University of Colorado Denver

“Thank you for a great semester. It’s been fantastic being in your class. I’ve learned so much from you — not just from experiencing your lectures, ‘cause quite honestly they’re an experience, but from literally watching your career.”
—David Toro, 2021 Undergraduate Student

Cory spent three years on the Recording Arts Faculty at CU Denver’s Music & Entertainment Industry Studies Department. His average Faculty Course Questionnaire score in 2020 was 4.64/5, a pandemic Zoom-taught year of flexible teaching he’s proud of. Here’s a song the brilliant and blind David Amaya gifted him after the semester in 2021:

Below is a video of recordings Cory’s CU Denver Recording Arts undergrads made in 2019, followed by the complete and unedited responses from all students who anonymously chose to offer Qualitative Comments on his courses’ most effective aspects in 2020. Clearly they are poor judges of character or something…

CU Denver 2019 Audio Production I Undergraduate Recordings…


Course 1

  • Loved the course and the teacher.
  • Cory was honestly one of my favorite teachers this year! He made me feel seen since the first day! I hope to have another class with him in the future. 🙂
  • The classes where we took a break from the regular coursework and focused more on personal technical issues were very welcome, and happened frequent enough to be useful without getting in the way of regular progress.
  • This year was a challenge due to the isolation that the class found themselves experiencing this lab from. What was most helpful was exploring the studio space and exploring ways to record in unique ways in unique spaces.
  • Appreciate you’re effort in teaching us and helping us understand our course material I wish I had more teachers who were more down to earth and easy going while also being a good teacher. Best of luck to you and you’re future endevors!
  • You’re and have been an amazing professor. The only thing that I can be constructive is is that the classes go a little long but that was always necessary because even when it was just talking we all need the human interaction right now. Thank you for being an amazing professor.
  • Cory is a great instructor, very fun and very professional
  • The most effective parts of the class was the way you kept the class intriguing, I looked forward to this class every morning of it. Not just for the course information provided, but the teacher too.
  • The most effective aspect for me was how we would go over the homework the next day and watch the assignment be re-done in pro tools.
  • Getting time to go through questions and watch pro tools get used was helpful.

Course 2

  • Cory is a very personable and friendly instructor, so even slogging through key commands in Pro Tools was fun and engaging. Tests and assignments were designed well and used course book and lecture material well. The variety of lectures, videos, and reading kept things interesting.
  • A fun course with a great professor that kept everyone’s spirits up, loved engaging with students, understood how to read the room (was able to say “Hey the world’s kinda crummy right now let’s take a break”) and kept assignments light-hearted with a lot of extra credit opportunities.
  • Out of all my professors, I believe Cory adapted to the off-site class times the best. His Zoom presentations were on topic and interesting, he kept questions coming and answered them well, not to mention he’s quite funny and generally likeable. I think Cory understood very well the goals of his class; insuring we had a basic but essential understanding of how to use Pro Tools.
  • I think the way you teach really works. It helps that you engage with your students during the period instead of just giving us a lecture. Especially since the course is remote and it’s difficult to get students engaged. I also think it helps that you have a sense of humor with everything. It makes it a lot easier to learn when you’re cracking jokes or saying/doing things that we will remember or will make us want to remember rather than just telling us about things.
  • I liked that you showed us how to do the assignments during class to help us out with our homework
  • My instructor was always available for questions after the lecture and sometimes during. I always found that he was very respectful to his students and overall made the classroom environment a fun place to learn. His curriculum was also easy to understand. Overall I believe his teaching abilities to be top notch!
  • Cory is great and really fun to learn from, but… (see least effective)
  • I think the course was helpful since we got to see the screen of what was happening in Pro Tools. Each week, we were also able to talk about the previous and next lesson which kept us all on track. I also think the quizzes/assignments each week were super easy to figure out and get through without problems.

Course 3

  • It was nice to have a class that was pretty low stress to just talk about how to make music.
  • Thank you Cory for teaching this class and making it so fun. I really looked forward to it every week. Please teach more classes!! I would love to have you as my professor again!
  • Very personable and helpful
  • Cory was one of my favorite instructors, I looked forward to his class every Friday, and sometimes knowing that this class was at the end of the week helped to keep me motivated in my other courses throughout the week. Cullinan was really effective in helping keep our spirits up and to keep smiling. He would take breaks from the text book to give us more creative and real-world assignments which helped me get a genuine feel for how things occur in this field even through remote learning. I also really enjoyed when he would let students share their work in class, it allowed us to encourage each other and connect on a deeper level than some of my other courses. We also had lots of opportunities to interact in the chat which allowed me to feel like I was still making friends in the class decpite the set backs of zoom.
  • Cory is a beacon of light in the dark abyss that is higher education, we should build a statue of him in the courtyard honestly. Maybe put a dog like a husky or something next to him too and have them both looking off in the direction of the rockies majestically and have a built-in fountain that shoots water out their eyes like laser beams.
  • Probably my favourite online course I’ve taken in a schooling environment simply because the environment that Cory created was so conducive to being open, friendly, thinking with precision and really doing things on your own to learn for yourself.
  • Cory is an interesting teacher and makes learning fun
  • We love Cory and his energetic attitude. He’s always ready to teach us something new. Dr. Noize cares about his students and how they feel
  • it was pretty good for being online. Cory was a great teacher.

To Regis University | To Pinewood School