Carla M Koehler
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
AD
2.6
Overall Rating
Based on 40 Users
Easiness 2.2 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 2.4 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 2.7 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 3.0 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

TOP TAGS

  • Gives Extra Credit
GRADE DISTRIBUTIONS
52.8%
44.0%
35.2%
26.4%
17.6%
8.8%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

56.3%
46.9%
37.5%
28.1%
18.8%
9.4%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

34.0%
28.4%
22.7%
17.0%
11.3%
5.7%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

37.7%
31.4%
25.1%
18.8%
12.6%
6.3%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

23.4%
19.5%
15.6%
11.7%
7.8%
3.9%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

24.5%
20.4%
16.3%
12.2%
8.2%
4.1%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

19.0%
15.9%
12.7%
9.5%
6.3%
3.2%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

18.2%
15.2%
12.1%
9.1%
6.1%
3.0%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

23.6%
19.7%
15.7%
11.8%
7.9%
3.9%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

ENROLLMENT DISTRIBUTIONS
Clear marks

Sorry, no enrollment data is available.

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Reviews (35)

2 of 4
2 of 4
Add your review...
Quarter: N/A
Grade: N/A
Jan. 11, 2012

She blames her inabilities at teaching this quarter to having more transfer students as well as students receiving poor teaching in CHEM 153A. She doesn't tell you how she grades and you'll be greatly disappointed by what you get. She gives credit to herself for teaching the top 5 kids who do exceptionally well and won't take responsibility when half the class scores below 50%. She's a scoundrel. She deserves no respect.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: N/A
Grade: N/A
Jan. 10, 2012

She fails half her class (those below 50% overall despite an average of 45%) because they don't live up to her standards. She talks trash on Dr. Nelson's failure as a teacher in biochemistry when Dr. Nelson was far better than her in all respects and had an appropriate curve to the course she taught. Dr. Koehler math: 80-100 pts above the average gets you a B- or B in the course when the course is out of 400 pts and the average is 193... do the math and tell me it makes sense.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: N/A
Grade: N/A
Dec. 14, 2011

She is really bad at teaching (her TAs definitely gives better lectures than she does) but gives super difficult exams. Avoid her class if you can. If you are stuck with her, good luck...

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2019
Grade: A
June 21, 2019

Poor concern for students and not helpful at all. People can get an A thanks to professor Gober who teaches the course with her.
Don’t bother to ask questions, she will tell you to look at slides. I mean, really???
She must understand that if we understood something from a slide, we would not waste our time to talk to her. Also, there is a reason why she is the instructor and we are students. So she can fill the gap of understanding of course material.
I am grateful that professor Gober took over for the last half of the course.
For people who read this,
Expect the sense of rudeness and lack of concern included in useless answers she gives you for your insightful questions.

Helpful?

1 1 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: A
March 30, 2020

I actually loved Dr. Koehler! She is very kind and cares about individual students. Her lectures are super interesting and clear. Some may disagree with me, but this was my experience and I did well on her midterm solely by relying on her lecture and her slides. Did not even used the book. All you have to do is listen to her podcast, understand the slides, and focus on her notes(written under every slide). I did lose a lot of points on the methionine pathway, but still, the rest of the problems of her midterm were straightforward and the answers were all given during her lecture and the review session (they complain because they didn't pay attention to her lecture). Just make sure to memorize the methionine pathway even if she doesn't emphasize during the lecture. She is usually very clear about what's gonna be on the midterm. If you're confused about anything, go to her office hour. She was very accomodating and tried to answer every question we had. Her notes were in fact very helpful and I personally thought her slides were way better than Gober's. Gober's slides were often vague and did not really help for the midterm and final. I really liked how Dr. Koehler gave many examples of the diseases and applications of each pathway. I wish she taught more upper-division courses. Now, I scored 5 points above average for midterm 1 and 15 points above average for midterm 2. Midterm 2 was mostly composed of Koehler's material. For the final, I scored D- but was still able to receive an A because of the wise curve. I personally think this class was way easier than 153A and honestly there isn't that much to memorize (you just gotta understand the material). Hope this helps.

