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Bowker, Les

Cumulative GPA: 1.38/4.00 with 16 evaluations
Presents Material Clearly: 1.31
Recognizes Student Difficulties: 1.19

Biological Sciences Department, Cal Poly, SLO
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BIO 153 Junior Grade Earned: B Required (Support) 9:29 pm, Apr 29, 2004 Report Evaluation		Dr. Bowker presents his material well most of the time, but if you ask him a question, and he doesnt know the answer, he makes stuff up that "sounds impresive". He is a real stickler on lab tests and real doesnt like to give partial credit. I wouldnt really recommend him.

BIO 325 Senior Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 11:29 am, Jan 9, 2004 Report Evaluation		Dr. Bowker is an interesting fellow. He's very nice and will talk with you about pretty much anything. However, when it comes to Bio, he just kinda throws stuff up on power point. Don't bother with the book, i opened it once and it didn't help. Answer questions on the test exactly as he stated them in lecture. Any deviation and you'll lose points. Also, keep your answers short and to the point. I'm pretty sure he gets bored and docks points if you write long answers. Ecology's just not a very hard subject, and I'm sure there is a huge curve since the high grade on the first test was an 80.

BIO 325 Junior Grade Earned: C Required (Major) 11:29 pm, Dec 25, 2003 Report Evaluation		Bowker is a nice enough guy when you talk to him one-on-one and it has nothing to do with Biology. Other than that, he is not very compassionate. The average grade for our first test was a 38, he fails to see any problem with this. He tests are straight from the lecture, the book is unescessary. The tests are all short answer or essay. Remember, answer EXACTLY what the question asks for. He doesn't like lengthy answers, don't write more than 2 setences. He will dock points for anything much longer than that. I recommend finding somone who took the class previously and borrowing their old tests. This will give you an idea of what to expect, there is alot of information to study. Goodluck!

BIO 325 5th Year Senior Grade Earned: D Required (Support) 12:06 pm, Nov 5, 2003 Report Evaluation		Les sucks. He is the epitome of everything wrong with Cal Poly Professors- he's old and doesn't know anything and he's tenured. He realizes he doesn't have to really teach you anything, so he takes advantage of his weekly captive audience to pretend he's just smarter than his students, and we just don't understand his heady logic. Good luck figuring out what he's going to test you on. Some people take FNR 306 instead.

BIO 325 Junior Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 10:49 am, May 14, 2003 Report Evaluation		Dr. Bowker has a bad rep but i thought he was great. His tests were right from lecture and I never even read the book. His lectures I thought were easy to understand. I don't really know why everybody hates him, I thought he was a great teacher. The lab was a little boring because there wasn't really enough work to keep everybody busy the whole time, but it certainly wasn't hard. I got an A and I know alot of people did terribly in the class but I just can't see why.

BIO 325 Senior Grade Earned: C Required (Major) 6:51 pm, Feb 28, 2003 Report Evaluation		les can be a real jerk. i think he needs to get laid.

BIO 325 Senior Grade Earned: C Required (Major) 9:40 pm, Feb 1, 2003 Report Evaluation		This was seriously one of the most frustrating classes I've ever taken. Dr. Bowker's lectures are terrible!!! He rambles on about various topics using 101 overheads each class. You can never follow anything he discusses let alone get any decent notes. Then when the midterms come around, LOOK OUT. The questions he asks are so in depth and random and all are short answer/essay. You never know what to study for his tests because he NEVER stresses the importance of any particular topics, you pretty much need to read the entire book and memorize everything. Even when you answer his test questions reasonably, he only gives you 1 point out of 5. He is really bad. If you have to take BIO 325 I strongly recommend getting old tests....that's the only way of getting a passing grade.



