da2xd

i have to choose among: Muller, brydges, johnson and kummel
I really want johnson but my enrollement time is super late so
i need backup professors :[

I also need help on choosing a bild1 prof.
traver, golden and sato

OoPurestOo

Johnson=Kummel>Brydges>Muller.

Kummel is the most entertaining of the bunch. Brydges is probably the nicest.

Radiance

Omggg is Crowell not teaching? :O I really liked him, but I think most people didn't.

Even if you have a late enrollment time, Johnson's class always opens up 2 "secret sections" so if you really want her, waitlist. But I'd definitely recommend Kummel, as you probably won't have him till Upper-Div, if you ever get to, that is. He's a really great lecturer

pattyhsujsp

to OoPurestOo, how did you rank these professors? In terms of easiest to hardest or by how much you learn from them?

astrina

johnson, crowell, kummel, and hoeger are without question the four best general chemistry lecturers in the department, all variables (approachability, teaching effectiveness, etc) considered. taking a class from any of them will be an invaluable experience.

(but as for ordering, the listing's just arranged by how well i like each of them -- nothing to do with their teaching)

OoPurestOo

Really Astrina? Crowell?

I agree with Johnson, Hoeger, and Kummel though.

For the teachers available:
Easiness: (from hardest to easiest): Kummel, Brydges, Johnson, Muller
Quality of lecture: Johnson>Kummel>Brydges>Muller

Didn't find Johnson to be too difficult. It was just the quality of the students that relied solemnly on her lectures as to why the averages ended up being in the 50's.
Kummel apparently doesn't curve at all, but instead gives the A to 85% and above. This basically means you have to pull constant 17/20's on his midterms on average.
Crowell's exams were apparently Plug and Play and considered the most easygoing.

This is all based on last year.

astrina

What about Crowell? Not a nice guy or something?

Both he and Kummel do that 85% = A- thing. I came from an era when Johnson didn't teach general chemistry (her first quarter teaching was my junior year of college) and Crowell and Kummel's classes always filled up first.

Radiance

I LOVED Crowell. He's really nice if you actually go and talk to him during office hours. I went in once, and he kept me there for a good two hours talking about his research/past, etc. And I think his tests/grades are very fair.

astrina

yeah, i think crowell's a nice guy too. most people think so, i was just curious to hear what OoPurestOo had to say on the matter.

hopefully he/she wasn't the kid who was caught cheating on one of crowell's exams and subsequently expelled from the university ...

Radiance

In addition to Purest's post,

You couldn't just plug & chug for Crowell's exams, he specifically put in multiple choice answers that would be wrong if you did just plug and chug. He also supplied everyone with an equation sheet that was completely worthless; it was filled with derivations and unnecessary equations--if you relied on the sheet, you were basically screwed.

OoPurestOo

You found me, Astrina. I was the kid with wandering eyes who forgot the Boltzmann equation. Only kidding

I'm going off of how he was last year from others. I didn't actually take Crowell. I had Johnson for chem6B. I just heard that his tests were pretty easy, and that "if you could memorize the right formulas, you could plug and chug". I have a few friends that had him and said that he was an okay lecturer, but very easy compared to Johnson's class (chem6C). I didn't find Johnson's class to be TOO demanding (Hoeger definitely was trickier) so just hearing that Johnson is "much" more difficult than Crowell makes me skeptical about the difficulty of his class.

Don't worry guys, it's just a biased opinion

Radiance

For 6B, I have to say that Crowell was much harder than Johnson. I went to both of their lectures throughout the quarter, and Crowell, being the 126/127 P-Chem professor incorporated a lot of his work and concepts that seemed a bit too irrelevant and complex into his lectures, which sometimes appeared as "extra-credit" on his exams.

I've always found Johnson's tests to be pretty simple (6A/6C)

OoPurestOo

^
It's probably just teaching styles matching with different people. Again, I knew people that claimed Johnson to be much more challenging, two of which said they never attended Crowell's lectures and still obtained the A by "plugging and chugging" so to speak, while struggled in Johnson for 6C. Obviously Johnson's style clicked with you a little easier. I do have to say, however, Johnson's curve was a joke(~10% increase), given the average on the 6B final was a 43%.

That does sound pretty cool about incorporating his own work into his exams, though. Alot of O-Chem professors here do the same. Easy incentive to strike up a conversation with them.

Radiance

Well, Crowell did end up curving the class so that you only needed a 79% in the class to earn a solid A, because there weren't enough A's in the class prior to the curve, so I guess you could've made it through by plugging and chugging.. I wouldn't say that's really "A" quality, as I had an uncurved 90% in the class and found that curve extremely unfair /:, but I assume your friends are pretty smart, cause I'm sure most of the class didn't know what was going on and relied on plugging and chugging--but obviously most didn't come out with an A.

Crowell told me during OH that he had the author of our Gen Chem textbook write a lot of the exam questions :O

astrina

eh, the amount of grade inflation at UCSD isn't as bad as some other schools. the biochem class i'm TAing right now is curved to a @($*@ B+. and nobody gets flunked, even the people who really really should be.

i still think johnson/crowell/kummel are the best 6B lecturers, but each one for their own strengths: obviously johnson is the nicest, crowell's class is the easiest (curve and the fact that every exam question has been featured on a previous exam in some form or another), and kummel's is the most entertaining.