Tbh I don't know why there are so many negative reviews. This is the easiest class I've taken at UCSB. We had weekly Eli reviews, a very easy midterm project and exam, and a short final research paper. I also only went to 50% of the lectures and still received an A. She is a bit disorganized, but still very nice and easygoing.
She does not know how to teach. I was lost and her instructions confused me even more. Grad students in the history department said shes notorious for being bad at her job. If I wanna take another history class, now I know who to avoid.
She is very unclear about her assignments and her lectures are even more confusing. It seems she doesnt have a good grasp outside LATAM and women history which made the class the blind leading the blind
Veronica is helpful, kind, and knowledgeable. I took the class not as a History major, but an engineering student looking to complete my depth requirement. Her course, however, has re-sparked my interest in History. As a tip, be sure to do all of the reading before coming to class!
I have regarded many courses as some of the worst I have taken but I think this is actually the worst. We got behind in lecture so she made the last two assignments due right before finals. She was extremely disorganized and treated the class like it was the only one we were taking. It felt rushed and like I barely learned anything.
I absolutely adore Professor Castillo-Munoz! She really cares about her students and about history and you can feel that when she lectures. I learned so much from her class and I loved that grading was based on the readings, midterm, and final. I would 100% take another class with her!
Loved taking this class and learned a lot of the history of US-Mexico relations. The course was online due to the pandemic but Prof Castillo-Munoz worked hard to make sure we still had a semblance of an actual classroom but did it in a way that wasn't annoying like other professors.
She had a good balance of homeworks and stuff. very good lecturer, she was a little tough on the midterm. Take-home final though. Very interesting and inspirational!
The only problem I had was that she did not give clear guidelines for assignments, so you never know if you are doing the work correctly. Assigned a lot of reading which is normal for a prosem but it was hard to keep up reading an entire book per week. Grading was not tough.
Was really looking forward to this class... HUGE LET DOWN... horrible lectures, hard to understand, takes attendance, VERY disorganized.... her powerpoint are useless and docks points to examine if you include info Not in her class material. So if you have learned stuff before or flush out your knowledge with your own research, it actually hurt u.
Her lectures are horrible- they are unorganized and have many grammatical and spelling errors. You are assigned to read roughly over 100+ pages per week... and only some of it will actually be useful for you for the exams. Lectures were about Latin America and covered NOTHING that would be on the exams. You basically had to teach yourself the class
Although it is true the professor makes mistakes on powerpoints on exams she is not a bad professor. The grading itself depends on the TA so just go to section, do well on papers an you're guaranteed a good grade.
Although this is suppose to be a world history class Castillo-Munoz treats it like a case analysis of Latin American history. Her lectures are useless and hardly cover the information presented in the textbook or on the exams. Multiple factual and grammatical errors on her power points and on exams and essay prompts. Worst class I've ever taken.
Unorganized lectures, professor skips all over the place, touches briefly on topics that are important, goes in depth on relevant (but unimportant) topics, readings about 70-150 pages a week, in addition to textbook, she requires you to buy two books that are essentially useless, any questions you ask her, she replies by asking you same questions.
This class was supposed to be "world history" but most of the time she talks about Latin American history. Doesn't seem to know what she's talking about and my middle school history classes went in more depth than she does. Uses Socratic method too much, meaning the same annoying people answer obvious questions too much. Don't take.
Very hard to understand during lecture; will often talk about obscure topics for a long period of time without going in depth on important topics, too much emphasis on Latin America and feminist points of view, errors in powerpoints and study guides, frequently gets dates wrong, seems nice
Very confusing professor, she switches from being very in-depth for Latin American history and in the same lecture, jumps to arbitrary topic such as Levi Strauss Jeans being shipped to Cowboys in Texas. I don't understand her. Many errors in pwrpoints as well, ridiculous.