EVSC 1010

This is the worst professor at UVA. He is not clear at all about grading. There were 3000 level environmental science questions on the quizzes. These questions were impossible to answer for one of my friends who is a current 4th year and majoring in the subject. This should never be the case for a introductory class, and I do not recommend anybody take it with this professor. I only got 4 points off out of 41, and I finished with a B+. Other professors are significantly easier as they make the quizzes fair. I have taken several 3000 level classes at UVA, and this was by far the hardest class I have taken here.

I really enjoyed this class, but it's kind of ridiculous. Your entire grade is based on 6 quizzes (two of which you can drop), and each quiz is about 10 questions, meaning there isn't much room for error. I wouldn't recommend this class as a GPA booster, although it isn't too hard and you'll probably get a B or an A- if you pay attention. About half of the question are trick questions in some way, which makes the class really interesting but also much harder. I think the professor is a cool guy and I enjoyed his lectures, but the class structure is kind of a mess, and he would often make mistakes on grading the quizzes, be behind on releasing grades, use lecture slides that are overly complicated and repetitive, etc. I learned a bunch of interesting environmental facts and don't regret taking this class, but I can't recommend it as it basically fails by every metric of what a good class should be. Take at your own risk.

This class was disappointing a frustrating. I needed this class for my major and thought it would be one of my easiest classes, and while there wasn't any work the quizzes were way more difficult than they needed to be. The class grade was made up of 6 quizzes and nothing else so the quiz grades were really important but usually only had 10-20 questions. The answers are also written to trick you with many questions having all of the above choices or even "trick question" choices. We were gievn 4 days from when the professor uploaded the quizzes to take the quizzes, but it wasn't like we had til the end of the day because when the professor said four days he meant exactly four days and even made a quiz due at 11:59am unstead of pm and many people missed this quiz. It was also hard to plan for taking these quizzes because they were never posted on time based on what the sylubus said or eve what he said in lecture. And if you email him a question, do not expect a response unless you show up to every class because he will only answer in person. I have take EVSC 2800 and EVSC 3200, both of which I got an A in, and yet I found this class more challenging to perform in because of the professor alone. Wait to take this class with someone else.

Absolutely do not take this class. Professor Lerdau is a nice person, but a horrible professor. The lectures are just powerpoint slides that you can look at on your own because he posts them on Canvas. Class is a waste of time because of this and the way he lectures is so boring. The worst part is the quizzes. There was supposed to be one quiz for each section this semester but because he is so horrible about making them and posting them we had less which makes it harder to get a good grade. The quizzes are ridiculously difficult and obscure. Horrible class.

Professor Lerdau is a super cool dude, however, I do not recommend taking this class with him. He constantly messes up the canvas quizzes, and even then the questions are extremely confusing and are just about random things that he may have just passively mentioned in lecture and are not in the readings or slides. I have emailed him multiple times and each time received an out of office email. He claims that he will be curving all of the tests, but then again, I cannot get through to him via email so I have no idea how that will end up for me. I got a 12/20 on the first quiz and was told that was the average, and that even environmental science majors took the quiz before us as practice and said that it was too hard. Lerdau is a sweet guy but I do not think that this course is very well organized as the quizzes were uploaded late and he is extremely unresponsive.

I was extremely disappointed with this course. As someone who is not a science major, I took this class as a requirement but chose it because of my interest in climate change and environmental science. Unfortunately, the experience was frustrating due to disorganized quizzes and assignments. Quizzes were never posted on time, which forced me to be overly flexible with my schedule since I could never predict when they would become available.

I was shocked to receive a 12/20 on the first quiz, only to learn that this was the median grade—a mere 60%! It is my experience and my peers that the quizzes were less a measure of our understanding of the material and more an assessment of reading comprehension. The questions were often unclear, and I struggled to understand what was being asked. This led to immense frustration, and I ultimately gave up on engaging with the course material.

While I expect to end with an A, I would not take this class again or recommend it to others. The disorganization and lack of clarity detracted significantly from what could have been an engaging and educational experience.