Richard Allison

School: University of Houston-Clear Lake
Department: Business Administration
Location: Houston, TX
Overall Rating
rated by 20 students
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Pros: None
Cons: No matter how much you study for his exams, you'll be lucky if you get any question right. His slides are horrible, his homework has nothing to do with his exams or class, and his exams are just plain stupid hard. Anyone who gets a 3.0 or higher in this class is lucky. They were lucky enough to remember some minor detail from some random page of the text/slides for the exam. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH ALLISON. I have worked harder in his class than any other class at MSU and I am still failing.
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Pros: He's a nice enough guy...
Cons: ...but he's the absolute worst professor I have had in my entire life.
Never in my life has a class (or anything, for that matter) filled me with the urge to binge drink and cry until I pass out in a pool of my own tears... until this class.
I have had courses that required memorization of every reaction that takes place in different metabolic pathways, a class where I had to be able to identify mammals down to species level by their skull. I have nothing against difficult classes, so long as I know what I am supposed to be learning, but that's not how this class works. Apparently Dr. Allison's definition of "teaching" doesn't actually include... well... teaching.
Super nice guy though.
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Pros: lol
Cons: everything
this guy either needs to retire, or be fired asap. He is the worst professor I have had at MSU by far.
He's monotonous, boring, and just reads of the slides for the entire lecture. You really only go for the clicker questions. The exam problems are nothing like the text book or the homework he gives out to us. I highly regret taking this class, and do yourselves a favor, don't get Allison.
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Pros: none
Cons: Literally the worst teacher at Michigan State University. I am so sad he represents our university.
The homework questions are so incredibly vague and they are graded SO hard based on specific answers. Dr. Allison has no idea what he is talking about and just constantly mumbles throughout class. He purposefully doesn't turn his microphone up loud enough so half the class can't understand or hear him speak. I hate this class with a burning passion. Study so hard for every exam and fail every one. The class is by far the worst I have ever and ever will take at MSU.
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Pros: I can't think of any. I'm serious.
Cons: Has absolutely no clue what he is doing
Is not a geneticist
Mumbles constantly and clears throat, on average, every 5-10 seconds
Does not want to teach the class
Homework questions are vague but graded with lots of detail
Tests long and filled with obscure topics that were not covered in class
Slides copied out of book, of no help whatsoever
Do not take this class with this professor. Allison is the most incompetent teacher I have ever had. Thinking that I support his salary actually makes me feel nauseous.
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I don't wear my seatbelt driving to school because I want to die before I can make it to this class
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Pros: Nothing.
Cons: TERRIBLE. Crams way to much information onto each ppt slide, and wonders why he falls behind in lecture. Exams are just ridiculous....Should not be a teacher.
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Pros: none
Cons: boring, exams are impossibly hard, TA's are useless.
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Pros: Zero
Cons: He is THE WORST professor I have had here at MSU. I have taken a wide variety of upper levels, and this class is by far way harder then any other class, including BMB 401, anatomy, physic, immuno, ETC. I had heard that this class was tough, but had never expected it to be like it was. The exams are UNREAL, I am the type of person that studies for hours on end, and always prepared way in advance and still managed to barely survive the class. I honestly can't believe that the department hasn't fired him. He has ZERO clue about genetics. His classes are extremely boring, and his lecture slides are full of text. He expects you to memorize every single detail from the book on top of his lecture slides which have different information on them then the book. His exams are designed for an 80 min class, and you find yourself rushing/barely finishing every exam. If possible, TAKE IT WITH A DIFFERENT PROF!
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PUNCHING KITTENS! thats what this man made me want to do during this class. I can't even express in words how much I loathed every second of this class and that man.
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Pros: None
Cons: He is the worst teacher I've had so far in MSU! DON'T ENROLL IN THIS CLASS!!!!!! It's a waste of time and money.. I studied so much and still didn't do as well in class. I attended every class, read every chapter in the book, memorized all the slides but still didn't do good on his exams! His exams are ridiculously hard and when he says he's going to change them to make it easier it gets worse. They contain tiny details and they certainly dont do a good job of testing a month of material in 50 min. The exam contains short answers and a lot of drawings and labeling. He cant teach and his slides have a lot of errors in them. If you want to learn genetics don't take the course with him.. If you dont want to kill your GPA don't take the course with him... And if you decide to take this course: good luck bro
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Pros: -40 extra credit points for attending lecture (iClicker)
Cons: -Can't read or spell
-Honestly does not know what he is talking about
-Doesn't know how to write exams
BY FAR the worst professor I have ever had. He does not know genetics. He writes his slides and reads from them (often incorrectly) during lecture since he cannot synthesize information to teach us on this topic. He simply does not know it.
First exam: Admitted he gave us a test from an 80 minute class (we were a 50 minute class).
Second exam: Put information on there from the book that NO ONE would think was important. For example: "How many histones are there?" As opposed to "What are the function of histones?" The latter is what everyone spent time studying.
Third exam: Improvement here. Everyone finished and this was my highest test score (A whopping 60%).
Final: "It will be like the third exam, and skip x, y, and z while studying." X, Y, and Z were on the test. And it was not very similar to the third exam.
DO NO TAKE HIM IF YOU CAN HELP IT. I somehow managed a 2.5 when I was already planning on retaking it. He is the perfect example of a college student passing his classes on pure memorization, not understanding. HE DOES NOT KNOW THIS MATERIAL. It was a weekly laugh session in recitation when the TA would say "...And he said this, but he was wrong....it's this..."
