A sample of anonymous student comments on SOC 459, Seminar in the Sociology of Work, taught by Kenneth Westhues in Spring 2006, at the University of Waterloo

Very educational, enjoyed the open forum for discussion. Readings are well organized, but some students in future semesters may have a heavier work load from other classes, so meeting the required readings may be difficult.

Very interesting focus. Open, welcoming environment for discussions. Lots of freedom with essay topic. Incestuous Workplace gets too systematic and detailed.

Relevant topics presented by an instructor with clear expertise. Refreshing that Professor Westhues did not take the traditional distanced academic stance, but instead shared his personal experience and opinions. I would have enjoyed the addition of a few more topics to the syllabus.

Strengths are the readings and discussions. I like how we looked at real cases and did profiles of our choice. Weakness was oral presentations. It is a weakness for shy students but it's a good learning objective and a strong way to gain experience in speaking in front of small groups.

This course teaches you to think outside the box, as well as to think critically about important topics and issues. Some of the text readings I found really un-useful, redundant, and long. An excellent course, in my opinion.

Open discussion, thought-provoking. Copious amount of readings. Thank you for bringing down the price of the textbooks. Enjoyed this course the most this summer.

The readings from the White text could possibly be discussed for another week or two. There's a lot of info in the text, possibly divide into thirds or quarters.