DO NOT take this class. Professor Sears is honestly the worst Professor I have ever taken out of 4 years of UCLA. If you are looking for a good EEB class to take, please look elsewhere. This class is literally the worst and so disorganized. She makes us watch pre-recorded lecture videos in addition to attending lecture 3 days a week which is a lot of f*ck*ng content. She also has us watch videos on youtube by people other than her because she is too lazy to lecture on the content herself in a more digestible way. The pre-recorded lectures are from previous years too, more lazy behavior and shows she doesn't actually care about the student's success. AND on top of that she has guest lecturers come in the present their research and for 50 minutes straight they spew a foreign language at us and she expects us to have understood and memorized everything that they have done in their research including methods of experimentation and details about their findings. She has 6 multiple-choice questions on the second exam pertaining to these guest researchers and I'm pretty sure people who worked FOR THE RESEARCHERS wouldn't even be able to answer these extremely specific questions. You can also read through other reviews regarding the most chaotic first midterm experience where she had missing pages and came up with the most ridiculous and unhelpful solutions. And on top of allllllll that, she gave us ONE (1) point back on that midterm because she said "well the midterm average was high so I didn't feel like it affected you all very much" like HUH. She has messed up and continues to mess up everything for this class but doesn't want to take accountability for her actions and fix her mistakes because she is too prideful. This class is going to cost me my 4.0 GPA that I spent 4 years working towards. TRUST ME WHEN I SAY STAY FAR FAR FARRRRRRRRRR AWAY FROM THIS CLASS. (Unless of course you wish to hate your life.. then by all means)

I made an account just to write this review. This has been my worst class at UCLA so far, and I'm a senior. I have never performed so badly on an exam. The first exam was end of week 2 and it was pure chaos because pages were missing from one version of the exam. I couldn't focus with all the commotion. She decided to give us extra time but it meant we had to sit on the floor outside in the sun trying to finish them up and I was sweating so bad. She ended up giving us all 1 point extra on that exam because "one multiple-choice question was not clear". The second exam was really tough. She expects us to know content she lectures in class, content she posts online (which is usually a video by some other professor or random YouTuber), content from discussion sections including scientific articles we have to read for those sections, and finally content from guest lecture presentations, which are not the easiest to understand due to all the scientific jargon. She really had 6 multiple-choice questions on the exam from the guest lecture presentations, and they weren't even simple but required critical thinking. I think it's not fair that half of the content we are responsible for is on stuff she doesn't even lecture, and then most of the time she doesn't even have office hours so we could ask her about them and doesn't respond to emails. Also, she says that she doesn't usually give out practice midterms (I guess so we can think she is nice) but the practice midterms she gave us suck ass. The questions on there are so straightforward and nothing like her actual exam questions, which require deep thought and integrating info from different lectures (something she doesn't do, by the way - the online lectures rarely relate to the in-person ones and she doesn't make a connection between them or rarely references them in class so the info just seems so random). If you're going to test us on our UNDERSTANDING of the material (ie, critical thinking questions and not just pure memorization-based ones), then our brains need to PRACTICE those kinds of questions. And if those kinds of questions aren't offered as practice, then it's gonna be difficult to actually do well on the exam. Also, discussion sections are useless. It was just a way for her to throw more content at us. I think the paper that we have to write based on one of the guest lectures is also just a bunch of busy work and really isn't necessary.

I currently have an A in the class but I had to write this review because I believe the reviews written during COVID tell a different story. Perhaps the exams were easier online when you can use your notes etc, but I do not recommend taking this class at all.

IDK where to begin. First exam was hectic. She misprinted the exam, resulting in a page missing. Her soln. was to project the questions. Imagine 80+ students huddled in the front of the hall causing a ruckus during an exam that’s already 50 min. TA’s take forever to pass out the exams/ scantrons. She has the time to include an extra guest lecturer, but didn’t think it would be beneficial to give us an extra weekend to study for the exam. Expects us to know everything about the guest lecturers research, despite it all being foreign jargon. I dropped the class after she had to add 6.5 extra credit points to everyone’s exam just to raise the avg to a 79%. I think she forgets that the last time she taught this class was when exams were online and open note and forgets that the lecture information is very dense. TAs are going on strike so students are left to fend for themselves indefinitely. The groupme is like a chicken fest. 90% of the members are confused because of how disorganized this class is. Save yourself a headache by not taking this class or take with a different professor. The previous reviews were dishonest

