Review:
As most anybody can tell you, Professor Cruz is an extremely engaging professor who clearly cares about her students and is interested in their thoughts and opinions. She makes an effort to learn her students' names (no small achievement in a class of over 100 students) and is genuinely impressed and interested by intelligent comments and questions. She herself clearly puts very little emphasis on the grading aspect, preferring the class to be a discussion-- one of those very few professors who really does the "it's not about grades, it's what you LEARN" approach.
The problem is that, though interesting, her lectures are EXTREMELY disorganized; if you were expecting to take coherent notes, think again. She jumps around all over the place to the point that you will completely forget what you are talking about, and why. Basically, the class has no real structure, and while the syllabus does earmark certain days for certain topics, the way that the topics are discussed seems completely haphazard. An interesting professor though, and very approachable.

Workload:
Take-home midterm and take-home final. You are mostly at the mercy of your TA's, but grading is generally pretty fair. Most of the reading is probably unnecessary; I personally didn't do any reading until it came time to write the papers (though taht's probably not the best way to go about it). Basically, you could probably get a good grade in the class without ever showing up to lectures, but make sure you go to the recitations (it's 10% if your grade).

review a class you took with Consuelo Cruz - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
I got the most out of the readings in this class. The readings are probably about 50-75 pages a week and they are all from pdf files so you don't have to spend hundreds of dollars on books. He isn't a very good lecturer though he is a very intelligent man. His powerpoints are up on the website but most of the important stuff is what he says outloud in lecture, so I wouldn't miss them.

Workload:
50-75 pages a week. One research paper. Midterm and a final. Weekly recitations are a joke.

review a class you took with Shinju Fujihira - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
This professor is very interested in comparative politics but one can tell that she's moreso interested in Latin American politics. She's a great professor, but I do think that certain areas were briefly touched on while others were prolonged.

Workload:
Two exams: Midterm and Final.

Midterm is a piece of cake. The final is hard because she asks about seven different questions for one essay. If you like political sciene, you won't mind. If you don't, come prepared to suffer a bit during the final.

review a class you took with Consuelo Cruz - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
It's true: yes, the lecture can be a bit boring at times, but I did learn a lot and Professor Fujihira is hilarious. He's a really funny guy - his jokes lighten the class up. In addition, he really takes interest in answering any and all questions even though he often doesn't know the specific answer and says he has to look it up. He also makes a great effort to get to know all of our names. All together a great intro course.

Workload:
I thought the reading was really difficult at first, considering that I am a freshman. The way i planned it out, I had an article to read five nights a week. It's possible to not read, but it makes the paper very difficult. There is a midterm and a final examination and a paper. You really have to keep up with the reading to be able to write a competent paper.

review a class you took with Shinju Fujihira - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
Cruz is an amazing professor. Random, but amazing. Be prepared to have very jumpy lectures--there are a lot of random ideas thrown out and it is up to you to synthesize them into an analysis of comparative politics. She is ALWAYS at her office hours and willing to help and also willing to make appointments outside of her office hour times. The reading is not necessary until the two take-home exams. But be warned--the TAs (especially Leonardo) really want a lot out of those exams, so be prepared to put a lot of work into them to yield a good grade.

Workload:
The reading is not necessary. The two take-home papers were not bad. Recitations, however, were a complete waste of time. Do not have Leo as your TA. He mumbles throughout the recitation and talks about women's body soap. Utterly pointless.

review a class you took with Consuelo Cruz - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
Prof. Cruz is a brilliant, compassionate, engaging professor. She truly does her best to maintain the class's interest each night. She does her best to encourage class participation (and does quite a good job for such a large course) and is VERY accessible outside of class. If you're having any trouble with the material, go and talk to her - you'll be surprised how much it will help.

Workload:
Everyone is complaining about the workload, but really they shouldn't...you don't have to read it all. If you attend lecture and take good notes, you'll be fine. When the exams roll around (there are two take-homes, each given out with ample time to complete them) you can go back and read what you'll actually be writing about. Otherwise, it might be helpful to skim them, but really, it's not a big deal. I would say you could get out of this class as much as you wanted to put in, but that even if you don't put in 100%, you will still get a good grade if you attend lecture/recitation. And yeah, it is annoying that the rec. is not mentioned when you sign-up for the course.

review a class you took with Consuelo Cruz - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
Professor Cruz is incredibly knowledgeable about the topics of the course. Like her credentials would lead you to suspect, her knowledge of Latin America exceeds other regions. She is eloquent and insightful, while at the same time engaging the participation of class members. If the class seems to take on the character of a few students, it is merely because they are the ones that wish to speak. I was not one of them, but I don't find anyone's fault in that other than my own.

