Discussions are stimulating but papers are graded severely.

she is into what she does and always willing to stay late to help you understand

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The class is really interesting, but grades are not easy to come by.

Very clear. Always willing to help after class. Thought-provoking assignments. Good class discussions. :-)

I had her for Con Law and Ethics; she's very knowledgeable on topics, and genuinely a nice person. While she may grade a little tough, you learn alot in her courses!

She is an awesome professor, tough, but fair. She really gets you to do the absolute best you can. Very nice and makes class interesting

good at making you analyze concepts in depth - tough grader, but it is worth having her at least once.

I had Professor Failer for ethics and she was amazing. A very sweet lady and very understanding and helpful! I highly recommend this course!

Outstanding professor. Papers for the class are graded critically, but she holds students to a high standard, which encourages hard work. She always prepares her lectures extensively, but allows questions to clarify the material. The class is structured very interestingly, with moot courts and task forces instead of solely lecture. Great prof!

Grades papers tough but helpful with extra credit case briefs to boost your grade.

One of the best profs in the political science department, but a very tough grader until you get the idea of what she wants. Case briefs will boost your grade a ton, and volunteer for a moot court; they're actually fun and will boost your grade on that paper by a full +/-. FYI: Failer is the sponsor for the Truman scholarship for IU

Great professor. Very knowledgeable in her field and is fun to listen to. She expects papers to be structured a certain way and she explains in a lot of depth her expectation. Easy A if you show up to lectures and pay attention to what she has to say. Good at leading discussion.

She is great and knows what she is talking about.

Prof. Failer is awesome! She is so passionate about what she does and loves teaching. The class was very interesting, just make sure you do the readings and come to class prepared. I hope I can take more classes from her in the future!

Fairly good teacher, but I found that it was fairly easy to get a good grade by just regurgitating her opinions from the lecture. She (and her TAs) aren't the easiest graders ever, but it wasn't too hard to nail the content if you studied notes from the lectures.

Failer is clearly passionate about the material she teaches, but the class is structured so that a student doesn't have to actually do the readings to understand them...they tend to be covered in lecture. However, I think she is a great professor and if you have the chance, you should definitely take a class with her!

She is so passionate about this class it is ridiculous (in the best way possible). Easy class if you attend the lectures (and the discussions!). The tests are all the same and fairly easy, and you only have to do 3 one-page papers, as well as a 5 page paper!

She was such a great professor to have! She really cares about what she is teaching and loves the material she covers. She makes the lectures fun by including jokes but still covers all of the necessary material.

Failer is an excellent professor - definitely my favorite one in my time at IU. Take her if you get the chance. Her lectures largely cover the readings, and will help you understand them, even if you fail to read some/all of them. Y304 case briefs will definitely boost your grade. Can be a tougher grader, but knowledgeable, helpful, and exciting.

Professor Failer was wonderful! She truly cares about her students and is one of the most fair professors ever. The material is not easy but she is extremely willing to help. She allowed us to have an open note midterm and final which was wonderful!

Professor Failer dumbs the material down to an annoying degree, but it's an easy class. I didn't do any of the reading or go to class and I still got a good grade.

She's really helpful and explains material very well. There was one big-ish projectpresentation but it wasn't as bad as it sounded.

Great professor, tries very hard to make the information manageable. Gives you whole book assignments, tells you basically everything you need to know in the lectures, don't skip

This is basically an intensive writing course without intensive writing credit. She assigns between 4 and 8 cases a week, each of which you are required to summarize in 1-2 page "case brief" essays. This is on top of around 25 pages of regular essays that are also required. Easily adds up to 80+ pages of writing over the semester. Not worth it.

Judy is very passionate during her lectures. She knows her stuff tries to make even the most driest material seem interesting. 3 one-page papers and 1 five-pager. The discussion classes were very boring and the TA's weren't very clear on their grading criteria. Readings can be found with a little googling.

Professor Failer is the best instructor Ive had at IU. She genuinely cares about every one of her students and is invested in their success. Incredibly intelligent, but goes out of her way to make sure that everyone understands course concepts. Dont pass up a chance to take a class with Failer, shes amazing.

DO NOT take Introduction to Political Theory with her if you're looking for an easy GenEd. That's what I did, and even though I'm actually quite interested in the materials, her TAs grade so unbelievably hard on completely subjective things that it's a killer. And, to top it all off, they are totally unclear on why they grade the way they do.

The lecture portion of the class is great! There is a lot of reading. Beware however, the TAs that I had were HORRIBLE. I do not believe their grading style was inlign with what prof. Failer would have wanted. They were also very unclear about why grades were received.

Very nice woman and a pretty good teacher. She definitely knows what she is talking about when lecturing and the lectures themselves can be somewhat entertaining. The only bad thing is that she writes the subject points on the board and expects you to write down everything she says after as notes without saying when she is moving on.

Overall, a pretty good teacher. Her lectures were very interesting and 90% of them were easy to understand. A couple were confusing but she always encourages people to ask questions and loves to answer them. There was a lot of reading assigned for this class but it wasn't super necessary. It might be best to have taken an ethics course already tho

Professor Failer is easily one of my favorite professors. Her lectures are always interesting and the tests are always fair. If you simply attend lecture you will do well in this class.

Professor Failer gives some of the most interesting lectures. I took intro to Political Theory and I was worried it would be boring, but it was just the opposite. Dont bother reading the material, it takes way too long and in her lectures she explains all you need to know. That being said, DONT miss and take good notes!