Helpful?

1 2 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2019
Grade: A+
April 4, 2019

Might as well write a review of this class, since grades were published 2 days ago. Overall, this class isn't that bad. People who say otherwise might not be studying the right way. I went to class and played games just in case the professors said anything interesting, and by studying the slides, I got a mid A on the first (raw score), SO close to a 100% on the second midterm. If you want pics of them, I'll send them to you for free. (People need to stop tryna sell shit on bruinwalk). All you need for an A- is about a 74.

People need to cut Koehler some slack. Yes, her handwriting is messy, and yes, she goes off on tangents, but she when it comes to her grading (which is all you guys care about), she is very fair. If she says something's gonna be on there, it will be. If you were in class that one day right before midterm 2, she told us that she was going to put methionine catabolism/SAM on the final. That's why we could eliminate midterm 2's amino acid catabolism question to only the branched chain amino acids. Why are people so surprised when it actually showed up on the final? Her teaching isn't terrible either. Sometimes, it's hard to follow, but if can overlook the fact that she brought a small bag of cheetos/1 small bottle of coke for the whole class to share, she does give alot of pointers as to what she wants us to focus on. For Koehler's exam, everything you need to know is either one her slides or on the footnotes of the slides she publishes on CCLE. You never need to know enzyme names unless it's specifically talked about in class/mentioned in the footnotes. Memorizing structures are only necessary when told. Overall, I'm glad I took this class with her, and I would take 153B with her if she was offering. (tl;dr no need to pay attention in Koehler's part. Just read her footnotes and your'e good to go)

Gober's great. He's really funny and kept me awake during the 9 AM lectures. He tells you what to focus on, so you should go to class if you want to do well. He asked a question on the final that wasn't on his slides, but was emphasized in class alot. His slides are okay, but contain alot of extra info that might confuse you. Just pay attention in class and you should be fine. (tl;dr pay attention in Gober's class, that's all you need to do)

Helpful?

1 5 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: A+
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Dec. 25, 2023

Reading the reviews here before I took the class, it first seemed like Koehler was a difficult and horrible professor, but I've come to learn she is quite the opposite! I personally loved Dr. Koehler; she was very sweet, engaging as a lecturer and prioritized the application of biochemistry in multiple post-grad fields rather than on nitty-gritty mechanisms that we wouldn't need to know. She also gave a TON of extra credit. Most of all, she prioritized genuine learning over a grade and she stuck to her promise that if you stick around a B-range, she would make that the A!
Scheme: Team Quizzes (5x30 pts), Midterms (2x50 pts), Final (200 points)
Lectures: They weren't lying, Koehler's lectures are pretty hard to follow. She has slides with notes on them but she sticks to projecting her paper and writing (pretty sloppy) notes on them lol. My biggest tip is to annotate the slides on a tablet, writing on them on a laptop or printing them out and annotating them physically. Honestly, anything she draws or writes I would say was important and worth copying. She switched her structure to focus more on how biochemistry manifests in diseases, so I would write down any disease she mentions in class. When in-doubt, make sure you read the notes she wrote down on the slides. I found she would lecture on those notes and test you on them too. A cool thing she did would give those who attended lecture a TON of extra credit by opening a poll and just asking a simple question, so make sure to either attend or at least pay attention to the Gradescope to see if there'll be an EC opportunity.
Quizzes: There were 6 quizzes, one every week that there wasn't a midterm or a holiday, and she drops your lowest one. The structure is a little funky, in that you would do a "pre-quiz" in discussion every week to answer general questions on the case studies that the quizzes were based on but they were only based on completion and was an easy 10 points if you just attended discussion every week. They're called "team" quizzes, but you have no assigned group, and she just recommended that you form your own small groups. These were also open note. They were around 4-5 questions (2-3 pages), and honestly were easy for the most part. I honestly recommend taking this class with a friend or finding friends quick, I don't think I would've done as well on the quizzes without establishing a group quickly! Lastly, there'd always be 1 or 2 tricky questions, but Koehler was also super generous and would either implicitly give you the answer if you asked her enough or just straight up would tell you lol, so don't be afraid to ask!
Midterms: Very medium difficulty exams I would say. They would be in-class for 50 minutes and around 4-6 pages. The practice midterm she provides is pretty representative but she definitely doesn't test you on all the material taught for the midterm and can swap concepts in and out. Her rubric does look for specific words and phrases. Biggest tip to study for the midterms would be to make flashcards out of her weekly learning objectives EVERY WEEK and studying them as the quarter goes on. It is a bit of work, but I promise it pays off because the tests come directly from there. I also recommend really paying attention to the beginning of lectures where she recaps on previous content (it's the exam material) and she usually demos test problems in the couple lectures leading up to the exam. For the first midterm she basically gave us half the points for free by doing that.
Final: This was a BEAST to study for. Koehler is a professor that does cumulative exams well. It was mostly new content but by far the most intensive exam as she takes advantage of it being 3 hours. I recommend studying all of the diseases mentioned in class, cofactors, fates of central metabolic pathway metabolites, bigger picture/general ideas of previous pathways and knowing how altering a pathway and its metabolites affects the direction of the pathway. She provides a practice final and I recommend taking it as a diagnostic test very early on in your studying to see what you do and don't know and make flashcards out of them. Koehler did a final review session for us a couple days before the final, GO TO IT and HAVE QUESTIONS! She basically told us what exactly she was gonna ask about every topic on the midterm and answered what she will and won't test, the diseases we should know, what kind of questions to expect, etc. I really recommend writing down everything she says to study because it really contributed to the grade I got. Overall loved Dr. Koehler and would absolutely recommend her for 153C!