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Pros: None
This is the worst class that I have taken at MSU besides MMG 301. Richard Allison is the worst incompetent teacher that I have ever seen. You can print the notes before class and the notes are a full wall of text on every single slide. Slides are full of errors, and you will spend some time correcting them. You are expected to memorize minor details, and you will be tested with these on the exam. While Allison can’t teach, he doesn’t know how to give an exam. All exam question difficulties are much harder than the notes. The book did not help at all. He kept changing the exam so that we could do better but the class average kept going down.
Also, when we had questions about the exam, for why we got them wrong, Dr. Allison became very angry and said he wouldn’t answer them. He gave no points back to me, and told me personally not to ask him any more questions. What kind of teacher does that? He took no time to explain why the answers were wrong.
Homework doesn’t help at all. Dr. Allison will not ask questions from the homework. He creates new theories and questions of things he didn’t talk about in class. He kept asking us to draw the steps of mitosis and meiosis in the exam. Yet during lecture, he never drew out how mitosis or meiosis were, and breezed through them during lecture.
When the TAs tried to help us, Dr. Allison said that they revealed too much information, and changed his exam questions. Even the TAs had to correct him several times on information due to his incompetency.
If you are a hard worker, this class is not for you! I performed poorly on exams that I had studied a lot for it, but cramming I did much better. I know this seems contradictory, but I have no idea why it happens this way.
Not only does he not know how to teach, he doesn’t understand genetics. Taking this class is a waste of time and money. Take this class with a different teacher. Preferably, due to the class history, do not take this class at all. Hopefully he will be fired and there can be a new better teacher.
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Pros: He loves MSU football
He's retiring... hopefully
Cons: HE CAN'T TEACH! You have no idea what he's going to put on the exams, he pulls most of the stuff from the book and loves looking for nit-picky details
I've taken Physio 400 level, Biochem 400 level, Microbio 301, and countless BLD courses... this is by far the most ridiculous, most difficult, class I've ever taken. I love genetics and am fascinated by it, but this guy makes it horrible. His lectures are completely non-informative, he pulls random stuff for the exams from the book so you have to read, AND REMEMBER, EVERYTHING that you read. The class averages on the second exam, which he said would be easier than the first, dropped 10 points to a 59 percent and the third exam, which was supposed to be the easiest of all, had an average of only one point above the first. He claims to care about the students and if they're learning but if you challenge him on a mistake he made on an exam that resulted in incorrect answers or have questions he's completely unhelpful or willing to give you extra points for his own failures. He won't tell you what to study (save for one or two things per exam plus a repeating diagram you have to draw on each) and actually yelled at a TA who gave just a general description of what to expect (this many points on this general topic, that many points on that general topic, etc) for giving away "too much information". I'm not sure if he doesn't think that the rest of us have lives outside of this class (like other difficult classes, a job, having to cook our own food and shop for ourselves, I don't even know?) but he seemed shocked when I approached him after missing a class and he found out it was due to work and illness and not because I was out having fun. You can spend hours upon hours studying for this class each week and still not do well with this guy. Bottom line, don't take it with him if he, for whatever reason, teaches it again. You won't learn squat except what you (and maybe a good TA) teach yourself, your GPA will suffer, and you'll wind up with nothing but stress. Oh, and so far there's no curve... enjoy.
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Pros: He is a nice professor... he corresponds his material almost verbatim from the book. Extra credit was given on the exams (5 points) but were almost impossible to get. Clickers are an every class occurrence.
Cons: But, his exams are mostly written-out and very timely so rarely students finished early. The questions also were pretty detailed for a basic level courses and the TAs grade hard, for example, if you forget one point, that's 5 point deduction of 20 on the homework problems. Homework was given every single week, even on exam weeks. Also, his lectures were him reading off slides that were directly from the book.
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Pros: There are clicker points so come to class and if you go to recitation you get extra points for that.
Cons: He goes over a lot of material and picks the most random facts to test you on. His exams are written for a class that is an 1.30 minutes long but the class is 50 minutes. He reads directly from his power points and tells you that everything is important or interesting therefore you never really know what you should know exactly to pass exams.
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Pros: none
Cons: horrible in all areas
Horrible professor... He stands up front with a monotone voice and rambles through his powerpoints word for word. His exams are ridiculous for a 50 min time period, with over half the exams being detailed short answer. Id highly recommend taking someone else
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Pros: honestly can't think of any.
I would highly reccommend taking this course with a different professor if you want to learn anything about genetics. Dr. Allison is a virologist that cares more about football than he will ever know about genetics. He can't handle putting correct information on his powerpoints or answering any questions. Half the time he doesn't understand his own clicker questions (when he can get the clicker set up to work) or the correct answer isn't even listed. His exam questions are on tiny details and things from the book, and he puts a ton of things that you have to draw out. Also, if you want to learn any current events about the rapidly expanding field of genetics, take it with someone else.
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Allison was a horrible professor. He often mispronounced words on his slides. He can't pronounce genome or tryptophan. His voice is extremely monotone and his lectures could put anyone to sleep. He for some reason has to clear his throat every three or four sentances. His exams are beyond words. He expects you to remember things that seem unimportant from lecture that aren't even in the 100 pages of the book that you are tested on. Some questions were on things that he mentioned vocally in lecture but didn't actually put on his slides. And on top of this, he gives very specific essay questions on topics that molecular geneticists would have trouble understanding. We spent two lectures on the details of transcription and ended up having only one question about it on the exam. When a student asked if he could make a review for the exam, he replied "just know everything that I said, everything that was in the slides, and everything that is in the book." He is unreasonable and a horrible professor. If you have the option, take Lyman Briggs bio instead and just do an honors option for it.
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as much of a nerd as he is, he is a really great guy. if you have trouble in the class just make appointments with him and he helps you so much. he also will "put into consideration" the amount of effort you put in. you're lucky if you have him for your chemistry 141 class because he is actually a professor that cares about his students. the tests are really hard though, so study.

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