Definitely the best professor in the whole Cluster 70A program. His lectures were incredibly engaging, and you can truly see the enthusiasm and passion he has for the field of astronomy. He makes them fun by adding in Sci-Fi movie references while also maintaining very strong clarity. Also, he was really helpful (he would even answer questions that were asked during his walk-through of lecture slides). Really wish more professors were like him.

Pretty easy and fun class. Prof gives a ton of extra credit which I took advantage of all to get an A+ in the class.

Took this class in-person fall 2021. To me, I found the material incredibly boring, and the professors are really terrible at creating slides. Each lecture consists of hundreds of slides with either a. repetitive information, b. useless information c. boring information. Most of the information you need to know for tests is not covered in lecture. Fall quarter is all astronomy and creation of the earth. Basic knowledge of elementary physics/chemistry would help, but you don't need any strong math/science skills. The class is really more a writing class since the essay is what makes/breaks your grade.

Class is taught by like 3 professors so consistency is a huge issue and each professor teaches class differently, which makes it aids logistically for you and the TA.

Never talked to any of the professors so can't really say how helpful/willing to help they are.

Quizzes are 30%, consisting of 10 at 3% each. 5 free response quizzes that are super easy, 5 multiple choice that are ridiculously hard. 35% discussion work, this is basically a free grade booster, 35% essay.

Your TA grades everything: get a bad TA and you are finished since you really can't afford to lose points in discussion since your quiz grade is going to be okay at best.

Overall, it's not that hard of a class, but you will need to put in a little effort to get by. Curve is very nice, professors feel the need to give every a grade bump should they feel not enough kids get As. Probably >50% of the class gets As, and you can pass the class without any effort.

Dr. Jewitt is very funny and his lectures are engaging. He cares about his students in their lives outside the course. Expect very difficult midterms, but a final that reuses questions from them. His part of the class is pretty difficult.

I love this professors and teaching staff for this cluster, but the quizzes are actually really hard and oftentimes the lectures aren't really helpful in preparing for them. It IS a cluster, so there is more workload (bi-weekly quizzes, weekly discussion labs and a 5 page paper due at week 10), but it's manageable. I rather do this cluster than fulfill my science GEs with other classes, so I do recommend taking it!

It seems like this class has changed severely in the last year, and it shows lol. quizzes are no longer take home and every other week; there are three throughout the quarter in discussion, with 30 minutes for 20 MC questions each time. these quizzes are 20-30% of your grade and the final (which for us was 75% questions taken from these quizzes, though there are multiple versions of each, and 25% new material) is 10-20%, depending on which is better for your grade. another 25% was the labs & discussion participation, and 35% was the paper you worked on all quarter

i’m going to be honest that i didn’t put a ton of work into the class, and i probably could’ve done better on my quizzes if i actually cared enough to study and really try to understand the concepts (i got a 16/20, 15/20, and 15/20, which started off as a little below average and progressively was more & more above average, as people pretty much bombed them). i think the main reason people bombed these quizzes is that they 1) used a lot of red herrings to try & distract you from the point of the question, so that the real challenge was trying to figure out what the question was really asking you 2) there were some questions that just required you remembering some random fact from class 3) people tried to study via memorization and not understanding. also, our review questions were incredibly simple and easy to answer, unlike the quiz, so it was hard to get a sense for the kind of question you’d be asked

the curve was heavy, though, and jumped my grade a letter (i did well on the writing & labs, and had zero problems with either; you just have to make sure you REALLY understand the essay prompt ‘cause it’s a little convoluted, but it’s not hard to write). i have all sorts of critiques on how this class is taught (too wide a scope to understand or spend an appropriate amount of time on anything, abandoned the math that grounds the concepts in real relationships, discussions & lectures felt like different classes, etc), but it honestly shouldn’t have been that hard, i just didn’t study lol. turned out fine for me though. jewitt had more of the random/trick questions & petigura was a little easier (only two profs who taught this quarter), neither were particularly interesting but i also think i have a hard time caring about classes that cover such a broad array of subjects. just don’t try to memorize while studying– it doesn’t work. you have to Understand the material