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: A-
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
June 22, 2021

Carla's exams were super hard and her lectures were all over the place. I do not think she prepare for the class. The average of all exams were stay about 60. She did give 1 or 2 points extra credit every exam but it was not helpful. She did curve the average to B/B-

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: A-
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
June 22, 2021

Carla's exams were super hard and her lectures were all over the place. I do not think she prepare for the class. The average of all exams were stay about 60. She did give 1 or 2 points extra credit every exam but it was not helpful. She did curve the average to B/B-

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: A
April 8, 2020

I thought Koehler was ok -- not the best or the worst professor I have had. Although she isn't the clearest professor during lecture, her footnotes on her lecture slides are basically all that you have to know for her exams. They're fairly straightforward, and I thought her questions were written more fairly than Gober's parts on exams. I never really went to her office hours, but I made sure to pay attention in lecture and memorize all the details from her slides. It's a lot, but she's pretty good at narrowing down what we should know.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: N/A
Grade: N/A
Jan. 11, 2012

She blames her inabilities at teaching this quarter to having more transfer students as well as students receiving poor teaching in CHEM 153A. She doesn't tell you how she grades and you'll be greatly disappointed by what you get. She gives credit to herself for teaching the top 5 kids who do exceptionally well and won't take responsibility when half the class scores below 50%. She's a scoundrel. She deserves no respect.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: N/A
Grade: N/A
Jan. 10, 2012

She fails half her class (those below 50% overall despite an average of 45%) because they don't live up to her standards. She talks trash on Dr. Nelson's failure as a teacher in biochemistry when Dr. Nelson was far better than her in all respects and had an appropriate curve to the course she taught. Dr. Koehler math: 80-100 pts above the average gets you a B- or B in the course when the course is out of 400 pts and the average is 193... do the math and tell me it makes sense.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: N/A
Grade: N/A
Dec. 14, 2011

She is really bad at teaching (her TAs definitely gives better lectures than she does) but gives super difficult exams. Avoid her class if you can. If you are stuck with her, good luck...

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2019
Grade: A
June 21, 2019

Poor concern for students and not helpful at all. People can get an A thanks to professor Gober who teaches the course with her.
Don’t bother to ask questions, she will tell you to look at slides. I mean, really???
She must understand that if we understood something from a slide, we would not waste our time to talk to her. Also, there is a reason why she is the instructor and we are students. So she can fill the gap of understanding of course material.
I am grateful that professor Gober took over for the last half of the course.
For people who read this,
Expect the sense of rudeness and lack of concern included in useless answers she gives you for your insightful questions.

