Western Kentucky University / S / Selena R. Sanderfer

I do not recommend Sandefer at all. She doesn't know what she is talking about. Her powerpoints are online but they are vague with no definitions that will help you on her exams. Her exams are very hard, like all of the other history teachers. If it wasn't for wikipedia I wouldn't have passed the class.

Professor Sanderfer is a nice lady, but her class is kind of boring. She tends to go on tangents and expects you to be able to follow her. I found myself doodling more than taking notes. Her tests are pretty ridiculous to study for.

This class is a survey course so you just briefly hit several tropics on the history of Africa from pre-history to the present day. The powerpoints are pretty vague most of the time and not helpful to study. You have 2 exams and 3 papers. I used the textbook to find answers for the study guide. The first two papers are 3-4 pages on some documents and the final paper is 8-10 pages and its a historographical paper on any event dealing with Africa. The good thing is that you watch a video every Friday and you have a group project that is an easy A. Honestly this is probably one of the easier 300 level History courses in the department but you cover so much in class and its on stuff your not familiar with, so it can be overwhelming at times. I would recommend this class to History majors who are taking this for their History class outside of the US and Europe.

Any Western Civ class is going to be hard especially if you're a freshman, but this is college. All of the western civ exams are essays so it doesn't matter who you have. Dr. Sanderfer is very quiet and it seems like she mumbles a lot so it's hard to focus on what she is saying to write it all down. Her study guides are outrageous. She gives you about 50 items you have to know everything about and 9 possible essays. But on the exam she only gives you 4 of the 50 items and 2 essays. You don't know which will be on the test so you have to study all of them. I got an A because I worked my butt off in this class. You can do a good job in her class but you have to work at it.