Last week, two of my friends and I bought Halloween costumes at Spirit and had planned on going to SAE to celebrate. We were supposed to be the three Powerpuff girls and our outfits were all coordinated. Last night, I checked the EEB 184 GroupMe (for the first time in God knows how long) and saw that we had an exam scheduled for Wednesday two days after Halloween! Many students, including me, thought that Wednesday was supposed to be an activity day, not an exam! I also checked the schedule and saw that we have another exam the Monday after Thanksgiving! What is wrong with this professor?!?! The lectures are so confusing and mind-numbingly boring, especially the guest lectures. We are literally expected to become experts in what the guest lectures talk about. WTF!!! They are even worse than Karen's lectures! She's such a Karen. Now I cannot go out with my BFFs because I got a D on the first test. Another review stated what happened perfectly. However, she thought the averages were high enough to not give any extra credit. As someone with test anxiety, I thought this was so inconsiderate. That test debacle should get this professor fired. I am literally writing this review to warn everyone to avoid this class. Her previous reviews were probably fake, like her.

I hate this class so much. It is so disorganized. The slides are complicated. Just save yourself a headache.

I really enjoyed this class and I think Dr. Sears did a great job teaching it. If you took EEB 185 and were a bit disappointed by a lack of topics actually covering medicine, I think EEB 184 would be a great choice. We went over a lot of material that actually has a lot of relevance to humans, such as pharmaceuticals/teratogens/that sort of thing and their effects on development.

None of the topics were too dense and all three of the exams covered things she explicitly went over in class/discussion, so they weren't bad to prepare for. In other words Dr. Sears didn't pull any tricks on the exams. Just take notes in class and understand the major points and you'll probably at least score in the average. There are a few questions that will make sure you paid attention to the papers we read in discussion, and a few questions that test more minute details that may have only been mentioned once or twice in the slides, but everything tested is present on the slides or discussion.

If you have a background in classes that focus on evolution, this class will be pretty easy to understand and enjoyable. It covers a lot of different topics, and goes into varying degrees of detail, but it was cool to learn about different drugs or environmental agents/factors that can cause developmental changes.

Grading is based on:
3 midterm exams (no final exam), a poster project week 10 (in groups of mostly 2, but some had 3 people), and discussion/participation (attendance and completing the worksheet + doing the online quizzes)

I highly recommend EEB 184 with Dr. Sears

This was a new class taught this quarter. The class focuses on evolution and how it relates to development of a species. There were three exams 60 points each. They were not cumulative. There was one week 2, one week 5, and one right before thanksgiving, so week 9. The final was a poster project with people in your discussion section. It was out of 100 points, very easy. 120 points was from discussion and other various assignments. The professor would have a video quiz before most lectures, where we watch a video online and then answer questions. It was directly from the video and can be taken twice. The discussion would be assignments that the TA went over after everyone was done and then collected for completeness. It was not graded for correctness. There was one extra credit, where if we attended a seminar or talk by other professors in the department, and wrote about them, our grade would be boosted one whole percent. It helped a lot.
Mainly, I didn't try as hard in the class. I averaged 70's on the exams, 100% on discussion and online quizzes, and 95% on the final poster, and I got a B+. I took this for MCDB elective, and it was really easy compared to other electives. 100 RECOMMEND

ONLY CRITICISM: this lady really scheduled an exam the day after halloween.
She is very smart, but reads from her slides which i guess is good cause then its easy to study for exams. Does not have office hours and only makes herself available through the TAs. Discussion is stupid and useless doing dumb activities instead of reviewing material. Material is interesting for the most part. There are 3 exams, I got a 76, 96, and 87. I finished with a Solid A in the class!! There is a final poster project which is annoying to do but I got a 98 on it even though we did it the night before and i messed up the presentation. I have 0 experience in medicine, i don't know why i took this class im an environmental science major,,,but i did pretty well!!
DONT BUY THE TEXTBOOK, waste of $80.

This class was remote for Fall Quarter 2021, and I believe that it is always remote. It is a very easy class that would be a great buffer for when you have more difficult classes to take in a quarter. Every exam and quiz is open note and very, very straightforward based on the lectures. Take good notes on the videos so that you can just search through your notes when you need the answers to exam and quiz questions.

Quizzes are mostly memorization of facts, but some questions on there and most of the exam questions require some understanding of the concepts. These concepts are not difficult and will not take too much effort to understand if you have a decent biology background (which you will if you have taken all of the prerequisites).

Highly recommend this class as an MCDB elective—it was a great choice for me to have a more chill quarter! Also, the lectures have interesting material that keep you engaged, and because I enjoy evolution and development I enjoyed this class a lot.

I took this class hybrid (virtual lectures, in person discussion) and loved it. we had 6 exams but they were all manageable and I actually liked having more tests with lighter content loads. I learned a lot and found the content super interesting. highly recommend taking this class!