Basically every major has to take gen eds in order to graduate. It’s probably not something you’re thrilled to do, but to help you out, we’ve come up with a list of professors we LOVE. Check out HC’s list of great Pitt professors.
English/Literature Professors
Schuyler Chapman teaches Forms of Prose and Bible as Literature. I’ve definitely never liked a lit class as much as his Forms of Prose, and he just cares an incredible amount about his students’ advancement. He puts in a lot of time that most professors just aren’t willing to.
Katie Booth teaches Intermediate Nonfiction Writing and I love her. We got to pick what topic we wanted to write about for a whole semester, which was scary but made the class so interesting because we all were writing about such different things. My tattoo blog stemmed from her class, and she even tweeted it! It’s such a relaxed class, but you learn so much and deepen your writing and how you think about writing. I also loved the readings because they were so out of the box. Amazing person, 10/10 would recommend.
If you need literature credits, take Intro to Pop Culture, Short Story in Context, or Science Fiction with Geoffrey Glover. I love him. He is a great professor and keeps the class fun and enjoyable.
Foreign Language Professors
If you are looking for a language class to take, I highly recommend taking ASL 1 & 2 with Kenny DeHaan. He is such a sweet guy, and he actually really cares about how you’re doing in his class. If you make a signing mistake, he doesn’t make you feel bad about it, and he genuinely wants to help you do better. He is so funny and makes learning a new language super fun and easy.
If French is more your style, I suggest Brett Wells! He is a ball of fun and love and energy and literally my favorite person on the planet. Oh yeah, and he’s brilliant.
Other Professors
If you want a super easy, bizarre professor, then Robert Metil is your guy. He teaches Vampire: Blood and Empire, which is a weird enough class already, but he just takes it to new extremes. He thinks his mom is a vampire and spends at least a whole lecture telling you about it (apparently, since I took the class, it has expanded to 2 lectures). He’s entertaining, and I got an A+, so if you need a good blow-off class, I’d recommend it.
If you’re into gender, sexualities, and women’s studies (which I highly recommend), take Sex & Sexualities or Intro to GSWS with Julie! She’s incredibly smart and passionate, and she isn’t afraid to challenge your ideas. She welcomes other views and entertains every thought and interpretation. She makes the classroom feel like such a safe space, and she’s really funny.
Dr. Cynthia Lausberg teaches Psychology of Personality, Intro to Psych, Psychology of Death and Dying, and Abnormal Psychology. She’s not a researcher like most professors in the psych department, but she is a practitioner. She brings clinical experience to the table that other professors can’t. She is always willing to answer questions and really helps you learn to the best of her ability.