BIOL 4040

Prof. George is awesome, very understanding, and approachable. He cares about his students and would like to know his students. He's good and patient when he's teaching and explaining concepts. 94 for A cutoff (so normal university cut off which is a little high). The quizzes are short and so each question has a high point composition, although they are super easy, sometimes people make mistakes, however, they don't value so much to the overall grade so that's fine. My only 2 complaints would be that one of the rooms is in the chem building with a loud fan, so hard to hear his lecture, especially the one for research papers, even with recording. But I won't say it's his fault. The Final is reading a research paper and answering questions, some of the questions are hard, unfortunately I have too many finals this sem so I couldn't go to office hours which would have helped. But overall great class, no stress usually, but take more time if you aim for A- or above.

This class was really relaxed and not very stressful. Professor Bloom is a good professor who seems passionate about his work. The TA Lauren was also very patient when it came to troubleshooting experiments. The class only met once a week, but it usually took the entire class block and sometimes involved coming in at strange hours or on the weekend. We had one experiment where we had to go into lab every 24 hours from Thursday-Monday. I was able to practice skills such as loading gels and doing western blots, things that I had only read about in theory. It has come in useful to be able to say that I had some background in basic cell bio techniques. The quizzes were sort of challenging and required no studying/knowledge of the course material. They are both worth 25% and the first quiz only had two questions. Bloom emphasized critical thinking and I think I would have done the same if I hadn't even opened the powerpoints to study. The final was the hardest part and graded pretty strictly. It was an analysis of a scientific paper and in short answer form. The stupidest part was that you only got 20-50 words for each response. On my graded exam, the explanation of why I missed points often went on for a paragraph. The class was curved generously, with a 84 being A-. Besides the final, a good class and pretty chill for a 4000 level bio

If you are looking to do research post-grad, this class is a good one to take. You get to have hands-on experience doing the fundamentals of cell bio techniques which will really help you out. The class is relatively simple with no homework and only a 3-5 hour commitment each week. However, as far as class structure, it leaves a little to be desired. Professor Bloom seems like he still hasn't quite gotten the hang of what this class is supposed to be, so one of your assignments is to read and discuss a NOVEL (in a lab class??). Also, the two midterm "quizzes" are pretty simple, but the final IS NOT. The final is a piece of primary literature with the abstract, title, and discussion taken out so that after you read the results, you have to write the missing pieces. If you have taken other courses where you read primary literature and feel comfortable you will be okay, but if you haven't I pity you. Given that we read one piece of primary literature all semester, and the fact that the final was primarily a writing assignment, was pretty unfair. Overall, its a good course to take to help boost a research-focused resume, but otherwise it's pretty disorganized and not really worth your time.

This class was all fine and good until the final. The 2 quizzes we had, the averages were in the 90's and they were pretty easy/common sense. There wasn't very much work associated with the class or really anything difficult. He even mentioned many times that it seemed like all of us were going to get A's. Then the take home final was very open ended and seemed easy enough. Suddenly we get the final back and the average is around a 60. He assures us that he will curve the final as to not ruin all of our grades....well that was a lie. I think he realized he wasn't allowed to give everyone in the class an A and as a result only 7 people received A's while everyone else was relegated to receiving grades as low as a C- just because of one test. A test that was open ended and graded unfairly having the potential to drop multiple people from their 95% to a 70%. All I'm saying.

This class is great if you want some hands-on experience with the techniques you learned in Cell Biology (BIOL 300)! Dr. Bloom is an incredible professor: he is approachable and really tries to encourage analysis rather than memorization. When I took the class, we had 2 quizzes (25% each), a lab notebook, participation, and a take-home final. The final was the most difficult, but otherwise, the class was well worth it.