Dr Curley is very informed, helpful and taught with clarity and professionalism. I enjoyed the class and was influenced by her teaching style and her unique perspectives on complex matters regarding International Relations in East Asia. I would take more classes at POLSIS with Dr Curley as either senior lecturer or course coordinator.
It is difficult to describe the frustrations I had with Dr Curley as a lecturer, but I will try to be as balanced as possible.
On the plus side, she is personable, and does clearly possess a wealth of knowledge in her area of expertise (namely East Asia). She also demonstrates some enthusiasm for providing students with a depth of excellent material via reading lists and additional material posted throughout semesters (eg. links to videos, interviews), and that is a very valuable trait.
However, she also exhibits some frustrating tendencies as a lecturer that made the courses of hers I took a complete waste of time and money. Firstly, she seemed to exhibit repeated preferences for cutting corners; turnitin was not set up properly, all of the lecture recordings and slides were from the last year's course, she took over a month to release marks (despite only being short and not requiring moderation) and the material that she did present in class was overly descriptive, with little analytic/critical IR thought. I was impressed with the extensive reading list she provided to the class; and yet that was greatly diminished by her seeming reluctance to actually teach material herself. The course was overly simplistic, and if I had an alternative, I would've opted out. Very sad and disappointed with this experience, and more so by the fact that, after speaking to colleagues, it does not seem to be in the minority. I understand that lecturers are faced with the burdensome challenges of a shrinking school budget, and in needing to deliver extensive research in tandem with teaching duties... but sadly she neglected the latter to the detriment of us all.