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

Her test questions are WAY too ambiguous and tricky

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.

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.

I am currently taking EEB100 right now with Alison Lipman and Gregory Grether, and I'm not going to lie, I was scared to take this class when I saw the Bruinwalk reviews. But, after the midterm and quizzes from her half of the class (which was on topics that only *she* covered), I think she has improved her teaching style and tests since the last Bruinwalk reviews. She was very clear during lectures, and the answers for the weekly quizzes we take are explained almost word-for-word in her lectures. I got a 100% in almost every quiz just by pressing "ctrl+f" through the lecture transcripts. But beware, you should at least still watch the lecture to actually comprehend the quiz questions thoroughly.

I got a 90% on the midterm with minimal studying, although I know other students had their grievances with the number of calculations on the exam. The class average was 87%, so I think the majority of students did very well. I'm glad to see that she realized she needed to change something about her class and actually listened to students- she also made her exams open-note once students voiced their opinion. Also, with consideration that not everyone could attend/afford an off-campus extra credit assignment for 10 points, they later offered a couple of on-campus options for EC.

In conclusion, I was very satisfied with the ecology section of this class. I will write another review for Gregory Grether's section on animal behavior on his Bruinwalk, but Alison gets 5 stars from me!

This is literally the worst class you will ever take at UCLA. I took it with Lipman and Gorlitsky and I thought Gorlitsky was bad until I had Lipman. Both the midterm and the final were insanely difficult for no reason at all and discussion section questions were graded very difficultly. Both are dry lecturers with nearly no personality and little regard for the welfare of their students. Moreover, Lipman frequently incorporated her own political opinions into lecture in order to brainwash her students. Please save yourself before its too late.

The final was unnecessarily difficult. I could not believe I was tested on the concepts she chose as they were explained very briefly during lecture. I almost shed a tear. I felt as though I had a good grasp on concepts but apparently that did not matter because we were tested on ~15% of the information on the final.

I took this class with both Dr Lipman and Dr Gorlitsky. Dr Gorlitsky taught the first 5 weeks on Animal Behaviour, whereas Dr Lipman taught the latter 5 weeks on ecology. With that being said, Dr Lipman's portion was not only more engaging, but her exam was also markedly easier. Overall, I enjoyed both professors and the class. The textbooks were also helpful for further clarification on subject material.

I'm only writing this review because the GroupMe for this class seems to be going crazy. Professor Lipman is an exceptional teacher. She stays up to date with effective teaching methods and successfully employs them in class. She taught the second half, i.e. the ecology portion, of the EEB100 class. She truly believes in the importance of her work and its real-world applications. To that end, she often mentions how we as students can get involved in conservation efforts which is incredible. She is incredibly engaging. I have to admit I would tune into live lectures and just watch TikTok for the hour and 15 minutes but I would still end up having learnt something every single time. For the final, I just skimmed her slides and rewatched the recorded lectures at 2x speed for any confusing concepts like the diversity indices and life history tables. I never bothered reading the textbook. She covered everything in plenty of depth in her lectures even for someone who wasn't even really listening. She encourages class participation to work on problems together. She does assign a lot of weekly articles and documentaries. I didn't read or watch any of them but answered the relevant questions on the final with nothing more than common sense. The final was incredibly fair and I truly believe I would have gotten an A without any review. The answers to the questions from the discussion articles could basically be found in the abstracts of each paper. The GroupMe however seemed to think that the exam was impossibly hard and unfair. They misinterpreted her lecture slides and tried confronting Professor Lipman. I was curious so I went back to the lecture recording to the relevant sections and I really don't see how they managed to confuse themselves. The average for the final was still in the 80s so I have no idea what they were tripping on but there was some beef there. I only wrote this review because it seems like there's a small but vocal group with an agenda against her and I wanted to present the other side to this story.