Helpful?

1 1 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: A
March 30, 2020

I actually loved Dr. Koehler! She is very kind and cares about individual students. Her lectures are super interesting and clear. Some may disagree with me, but this was my experience and I did well on her midterm solely by relying on her lecture and her slides. Did not even used the book. All you have to do is listen to her podcast, understand the slides, and focus on her notes(written under every slide). I did lose a lot of points on the methionine pathway, but still, the rest of the problems of her midterm were straightforward and the answers were all given during her lecture and the review session (they complain because they didn't pay attention to her lecture). Just make sure to memorize the methionine pathway even if she doesn't emphasize during the lecture. She is usually very clear about what's gonna be on the midterm. If you're confused about anything, go to her office hour. She was very accomodating and tried to answer every question we had. Her notes were in fact very helpful and I personally thought her slides were way better than Gober's. Gober's slides were often vague and did not really help for the midterm and final. I really liked how Dr. Koehler gave many examples of the diseases and applications of each pathway. I wish she taught more upper-division courses. Now, I scored 5 points above average for midterm 1 and 15 points above average for midterm 2. Midterm 2 was mostly composed of Koehler's material. For the final, I scored D- but was still able to receive an A because of the wise curve. I personally think this class was way easier than 153A and honestly there isn't that much to memorize (you just gotta understand the material). Hope this helps.

Helpful?

1 2 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2019
Grade: A+
April 4, 2019

Might as well write a review of this class, since grades were published 2 days ago. Overall, this class isn't that bad. People who say otherwise might not be studying the right way. I went to class and played games just in case the professors said anything interesting, and by studying the slides, I got a mid A on the first (raw score), SO close to a 100% on the second midterm. If you want pics of them, I'll send them to you for free. (People need to stop tryna sell shit on bruinwalk). All you need for an A- is about a 74.

People need to cut Koehler some slack. Yes, her handwriting is messy, and yes, she goes off on tangents, but she when it comes to her grading (which is all you guys care about), she is very fair. If she says something's gonna be on there, it will be. If you were in class that one day right before midterm 2, she told us that she was going to put methionine catabolism/SAM on the final. That's why we could eliminate midterm 2's amino acid catabolism question to only the branched chain amino acids. Why are people so surprised when it actually showed up on the final? Her teaching isn't terrible either. Sometimes, it's hard to follow, but if can overlook the fact that she brought a small bag of cheetos/1 small bottle of coke for the whole class to share, she does give alot of pointers as to what she wants us to focus on. For Koehler's exam, everything you need to know is either one her slides or on the footnotes of the slides she publishes on CCLE. You never need to know enzyme names unless it's specifically talked about in class/mentioned in the footnotes. Memorizing structures are only necessary when told. Overall, I'm glad I took this class with her, and I would take 153B with her if she was offering. (tl;dr no need to pay attention in Koehler's part. Just read her footnotes and your'e good to go)

Gober's great. He's really funny and kept me awake during the 9 AM lectures. He tells you what to focus on, so you should go to class if you want to do well. He asked a question on the final that wasn't on his slides, but was emphasized in class alot. His slides are okay, but contain alot of extra info that might confuse you. Just pay attention in class and you should be fine. (tl;dr pay attention in Gober's class, that's all you need to do)

Helpful?

