BIOL 3030

This class was awful.

Of all the courses I've taken here at UVA, this was by far the most disorganized, poorly planned, confusing, and unclear of them all. To start off, Kuhn was informed he got this teaching job FOUR DAYS BEFORE CLASSES STARTED, and it was obvious. Lecture powerpoints were always straight from the textbook publisher, and it would often seem like the first time Kuhn was looking at them was during lecture itself. He would pretty much just read off the slides, and since they were made by the textbook publisher, they were just word-for-word repeating what the textbook. When teaching reactions, instead of actually drawing out the molecules and the reaction arrows, Kuhn would just use his laser pointer and speed through the mechanisms, leaving us scrambling to write down any semblance of a biological molecule so we could later go back in and fill in 90% of the details. No organization to the slides, no clear themes, just like having a textbook read aloud to you. We never got to take a step back and look at the big picture of what was going on in each unit. Nothing was tied together, and we were left trying to figure out how everything related on our own. Kuhn also didn't know how to record the lecture initially, and would often forget to record or not record the audio. So you couldn't even watch back the lectures if you wanted to. This was especially annoying for the "optional" discussions, in which he taught new content that was simply not covered in lecture but would be on the exams. Only after asking him repeatedly to record discussions did he start doing so halfway through the semester, but only recorded in computer screen, not the blackboard he used to write work for problems or the document camera he used to show us his scratch paper. His teaching was ineffective and his lecturing was borderline useless. For exams, we were not given much clear advice either, and were left just trying to memorize everything we could in the hope we would remember something asked on the exams. Never was it clear what we were expected to know, just Kuhn saying "I would be familiar with this, yes I think that's something good to be familiar with" ...
The homework and other assignments for this class were doable, but very, very, very annoying. For one, the homework was made by the textbook publisher (understandable, organic chemistry and other biochemistry classes do this too). However, in those classes, we are given several attempts for each homework problem, as there could be mistakes in the questions from the publisher, the questions could be incorrect, or they could just be difficult in general and as a great learning tool it's important to afford multiple opportunities without penalty to allow students to learn without worrying about their grade. Kuhn disagrees. Each homework was 2 attempts, first attempt was free, second attempt if you got it right was 50% credit, and if you didn't get it right after the second attempt it was 0% credit. Not only was this incredibly unfair given the amount of issues in the homework, it caused an undue amount of stress on us. The homework questions very often asked about concepts that were never mentioned in lecture and only came from small parts of the textbook, and were never asked again. As such, it was very difficult to get good, useful practice problems for the exams, because half of the homework was just randomly taken a test bank and no thought was actually taken to look at the questions and make sure they were relevant to the lecture content.
We also had a paper-review assignment towards the end of the semester. For this assignment we had to read 2 papers and answer some concrete questions about one paper and write a 2 page review on the other paper. Kuhn and the TA spent a whole discussion section going over how to read a scientific paper. While this instruction may be needed for an introductory science class, in a 3000 level biochemistry class, a pre rec for which is organic chemistry, I think we can assume everyone has a working knowledge of how to read a scientific paper. Nevertheless, Kuhn and the TA insisted on spending time on this, rather than helping us understand the core concepts and the biochemistry techniques used in the paper. As such, we were lost when reading the paper, and the only guidance given was "just be general, no specific details, give us a good overview that shows you've read the paper". Again, unclear, disorganized, and overall very disheartening.
I would not recommend this course to anyone unless you have a wish to lose your sanity and regret paying several thousands of dollars.

