sources that deal with relatively complex subject matter, but I liked them and feel like I got a lot out of them. The sections are designed to force you to bring your discussion A game- if you have input you have to cite what you're talking about by page. But other than that I found the essays to be more than fairly graded and the tests not hard at all. Great professor, great class.

Great professor. He posts slides online but attendance is graded. Most of your grade is based on 3 short (3-5) page papers. Midterm and final are extremely simple. I would definitely recommend this class as a pretty easy GE.

He's such a cute person. He is like awkward cute, and when he makes jokes, it makes me so happy. I've noticed that he does change the grading of the class every now and then so this time it was 3 900-1200 word papers that were each worth 20% of your grade, a midterm and a final that were each worth 10% of your grade (as he was passing the final out, he was like "good luck, but really we all know that most of you are going to get a 100%."), and going to discussion was 20% of your grade. I had Daniel as my TA who was really nice but also kind of awkward. I personally did not fun find the information in this class super interesting except for the eugenics section, but I know others did! In this class you focus on Darwin's family ties and relations with others, then eugenics, you focus a lot on the world wars, and end with environmentalism and DNA. This class has SO much reading - about 100-120 pages a week, BUT because of my TA I did not have to actually do it, so I didn't read since like week 2. Reading is always mandatory but you just like skim a few pages here and there to get whatever you need. My other friend had to do all the reading because she wrote page long summaries in her discussion every week. It really depends on your TA.

This class is a great GE because it is not very rigorous or demanding of your time. You are graded based on 3 papers, and your "midterm/final" are just comprehension questions to see if you went to lecture. Attendance in discussion was mandatory, but that's really minor. Professor Porter never finishes his lectures on time or early, so I would recommend leaving a comfortable time gap after his lecture. Everything from lecture is posted on the website, so its great to review. The monotonous tone of voice can sometimes overshadow the important and intriguing parts of lecture, but overall, this is not a course that you will have to stress over.

Great GE course. Not very demanding of your time and has easy quizzes. It is easy to lose focus however.

Professor Porter is probably the nicest man I've ever met, but he just lack public speaking skills. His lectures are interesting in their content, but he has a horrible habit of stuttering and going off on tangents. If you can bear through his lectures, which are sometimes a pain to get through in order to answer the question he provides at the end in order to prove your attendance, it is a fantastic class. His tests are short answer and he sends out a list of around 15 possible questions beforehand. Plus, 60% of my midterm was writing my name on the page and it was also 80% of my final. Other than the the only work the whole year was 3 essays of reasonable length (about 5 pages each) and and work assigned by the TA's.

Professor rambles a bit, but is occasionally funny and very sweet. Topics are engaging, reading is mandatory for a good grade.