The exams tested on small details from videos shown in class.

Her test questions are WAY too ambiguous and tricky

I am not sure how this class has such good reviews! I have taken many environmental science courses before, and the class material during the lectures seemed straightforward enough. However, the exams were graded very harshly. It seemed like you could never give them enough information to get an A. These tests were taken as a group, too. The lifestyle change project guidelines were vague, and I had 2/4 partners contribute nothing to the project. When I brought this up to my TA and Professor, they told me my grade wouldn't be affected, yet I still received a C on the project. The lab assignments are unnecessarily difficult (and sometimes dangerous). If you're looking for a better environmental GE, I would recommend taking Geog 5.

Meh. I'd avoid it honestly.

Professor Lipman was really nice! She taught very engaging and interesting lectures and the class was quite enjoyable. However, my TA was a pretty inconsistent grader, and he also graded all my assignments super late so I was never able to use any of the feedback to improve. There are 4 labs (including participation and attendance points which count as much as one lab) and I averaged like a B/B+ in them because I never received any feedback until after finals week. Nonetheless, extensions were handed out like candy which was pretty awesome. Also, professor Lipman has a policy where if attendance in class is high throughout the quarter she holds a group midterm and final which is such a grade boost! Also make sure to do the Extra Credit! It's basically a two-page book report that can give you up to 4% more on your overall grade if you get full marks. I did it in an hour and didn't even read the book and I got full marks on it so I highly recommend doing it. It's most likely going to bump you up to the next letter grade.

Selling the second edition book: Conservation Biology. Message **********

The ecology part of this class just felt incredibly unengaging and uninteresting. I appreciate her attempts to make it seem relevant and important, but I think she already hit that point really well during the first lecture. Her slides have barely any information on them, so you really have to pay attention to lecture. Unfortunately, the material was very dry, so it was hard to do so. One thing I hated was that she would pose a question in class, ask for students' answers, and then say yup those are all good points. But she wouldn't say what the "textbook" answer was. So it was hard to extrapolate the actual correct information from that.

There was a lot of overlap between this course in LS7B. I did not enjoy this course, but I felt a lot of the information was relatively self explanatory.

//The professor//
- Gorlitsky teaches the animal behavior portion of the course, which is the more difficult portion; Lipman teaches the ecology portion.
- She is clearly passionate about the course material and always has examples to give regarding the concepts she wishes to illustrate.
- Lipman is clear during lectures and often seeks student participation during lectures. She seems generally nice and is approachable after class and office hours. The only con I would mention is that she talks a little slow for my taste and ends up wasting some time.
- Lipman is overtly political in her class and while I sometimes found it annoying, I also found it, on occasion, to be refreshing. Students have this false perception that science is separate from policy and politics and it's not. As scientists, we should not be afraid to get a little political at times, especially because topics like species conservation and climate change are political (even though they should not be.) She did, however, shove Bernie Sanders down my throat a little too often, but it makes sense because the primaries were taking place, so this probably won't happen to you.

//The material//
- I found the ecology portion of the class to be really interesting because it expanded on basic things we've learned in things like high school (carrying capacity, population density, etc.), and overlaid a bit more nuanced information.
- Lipman definitely focuses a lot on environmental conservation in the Ecology portion and really likes to discuss climate change. I am interested in both of these topics so I found her emphasis to be interesting.

//Grading//
- the course is out of 550 points; 2 exams worth 200 points each, 60 points for attendance; the rest is for discussion section attendance (mandatory, 18pts) and for responding to weekly reading assignments (72pts)
- straight-scale i.e. no curve unless exam averages are below 80%, which they weren't.
--Exams: Apparently exam 1 (Animal behavior with Gorlitsky) was supposed to be the harder exam, but exam 2 was definitely more difficult. Talking to students in other quarters, though, I think Exam 2 was difficult for Spring 2020 just because the COVID-19 situation forced the exam to be open-book so Prof Lipman had to write the questions in a way that it was harder for us to Google things. She did however unfairly focus all of the exam questions on 20% of the material.
-- Weekly assignments: Each week, you read a research article and have to generate three questions that show your understanding of the article. These are graded fairly harshly and generating good questions is more difficult than it seems. I would write 3-5 sentences per question in order to receive full points. Not incredibly difficult but it is incredibly annoying.
-- Discussion section: Pointless but mandatory. Each week, a group would be assigned to give a 20min presentation on the research paper of the week. As long as you had slides, read the article a few times, and lightly prepared, you received full points. The rest of discussion section involved answering the questions we generated for the weekly assignments (described above) in small groups.
-- Attendance is not taken every class but instead, the professor does "pop-quizzes" randomly, which you turn in at the end of class to provide evidence that you were present. The pop-quizzes are graded on effort and completion, not on correctness.

//textbook//
- Didn't bother renting it for the second half of the class (ecology). You don't need it - just record the lectures and take notes.

//Overall// Interesting material and passionate professors make this a good class in my book. If you're a psychobio student, definitely try and take this class (though the EEB department severely restricts seats), instead of Psych118.

Good things about this class:
- It definitely is an easy GE!
- You learn a lot of really important and relevant information in this class. I personally recommend taking it just to become more knowledgeable about climate change. It was really eye-opening.
- The professor is really nice.
- There's no homework.
- Tests are fairly straight forward.

Bad things:
- This class has a lottt of lab projects, and they are all group work. If you really dislike group work, I wouldn't recommend taking this class.
- The TA's grade surprisingly harsher than one would expect, so make sure you check your work with them beforehand.

Tips:
- I really 100% recommend that you go to lecture. She makes her midterms and final a group exam, but ONLY IF everyone consistently comes to lectures. Half of our class stopped coming eventually, so only half of our exam was group work. Turned out, everyone scored much, much higher on the group part, so the big takeaway from this is that if you want the best grade possible, seriously, go to lecture.
- She posts study guides for her midterm and final, you just have to look for it on CCLE
- Watch all the videos/movies she assigns; I didn't watch any of the media for the first midterm, and I almost bombed it.
- Take advantage of the extra credit!! It bumps your grade up to 2%, and it really helped me out a lot in the end.

Overall:
I definitely recommend this course. It is an easy GE.

Professor Lipman taught the ecology portion of this class (Professor Gorlitsky taught the behavior portion). I thought both were interesting, but the ecology section was definitely more difficult. I personally hadn't had a lot of exposure to some of the concepts, so it felt a bit fast paced, and Professor Lipman moved pretty quickly through her powerpoints. But I went to office hours a lot to ask my questions, and she was super helpful and clear, which allowed me to do well in the class. Professor Lipman is also just a super approachable, funny, and knowledgeable professor and would highly advise visiting office hours. The workload was not bad, but I know a lot of students struggled with the final due to some of the wording of the questions. She does assign documentaries and outside papers to read, some of which were tested on which many people complained about. I just watched them quickly or skimmed through and wrote down the main ideas/points and did well on the final.