Ive never written a public course review before, but given the absolute atrocity that was this course and, in the hope of sparing anyone else the struggle of going through this, here it is: This was the absolute hardest class I have taken at UVA. This wasnt due to the content (organic chemistry was definitely harder in content), but simply due to the awful teaching. The lectures for this class seemed very rushed and nothing lined up. Usually, professors will take some time to step back and explain how some of the little details lined up and created a big picture. Kuhn simply did not do that. He would say "dont focus on the details" and then proceed to teach a whole lecture about minute details that seemingly had no connection to anything else we were learning. Oh, and the details were in fact on the exam. There was rarely time to ask questions and get clarifications, and when you did, the questions were often met with a condescending tone. There were never clear expectations on what we needed to know. He would simply say "yeah I would know/focus on this" without actually explaining. At the beginning of the semester, we were told that the exam would be noncumulative then, suddenly like 2 weeks before the final we were told it would be 60/40 new to old stuff (it turned out to be 60/40 old to new). He only held a review session 36 hours before the final and spent that time telling us that, to succeed on the final, we should have started studying hard a month beforehand. Overall, this class had little structure, awful teaching, and made me the most stressed I have ever been taking a class at UVA.

I normally don't do this because I understand STEM courses can be very difficult, but this was something else. This class was absurdly disorganized and Kuhn was a terrible instructor. Lectures were weirdly detailed on some slides, and then he would say one sentence or entirely skip over other slides, but we were still expected to know what the slide is about based on the textbook alone. In other lectures, he would add in completely tangential information that wasn't even mentioned on the textbook, to make things more confusing, and then proceed to lecture on it for 15 minutes and expect us to be able to answer free-response questions on it.
Discussion was "optional", but he would introduce new concepts there and not record the discussions, so they were pretty mandatory in that sense. Test-style questions were never introduced during lecture, so you were expected to be able to solve a question from any angle he may give it to you based on the textbook and spare lectures.
At the beginning of the semester, we had 3 attempts on the homework, in which only the last one would be 50% penalty if incorrect. However, after the first homework was due, he stated that "the class average was too high" and he "didn't want us to just guess the correct answer since there are 4 choices and 3 attempts". He then lowered the amount of attempts on every homework after that. Homeworks are supposed to be an opportunity for students to practice what they were introduced to, but Kuhn's homework ended up giving me panic attacks weekly because homework is a whopping 15% of your grade, which means if you don't do well on that, you have to do much better on the flip-floppy exams he gives, which are 20%, 25%, and 30% of your grade.
For exams, whenever asked what would be on it so students could focus their studying on what was important, Kuhn would just say "be familiar/focus" on pretty much everything, only for it to not even be tested. This was especially prevalent on the final exam, which, at the beginning of the semester and on the syllabus, was a non-cumulative exam. 2-3 weeks before the final, Kuhn tells us the final is cumulative and will be 60-40 old to new material. Then the numbers flipped. Then it was 50-50. It was extremely confusing and difficult to consolidate 15 chapters of information and pick out which ones we though he might test us on. The final exam review session was 36 hours before the final, in which he told us we should have time travelled back in time and started studying for this final a month beforehand when asked for study tips by a student. He told us to post any content questions about the final the morning before our 9 AM final, and didn't get to answering the questions until midnight that night. Multiple people asked what to study, only to be met with "everything from this semester is fair game", only to ask us 3/4 of the details from this semester. Any questions about extra credit, curves to the exams/finals, or corrections to exams were waved off immediately.
The only small buffer given was a paper review that required us to read two 14-page scientific papers and answer questions about one, then review another. The instructions were vague and were basically "give us a rundown of everything this paper says in 2 pages". The TA was practically unreachable all semester as well. Content-wise, it was not very difficult, but the unstructured, disordered chaos of this class made it easily the most difficult and my lowest grade during my entire time at UVA. If you're considering taking a class with him, please spare yourself and take this course a different semester with someone else. It is not worth the stress and emotional anguish this instructor will put you through.

I would highly recommend not taking this instructor unless it is an absolute last resort. If you read the other reviews as well it will show you why. I have never written a review for a course before in my 3 years here but I want people to steer clear. The professor is nice in general and the course topics themselves aren't too hard to understand but he wants us to know the smallest details about some insignificant topics in the exam. The homework and discussions are almost completely different than what we are tested on. Additionally, our homework (which is "good practice for the exams") is indeed not good practice for exams. On top of that, we have 2 attempts and we get 50% after the first attempt. Other teachers in this course provide some sort of curve/extra credit to buffer your grade. Do not expect any of that in this class because the teacher "does not believe in curves".

