I loved this class with Dr. Lipman. Her lectures were great, and discussion sections were my favorite of any class taken this year. The class overall was engaging, the material was interesting and accessible, the grading was very fair, and I felt like I learned a lot. Definitely one of my favorite classes I've taken so far.

As for the class structure itself, there were two books: a traditional textbook and Half Earth by E. O. Wilson. Half Earth was required while the other textbook was not, and you do not need the other textbook. Lectures and discussion sections are plenty for the content. The class was hybrid where the lectures were over zoom and recorded while discussion sections were in person.

The grading scheme of this class was focused heavily on exams and quizzes. The exams were open for a day and were collaborative if you chose to work in a group (although you didn't get to pick your group). The questions were multi-part short answer. Overall the tests seemed very fair, and if you knew the content, I thought that they were decently easy to get through. You also had to make a study guide, and there were evening study sessions ran by the TA, so I definitely felt prepared. The quizzes were short and 5 questions, given at the start of discussion sections. They were easy and really just there to make sure you did the weekly work (reading the chapters of Half Earth, reading the assigned journal article, watching the weekly film, and lecture content).

The rest of your points came from discussion section. A small amount was just pure participation. You also had two presentations, but those were informal and easily graded. You also had to volunteer, which was basically free points.

Overall the grading scheme felt fair with a decent buffer from the discussion section. If you do the work, you should feel prepared and get a good grade and learn a lot. Again, I highly recommend this class!

Honestly an awful class. Just so many random awful assignments and group oriented things. Not to mention the ridiculously slow pace of the lectures. I could not stay awake. Just take another class

I would not really recommend this lab honestly. It’s not that it’s insanely difficult, it’s just a lot of work and it can be annoying when you have a bunch of other things going on. I had Sara as my TA and I liked her a lot, it wasn’t too difficult to get an A, just make sure you meet with your TA often and ask for lots of guidance on your group project. Also, almost your entire grade is based off of one big project/paper and you can’t choose your group members so make sure everyone is contributing equally and you’ll be fine.

This class was incredibly poorly organized. All grades took absolutely ages to be returned, so it was impossible to know where you really stood in the class. Lectures were adjacent to actual torture, as Gorlitsky and ESPECIALLY Lipman were plain boring and awful lecturers. The content had its interesting moments, especially in the animal behavior portion of the class, but this was compromised by the awful attempts to teach made by both professors. The professors realize no one would come to lecture unless they sporadically assigned quizzes, so this was done to maintain participation, although if you looked around the room it was clear everyone was preoccupied with anything else more stimulating and important to them. Please do not take this class unless you want to be permanently turned off to animal biology and ecology. Had an absolutely revolting experience.

This course is TA-taught. The only interaction my group had with Dr. Gorlitsky and Dr. Lipman was through an hour-long office hour they held, in which we received optional feedback for our initial research project idea. Because the class is TA-taught, your grade will heavily depend on your TA, and the professors will only be accessible if you request extra meetings with them (the professors seem to often be busy, as my group emailed a meeting request and did not receive a response). The course revolves around a group research project in which you write a prospectus (proposal) for, present on twice, and write a final paper for. This class was more work than I expected as several of my group members did not pull their weight, and the only consequence for this is a lower group participation grade, which is a small portion of the grade.

Pretty interesting class, with a heavier emphasis in the Discussion portion. Here, there are weekly quizzes, two group presentations (one on a book and the other on a volunteer organization), the actual volunteering event, and an individual book report (on all books being presented by the groups). The exams would be done in the Lecture portion, which were quite ambiguous in what was wanted. It seems to ask questions that allows for many potential answers, given proper reasoning, but the grader would want something specific. The lectures are not recorded, although the slides are uploaded.

Seriously the worst class I have ever taken. The TAs will take off points for absolutely random things. AND I MEAN RANDOM. They clearly are just trying to meet a quota and that honestly just makes the authenticity of the class go way down. Everyone agreed that the exams were super vague and worded weirdly. There were probably about 10 questions on each exam that could have multiple correct answers depending on your reasoning. I met with a TA one time to discuss exam answers and even she couldn’t give me a logical reason as to why my answers were incorrect. Dr. Lipman and Gorlitsky… do better

TLDR; Don't take this class because of mandatory attendance (not recorded), poorly written multiple choice exams, and weekly assignments that are near impossible to get 10/10 on.

This class is an unnecessary time sink that will require a disproportionate amount of effort to succeed in compared to other classes. For instance, I took this class at the same time as CHEM 153A and found that I was spending WAY more time on EEB 100. If you are able to take literally any other class, I would choose it. The professors do not post their lectures which is crazy because they expect you to remember every little detail for the midterm and final. They had multiple test questions that referenced a singular sentence from a YouTube video shown in class.

There is absolutely 0 indication as to what is important to study for the exams. You essentially have to memorize the course which is especially difficult to do when it is not recorded. The PowerPoints lack the necessary detail to succeed and the practice exams are far easier than the actual tests which are worth 60 PERCENT of your final grade.

In addition to this, the TAs were super nitpicky about the weekly assignments. They were literally taking off 10% of our weekly assignment grades for not including a hyperlink in a pdf document in addition to their wildly inconsistent grading scheme.

So, if you have the choice DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. However, if you have to take this class then you better be prepared to go to every lecture and take really good notes.

I took this course with professor Gregory grether and Lipman.

Overall view of the class:
I think that the concepts were engaging and interesting and there wasn’t a lot of work to do for the class. For discussion you only had a weekly reading that came with a summary and 1 presentation. But it was annoying because you can almost never get a 100 on the homework and they take off points for the most dumb thing like not putting your name, the title of the reading, the TA’s are very nit picky. I had Joey as a TA and he would never give 100 and would take off points for anything he was also harsh on grading presentations. Basically it’s very hard to get an A for this class, the class average this quarter was 85% and BEWARE they do not round up grades. Even if you are very close they say they do not round, so whatever you get is your grade period !

Gregory Grether :
His lectures were so boring ! I had to fight my sleep ! He would talk to fast and I feel like I couldn’t take notes as quick but he had recordings which helped. His quizzes were online and must be completed in an hour, which was graded for accuracy. The quizzes were not that simple, I feel like you had to understand the concepts and I feel like the way he explained things just made it way more complicated. The best TA that helped explain things was Maddy. But besides that the midterm was not that bad, I feel like he mostly teaches about concepts rather than definitions. But the way I studied was mostly by definitions. And I got a B on the midterm. Overall, boring lecturer but his midterm was not that bad.

On the other hand…

Lipman: she was a very engaging professor, she asked questions and accepted participation. So I didn’t want to fall asleep in her class. But what I hated was that she would take more participation time rather than thoroughly going over concepts. Not only that but she would not record lectures so you have to go to class and she would have pop quizzes that would be turned in to the TA some Time during class so you have to make sure to go. Good thing the quizzes were not graded on accuracy but more on participation. But because she wouldn’t record it would be hard to keep up with the material since I feel like she mostly used pictures as her slides. Not only that but I feel like her exam was way harder than the animal behavior portion. Something I did not expect in the final was the fact that she had questions related to the videos she would show in class so try and pay attention to the main point in the videos she shows in class. Overall, she was not the best professor when it came to explaining content.

Not an easy class, but doable if you stay on top of the material and know going into it that it is going to be a little bit more difficult than some EEB classes you take. Make sure to do the EC field trip because it can make a big difference at the end of the class! Going to office hours before the exams really helps and both Gorlitsky and Lipman are very nice and willing to answer any questions you may have.

Selling the Animal Behavior Textbook, $45 **********