Reviews of professor Akiko Okusu

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
I think Professor Akiko is the best Professor for an Introduction to BIO class at Umass, such as 152. She tries her best at her lectures using examples and uses case studies. She highlights the main point on what you have to focus on the most. HOWEVER, her exams are tricky and can be somehow heavy, so you have to be able to understand the material.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
She is very bad at explaining the material and just reads off the slides. She also goes very fast, the class itself is all online exams. If you take this class, make sure you have friends to work with on the take home tests.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 2.0/5
Such a caring professor. I would not say it's the most rigorous course bc I'd say she was a bit too nice with the grading. That's a good and bad thing because it's very easy to do well, but it also makes it harder to learn stuff if you're not interested in a topic. However, her being "too nice" is bc she's a genuinely kind and empathetic person.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Professor Akiko has been wonderful this past semester, given the past year and a half has been online. Her class is exam heavy, but as long as you go to the lectures and understand the material you'll be fine, the SI sessions before exams have also been super helpful.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
I went into this class excited and hopeful after reading all the positive reviews, yet Akiko has been my worse professor yet. Im ending the year with A's in all my classes (including organic chemistry and cell/molec bio), yet barely scraping by in this class. Her exams are 10 times harder than what she teaches. The only people with A's cheated.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Prof. Okusu is a great choice. She's very nice and accommodating, and it's always a pleasure to go to her classes. As long as you attend classes, take good notes, and ask for clarification whenever needed, you should be able to do well in the class.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 2.0/5
She is the single sweetest professor I have ever seen in a classroom. She is so nice and accommodating and very flexible. She is such a good communicator as well. the exams are however always so hard and the stuff was not mentioned in the lectures at all.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 1.0/5
Akiko makes it clear at the start of the semester that her lectures are not meant to be learned from and that they serve more as review for the weekly textbook readings in the course schedule. That being said, as long as you do the reading(s) before class that week, lecture is always a breeze and you are never tested on content from lecture slides.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 1.0/5
Akiko is awesome. She is seriously so kind and wants her students to succeed. Marine bio lab is also super interesting and its in groups. In class assignments are exactly what we went over on the slides and the lab reports are easy enough. Shes easily accessible outside class as well. 10/10.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 1.0/5
You will never regret taking a class with Akiko ever. Kindest prof, accessible, and very kind.