One of the best professors at UVA. If you put in the work (take good notes during lecture, are caught up with the HW, pay attention in lab) you should do pretty well! Him and his TAs are always available to answer any questions. He also really cares for his students (emails all the time for updates and making sure everybody is on track).

This was not my favorite class ( I definitely prefer learning about evolution and ecosystems), but Kittlesen is very knowledgeable and seems to care about his students. I thought the tests were extremely hard and spent hours on hours preparing to still normally get a B- on them. Tests make up 70% of the grade, so there isn't much room for error on a bad one. There was no final, just a 6th test (during COVID).

Dave is a very nice and friendly professor. You are only responsible for information he mentions in lectures and labs, although reading the textbook is a good supplement. The online labs were easy for the most part but not the most interesting. If you have a strong biology background this class is not super hard, but requires some studying of the examples he mentions. This semester we had a test every other week which did get overwhelming, but he dropped your lowest score. Overall not as hard of a course as I expected it to be.

Professor Kittlesen is a great guy, but wasn't a very effective lecturer in my opinion. Everything was online so I understand that it was different than the usual experience, but his lectures were very hard to follow. His slides are only pictures, so it can be difficult to understand what information needs to be taken from each slide. You would have to rewatch the same lecture multiple times to understand what needed to be retained, so if you didn't have a ton of time, it could be frustrating. Read the textbook!!! Most of what he says in lecture is in the assigned readings and is easier to understand. My other issue with the class is how heavily the exams are weighted (70% of the grade for 6 exams), so there isn't much you can do to change your grade if your exam average isn't too great. Most of the exam questions are drawn directly from information in the textbook and examples discussed in class, but sometimes the wordings can be pretty tricky. If you are taking a relatively light course load and have a decent amount of time to devote to this class, then you should be fine. It's difficult to juggle with multiple other hard science courses at once, and don't expect an easy A. I went into it thinking it would be much easier than it was, but still pulled an A- by spending t about 7-9 hours/ week on this class. But Professor Kittlesen really is a great guy and you can tell he cares about his students and the material he teaches a lot.


#tCF2020

I came into this class with a decent amount of bio knowledge. I took AP Bio in high school and I am so glad I did because I don't know how I would've done without it. However, this class is very difficult, but Kittlesen gives you many opportunities to succeed. Also, Kittlesen is the absolute BEST! He is an amazing lecturer and he is so so passionate about teaching intro bio. His lectures are very interesting and they go into a lot of detail, but Kittlesen will let you know if you need to know certain things for the exams. The majority of this course is weighted on the exams, and I highly recommend studying early for them. I started studying about 3-5 days before the exam, and I wish I spent more time studying. The first two exams are brutal and mostly textbook based, and the rest really seem to go off of the lectures, especially the last two. The questions reflect the objectives and main points of the lecture so I recommend rewatching the lectures and taking detailed notes. Also, it really helps to read the chapters beforehand so you know what's going on in lecture. Lab was pointless during covid times and I slacked off on the assignments, which didn't help my grade in the end, so take those assignments seriously! You're in good hands with Kittlesen and if you put in the effort, you'll do great! #tCF2020

I spent about 15 hours a week for this class. I rewatched lectures about 4 times before each exam. I did well on the first 5 exams and did not take the 6th exam. I really loved Kittlesen, such an amazing professor and super thorough with his instructions. I highly encourage you to ENGAGE with the material and not just write it down for words but to make sense of it because the exams will test your understanding not just memorization! #tCF2020

This class was moderately easy and Professor Kittlesen was great. He is very understanding, and he tried to make the online lectures as engaging as possible with the online format. The class wasn't very difficult, and most of the material was a review from AP Bio. The tests weren't hard either. Definitely take the practice exams because they were very similar in difficulty to the tests. Also, do the assigned readings before the lectures! It makes the lectures so much easier to understand if you have already reviewed the content.

Disclaimer: I took this course Fall 2020; it was all online because of COVID so I can't say for sure exactly how different my experience was compared to how this course would be in a "normal" semester.

I went into this course very nervously because I hadn't touched biology since 9th grade, and I didn't take AP Bio so I was worried that I wouldn't be able to keep up with college-level bio. Thankfully, this course was nowhere near as nightmarish as I had initially feared, and I'm actually proud of what I learned and more interested in biology after taking this class.

The Professor:
I really enjoyed having Professor Kittlesen as a teacher. He was very patient and approachable. He took questions in class, after class, and in (Zoom) office hours. He never called a question dumb, and would really try his best to answer them as clearly as he can. I went to his office hours pretty frequently, and oftentimes different students would ask him the same question over and over again. I never saw him get exasperated--usually he would try explaining it in a slightly different way abd/or point the student to a specific part of a lecture video/other resource. He also tried to keep lectures fun sometimes. I respect the man for being able to tell jokes to a wall of 250+ people with their cameras and mics off without making it awkward.

The Exams:
Exams are definitely the most stressful part of the course since they make up 70% of your grade. There are 6 exams total, but Kittlesen drops your lowest exam so in the end only 5 exams count towards your grade and they're pretty much weighed equally. I didn't do so hot on the first one, but I did well enough on the next four that I was able to skip the last exam and still end with an A. Kittlesen has his own tips for success that he'll share, but I'll list here what worked for me:
1.) Follow the learning objectives --- Kittlesen starts each lecture with a bulleted list of learning objectives on the first ppt slide. I would copy this list onto a google doc, and after each lecture I would "fill in" as much information as I had learned. I would highlight the parts that I didn't understand and make sure that I bring questions about those concepts to office hours.
2.) Read the textbook before lecture --- I started off the semester always reading the textbook (and taking notes) first at least the day before lecture. One time I decided to do the reading after lecture and boy that was bad lol I didn't understand anything from lecture and it felt faster than normal.
3.) Pay attention to Mastering Bio --- 10% of your grade comes from Mastering Bio homework. Kittlesen picks which Mastering Bio questions to assign so they're usually pretty relevant to what you'll be expected to know for exams. Re-doing/reviewing these homework questions were a good way for me to practice active recall and be sure that I really knew what was going on.

The Lab:
A lot more chill than chem lab (1411) that's for sure. Lab-related assignments make up 20% of your final grade. I don't know what is normally done in biology lab, but for us it was like one "wet" lab experiment, a DNA analysis virtual demo, and the rest were discussions, paper-demos, and practice problem worksheets. My TA, Keric Lamb, was pretty nice and good at explaining things. Should be an easy category to get an A in. Just show up and try to participate.

#tCF2020

I am one of the few who did not really like Kittlesen. He is very knowledgeable in his stuff but attending lectures is almost pointless. His lectures are confusing and rather than teaching the concepts, he will talk about specific cases before making sure the students understand the basic concept. His slides have virtually no text, just screenshots of diagrams from the textbook. Definitely going to be a struggle if you have problems focusing when there is no structure in the class. Then he would go on and just talk for fifty minutes straight. His voice is so droning and very hard to follow. He does not even annotate the slides. You must read the textbook and do Mastering Bio. It doesn't really matter in the end though because there's only one professor for this course so make the best of it and good luck.

All the reviews about Kittlesen are true-- he's a great professor, really passionate about what he does, and is obviously brilliant. His class, however, was rough. For a non-STEM person, you are going to need to WORK for this grade. Course content was usually pretty interesting, but very detailed and incremental. If there's one lecture or section of the textbook that you don't understand, prepare to be LOST going forwards. Not impossible, but definitely requires attention in order to get a good grade.