BIO 111 Sophomore Grade Earned: C General Ed 3:32 pm, Feb 1, 2003 Report Evaluation		i hate you! you suck! i asked this guy if we had a midterm the next class and he told me no, and then when we showed up to class the next week we did have the test. he makes you stay the full three hours for lab when you are done after only one. do not take him! go eat a cock les

BIO 325 Junior Grade Earned: N/A Required (Major) 2:59 pm, Dec 5, 2002 Report Evaluation		Bowker sucks. His lectures are all over the place and nearly impossible to takes notes on. He jumps from topic to topic without fully explaining anything and leaves everyone very confused at the end of each lecture. There are two midterms and a final which are not horrible, but they often contain things that were not especially focused on in lecture and are in short answer/paragraph form so you really have to know the material. I highly recommend reading the book, although it is just as boring as lecture. The lab was the worst part of this course. Bowker usually divided us up into groups and had each group performing a different task. None of the groups knew what any of the other groups were working on and none of the lab results were discussed or explained. The lab final is based on a compilation of all the lab results from the whole quarter but there was never any opportunity to discuss or ask questions about the material. There are several field trips(during regular lab time) which are pretty interesting but lengthy and usually far away from campus. I was really disappointed in this professor because he managed to make a class that could have been tons of fun into a disaster.

BIO 111 Freshman Grade Earned: B General Ed 10:32 am, Nov 8, 2002 Report Evaluation		Bowker is an absolute idiot! He bragged about his extra degree in Statistics, yet, was unable to do simple addition with out our help. We had to stay in lab for 3 hours, when we finished in an hour. He marked people off if they left when they finished the lab, instead of waiting for his explanations that confuse you more than they help. HE couldnt understand why our section had the lowest lab tests, turns out that the other lab professors actually gave their students study guides... =/

BIO 111 Sophomore Grade Earned: A General Ed 7:27 pm, Jun 8, 2002 Report Evaluation		Though he did not help much and was not too clear on the material he had to present, Bowker is a really nice guy. He is funny, even if he is not that interesting. If you have to go on the field trip for one of the labs, I would recommend going with another class, because Bowker makes you stay the whole three hours, while the other teachers only go for like 2 hours.

BIO 111 Freshman Grade Earned: C General Ed 3:40 pm, Feb 6, 2002 Report Evaluation		he didn't really present the material clearly, and he messed up a lot when he was doing work on the chalkboard, which left the class with wrong answers. he would spend like 20 minutes on a stupid math problem to get the wrong answer... then just sit there and go "hmmmmm......." and everything he says is just really confusing. he doesn't like to help people out when they have questions. he has a figure-it-out-yourself attitude.

BIO 153 Sophomore Grade Earned: C Required (Support) 8:10 pm, Jan 18, 2001 Report Evaluation		Out of the four biology teachers I've had in my education, Dr. Bowker is the only one who has made the subject interesting. His passion for biology is contagious. Although he does occasionally have difficulty remembering some of the information, this is a very fun professor to have.



BIO 153 Freshman Grade Earned: N/A Required (Support) 10:45 am, May 31, 2000 Report Evaluation		After all of the things I've heard about Ortiz, this guy is a saint. He can be pretty funny - but, at 8 in the morning, not too many people are awake to catch his jokes. Dr. Bowker most definitely knows his stuff - and he is always more than willing to share it. During his pre-lab lectures, be sure to take good notes - some of the little "trivial" facts that he throws out end up nailing you on the lab exams. I'd recommend him for BIO 153 Lab - I don't know what he's like in lecture [I have Gambs for lecture].

BIO 151 Freshman Grade Earned: C Required (Support) 9:02 pm, Mar 30, 2000 Report Evaluation		Dr. Bowker is a very nice teacher but doesn't know how to teacher the lab section of this course. He didn't know how to do most of the labs and didn't know how to do most of the equipment. He did do an excellent job teaching the ecology and evolution labs but knew nothing about the first 10 labs--we had grad students in there helping. Overall he is friendly, helpful, has a lot of knowledge, and is good at teaching material he knows about, but do not take him for Bio 151 lab because he doesn't know most of the material

BIO 153 Freshman Grade Earned: D Required (Support) 8:58 pm, Nov 13, 1999 Report Evaluation		Bowler's lecture was a very confusing class. And on top of that, half of his tests come from reading the book. So not only do you have to try and figure out his lecture, you have to read a ton of pages and guess what he's going to test you on. There were several other people who also didn't pass...and many also thought that he was a bad teacher. Even though Gambs is quite random, he's not near as bad as Bowker is and doesn't test out of the book. If you have to choose between the 2, I recomend Gambs.

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