BIOL 4190

The material covered in this class is definitely very interesting, and heavily focused on experiments conducted and what results they provided. Both Menaker and Wijnen lectured well, especially Menaker who likes to keep the class lighthearted with jokes, and tries to engage the students and make it somewhat discussion based. Need to study details for test, even ones that seem trivial, since they may be thrown in to check to see if you were paying attention in class.

No textbook... little office hours.. most students in the class are not very friendly... Way too much detail... all the material is based on experiments. Way too much detail. All test questions are on seemingly random parts of the material. I could've guessed blindly at the scantron and still gotten the same grade.

However, Menaker is the premier researcher in this area... he's pretty much a celebrity. So if you want to be around a bigshot, this is your chance.

There are three tests each around 35-40 question long meaning your grade is worth less than 150 multiple choice questions total. The material is interesting but there is absolutely no room for error. This class is unforgiving. Menaker is cool and Wjinen is meh. Both, however, fail at making the class enjoyable or fair. Avoid at all costs unless you like the sort of thing.

Soooooooo hard.

Difficult, but interesting class. Taught by Menaker and Provencio together. Average on all of the tests were in the mid 70's, but the final grade average was curved to a B+ so the class isn't as difficult as it initially seems.

This is probably one of my favorite biology classes but beware: its difficult. The course structure has changed so the exams (3) are multiple choice and equally weighted.

Its taught by both Menaker and Provencio which makes going to office hours somewhat difficult because they focus on the material they each respectively teach and can only offer insight on the others' material. But going to office hours are extremely beneficial; both professors are very approachable and want to see you succeed.
As the course progresses, the material becomes increasingly interesting; many implications on other aspects of bio. I would highly recommend taking this class but expect working for your grade.

This class is tough. The whole class is based off extremely dense papers and each week, one group of students is assigned to explaining the paper. Menaker, himself, also does a lecture each week. The class is taught in chronological order: from the first findings on circadian rhythms to the most recent. This can be frustrating as he wants you to piece this complicated puzzle together while not providing a thorough bigger picture. Exam questions are nearly impossible to predict and there is only a midterm and a final. That being said, if you want to take a class with a "founding father" of circadian clocks, then this is the class for you.

It was alright. There was a lot of dense papers that spanned from the beginning of the circadian rhythms studies in like the early 1900s or something to pretty recently. All you really had to do was read the papers when they were assigned and take good notes in class. He really likes it when you ask questions and I recommend you do because if you don't understand it in the beginning then its just going to get confusing later. There's one midterm and then a final and they were pretty weird, but if you understood the concepts and papers then you could do well.