1 5 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: A+
Dec. 25, 2023

Reading the reviews here before I took the class, it first seemed like Koehler was a difficult and horrible professor, but I've come to learn she is quite the opposite! I personally loved Dr. Koehler; she was very sweet, engaging as a lecturer and prioritized the application of biochemistry in multiple post-grad fields rather than on nitty-gritty mechanisms that we wouldn't need to know. She also gave a TON of extra credit. Most of all, she prioritized genuine learning over a grade and she stuck to her promise that if you stick around a B-range, she would make that the A!
Scheme: Team Quizzes (5x30 pts), Midterms (2x50 pts), Final (200 points)
Lectures: They weren't lying, Koehler's lectures are pretty hard to follow. She has slides with notes on them but she sticks to projecting her paper and writing (pretty sloppy) notes on them lol. My biggest tip is to annotate the slides on a tablet, writing on them on a laptop or printing them out and annotating them physically. Honestly, anything she draws or writes I would say was important and worth copying. She switched her structure to focus more on how biochemistry manifests in diseases, so I would write down any disease she mentions in class. When in-doubt, make sure you read the notes she wrote down on the slides. I found she would lecture on those notes and test you on them too. A cool thing she did would give those who attended lecture a TON of extra credit by opening a poll and just asking a simple question, so make sure to either attend or at least pay attention to the Gradescope to see if there'll be an EC opportunity.
Quizzes: There were 6 quizzes, one every week that there wasn't a midterm or a holiday, and she drops your lowest one. The structure is a little funky, in that you would do a "pre-quiz" in discussion every week to answer general questions on the case studies that the quizzes were based on but they were only based on completion and was an easy 10 points if you just attended discussion every week. They're called "team" quizzes, but you have no assigned group, and she just recommended that you form your own small groups. These were also open note. They were around 4-5 questions (2-3 pages), and honestly were easy for the most part. I honestly recommend taking this class with a friend or finding friends quick, I don't think I would've done as well on the quizzes without establishing a group quickly! Lastly, there'd always be 1 or 2 tricky questions, but Koehler was also super generous and would either implicitly give you the answer if you asked her enough or just straight up would tell you lol, so don't be afraid to ask!
Midterms: Very medium difficulty exams I would say. They would be in-class for 50 minutes and around 4-6 pages. The practice midterm she provides is pretty representative but she definitely doesn't test you on all the material taught for the midterm and can swap concepts in and out. Her rubric does look for specific words and phrases. Biggest tip to study for the midterms would be to make flashcards out of her weekly learning objectives EVERY WEEK and studying them as the quarter goes on. It is a bit of work, but I promise it pays off because the tests come directly from there. I also recommend really paying attention to the beginning of lectures where she recaps on previous content (it's the exam material) and she usually demos test problems in the couple lectures leading up to the exam. For the first midterm she basically gave us half the points for free by doing that.
Final: This was a BEAST to study for. Koehler is a professor that does cumulative exams well. It was mostly new content but by far the most intensive exam as she takes advantage of it being 3 hours. I recommend studying all of the diseases mentioned in class, cofactors, fates of central metabolic pathway metabolites, bigger picture/general ideas of previous pathways and knowing how altering a pathway and its metabolites affects the direction of the pathway. She provides a practice final and I recommend taking it as a diagnostic test very early on in your studying to see what you do and don't know and make flashcards out of them. Koehler did a final review session for us a couple days before the final, GO TO IT and HAVE QUESTIONS! She basically told us what exactly she was gonna ask about every topic on the midterm and answered what she will and won't test, the diseases we should know, what kind of questions to expect, etc. I really recommend writing down everything she says to study because it really contributed to the grade I got. Overall loved Dr. Koehler and would absolutely recommend her for 153C!

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: A-
June 22, 2021

Carla's exams were super hard and her lectures were all over the place. I do not think she prepare for the class. The average of all exams were stay about 60. She did give 1 or 2 points extra credit every exam but it was not helpful. She did curve the average to B/B-

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: A-
June 22, 2021

Carla's exams were super hard and her lectures were all over the place. I do not think she prepare for the class. The average of all exams were stay about 60. She did give 1 or 2 points extra credit every exam but it was not helpful. She did curve the average to B/B-

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: A
April 8, 2020

I thought Koehler was ok -- not the best or the worst professor I have had. Although she isn't the clearest professor during lecture, her footnotes on her lecture slides are basically all that you have to know for her exams. They're fairly straightforward, and I thought her questions were written more fairly than Gober's parts on exams. I never really went to her office hours, but I made sure to pay attention in lecture and memorize all the details from her slides. It's a lot, but she's pretty good at narrowing down what we should know.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
2 of 4
2.6
Overall Rating
Based on 40 Users
Easiness 2.2 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 2.4 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 2.7 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 3.0 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

TOP TAGS

  • Gives Extra Credit
    (13)
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