American Politics with Vallely is a very solid, fairly interesting intro into the Political Science department. Vallely is funny at times, though overall his lectures are kind of dry--he tries very hard to get students involved though, and is very approachable. He is a lenient professor, who will postpone a paper's due date for several days for nearly any reason, and is a moderately difficult grader. The format of PS 04 was, I think, three 5 to 7 page papers, three tests including midterm and final (essay tests) and then a longer 10 to 12 page paper at the end. Or something along those lines.

The reading for American Politics was pretty interesting stuff, and about three hundred pages a week or so. The class format tends to be lectures interspersed with discussions and questions. I heard he gave his morning PS 04 class doughnuts, but he didn't like ours as much, since we were a little less talkative.