I took the Gender Violence USEM this past semester. I got an A in this class, and I'm fairly certain everyone else did as well. This class consists of 10 response papers, a final project, and participation. The response papers don't even have to be about the readings and can be reflections of what we see in the world around us. Professor Laughon mentioned that she read them to see if we did them, but I don't think she actually graded them for the content. Also, the final group project was a paper and some sort of poster or campaign to prevent gender violence. I felt that the instructions could have been clearer for the project because many of the students were confused, but I think for her, she was more interested in what we did than the logistics of it all. Since the class is small, we had super cool discussions about court cases and gender violence in the news which made participation fairly easy. She brought in guest speakers and we got to visit her husband's court as he is a judge. I sometimes felt that we didn't really have a set topic to discuss and instead talked about random things, but I still learned a lot in the class. I wish the grading was a little clearer since none of us knew our grades the entire semester, but I saw the "A" in SIS and was happy. Overall, this is a great class!

This class in fantastic! Kathryn is a wonderful professor and is very passionate about the topic. There are 10 short weekly response papers and a longer final paper. The class is full of guest speakers and group discussions. Best USEM, hands down.

Great professor and great class! Took this my first semester of first year and really enjoyed it. The work is not a lot and the material is very interesting.