Dr. Jewitt is one of my favorite professors in this cluster. He makes lectures engaging and actually helps you learn the content he is teaching. He is very knowledgeable and intelligent about what he is teaching and makes it relatable to anyone taking his class. I really liked the quizzes that he integrated into the course, they were all written based on documentaries which were a pleasant change from the usual math-based 7-question written responses from other professors. I recommend taking this class and ignoring the bad reviews on Dr. Jewitt. At least not during my class, he did not say anything offensive and helped me genuinely learn concepts and apply them to life. His work on the Kuiper belt fascinated me. I genuinely enjoy his teaching and will miss his fun, demonstrative teaching.

I recommend this cluster to absolutely every freshman who wants to knock out their science GEs. 1/3 of the grade is based on quizzes which are take-home and open note. These quizzes are based on lecture material, and I skipped pretty much every single lecture throughout the entire quarter but since they are take-home and open note it is pretty easy to go back and find the material in the slides. They also grade the written part of the quiz really easily. Another 1/3 of the grade is based on assignments you do in your discussion section, and my TA (Caitlyn Fick - highly recommend) graded these on participation which was super nice for the grade. The last 1/3 of the grade was based on a 5-page research essay that was also graded super easily by my TA. Much of the discussion section material feels disconnected from lecture which is kinda annoying, but otherwise, I have no complaints about this class. Like I said, I never went to lecture and I got an A+. No need to do any ungraded work in this class like readings either. Definitely take this class, I couldn't recommend it more for incoming freshmen.

Grade composition:
Bi-weekly Quizzes: 30%
Lab: 35%
Paper: 35%, 4-5 pages
No extra credit
Attendance not mandatory
Class is not curved (no limit to how many A's they give people)
No midterm or final (bi-weekly quizzes instead)

The quizzes are bi-weekly and online, so make friends in the class and take them together. Quizzes are posted on Thursdays at 5pm and due Friday 5pm. They are 2 part quizzes, 10 multiple choice questions with 25 minutes to complete it from the time you start (not lockdown browser), free response is unlimited time (within the 24 hours window to complete it and not lockdown browser). Everyone has the exact same free response but different multiple choice parts, although some multiple choice questions will overlap with your friends.
Jewitts' quizzes are SO MUCH EASIER than Petiguras', but I somehow did shit on almost all of them, like 5/10 bad. His free response parts are only one question and he makes you watch some 1 hour video of him on a BBC science episode and summarize it. The free response is not hard, just tedious and annoying because you have to sacrifice all that time watching a video, but I'd say make your answer is scientifically backed up because I think that's how I lost points. For Jewitts' part of the multiple choice, I think they were actually harder than Petiguras'. It was either that or he makes way more questions, so if you take it in a group you and your friends won't have a lot of the same questions, so you have to figure more of them out on your own. And for the multiple choice if you have the same question as your friends, he mixes up the answer order, so be careful of that.

He was by far the most engaging lecturer and says out of pocket things which keeps everyone on their toes so showing up to lecture was not so bad when he was teaching, but make sure you are quiet during lecture because he calls people out for talking over him which is embarrassing. Half of his slides are just pictures/ graphs and videos, so the slides are not really useful for the quizzes.

I enjoyed Jewitt's part of the course much more than Petiguras. He took difficult concepts and tried to make them easier to understand by explaining them in detail and even coming up with some great analogies. Although his lectures were sometimes quite random in which he included some interesting videos, I thought his lectures were great and I found myself interested and not bored like I was at the beginning of the quarter. Jewitt's quizzes were much easier in my opinion, especially the free response which just consisted of writing a response to some topic or questions that were not that difficult to understand. However, some of the multiple-choice questions were a bit difficult. Overall, although this class was not the best due to organization and the workload being a bit extensive for a GE, I thought Jewitt was great.