Definitely take him. He's super chill, and teaches everything in a fluent, comprehensive manner. He always stops to make if anybody has questions. There's like four quarters of exams, BUT you can replace each exam with the quiz grades you got for each quarter. Quizzes are every week, based on the information you learned last week and its only like 7 questions that aren't too hard. There's also a project you do in this class where you have to come up with an idea on like how to test a hypothesis on some cellular/molecular biology related project that's never been thought of before. You get a lot of feedback and submit drafts for like a 3 minute thesis, research statement, and figure illustration. Each of those is worth 10% of your grade, but I think 50%of each one is based on what you get on the draft which is a guaranteed 100. Highly recommend him, great uplifting teacher. I've heard his office hours are great, but he's not great to reach on email.
Grade Distribution
No grade data available
3 Reviews
The professor for this course is amazing, his office hours are amazing, the entire course is literally my favorite course I have taken at this University. He is honestly so so knowledgeable and so nice and easy to approach if you have any questions about any topics. The information was so interesting and I was so excited to go to class every lecture. The project over the semester was also very interesting and he provided lots of feedback so that we could improve what we have over the semester. I loved this course so much and I wish I could experience it again for the first time.
Prof Abebayehu is a great guy who is relatively new to teaching. This course is structured/ordered poorly but I don't think it's Abebayehu's fault since he and Zunder teach the same curriculum. The semester is divided into 4 sections with a midterm after each of the first three sections and one final for the last section (non-cumulative). There are 7-question quizzes every Thursday. Your quiz grades can replace your test grades per section.
Pros:
- Abebayehu loves talking to undergrads and is super approachable
- Abebayehu is SUPER knowledgeable + passionate about the subject and is very willing to go in-depth
- Lots of visual support given in lectures
Cons:
- Abebayehu is so passionate about the topic that if a student asks him a niche question, he will use up class time to go over the question... in-depth. So often I thought about how much shorter class would be if Abebayehu asked for the niche questions to talk to him after class instead
- The class is structured so poorly. You go in-depth in topics in a seemingly random order rather than progressively diving deeper into the subject as a whole. Keeping afloat is much easier if you took AP, IB, or dual-enrollment bio earlier
Advice:
- Study for the quizzes and exams early
- Talk to Abebayehu after class and get to know him
- The pre-lectures are pretty irrelevant to what's on the quizzes and exams
- Don't procrastinate on your final project and meet with Abebayehu to discuss ideas early on so you don't get stuck later in the semester