This was overall the worst class I have ever taken at UCLA. Dr. Hill was condescending and frankly did not care about students learning. Office hours were unhelpful. When the TA strike was occurring, Hill and Bouklas did absolutely nothing to help us and basically told us to learn on our own. Lectures did not tie together well and were all over the place. The only thing that was really helpful was the discussions and when the TAs left, I literally did not learn anything. The homework was not helpful whatsoever. The tests were extremely challenging, which would have been fine if we were given any sort of guidance, however, we were not. I genuinely cannot say one good thing about this class.

Dr. Moberg-Parker taught this class for the first 5 weeks and then it was Dr. Hill. Her lectures were ok, a little unclear and vague at times. I liked Parker because she gave us these learning objectives before each lecture so that you knew exactly what to focus on and what would be on the test. She also required online quizzes before the lectures which were easy points. She also used clickers. Dr. Hill didn’t have either of these things and he didn’t use clickers.

The exam questions required a lot of designing experiments, especially for Parker’s questions. Dr. Hill’s questions were more memorization based, but nothing too difficult. For studying I would recommend focusing on the learning objectives that Dr. Parker gave and the slides for Dr. Hill.

The grade breakdown was:
100 points midterm 1 (mean was 75.81, median 77.0)
100 points midterm 2 (mean was 74.78, median was 76.0)
150 points final exam (stats weren’t released)
45 points discussion worksheets (you can miss 1)
50 points discussion participation (you rate the other people in your group)
36 points clickers (3 dropped)
60 points pre-class quizzes (2 dropped)
10 points pre-class and post-class survey (graded on completion)

There was also this extra credit forum where you would summarize a news article about microbiology. I recommend doing this early in the quarter because you can’t repeat a topic someone else has done and it’s difficult to find an article when everyone else is at the same time and Dr. Parker was pretty strict about this.

Dont take this class with Hill. I took this class during fall 2022 and there was a strike going on where we did not have any TAs for that last half of the class and no accommodations were made for the final. This is not the reason why I am I do not think you should take him. His exams questions are very vague and just studying the slides is not sufficient enough to do well on his exams. No curve and he only offers 4 points extra credit when the class is out of 430 pts. Save yourself the trouble.

I liked this class. Good way to weed out the weak pre-meds who can't handle real science and sequester them away to psychobio.

DO NOT TAKE IT. It was the worst class I have ever taken my entire life, I was studying more than 10 hours a day, and literally like it was the only class I was studying for and ended up with B+. Save your time, mental health and your grade. His office hours were useless, if I asked a question he would answer me with a question!! Even on campus wire, he was answering my questions with questions!!
Save your time.

First, I would like to say that I did enjoy the content of MIMG 101. The content is not hard but there is a lot of it so it does take sometime to memorize all of it for tests. I would make anki decks for each exam content and did well on the tests. If you are on top of your work, then this class should not be too much of a headache.

Now onto the teachers. I took this class with Hill and Bouklas, who is a new teacher. They had very different teaching styles so there were issues with consistency because Hill would put a lot on his slides while Bouklas had silghtly more minimalist slides. They both were not the best lecturers either because they would often go on random tangents during the lecture or minimally cover a topic that they would then make a big part of the exam. We had the TA strike occur during our quarter so we were asking for the final to have some accommodation since most of us began to struggle without the TAs help. They said the test would be mostly MC with some fill in the blanks, matching and short answer. The final ended up being about 17 pages with 90% fill in the blank like verbatim from slides. Most of us studied the same way we did for midterms which was understanding the main concept but not the very specific details because that was what we were told to do by the professors so the final was definitely unexpected.

Overall, this class is mostly going to be teaching yourself content and memorizing it. I did like the content but the class left something to be desired.

Dr. Hill’s lectures were interesting and concise, though his material only covered about 1/3 of the course. He really emphasized experimental setups and thinking, which I believe is a critical skill for many, especially MIMG/MCDB and other LS majors. He did seem to be more backseat, as Dr. Pour served as the face of the course at most times. Exams were too long and many students struggled to finish in time, despite the concepts not being too challenging themselves. I extremely disliked how regrade requests were handled, as it was emphasized that putting in a regrade request would regrade your entire exam rather than a specific question, and that we may lose points — which is ridiculous, as it essentially sounds as if they are trying to discourage students from getting a fair grade. Overall enjoyed Dr. Hill’s lectures, but wish for some restructuring of exams.

