Professor: Wool Course format: Lecture Number of respondents: 11 Total Enrollment: 20 Class Composition: Froshs: 10 Sophs: 6 Jrs: 2 Srs: 2 Concs: 4 Non-Concs: 6 Don't Know: 1

Instructor Average: 1.55 Course Average: 1.59

"Bearing Witness to Cancer" is a lecture course designed to give students an understanding of the social, biological, and psychosocial aspects of cancer through literature, memoirs, and social science literature. This course is geared towards students interested in medicine-PLME students are given preference when registering. There are no prerequisites for the course.

Students described Professor Margaret Wool as enthusiastic, accessible, sensitive to their needs, and open to suggestion. However, several members of the class commented that she was not as strong as they would have liked her to be when leading class discussions, and that sometimes her lectures were disorganized. Most respondents, though, felt that Professor Wool's passion for the subject was infectious, and some students even went so far as to describe her as "the best."

There were assigned weekly one-page responses (which were not graded) and two major papers: one "midterm" paper and one final paper. The reading was deemed usually useful, though some readings were more enjoyable than others. Students generally found that the personal stories were more effective and interesting, while the scientific studies were cumbersome and difficult to read.

Survey respondents reported doing two to four hours of work for the class each week, meeting most students' expectations for workload. However, time spent per week varied somewhat depending on how difficult the students found the readings, and increased during the weeks before the two major papers were due. In general, students felt the course was very enriching. "Be prepared,” one particularly enthusiastic student wrote, “to cry, laugh, and truly think about what [having] cancer means."

View BC/0168 in the Brown Online Course Announcement.