Randy Bertolas is a professor of geography. 

“I’d say run, don’t walk, to sign up for a Dr. [Laura] Dendinger course because she’s, well it’s because she is one of the best teachers on campus,” Bertolas said. “She teaches rings around me.” 

Of the classes Dendinger has taught, Bertolas recommends BUS 208, Business Communications. 

“It’s not an upper-level requirement in business where you have to have had lower-level business courses first, and with a prerequisite like composition skills, virtually everybody can take it,” Bertolas said. 

Chad Christensen is a professor of English. 

“I think an underrated class is the editing and publishing core classes, specifically the one that’s hard to describe because it’s three classes in one, ENG 221, 321, and 421,” Christensen said. “We focus on Adobe InDesign, which can be kind of a frightening program. Although you may not use it all the time, if you were to have to do a big project, something that Canva or Adobe Express can’t handle, you would be capable of utilizing that to put together a large text.”  

Christensen said the class also does a bit of event management.  

“You don’t have to go into publishing to really utilize a lot of the cool stuff in editing,” Christensen said. “This one’s kind of fun because it’s sort of the production end of putting things together.” 

Joe Whitt is a professor of communication. 

“The one class that I think is underrated is family communication,” Whitt said. “We rarely think seriously or analytically about our family lives, yet our family lives are so consequential to who we are as a person, how we treat people outside of our home, the ways that we make sense of the world, confront adversity, overcome challenges and even craft our own sense of our ideologies, belief  systems, attitudes.”  

“We really do get to make our futures through our communication and our choices, you know, how we act and behave with one another,” Whitt said. “This class helps us kind of look under the hood of what family is and how it crafts not only who we are, but then what we represent to the rest of the world.” 

Mark Hammer is a professor of life sciences. 

“Just the act of going to class is underrated,” Hammer said. “To me, going to class is a very special time of connecting with the material, having this unique interaction for learning that that’s different from doing something online or reading it on your own. Students can get information in any sort of way. It’s not hard to get information today, but to synthesize, to be educated, this is a special opportunity to be in class.  

To get engaged, and not only to show up to class, but to come prepared and then ready to engage in, whether it’s a conversation or activity or just passively listening. That act of getting off your phone and being engaged, that to me is underrated.”