TLDR; Find another professor or make sure the syllabus has changed!!

I think the people that have expressed their opinions are just mad. It was not that bad. Just go to the discussion and you will be glad. He let us out early a lot so it is not that bad. Just take it or you'll be sad. He is way better than Grisham, I might add.

Okay, I definitely didn't think this course was nearly as bad as most people here seem to think it is. It had problems, to be sure, but I'm still really glad I took it with Kuhn instead of another professor.

The good: Prof Kuhn was (in my opinion), very approachable if you had questions. Every time I asked him something after class or in office hours, he explained it and never made me feel stupid for asking. I also feel like he was very straightforward about what would be on exams - he said to expect questions like on the homework and in discussion, and sure enough, every test had some questions that came straight out of the hw and some that closely mirrored questions we worked on in discussion. If you reviewed the hw and discussion problems he said to focus on before the exam, it really helped (at least for the first two tests). I really can't stress enough how useful discussion was - as others have noted, the lectures were kind of rushed and didn't have much practice, so the discussion is where he broke concepts down in detail and worked us through them to understand the concepts. There were many times in the semester where I was totally baffled about how to do something until discussion, after which point I had a solid understanding of them. Discussion attendance was optional but strongly recommended, meaning you won't get taxed attendance points but it's best to come to understand the material... he never said discussions were useless and not worth coming to, so if you blew them off because you didn't feel like going to a late class (which I get it, the time did suck), that's not his fault. I also felt like the textbook itself was well-written, even if the hw questions were hot messes, so between reading the textbook, attending discussion, and asking him questions when confused, I felt like this was easily the best biochem course I could have hoped for in terms of actually learning the material.

The bad: Like others have said, this was Prof Kuhn's first time teaching, and it did show. He was somewhat unorganized and there were some problems like not very accessible office hours (same time on Tues/Thurs, so if you have a lecture then... oof) and kind of a harsh hw policy with only two tries and steeply reduced points after the first try. I agree with others that the hw was unnecessarily harsh (definitely stressed me out a ton when I should have just been able to learn how to work through problems), but at the same time, he was really willing to work with us and adapt to our feedback - for example, after repeatedly hearing how hard it was to get to his office hours, he shifted them to be more accessible, and he did make the hw point reduction a little less steep than it had been. A prof who'd been teaching for years would never make those changes to help us out, so I appreciated it. However, the hw questions were atrociously-formatted at times, and it was easy to get a problem wrong even when you completely understood the question because of how the question was worded or what it wanted on free response questions. There were a bunch of times they had to manually give points back or remove hw questions due to these issues, so it would have been nice to have a more lenient hw grading policy, but whatever. At least some test questions were straight from the hw. I also didn't like the overall grading structure of the course - each sequential exam was weighted more, which isn't that unusual, but the final was a whopping 30%, the largest individual category in the overall grade (Exam 1 = 20%, Exam 2 = 25%, Exam 3 = 30%, hw = 15%, paper = 10%). I really, really don't like that the paper was only 10% of the grade, because it took a ridiculously long time to write (despite only being 2 pages long) bc it took a thorough reading of two long, dense scientific papers w a lot of techniques you had to research yourself. I really don't feel like 10% was an adequate reflection of the time & effort sunk into that paper. I also wish the exams were more equally graded, because personally, I did really good on the first two tests, while the third was the worst due to it being cumulative. Everyone I talked to said they found the final hard bc it had more stuff from the first two exams on it that they didn't study enough, but personally I did the opposite and studied old material enough and didn't spend enough time on new. Unfortunately, the last unit was the most difficult, with lots of mad complicated metabolism pathways, so it just felt overwhelming trying to learn all of that at the same time you have to review the whole semester's material. Because the final was weighted so much more than everything else, I got a B on the final and wound up with a B in the class overall despite having gotten an A grade for every other grade category, which was kind of depressing tbh. However, I'm still glad I took this class w Kuhn, bc I feel like I left w a better understanding of biochem than I would've otherwise. He's a good guy.