Professor Houston cares deeply for her students and is an all-around great person. The class lectures are typically engaging, but it depends on whether your class feels like participating or burying their head in their laptops. Highly recommend taking COMM 160OD or 168, they are both great classes.

Prof. is a great speaker and clearly passionate. Attendance really matters. Midterm was a bit tricky, but the papers balance the course out. The material isn't too challenging. Super interesting and relevant course.

Good professor, just a lot of busy work throughout the week. Every week we had two discussion posts, one midterm, a paper mid quarter and a huge paper as the final. Really interesting class, just be prepared for a ton of readings and discussions.

Super nice. Seems like she cares. Slides are just a repeat of the readings, you don't learning anything in class, but you she has iclicker attendance so you must be there. Assigns an unreal amount of busy work. Like unreal amount. Would strongly avoid taking this class. Wish I didn't

Incompetent!!!

Ignore the other reviews! She's an incredible professor who really does care. She's not the kind to have awkward pauses waiting for students to answer; she's lively and always brings a cheerful mood into the class. She's very easy to talk to, and for an introvert, I really appreciate her approachability. Got rid of the final exam!

Houston is very nice outside of the classroom but her teaching skills are lacking. Test questions are difficult and often are not related to concepts gone over in class. Required readings are dense and her lecture slides just restate what is in the reading with little clarification. She is very disorganized so rely on the TA for everything

I had her for her first quarter at UCSB and she was facing pressure from the department to make sure that COMM88 would be hard enough to weed out enough students. She is very kind and really does want to see you succeed, but she was unorganized af. TA's and her were never on the same page. If I didn't have such a helpful TA I woulda been pissed

Professor Houston was an okay professor. I had her for one of her first quarters at SB. Her slides were copied and pasted from the textbook, she just basically read the textbook to us and then expected us to go read it again. Her tests were super difficult and required a lot of studying and sometimes the concepts covered were not even in the exams.

(COMM 88) Used an old professor's slides and didn't know the material so she couldn't answer student questions--relied on TAs a lot. Would waste half the class on dumb activities that she didn't think through. Midterm and final questions didn't match what we learned in lecture. Lots of inconsistencies in assignment instructions vs what she told us.

COMM 88: Renee was very kind & put genuine effort. However, we were not well prepared for exams and Qs were challenging. Her 1st quarter teaching this class & instructions for the big paper contradicted the instructions given by my TA which was confusing and required a lot of office hour participation to understand what I should actually do.

Had her for Comm88. She seems nice, but is honestly is a terrible professor. She could never give students straight answers and barely anything in lecture ends up on the final. No tests or quizzes, entire grade relies on the midterm, final, and paper. Get a bad grade on any, and you are screwed. Stay far away if you can. My TA was nice though.