If you are looking to take a class for an easy GE, this is not your class. This class is interesting, it is engaging, the concepts are genuinely fun to learn about. The professor is beyond amazing, and the TAs offer great support in discussions and office hours. The only critique I have for this class is the exams. Both the midterm and final are extremely difficult exams. They are heavy on memorization, and it is hard to predict the type of questions on the exam. For example, on my final, we had to draw the structure of proteins, which was covered in one slide in one lecture. The professor does offer review sessions for both, which are very helpful. This class might be a little tricky, but I cannot stress how excellent Phelan is as a professor. I managed to scrape by with an A-, getting a D+ on the midterm & a B- on the final, both of which I studied rigorously for. He does offer a slight curve at the end of the course, which gives you a little boost. Plenty of extra credit is offered, and all the lectures are recorded. I would 100% take this class again if I could and recommend it to anyone, but I would not call it a walk-in-the-park course.
TLDR: Amazing Professor, Hard Exams, Interesting Class, Curved+Extra credit offered

Phelan is a great professor, obvious that he likes to teach and that he enjoys the topics in his class. The best way I can describe what I learned in this class is that it's biology that matters to you. The topics covered were enjoyable. I personally don't like biology, but this class was not too bad. He gives out a lot of extra credit opportunities, so it's easy to pass.

I took Professor Phelan's class during spring quarter of 2024. He is an extremely engaging professor who is passionate about his job. His love for teaching and class content is extremely contagious. I was genuinely excited to attend his lectures because I knew I'd learn something new each time. This is a great class for students with a limited background in biology.

In terms of workload, it was very manageable as long as you keep up with the readings. The final exam is cumulative, so if you aren't up to date with the readings then you'll have a really hard time cramming everything a few nights before. I definitely would recommend this class to everyone. Everyone I know that took this class with me walked away with a lot of important and interesting life lessons!

If you can take this course I think it is so worth taking. Prof. Phelan is my favorite professor I have had at UCLA so far. He is so smart and makes science (which I didn't think I was that interested in) SO ENGAGING. I highly recommend this course I could not imagine not enjoying it. Also, go to office hours and get to know him, he cares about his students and will give his valuable time in helping you understand anything.

If you are not a STEM person and thinking about taking this class as a science GE, TAKE THIS CLASS!!! I usually HATE biology, but I found myself looking forward to every Phelan lecture and leaving feeling like I really learned a lot. His midterm and final are not easy, but after I got an average score on the midterm, I learned that you really just have to study all the material and practice being asked about a random topic. Professor Phelan offered an extra credit music video opportunity, and you should definitely take advantage because I'm pretty sure that my EC is what got me to the A. Overall, Professor Phelan is super engaging, entertaining, and charismatic. Highly recommend this class

Part of me took this class (for Cogsci and a GE) just to see what the hype was all about.

GUYS. It's worth the hype. Some play it off and try to be different but this professor is SOOO interesting and engaging! The concepts that he taught were just so applicable to real life, and as a humanities major that used to love STEM and ponders everything in life to exist ever this got me back into both while integrating BOTH. DNA, reproductive success, altruism, friends, family, everything. I think that it was a little difficult at times bc of bio content (I hadn't taken AP Bio in the past), but there were a lot of apes concepts and overall, while complicated, you could learn bio from a friend or something. I would say a heavy stem focus but also heavily interesting.

The teaching style was so engaging too. I remember the first day I sat in the class, bro went up to me immediately and asked me a fun question abt the subject. Jay the goat walks around during lecture! We were kinda surprised to discover some lore abt him, but he in general was soooo nice and interesting and helped me FBI stuff. Only downside is that he hasn't ever responded to one of my emails and his OOs are far af. But my probably ADHD Tiktok Gen Z brain was properly overstimulated when he had a slideshow presentation in the background, two pictures of animals, and talked about stuff; I genuinely felt like I was watching someone play subway surfers while telling a storytime abt something crazy. Take this class if you go to school to learn. Lots of EC opportunities so advantage of those too.

This class is absolutely fantastic to take as a GE if you aren't a bio major. The content is super understandable and Phelan is an amazing lecturer. One piece of advice I would strongly recommend is to *keep up with readings!!* You cover a ton of content in the class and the readings add a lot of context that makes answering problems on quizzes a lot easier.

Dr. Phelan is just awesome. He manages to be so engaging and informative in every lecture. I learned so much more than I thought from this class, and I would definitely recommend it! It requires some work, but it is definitely worth it.

Dr. Phelan is the best and most engaging professor I’ve had at UCLA. He genuinely cares about his students and is passionate about the topics addressed in LS15. Overall the material in the class is super relevant to life, which makes it easy to stay engaged. Workload and readings were very manageable. I recommend this class to anyone who has space to take it!

best professor and one of the most interesting classes at ucla. take him and take this class !!!