(Co-taught with Hal Monbouquette)
This class definitely took a lot of time, which put me behind in my other classes throughout the quarter. For the minimal engineering content and lessons I will be taking away from this class, the time investment was very frustrating. I don’t know if it is a funding issue, but having faulty lab equipment for all of the experiments, some more than others, did not allow for accurate data collection and thus many errors in our reports. I feel that we would be unfairly deducted points for errors and mistakes in the lab that were not our fault. Overall, the grading of assignments was ridiculously picky, especially in the beginning. More example reports should be provided, and the expectations of the rubric should be made crystal clear (before we get our 50-70% grades back).
On top of the lab memos, presentations, and reports, adding the homework assignments and quizzes was also unnecessary in my opinion. The extra hours that went into completing these extra assignments for a very small portion of our overall grade was dreadful. I understand that statistics and error analysis is an important concept, and the lectures were set up to enforce that. After week 2, I found that I could be well off enough to just glance over the slides on my own in 10 minutes rather than sit through another hour of lecture for this class.
The lab groups happened to work out well for me, and I am so fortunate that the random pairing did not make this class experience worse. I found new friends in the major that I could work with and ask help for in my other chemical engineering classes. They sometimes served as my only motivation to put in my full effort in assignments– as it would affect their grades as well.
This class single handedly made my winter quarter the worst one thus far during my time at UCLA in terms of workload and what I deem “empty” hours spent towards classes. I am honestly so fortunate that this class will be over after our last report submission, and this is definitely one ChemE class that I would warn younger ChemE students about.