University of West Georgia

The dining hall staff are ghetto unprofessional rude and literally so nasty and unsanitary. The dorms are infested with roaches and I asked SEVERAL times for them to treat the room before they complied, only because my father threatened legal consequences. The student security housing hires called ResStar are unprofessional, they play loud music at the desks, make calls to friends, and take jobs of people who would do a good job. The office staff when you call the school are as incompetent as they... Read More come. They seldom know the answer to any question and when they do it's the wrong answer. When they don't, they transfer you to every department but the one you need. When you finally get to the right department, they don't know the answer either. The teachers take themselves too seriously for professors who are on about the same standard as a public high school's. The hours of operation for the Z6 dining halls are ridiculous. The new restaurant "Lobos" s**** and was a devastating flop, complete waste of money, both on the school's behalf and mine the first and only time I attended it, because it gave me food poisoning for 2 days and there was an entire artery in my chicken. For the first part, who the hell suggested that after a taco bell 2 miles away, Mexican Mondays at east commons, and multiple burrito, nacho, and quesadilla bars, and Mexican lasagna every month, what this campus needed was another half a**** attempt at a gringo style Mexican establishment. I mean at this point y'all are reaching so hard for the Hispanic vote of approval that you're pulling a muscle, and it isn't paying off by an inch. Would've been better off keeping the d*** bagel store. Complete flop, embarrassing. All in all there is very little that this school tries to do that they manage to pull off successfully. For a staff that is never available to answer the phone they sure don't seem to be accomplishing much.

This review is for the online doctoral program in counseling and supervision. Most of the professors act as though communicating with students is a burden. I receive no responses from most of my professors; the head of the department does respond quickly and he is a dedicated educator. His wife also works at the school and she is also an effective and dedicated professor. If either of them had been my dissertation chairs this would have been a good experience. However, the other professors I've had... Read More have been unavailable and ineffective as educators. It's a vague and sloppy program. For example, I need guidance on my plan of study regarding how many credits to register for and when I can feasibly be done with my dissertation. I sent an email to my 2 team members. No reply 10 days later, and now it's time to register. I sent a second email asking them for information. She finally responded "As previously discussed-..." and answered my question. We had NOT previously discussed my plan of study. I would estimate the amount of time she's discussed my plan of study with me to be under 30 minutes, via email. Let's not forget, that students are paying thousands of dollars for the privilege of their "instruction". Another example: I sent several emails sent to a professor about making up a missed assignment. The assignment was to check in with her about how the supervision meetings are going with my supervisees. I simply needed to schedule a time with her. No reply from her until my second email. She said "I'm in a meeting- I'll respond within 24 hours." No response in 24 hours. I emailed again (a week later) and got no response. However, my grades had been updated and I got 100% on the assignment I needed to make up. We never had the check in about supervision process. I guess she assumed it was going well. The program could be good if there were more dedicated and communicative professors.

After my second year in the program, my classmates talked and I began to realize that we very rarely received feedback on our papers. I mean, every single student in the doctoral psychology program received only a letter grade for a paper that sometimes took them tens of hours to write. What was needed was more detailed feedback on the quality of our writing. I saw several students leave the program before I left it, usually for multiple reasons. Sometimes it was because the student needed to make... Read More a change in their life, in addition, several disclosed that they were frustrated that the faculty did not give feedback on papers unless the student asked for it, and others were concerned that there was insufficient structure in the program. People disappeared - they left the program - and they were never heard from again. The faculty did not discuss what happened with the fellow doctoral students which seems weird when the number of students is so small and when people know each other. The information shared in the program is profound and helps you to changes your view of the world, other people, and know how to analyze psychology and some aspects of society. The faculty are generally nice people. Most of the faculty worked hard, and asked for long (20+ page) papers to be submitted by doctoral students at the end of the semester. This was a time when the faculty were busy grading undergraduate work, and the time pressure they felt to get the grades in meant they don't have / make the time to give doctoral students written proper feedback. When I was there, the department was also run by a man who was hardly seen by students, no longer taught, and who seemed to have unwritten and inconsistent rules about how the department was managed. For example, the criteria used to determine which doctoral students were given extra teaching opportunities (and hence money) were not disclosed publicly. You receive a $10k stipend a year. Try living on that, and after a couple of years it is no wonder people bail out of the program because living below the poverty line is not fun. Oh, and out of that $10k you also have to have health insurance. We were told by the program director several times that they expect you to commit to being on campus 4 days a week, regardless of where you live, which makes it difficult - but not impossible - to have a regular job. I do not recommend this program, and hence I left in my third year. I could see how the department was being poorly managed, and I did not want to go through a dissertation with such little support from the faculty.