I took this class with Hill and Parker during Fall 2020, so COVID online classes were a thing. Parker was very organized and helpful, however the exams are extremely intense. Parker teaches the first half of the quarter and Hill teaches the second half. Hill was extremely disorganized and would constantly forget to post lectures on time (the lectures are posted, there is not a live class). I would only recommend this class and this major for those who are EXTREMELY interested in studying microbes. I personally decided to switch majors after taking this class. The decision was mainly because I realized I had interests in a different field, however this class played a significant factor in making me want to switch majors. You go through about a years worth of material in a quarter and it moves fast. The only reason I got a good grade was because, in the end, Dr. Parker is very understanding of the difficulty and provides many methods of getting participation points and extra credit. However, the workload is INTENSE. For reference, I would spend roughly 20-30 hours a week on only this class.

I took this class virtually in Fall 2020 with Dr. Parker and Dr. Hill. The class switched professors Week 5. I felt that Dr. Parker's teaching was fantastic and talked about it on her page. Dr. Hill definitely left more to be desired.

The course breakdown:
Concept Inventories and Course Evals 20
Smartworks Pre-Class Assignments 125 (a few dropped)
Smartworks Post-Class Assignments 80 (a few dropped)
Discussion Section Worksheets 40 (1 absence allowed)
Discussion Section Participation 50
Exams 350 (2 midterms, 1 final)
Total 665

A couple things of note here:
- Like the LS 7 series, there are pre-class (every class) and post-class (weekly) assignments connected to a textbook which is very similar to Launchpad that I believe you have to purchase access to.
- Also like LS 7 series, there is a mandatory discussion where we go over application of concepts, although I enjoyed it. I think as an adjustment for COVID, as long as you went to discussion you would get all 40 points and then at the end of the quarter, you would get the remaining 50 points by grading how involved your groupmates were (and they would grade you).
- By the end of the quarter, you had the opportunity for around 30? points of extra credit from doing things like posting on the forum, doing evaluations, and going to the MIMG poster conference and reviewing posters.

Lectures were completely asynchronous and pre-recorded which I did not like. Dr. Parker published everything on time. Dr. Hill published almost everything late. He frequently uploaded the reading lists after lecture times, he uploaded lectures usually a day late, and pre-class assignments were uploaded probably a day late too. He did not upload one of the post-class assignments until two weeks later. This made it so difficult to stay on track in a class that has such a high workload. I felt constantly frustrated and was terrified of forgetting assignments, since they were uploaded randomly and therefore had random due dates. I wish this class had been live, because at least then the lectures would not have been uploaded late.

Unlike Dr. Parker's lectures, Dr. Hill's were not interactive and focused more on what I would call complicated material like biochemical pathways. I felt his material to be heavier, but I also did less reading when he started teaching, so that could be why.

Tests were very different from the LS 7 series. They were open-notes and free-response. Dr. Parker's questions had emphasis on being experimental, and while some of Dr. Hill's questions were like this, more were recall-based. This ended up making the tests easier because they were open-notes. I thought that the tests were clear but a bit of a time crunch -- the professors were aware of this and responsive and as a result, gave 3.75 hours for the final. The midterms and finals all had some extra credit, although medians (averages not published) were low. The median of the first midterm was 76% and 23% of students scored below a 60 (36% scored a 70 or lower). The second midterm had a median of 80% where 13% of students scored below a 60 (25% scored a 70 or lower). While these are low grades, they were boosted by numerous extra credit opportunities and points from other categories like discussion.

Probably the most intense part of the class was its workload. There was a lot of reading assigned every class and when you're taking this class, it is so easy to fall behind. The pre-class and post-class assignments rely on the reading but are not completely related to the class material (like Launchpad). I read and took notes on everything when Dr. Parker taught, which took maybe 2hr/night, but after switching to Dr. Hill, I decided to do much less reading and did not suffer, making me think that readings are not completely necessary. Dr. Parker also published learning objectives before each lecture, and that is how I guided my notes for the readings. Dr. Hill did not publish any, and when asked to, he told students to infer them from his slides.

This class became incredibly frustrating when Dr. Hill began teaching because he uploaded everything late. If this does not change, I don't recommend taking the class with him, but I am hoping that he will adjust for this as he becomes more familiar with online teaching. Otherwise, this is a pretty interesting class that honestly does involve a lot of work.

This class made me a bigger germaphobe than I already was. You really do learn a lot of cool things in this class!
I got a 75% on the first midterm written by Dr. Parker, an 89% on the second midterm written by Dr. Hill, and a 96% on the final. I thought Parker’s material was the hardest, but also it was my first MIMG class so I think I grossly underestimated how difficult the exams would be. This wasn’t an easy class but certainly not the most difficult. I never went to office hours but sometimes I posted questions on the discussion forum. I thought Parker’s pre-lecture quizzes were super annoying because you had to devote considerable time to read the textbook first before you could know the answers to the quiz. Some answers are on quizlet and some aren’t. I never went to Hill’s lectures; thank god for bruincast at 1.5x speed. Didn’t read the textbook for his portion of the class. SO this isn’t a chill class but also it is doable like not trying to scare anyone. I really encourage people take this class because of the cool material.