Student Evaluations

Below is a summary of student evaluations for every course-quarter of my UC San Diego teaching appointments for which a report exists. Across the 110 responses to the recommendation question over my career, no student has ever recommended against me.

UC San Diego replaced its Student IA Evaluation instrument with the Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) in 2024. The two instruments ask different questions, so they are reported separately.

Student IA Evaluations (through 2023-24)

Student Evaluations of Teaching (2024-25 onward)

Notes: For Student IA Evaluations, the recommend rate is the share of respondents answering “Strongly Agree” or “Agree” to “I would recommend this Instructional Assistant to other students,” pooled across lecture sections and quarters. The SET instrument does not include a recommendation item; the final column instead reports the share of scored responses agreeing that “The Instructional Assistant used instructional methods in section and/or office hours that helped me learn and engage with the course material.” Responses counts scored responses (“No Opinion/Not Applicable” answers are excluded, matching the university’s scoring methodology). Enrollment sums the lecture sections I served. Two further section-quarters are suppressed by the university’s minimum of three responses and cannot be reported.

Selected student comments

“Vinny’s Discussion Section was a huge help to me in this course. His lecture slides facilitated note taking while emphasizing important points, he gave us tips and areas to focus on, and did a good job working through hard and important practice problems with us. He always encouraged questions and participation and made his slides available after class. Thank you Vinny!”

“Vinny is an excellent example of what a TA should be from the way he explains problems and goes through them and his willingness to keep going and to make sure that a student understands the material.”

“Vinny is a great TA who clearly has a passion for this subject and also cares about his students. After the 2nd exam results, he was very active and decided to switch techniques in discussion in hopes of improving our exams scores. He was also available during office hours and emails. I am thankful on how fast Vinny could reply to my emails with valuable and helpful information.”

“Very good explanations for lectures like the Y2K problem and numerical outcomes examples like fertilizer share of rich to poor farmers.”

“Vinny was great, enjoys his job and makes us feel like we’re just talking to friends”

All comments are quoted verbatim from anonymous student evaluations.