Yes, she's a tough grader. Yes, she assigns a lot of reading. But, we should show her compassion, too. She has had a difficult life (divorce) and that might be why she is the way that she is. You cannot judge a person until you have walked in their shoes. Perhaps she means well and wants us to learn and she feels the hard way is the best way.

She is my favorite IR professor by far. Civil wars is definitely not an easy A but you will learn so much. She is also very sweet and helpful in her office hours.

Liked her but unfair grading

As long as you paid attention in lecture, you'd be fine. People just hated her because she didn't put a lot on her slides, but you're in college you shouldn't expect to just be able to copy off everything on the slides and not have to think for yourself. TAs were really helpful, the readings were light, she even gave extra credit opportunities.

thinks she's THE chosen one in political science and not having any words on any slides and no clear grading criteria, fair because "she said so!".

just no, she's awful... thinks she's too good to respond to emails as if a student doesn't pay thousands of dollars in tuition already.

I had Coggins last quarter(yes the infamous failed first midterm), and I want to emphasize that she is not that bad. While she was kinda mean, she ended up allowing us to drop our scores. Never had issues with emailing/office hours were helpful! She is passionate about her subject/seemed frustrated by people skipping section and not doing readings.

boring lecturer, her slides consist of irrelevant images, her quizzes consisted of inaccurate answers, and she was a nightmare to contact (the first email she EVER responded to was 3 weeks AFTER THE QUARTER ENDED about a grading discrepancy). midterm: 120 F's, 58 D's out of 279 total students. class is not hard tho just know what a tariff is lolz

She is probably…no the worst teacher at UCSB. She is very unhelpful, super sarcastic and doesn't really care about the class. Like 70% of the class failed the first midterm and had the audacity to blame the students. NEVER take any pol s class with Coggins.

Worst professor I've had so far. While she's passionate about the subject, class is extremely unstructured, which leads to inconsistent and unfair grading. She's on a power trip rather than genuinely wanting her students to succeed. If you want a class that feels like trying to solve a puzzle and read the professor's mind, then take her class.

She got a lot of hate about the midterm but kind of made up for it by allowing you to make your final grade count as your midterm grade. Her lecture slides contain no info tho so you need to pay attention in lecture, which is hard as she goes off on random tangents, so you don't know what is important. She's nice and passionate about the subject.

Coggins isn't as bad as people make her seem. You must attend lectures and do the weekly readings to grasp the concepts and do well fully. Your grade honestly depends on the TA who grades your work :/