Workload:
This is an intensive reading course. As a comparative politics course inherently should be. Only two assignments, though they take a reasonable amount of preparation. The recitation aspect was annoying, and should be incorporated into the SIS system.

review a class you took with Consuelo Cruz - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
A class that did not meet its potential at all. The readings assigned were indeed unreasonable at times and never really explained all that well in class. Professor Cruz is very knowledgeable but the class ends up being a discussion between her and her 3 or 4 favorite students who think they know what they are talking about but don't. This class was more like a philosophy course than a comparative politics one.

Workload:
There was a ton of reading assigned that was rarely discussed in class and when it was it wasn't very interesting. A take home midterm and final that are of reasonable length. The problem is that all the grading is done by two separate TAs who grade very differently. One of the top 3 worst classes I've taken at Tufts.

review a class you took with Consuelo Cruz - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
Quite easily the worst class I have ever taken at Tufts. There is a recitation that meets every week for an extra hour that is mandatory that you do not know about when you sign up for the class, and in general, recitation times may not fit your schedule, and therefore you are screwed. The class is only based on select readings, and you hardly talk about anything outside of these few readings.

Workload:
Totally unreasonable amounts of work were assigned and it was not fun at all. Well over a few thousand pages were assigned to be read, but then all you did in class was discuss the readings, so it was easy to get out of it and do nothing. The midterm and the exam were 2 7-page papers which you could then look into the reading for the necessary information.

review a class you took with Consuelo Cruz - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
Professor Fujihira is a very intelligent man, but sometimes his lectures were incredibly boring, though at times he could also be very engaging. His voice is very loud and booming, and is in fact startling at first, but at least it keeps you from falling asleep (sometimes.) He is very kind, but sometimes he took too much time away from his lectures to answer questions from the class, questions it seemed like people were only asking to sound intelligent. His answers were usually always muddled and filled with "ums" or I don't knows. The class was always behind 1-2 lectures. If you like PS I'm sure the class would be appealing, but unless you really love the subject matter the class is nothing great. The TA is very nice but the recitations I found to be almost entirely pointless, they did not really help summarize the readings at all. Also the Professor doesn't seem to do any grading of essays at all himself, a little disappointing that he leaves it all to the somewhat befuddled T.A

Workload:
Not an insane amount of work. There are usually 3-4 reading assignments a week, which are mostly long articles from journals, etc. Be careful not to fall too far behind in the reading, it can creep up on you, although you can BS your way through without some of it. There was a midterm that was pretty tough, one paper, and a final. He gives you the questions that will be on the test, so if you prepare (which is difficult and tedious) you can do well.

review a class you took with Shinju Fujihira - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
Professor Cruz is an amazing teacher. Every student should take at least one class of hers while in college. You learn a vast amount of information on other countries, but because of the speed of the class it is often hard to spend adequate time on any one country. The reading from Professor Cruz's assigned Reader is interesting, whereas the reading from the Comparative Politics Text isn't. All things considered I'd suggest this class to anyone.

Workload:
There is about an average of about 60 to 80 pages of reading assigned a week, which is fair for a political science course. The midterm and the final are both take home test that asks you to answer two or three questions about the different texts you've read. This class is very fair in its grading. If you do the work, understand the material, attend recitation, and understand what Cruz wants out of the take home midterm and final you will do fine.

review a class you took with Consuelo Cruz - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
Professor Cruz is a very enthusiastic and knowledgeable professor. She lectures well and encourages class involvement even though the PS21 lecture has about 100 students in it. She's kind and is very concerned with students' understanding and class involvement. The only problem I found was that she was disorganized at times and jumped from one topic to another which made things confusing.

The course itself, however, can tend to be quite boring. This class is generally a theoretical class that compares various governments to one another. What bothered me the most about this class is that we would only spend 1-2 classes per country, which could make things quite complicated and dense. A lot of information was thrown out at once and the course booklet had some very heavy (and in some cases useless) readings. The textbook, on the otherhand was much more useful and contained information that connected well to the lectures.

Workload:
This course generally contains a lot of reading which cannot be done quickly. It can be insanely dense at times and I didn't always find a correlation with the lecture. There were two papers, one midterm (14-16 pages) and a final (both were take home exams). I ended up dropping this course because of the heavy workload and the fact that it didn't interest me at all. Going more in-depth may have held my interest a little more.

review a class you took with Consuelo Cruz - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
Professor Cruz was a really animated and interesting lecturer. I really appreciated how she attempted to learn the name of everyone in the class and how she ran the large lecture like she would a small seminar, encouraging lots of participation and discussion.

The subject matter was a little tedious; this class is mostly theory about different political systems rather than a focus on specific countries or regions, though Latin America comes up a lot.

Two plus block lectures a week and a mandatory recitation. 30% of your grade is participation, so speak up.

Workload:
I ultimately dropped this class because I was taking 5.5 classes and the workload became too much. There's a ton of dense reading per class. Cruz's midterm and final are both take-home essays, running about 14-16 pages each. The midterm was assigned the week before Spring Break and due the week after.

review a class you took with Consuelo Cruz - help your classmates make informed decisions!