Western Kentucky University / L / Ingrid Lilly

Hebrew is a SUPER hard language to learn, but Dr. Lilly is great! She does such a good job of engaging the class in learning the language. Even if you struggle in the class, she is very patient with you and tries to help you out as much as possible. Hebrew was one of my favorite classes this semester. You should definitely take this class! (Just be sure your passionate about wanting to learn the language. If you're just in there to get a gen ed grade, then Hebrew probably isn't for you)

I have had Dr. Lilly for both Hebrew I and Old Testament. I was originally dissuaded from taking her classes because of a few negative reviews of her. I decided to take a leap of faith, and was wonderfully surprised. Dr. Lilly is extremely accessible, and makes her lectures interesting, even humorous sometimes.

She takes a historical critical approach to looking at the Old Testament, which I suppose some people dislike her for--but lets face it, this is a public college, that's the way it needs to be taught here so as to avoid offending anyone on this divisive subject. Not to mention there is much to be learned from the historical critical approach, even for a committed religious believer. This is not your parish bible study, but it will not contradict or challenge your bible study either, although it will grant you insight into the historical atmosphere of the Old Testament, without any particular bias or idealism.

Dr. Lilly is a fun and interesting professor who loves her subject area, and it shows. I plan on having two more classes with her, Hebrew II and Judaism. I highly recommend her!!

Dr. Lilly is laid back and has a good sense of humor. However, her teaching style does not mesh well with mine, and I heard many of my classmates express similar sentiments. Rather than providing a considerable amount of specific information in her lectures, she assigns weekly readings and spends most of the class time facilitating discussions about said readings.

For the midterm (which comprises 30% of your grade) we were given three essay questions and told to choose two to answer. They were very open-ended, and she explained that they were a "great opportunity for research," meaning we were welcome to use information from outside of the class in our answers. As someone who enjoys specific parameters and expectations, this was not enjoyable. I studied my brains out, did all the required readings, and ended up with a B on the midterm.

The good news is that the midterm is all you have to study for. The rest of your grade is made up of attendance/participation, a synagogue visit and reflection paper, 10-minute presentation, a handful of written assignments based on readings, and a 10-page analysis paper that serves as the final.

Dr. Lilly is rather slow in posting grades, if she posts them at all. We didn't know our midterm grade until two weeks after we took the exam, and the rest of our grades (including attendance/participation and the final paper) were never made known. In my case it wasn't a big deal because I somehow ended up with an A in the class, but it would have been nice to know how I did on each assignment.

I'm sure there are some students who will enjoy Dr. Lilly's unorthodox teaching style, but I wish I would have opted for a different Religious Traditions class.

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. I'm serious. You don't take very many notes, and what notes you do take are confusing. You do learn quite a bit about the Bible, but she cleverly takes pieces of it out and inputs her own thoughts and ideas. If you don't agree with her ideas she'll give you a bad grade. She has these thing called E-days where she'll have you read a scripture or black board assignment and the next class period you have to write about it. I disagreed with what I read, but still completed the assignment and she only gave me half credit. She's also very irreverent when referring to the Bible and she actually uses curse words in the class. I mean, this is supposed to be a religious studies class.. It's ridiculous. Her tests are really hard by the way and are only worth 20 points so I suggest you study very HARD.