BIOL 3040

AWESOME CLASS AND PROFESSOR. Dr. K is so enthusiastic, so engaging (especially important for a 9 AM) and makes the material really straightforward to learn. There are 2 midterms, all of which are short answer so you get partial credit, and a final which is partly cumulative. Lab reports are a bit tough, but go to her OH and iron out any uncertainties. She makes it easy to participate, which is a small part of the grade but that's also found in some group work, and provides extra credit (read a paper and answer questions for points on the last exam + a meme) for each of the 2 midterms. She also brought us bagels on the last day of class! Interesting material, not about babies or fetuses but rather major processes like morphogenesis and organogenesis. Review all ppts before the exams, talk them through with a friend, and ask her questions. I did well, and so did my friends in the class--I don't believe the class average was too terrible for any of the exams. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!!

#tCFspring2022

I like this class's content, and Prof. K is good at teaching. But the course structure really ruined my love for the subject. 1. although she said she wants to make the class accessible to everyone, even the ones that are sick with COVID, she refuses to give us recording while most other biol professors do. 2. She said you can zoom in if you are sick and can't come to class, but by zoom, she means via TA's laptop, where you can't really see the slides, nor you can really hear her because TA is like sitting far away from her, so zoom is the worst option, it's better for you to study on your own than waste your time to zoom in. Based on these two points, I feel she's not as good at accessibility as she said she is trying to be. 3. Her exam is all "short-answer" cumulative. The problem is that her short answer is in a word document which you have to download from collab (wasting time) at start time and open to type on. This is the most stressful method of testing I've ever seen. We are sitting in a room with round tables and typing as if everyone's working as a scribe with super high speed but with thinking part, so if you are not fast, or your English is not very good, don't think about scoring well on exam. The whole classroom would be filled with noisy loud typing sounds, it's just insane and stressful to hear and see how people next to you are typing much faster than you are. They say that you can draw pictures and upload them to help answer, I assure you there's no time for you to waste like that. Also, there are somehow lots of space between questions on the document, so you might mislook and miss the questions if you are not very careful. I almost missed the last few questions on the exam, and I am not fast enough (40-50wpm) so I spent too much time on the first 15 questions and had to squeeze in sentences for the last few without time to think deeper and lost lots of points (note: first few questions are 2-4 points with occasionally 10, but last few questions are 10 points and even 16 points! 16 pt one is especially confusing in question-wording that I didn't know how to answer with so I lost half points on it). Those 10 points questions are like "describe this process from start to end" and she said she wants you to mention every gene that was present in the process. From the short description of the question, it's hard to know how much information she's looking for (am I writing too much? not enough?) so time management could become an issue. I ended up turning it in last minute because you actually have to upload it via the assignment tab, so make sure your computer is fast enough. The exam is so badly formatted that my friend who loves short answer questions said that she didn't like it. All the suffering comes from exams and lab reports (group project), everything else was great.
Last, she doesn't reply to emails. She doesn't tell you how much extra credit you actually get. She doesn't give you a grading scale for the course.

I took this class over Zoom and found it really enjoyable (though it probably would be better in person). While the audio to hear Dr. K over Zoom could be inconsistent at times, I found it negligible in understanding the material (especially if you go to office hours for clarification). Dr. K is super down to earth and makes sure students understand some of the more confusing material. It also helps that she consistently ties together concepts. The class was based on participation (10%), 4 lab reports (2.5% each), 2 exam (25% each), and a final exam (30%). Unlike some of the other biology courses, I found that this class was not tricky. I did good by having a deep understanding of the material and applying them to the free response questions on the test. That said, the tests are closed book and you can get points taken off by not having the correct criteria & developmental terms in your responses. Overall, fair exams and great professor. For the lab reports, get along with your group members for a better experience and understanding of the readings.

In general, I thought the class was my favorite out of the biology courses I have taken. Dr. K is not there to trick you but work hard in this class as it can be easy to fall behind and get points off on exams and lab reports. Definitely one of the more fair biology courses. I would highly recommend it with Dr. K!

Really cool course, definitely my favorite of the semester. Prof. Kucenas is super approachable, and had such genuine interest in the topics being taught that you couldn't help but enjoy her lectures. She is incredibly knowledgeable, which was vital considering the difficulty of the material being covered. You should expect to be confused at points in the course, as developmental biology is far more complex than most students likely had imagined, but she was always great about answering questions/clarifying points. Overall, I highly recommend this course, but be wary of the amount of writing involved - there were four "lab reports" in which you and your group analyzed and responded to questions regarding a research paper (which were graded pretty strictly!), and all of the tests were just 2-3 hours of writing short answer responses, each.

The topic is so interesting but all of the required group work really ruins it. Also the grading was so confusing and changed on every assignment so I was unsure the entire semester what they were looking for. Dr. K is very nice and knowledgeable and I would recommend getting to know her more at the beginning of the semester so she knows your name, etc. I think with more time, the structure of the class will improve. No need to really read every chapter of the book, but I do recommend taking good notes during class. The book is very helpful though for explaining all figures and pictures presented in the powerpoint slides.

My favorite class this semester! Kucenas is amazing and is excited to be in class every day (her energy/enthusiasm is super infectious and makes you want to learn and do well). The material for the most part was interesting. It was mostly developmental biology and a section of regenerative at the end. Also by developmental that means more about the genes/pathways/early processes pre-birth developmental biology. If you think this is going to be about babies/fetuses it's not although we did cover it a bit. There is weekly homework (read chapter of the book and answer questions) and groupwork (reading articles/research papers and doing questions in class with group). I hated the group work at first but then I realized we were learning to read research papers and it was actually really good practice especially since I was not used to reading them. Also, I wouldn't recommend getting the book if you think you can take really good notes in class. The book is really dense and dry and Kucenas covers everything you need to know for the exam. You need to read the book in order to do the homework but you can also look at the future power points and google things for that. The book was expensive. Exams are short answer but they were not bad at all. Overall, a worthwhile class that I am sad is now over.

This has been one of my favorite classes. Dr. Kucenas is really passionate, smart, and down to earth. I learned a ton. This class is reading intensive, but Dr. K pulls in a lot of interesting outside scientific literature. If you are willing to put in the time, you should do well in this class. Tips: 1. Make sure you do all of the reading before class. 2. Go to lecture - it helps you filter what you need to know for the exams. 3. Don't fall behind - this isn't an easy class to cram for. There's just too much material. 4. If you can't take this class, I highly recommend at least taking a class with Dr. Kucenas. She is awesome!