Professor Nicholas Diefel is an excellent teacher, always happy to help, and has very engaging lectures. He gives a lot of, and I mean, A LOT of, opportunities to meet up and catch up with the materials. The homework was sometimes challenging, but it was a great opportunity to raise your grade. Going to his office hours is a must - very helpful and clarifying (also pretty chill).

Deifel is a solid teacher but everyone’s overrating him like crazy. It was only his first quarter and he definitely had his flaws such as going off topic often, which made it pretty difficult to focus. I do admire his energy and his ability to make jokes on such a boring subject, which is why I would recommend him.

Deifel is super engaging in lecture and makes himself available for office hours and review sessions multiple times a week for many hours, so there is always time to meet with or message him if you are ever confused. There was quite a bit of reading and homework but it was manageable enough, and individual problems can be retaken on the homework until a 100% is achieved (and homework is worth 25% of the grade, so this is advisable). His lectures can be a little confusing if you did not do the related textbook readings, but with the homework and lectures and some self-study, the readings are not necessary to do well on exams. Deifel is also super personable and supportive of his students (he encourages them to go to sports games with him, especially if another one of his students is playing in one, and tries very hard to remember all the names of his students). Overall, this was my favorite class of fall quarter and I would definitely take other classes with Deifel.

Deifel is one of the most caring professors. Go to office hours - he answers all questions happily and also gives review practice problems. His midterm reviews were very helpful since he does practice problems that are very similar to those on the actual midterm. Sometimes Deifel’s lectures and slides were a little disorganized, but you can always approach him at office hours and he’ll re-explain everything. Homework was time consuming and not very helpful a lot of the time, but do it because it’s worth a LOT of the grade. I personally found the textbook confusing so looked at videos and material online to review topics instead of the textbook. Grading is fair and much of the grade is based on attendance at discussions and hw. Would take again.

Professor Deifel is by far the best Chemistry 20A professor out there. Although his class was at 8 am, he was always full of energy which certainly kept me awake. He is hilarious, kind, and so incredibly helpful. He allows you to text him through his Google Voice number with any questions you may have. This has been a huge help for me during times that I couldn't make it to office hours. He cares about his students and he is always willing to help by opening extra office hours and review sessions. There is only one homework due a week, 2 midterms, and 1 final. If you take this class, please take advantage of his office hours! I cannot recommend his class more!

Review:
Prof: Deifel is a nice guy. He genuinely cares about the content and genuinely wants you to learn. However, he is really scattered during lectures. It’s hard to determine sometimes what’s important or if he’s just going off on a tangent. His lectures have a weak structure and could really benefit from some guidance, although it is his first quarter teaching. I think his lectures could follow more of a structure like, explain the theory and why we use it where it came from etc., application of concept in problems, then proceed with a tangent based on his experience in different fields of chemistry. That being said he is fair with his midterms and gives you practice problems that might be of similar difficulty to the exam. I highly suggest going to his office hours if you do not understand a concept because he would be happy to explain it to you.

Class:
The class is pretty straightforward. Homework, mandatory discussion, mandatory lecture (at 8 am was death) 2 midterms (They are pretty long) and a final (very long). The homework is long and annoying sometimes. The discussions are super helpful and mandatory so just go to them, don’t skip. He makes lecture mandatory and does check ins based on iclicker. However, during my quarter, he did not know how to use it properly, so we used it once. He talks about giving pop quizzes sometimes and I believe it mentions it in the syllabus, but he hasn’t actually given us a pop quiz that was worth any points during my quarter (might be different for future quarters).

Extra Notes: Just some extra stuff, the easiness bar might be a bit biased this quarter, before our final the TA’s said that the chem department said that Deifel’s class avg was too high so he had to make the final harder. So following quarters, it might not be as easy. Additionally, I used to watch Huiling Shao’s she posted online from Winter Quarter 2023 lectures right after attending a Deifel lecture. It would really help, Deifel would give you an overview and what he expects from you, and then you could learn the more detailed stuff after by watching Huiling Shao’s lecture. If you want to learn the content thoroughly or are just interested in chem, I suggest doing the same, here’s the playlist:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1OwzlifIAf2muZQd7v4RAJ79in96fW3&si=FvF3jNwxwpqoHgwh

Overall, I highly recommend taking Chem 20A with Deifel its clear he is super knowledgeable in many fields of chemistry and has a lot of experience and passion for the subject. I have never met a teacher that cares as much for his students as he does. Take it with him if you can because Deifel is a good person.

If I could take chemistry with Deifel again, I would. Attendance and homework is worth majority of your final grade, making midterms and the final not make that much of an impact on your final grade. This is especially helpful since homework assignments are pretty easy to get a 100 on since you can redo all the questions until you get them right. Besides that, he holds review sessions before midterms, which are extremely helpful since he goes over similar problems and topics he would cover on the midterms. From my experience with his exams, they were all extremely manageable and he genuinely prepares you for what you see on the exams. Although lectures can be pretty confusing and you have to teach yourself most of the time topics you don't understand that well, he has office hours many days in the week and loves connecting with his students, so he loves helping his students! Overall, Deifel is extremely reasonable, helpful, funny, and supportive. Take him if you can!

Deifel is one of the most caring Professors on campus. He is very passionate about teaching chemistry and is dedicated to his students. He has a lot of office hours and he is very responsive. 50% of the grade is based on homework and discussion attendance. His lectures are engaging and funny. I would recommend you take the professor, Deifel makes Chemistry fun.

Dr. Deifel is an interesting guy. He's not an awful professor and knows somewhat about the subject. However, I'm not sure if it is CHEM 30BL or Deifel specifically, but the class was the most unorganized class I've ever. taken. Our data from our experiments would always be uploaded late (in fact our last lab was waived because the data was not ready until finals week) and the experimental procedure was somehow wrong. So much so that our TA would frequently tell us to do something differently. The lectures being at 8am also did not help matters but that's not on the fault of the prof. Back to the assignments, they are graded pretty harshly (prelab and postlabs). From what I've heard from other students, the labs would also be graded differently, with some people being knocked out points while others would not despite having nearly identical answers. Class structure wise, there is no midterm and one final worth 30% of your grade. The rest of the class is made up of lab assignments and required lecture attendance (5 or 10% I forget). For attendance you have to sign your name and UID on a piece of paper that gets passed around in class.

Amazing professor who is really passionate about chemistry and about helping his students understand as much as possible, even in hard to understand concepts like quantum physics. He is super supportive for his students and knows several by first name basis despite 200+ class size. Overall, take his class!!