Definitely one of the best professors I've ever had. She's so caring about her students and genuinely wants everyone to do well. She assigns a lot of reading, but if you just power through it it isn't too bad and you can generally get most of it out of the lecture. Would definitely recommend taking one of her classes at some point.

Judy was my favorite professor this semester. She's funny, kind, and really knowledgeable on the topics she teaches. You do case briefs, which can be tedious, but the lectures are based on the cases so it is beneficial to read. She doesn't seem to take attendance but she collects case briefs without warning so if you aren't in class, you miss out.

Dr. Failer is amazing and truly cares about her students. Shes one of the sweetest, most caring people I know. Alongside that, shes very available and goes the extra mile to help students succeed. The material is interesting and the moot courts are fun. I enjoyed writing most of the papers too! Great class and I would recommend any class with her

Ethics & Public Policy is a fun class, but its difficult. There is a lot of reading of political philosophy. Lectures are OK but are definitely mandatory if you want to understand the material. DO bring something you can quickly take notes on as you should write down everything she says. Dr. Failer is very considerate and loves her job.

This class was difficult but I ended up with an A+. I made sure to attend office hours, asked questions, regularly followed up when I didn't perform as well as I wished on the essay/exam, and attended class via zoom the whole semester. If you are looking for an easy class, don't take this one. But it's a good law school prep class.

Failer's lecture cadence & presentation structure can be hard to follow, but her passion for the course shines through. Always willing to take questions or explain a point. Exams were very straightforward. No extra credit offered. Really interesting content, and would recommend the course for that alone. Got an A & gave 5-6hrs/week class included.

I love Judy, this is my second class with her. Reading other comments, there are defiantly fair critiques. However, if you show up, participate, read, and apply yourself, this class is really not that complicated. Just think about the context of the class and essay question for papers. She is one of the most caring professors at IU.

She is literally my favorite professor ever, I would buy her flowers and chocolate, honestly the school year ending and not getting to see her anymore is sad, she cares more for her students than any other professors combined and I am not exaggerating. Biggest heart I have ever seen.

I took her class 379 Ethics and Public Policy and she was amazing about making sure the class was fair for everyone! She definitely cares about the students. One of those teachers who really just wants you to learn and succeed.

Definitely one of the best professors IU has to offer! I took her class to fill a requirement and ended up loving it, would recommend taking this course!

she was very lenient and did her best to make sure the class always did as best as possible on tests.

So caring and enthusiastic. Really cares about her students and does everything she can to suit the course to our needs and circumstances. Highly recommend her upper level classes :)

The professor and the TAs were extremely helpful and enjoyed teaching this particular class, however, I put a lot of time into the class and into the readings, so if you are interested in this field of study, I recommend this professor because she will prepare you well. I could tell she was really passionate about this class material.

If you're taking POLS105, try and get this professor. Just make sure you memorize the talking points about the texts from class and regurgitate them on the exams/papers you write and you'll do really well. Going to the lectures and paying attention is essential, but reading the texts isn't outside of finding quotes for your papers.

Prof Failer is very passionate about what she teaches. Course expectations are super clear. She makes difficult assignments much easier- very easy if you just show up and do the work.

She is very enthusiastic, and her lectures are more interesting than most others. She is very transparent with what she looks for in tests and essays. There is a lot of reading, but not all of it is necessary to succeed. She handles controversial aspects of the material well. I would recommend this class to anyone who doesn't mind a bit of writing.

Prof. Failer was very caring and available. The readings are heavy, but she goes over most of the content. Her study guides are very clear and helpful, and the papers were very attainable and easy. It is important to go to the non-mandatory lectures because you get a lot of good notes from it.

You can tell Prof. Failer genuinely cares about what she teaches and the students who take her course. While most of the grading is through her TA's, she is pretty available for additional help. I would really recommend going to most lectures because it will make future exams so much easier.

Professor Failer is so kind and intelligent. As a senior seminar professor, she was amazing. She understands that, as seniors, everyone is very busy and stressed. If you ask for an extension, she will surely grant the request. She does assign many papers, but its an intensive writing section so you can't really expect anything different. Loved her!

Professor Failer is very enthusiastic about teaching, which makes her class enjoyable. However, the only downside of her lectures is that you can barely ask questions. I remember many questions getting pushed aside due to time reasons. Despite this, she is available during her office hours right after class, so passing her course is not impossible.

Professor Failer is very passionate about what she teaches. While she doesn't post slides, you can always take pictures of the presentations. I would recommend taking her higher-level classes since they're more cohesive. The class is very text-heavy, and graded on think-piece essays but she's very caring and open to her students.

Hardly did any of the readings. The tests are based off of the readings so prepare to pay attention for the lectures on those. Great person, loves to teach, can sometimes get off track. Tests were kind of difficult, the information we needed to answer the questions sometimes were not clear in the lecture. very open to answering questions

Judy Failer is the most amazing teacher in this department. She is so knowledgeable, kind, and wants nothing for her students other than they leave knowing something they didn't when they walked in. She's got her own style for sure! But if you listen to what she's saying you WILL learn.

Lots of readings, but the lectures go over them pretty thoroughly. She seems super passionate and knowledgable, but is scattered and disorganized at times. Grade is from your discussion, one paper, and three exams (including the final).