Daniele is a great professor, super passionate about the subject. Overall the class isn't so much work but you have to stay on top of the material. Make sure you get Danny McCoy as your TA he is a lifesaver!!

First of all, I only got to watch pre-recorded lectures from this professor and the TAs were the ones in charge of the class (huge shoutout to my TA Danny!) I think it was a departmental thing, but the class structure was probably similar to how it would've been if we had in-person lectures with a live professor.

Just to make it clear though, this class focuses a lot more on the science part of climate change than the policy part of it. This was something I was caught off-guard by but ended up enjoying.

From what I could tell in the videos, Bianchi is very passionate about climate change and the slides he used were very clear. There was definitely a lot of information to learn, but since the topics were very interesting to me and were explained again in discussion by my TA, I found them easy to absorb. I'm a social sciences major, but the science part of this class was very logical to me. Even though the equations were a bit intimidating at first, using them only required basic math skills. Plus, you could always ask for help during office hours if anything was unclear.

Workload was very manageable. There were no readings required, just homework assignments and quizzes every other week plus a final. I spent quite a bit of time studying for the quizzes since they are proctored on Respondus and not open note, but this would probably vary from person to person. The final was intimidating to me at first because it was worth 40% of our grade, but it ended up being based mostly on concepts that we had been going over the most throughout the quarter and was very doable.

The best advice I can give when registering is try your best to get into Danny (Daniel McCoy)'s discussion if you can. He wrote the questions for the quizzes so he would place most emphasis on the topics we needed to study for them (he also puts them on slides which are shared with the rest of the class). I don't think students in other sections had this advantage, but hopefully in the future discussions will be more consistent regardless of the TA in charge of them.

Overall, I'd recommend this class as a GE or if you're just interested in the topic.

to be completely honest, this class was not in my field of interest whatsoever, but it definitely was an easy A science GE. Take it with the lab credit if you're missing that because it literally just means a weekly assignment instead of biweekly assignments. I know other professors make this class a lot harder, but Bianchi is a great professor even if his classes are a bit boring. He posts all of the lectures online and discussion attendance is optional. Extremely easy if you took AP Environmental in high school.

Bianchi's a king. Adds a bit of chaos to each lecture, which is so entertaining

Professor Bianchi was an excellent, engaging, and passionate lecturer. He runs through the content quite fast, however, so at one point I realized I should stop scrambling to take notes and instead digest the lecture which helped me out a ton. I used to dislike this and thought it was an unintuitive teaching and learning style until I met one of my current oceanography professors for spring 2024 who puts into perspective how phenomenal Bianchi is.

While the lectures were great, the homework (worth 20% of your grade) was personally the worst part of the class. Despite nearly acing the midterm with a 99% and doing great on the final where I got a high B, I averaged a 60% in the homework category because of how difficult I found the content to be. This was made worse by the fact that, usually, the math-based problems were something new you were seeing for the first time. You were expected to put together concepts and equations learned from class and apply it to the homework without any resources, guides, etc. When people started going to the TA's for help, they announced in class to "stop coming to office hours for help with individual questions on the homework" because they "can't accommodate everyone." Upon receiving homework grades back, you received almost zero feedback except for comments on bruinlearn that are unorganized and difficult to understand. That left me stuck with a 60% in the homework category which is worth 20% of your total grade in the class.

This is made worse by the fact that the tests are based on the homework (except the tests are a lot easier in my opinion which is how I was able to score high on them). Needless to say, however, the homework situation scared 20 people into dropping the class by week 3 before our midterm took place.

Overall I loved the class and the professor, but I would not take this class again. The homework and the lack of resources to do well on them gave me immense stress throughout the quarter as I was always wondering "if I'm getting D's on the homework, can I even pass the exams?"

The class was generally interesting but content wise it is crazy and you don't get a lot of time to practise the materials learnt. The professor's mid term was really difficult even though I prepared sufficiently. The mid term was badly made (lots of errors in the paper itself) and from what I gathered from the TAs, he made it at the last minute as well so the TAs did not have much time to review the test. My saving grace was my TA, Paige Hoel. The final was much easier probably due to all the complaints. There are other easier classes to take out there; this class is really not worth the effort.

This is not an easy A class but it is 100% manageable if you put in a bit of work. The homework assignments may seem hard at first but most of the answers and formulas needed are on the slides that he posts. If you want an A in the class just do the HW problems over and over again until you understand how to do them. The midterm and final are literally based on the HW so if you know how to do the problems you will be completely fine on the exams. Also the field trip was fun!

This was overall a really easy class that was also interesting. Professor Bianchi is passionate about the topics and makes lectures interesting. For the most part, there is minimal lectures on policy, and it is not a big overall topic of the class.

OKAY YEAH NO! This class was such a hard GE. I would never take this class ever again. Professor was really sweet and seemed to really care about the subject he was teaching... BUT this class was so hard for no reason. His accent was thick sometimes so I wasn't able to understand him. This though wasn't the problem. All these concepts they tried to fit in the first 5 weeks were not manageable. Literally the homework was never explained so if I didn't ask my TA you weren't able to do it. Paige was the best TA! Sadly I believe this is her last year doing it so that sucks. If I had to take this class again I would with her. I studied so hard for the midterm and got a big fat F! Professor made the midterm the night before and even said that this midterm was TOO HARD. The class average was like a D. And the other half of the course was definitely easier to understand but I felt burnt out after the midterm. They promised the final to be easier but I still think it was still a bit hard. The iClicker was only 3 extra credit and our explainer vid. Im just happy I barley passed but still... I would not reccomend this class!

I really enjoyed professor Bianchi. He definitely seemed into the material and wanted us to learn. He went quite fast at times, so I usually sat and listened versus scrambling to take notes. He was funny so I enjoyed going to lecture. Attendance is required with two weeks/four lectures not counting. The chem required for the class is no more difficult than chem 20b... we did basic unit conversions, acid base chem, redox problems and nothing else too difficult. The problem sets are prob 60/40 math to written responses. Don't wait till the last day since they usually take a few hours to complete. The material for the course kinda goes all over the place... you learn ocean chemistry, some physics and a little bit of biological oceanography. Although the slides go quite in depth you never really need to know every specific detail... know how to solve the problems on the HW sets and you'll do fine on the exams. Field trip was pretty fun too. Got an A on final but midterm grade kept my final grade down so don't slack off for it like me.