College is about discovering who you are through finding your talents and skills, further developing them, and then utilizing them to better society. Through my time at West Georgia, I have been able to do just that in my studies of psychology. West Georgia is best known for its success in nursing, education, and psychology programs, generally because of the satisfaction rate that is observed from students who have earned these degrees. As a psychology major, I can personally attest to the quality... Read More of teaching, learning topics, and difficulty that I have gauged from partaking in this education path. Teachers from my program have been unlike any others, and believe me: I know because I changed my major three times. While some teachers will lecture for an hour and fifty minutes to hear themselves talk, the psychology professors at UWG seek to make connections with you and discuss topics that are meaningful and educational. Class sizes range from 30 to 80, so teachers are almost always able to know you well by the end of the semester. They are the kind of professors that you can always feel comfortable approaching about a question you had about a topic discussed in class or a due date for a paper coming up soon. While I have found the rigor at UWG to be on the less difficult end of the spectrum, I believe it mostly has to do with my major. I know math and chemistry majors that have homework problems each night that are pages long, while I would simply have an article to read and a literature review to write. Because writing doesn't bother me, I find these kinds of assignments nothing too demanding. I have also found the teachers at this school to be more lenient in grading, while I have friends at other universities who don't get curves on exams and are practically expected to fail or barely pass with a C. Tuition and fees are expensive at every college, but at UWG, they are in the mid to low range. I have never had to pay for more than $7,000 dollars for a full semester of courses, fees, and textbooks, while at some schools that amount can't even cover room and board. So if you are like me and are trying to not end up with loans for the rest of your life, UWG is definitely more affordable. In terms of the vibe of the campus, UWG is a diverse place with lots of opportunities to get involved and meet new people. I am a member of Greek life here, where I have met over 120 girls and make relationships with a select number of them. I have also been involved in student leadership through the housing department and my religious group. I have met people who have really branched out through student government, student jobs on campus, and other clubs or sports teams. For anything you may be interested in, UWG has some form or fashion of a group that would allow you to meet people with similar interests. However, there is always room for improvement, and UWG has a few things to work on: campus safety, parking, and career services. In regards to campus safety, we do have a great team of campus police, but it often feels like they spend more time writing tickets than they do patrolling parking lots to make sure people aren't breaking into cars (which has been our number one crime this past semester). They would not have to patrol parking lots in general if they had the technology to install security cameras. Regardless, because our campus is not "watched over" as well as I would hope, I often find myself avoiding walking back from the library late at night. I try to be back in my room before 10 pm. Although there are emergency stations to alert authorities if an event were to occur, this does not deter crime from happening on campus. The parking issue goes hand in hand with security: if we had a greater access to parking with better facilities, we could potentially have security cameras and a decrease in ticketing. While freshmen are permitted to bring their cars to campus, they have to park in the stadium which is almost a half mile from any dorms or education buildings. There have been rumors of a parking deck being built in the next several years, but there is no confirmation to be found. And lastly, I believe students at UWG as a whole would benefit from better career services, as many students (especially with psychology majors) struggle to find a job straight out of undergraduate school, or don't know the first thing about applying for graduate school, let alone applying to graduate from UWG. In any steps that I had to take to look into my degree requirements or my program requirements for graduate school, I had to figure out on my own, not because counselors here don't care, but because the school doesn't equip them with the proper tools and software to help us effectively. Better training for counselors and more thorough tracking of students degrees and post-graduation plans would benefit a countless number of students. While UWG has had its ups and downs, I am thankful for the person it has helped me become. Through the help of my psychology professors and the friends I have made along the way, I feel as if I have found a sense of what I am good at and how I can use my abilities to make a difference in people's lives. Higher education at West Georgia is exactly that: helping you go higher - above and beyond.

Without the political science department at the University of West Georgia, I would not be attending a PhD program in political science. Every single professor was my advocate. They encouraged me to research and submit to conference to gain experience and make contacts. My professors at the University of West Georgia has given me incredible opportunities to develop knowledge and skills in political science. They have pushed me to research more and develop a strong base in quantitative analysis. I... Read More would not have had half of the opportunities I have had today without the mentoring provided by our incredible faculty. I can only hope that someday I have the opportunity to inspire the next generation of political science students. I strongly believe that Yale can provide the necessary training to help me achieve my academic goals.

The University of West Georgia provided me with an outstanding education in the ever evolving field of Speech-Language Pathology and Communication Sciences and Disorders. Prior to graduating with my Master's degree in the summer of 2011, I had two formal job offers including medical settings that were ideal for the geriatric population I wanted to serve. I am so thankful for the support I received from faculty and clinical supervisors during my time as a student. So much in fact, that it has motivated... Read More me to apply for doctoral programs with a goal of teaching Speech-Language Pathologists for years to come. I am thrilled to say, that with the continued support of UWG faculty past and present, I was accepted to a doctoral program and began this Fall.