BIOL 3010

Professor Seigrist never seemed thrilled to come to class. I had the split professor semester, so I had Professor Seigrist until Spring break. During the semester, there are 4 exams, weekly homework assignments, and an optional final. You have 2 attempts for the homework, and your lowest exam grade is dropped. Professor Seigrist's exams are incredibly hard, all the questions are conceptual, and the homeworks do not relate to anything on the exam. The lectures are so dense it's impossible to memorize all of the information. She is not helpful, and often would say one thing during lecture, and say the opposite the next day - so every student was confused. I did not enjoy her as a teacher.

Biol 3010 is a heavy reading, light homework course with 5 exams total (you get to drop your lowest exam score). The homeworks are easy A's, but the exams are fairly difficult and require a good amount of studying and practice with conceptual application before taking them. It is absolutely crucial that you take solid lecture notes and at least skim the readings (there is a lot in the reading that is not discussed in class, however, reading it gives you a better foundation for the exams). And since you are only tested on what is discussed during lecture, it's in your best interest to attend each and every lecture. In my opinion, Professor Siegrist taught the class poorly. She often seemed confused herself when explaining some of the topics and just wasn't the best at clearly explaining/teaching what we needed to know.

I took this course with Professor Siegrist and Professor Bergland, each of them teaching for half of the semester. Siegrist goes slowly through material and sometimes gets lost in her own explainations, but at least you can get all the material down the first time. Her first exam was very easy, while the second was awful and impossible. Professor Bergland moves very quickly through material and has many more slides, making is harder to follow during lectures, especially as he begins discussion about gene editing, which can be more complicated already. Near the end of the semester I stopped watching lectures live because I couldn't keep up and would just watch them back after (I would still join the zoom to get the PollEv points when he did one). I didn't open the textbook even once all semester, the tests use materials from the lectures. USE THE STUDY QUESTIONS that both professors provide. For the final specifically there were some questions that were nearly the same. There are weekly discussion sections that are to ask questions and help review material that are helpful to attend, many of those questions are similar to exam questions. Overall the class is very hard and is a lot of effort, but if you prepare and don't put off studying its doable. I'm saying 5 hours of reading per week but that is because thats how long it took me to watch lectures back.

Contrary to popular opinion of biology students here, I actually really liked Siegrist's half of the class. While she speaks in quite the monotone voice, her explanations of concepts always made sense and I thought summarized the concepts excellently. Unlike cell bio, you do NOT need to memorize all of the mechanisms / pathways on her slides; they're often there to expand upon a point she's making. So just be sure to clarify with her what's expected.
Her half of the course covers the basics of molecular biology & genetics, covering a version of cell division, transcription, and translation at a higher level than intro bio, but lower than that of cell. After the second exam, you switch to a more evo/eco side of things, which I thought was much more chaotic and of lower quality than Siegrist's half.