Dr. Phillip Lucido

Classes taught

• General Microbiology (04-140)

Style & personality

In lecture, Dr. Lucido mainly reads certain phrases from his notes while writing various main ideas on the board when he feels like it. Some may find it hard to stay awake during lecture because of his style, and his voice also tends to trail off at the end of sentences. Because of this, it is very advisable to sit in the front to stay accountable for consciousness. Also, he tends to ask random questions to students if he feels they are not paying attention or could gain from trying (and often failing) to answer them. He tends to not have a clue whether he lectures too quickly or too slowly, so he may ask at inopportune moments if he should change his pace.

In lab, Dr. Lucido can be quite helpful. Despite spending most of the lab periods early in the semester talking, once students are actually allowed to touch equipment he offers many tips on technique and time management. His style in lab is essentially to tell the students everything they need to do up front (which may be too much to absorb) and then watch and comment when necessary. Some may find this incredibly annoying, but for the most part it helps. Once unkowns are issued, however, his vast knowledge of microbiology lab technique immediately vanishes.

Dr. Lucido has a tendency to test over details (he warns the class about this), so it makes sense to take lecture seriously. Also, his test writing style is pretty canonical -- first he looks for questions in his lecture notes, then the book, then the notes again, etc. However, unlike many professors, he frequently does pull significant numbers of test questions from purely book material. Basically, if he says something is a good study guide, expect to see material from it (of course). His tests are often long (averaging around 135 questions) from all of the details, but they are usually tolerable. He also often comments on how his tests seem to drain the knowledge students may have gained directly out of them.

Student opinions

dr. lucido is faintly amusing, but is very erratic. his teaching style is hard to follow, but as far as lab work goes, no one will prepare you better. his tests are killer, but he lightens things up with questions like "you guys are a great class, so mark A." even though micro can be a major GPA killer, you can't help but like the guy.

Ben: Dr. Lucido is very interested (and knowledgable) in his subject area, which may become evident when he talks to students after class. However, his overriding characteristics seem to be verbose and quiet, so try not to get bogged down or bored. Because General Microbiology is a newly added requirement, many people may not find him to be that great, but I think he is a very good professor. He's pretty interesting most of the time and he often tries to help his students, and I think that's enough for a good evaluation.