This was def my favorite class this quarter!! Professor Sherrer is great at what he does, making this class an easy and educational experience for his students. First off, all exams (midterm and final) are open note so long as everything is handwritten, which honestly helped me retain the information better. Sometimes the questions on the exams were pulled directly from the slides, word for word, so do take good notes. I'd say around 18/20 of the questions were based on the lectures while around 1-2 were pulled from the readings so make sure to skim them over and take note of the central argument. A tip I recommend is to put a Post-it note on each page of your notes and list all of the main topics you wrote about so you can go through them quickly when taking the exam. 

There is no textbook and you don't need to pay for class materials since he provides scantrons. The midterm average was 90% and the final was around 87%!! The topics you can expect to learn about are the movements relating to race, women's rights, environment, gun violence, healthcare, education, immigration, economic inequality, barriers to policymaking like the filibuster, etc. Super interesting lectures plus he's really funny. I highly encourage attending the lectures in person (he does post the slides after) since he sometimes did state a few things that were not in the slides but were present in the exam.

There were only 3 homework assignments that consisted of making slideshows of a social problem of your choice. The first 2 assignments ranged from 250-500 words while the last assignment (a more research-intensive slideshow) was 500+ words. All of them were spaced out pretty well throughout the quarter and you had an entire week to do them. The first two assignments took me about 1 hour each while the last one took 2 hours.

Shoutout to my TA Selena, she's super chill and made my discussion section engaging. All of the discussions extend to the assigned readings and there's really no pressure to participate but if you can, you def should. Attendance is mandatory for these and is included in your grade. Loved this class and will def take another class with him!!

This class is a super easy GE. There’s a midterm and a final which were both really straightforward and open note, along with three homework assignments spread throughout the quarter. Content-wise, Dr. Sherrer is a really great lecturer and lets you know everything you will be tested on for the exam. He keeps the class really engaging with a lot of graphs, photos, and videos. While the first half of this class might be a review for a lot of people, the second half was super interesting and dove into a lot of policy issues that I didn’t know about yet. Would highly recommend!

Relatively easy and simple class. An occasional assignment here and there. Midterm which was based on readings and slides. Final was almost all slide material from lecture that he posts after class.

One takeaway: you have to get perfect scores on everything in order to do well.

Because this class is dependent on very little assignments and those assignment not containing many points, unless you get a perfect score it is very difficult to get a good grade.
Sherrer overall is a good professor who makes lectures entertaining

Professor Sherrer is my favorite professor I've had at UCLA. He's super funny, engaging, and good at conveying information. You can tell he really cared about this class and put a lot of work into it. There's a once a week discussion section that just reviews the material we went over during the week and a few exams that are nearly impossible to get a bad grade on. The exams were pretty easy, but there were definitely some questions that were very specific to certain readings (so make sure to do all of them). I would definitely retake this class!

I really enjoyed this class! Professor Sherrer is SO funny and chill, I found that I was super engaged every time I attended lecture. His exams are fair and the assignments are quite easy and practically grade cushions. You just need to select a social issue that interests you and write a few hundred words about it. He allows unlimited handwritten notes for the midterm and final which is super helpful as I pulled some of the answers for both MC and short answer right out of my notes. I'd love to take another Public Affairs class with him, he's awesome!