As a Geography/Environmental Studies Transfer Student, I was excited to see the Hydrology Course on the catalog even before I was accepted to UCLA. When I saw it was being offered, I found out that Lettenmaier was in the Academy of Sciences and was one of the leaders in the field of Hydrology, and became even more excited. I looked at "reviews" of Lettenmaier and this class online, but pushed them aside. I'm an A student. I love a good challenge if the knowledge I learn is exciting. When I read negative "reviews" about a professor online I usually take it as the student didn't try hard enough, or was looking for an easy class and didn't like doing the work. But then I went to class....

Here are just some of the grievances I have with Lettenmaier and his class:
1) He clearly hasn't even LOOKED at his slides OR homework assignments since he last taught this class in 2015. He would say things like "I don't know why this slide is here," or "This variable probably means this but I'm not sure." When attending office hours for clarification on a homework assignment, he said to me "I haven't looked at it yet, so I don't know." He then proceeds to review the material on the homework in class after it was due.
2) He is an extremely poor lecturer. He reads off the slides, tending to speed through important ones, and his explanations are very difficult to comprehend. There is very little background given to WHY we're learning what we're learning, how it can be applied, when we would use these equations/methods, etc. He teaches this class like he expects us all to be graduate engineering students or already have a background in hydrology. I don't think his teaching style reflects an introduction to Hydrology whatsoever
3) He's very unhelpful when it comes to clarification. Asking questions often seemed futile, as his responses were again very difficult to understand. He often tended to look at us like we should already know that.
4) He didn't teach us the material needed for the assignments or exams. If he did, it was not explained well, and we had to figure out ourselves how to apply what he showed us to the problems.
5) Tests were extremely difficult, and he was a very tough grader. One small error was anywhere from -5% to -15%.

The proof is in the pudding: I've never seen a drop rate as fast or as heavy as in this class. The first day there were probably 30 students, by the end there were 11 total, only about 7 of which actually came to lecture. EVEN THEN, WITH THE SMALLEST CLASS I HAVE EVER TAKEN, THIS WAS THE MOST IMPERSONAL CLASS I HAVE EVER TAKEN. He was NOT there when we needed help, when he absolutely could have been. It was such a disappointment. With 7 active students, Lettenmaier could have taught us some really awesome, complex things, changed our whole perspective or interest in water and hydrology, but instead let this class become the most disappointing in my time at UCLA. I suggest you don't take this class. Buy the book (Hendrick's Intro to Hydrology) and learn from it yourself. That's basically what we had to do anyway.

I learned a lot about hydrology and climate modeling in this class. I wasn't sure what to expect of the professor due to the negative reviews, and because of the small class size (only 3 of us stayed in the class out of the 6 or so who came to class the first day). However, I came away from the quarter with a positive impression of Professor Lettenmaier, and although the workload was pretty high, I felt like I got a lot out of putting in extra effort.

The way the class was structured Winter quarter was that the students take turns leading class discussions. For three people, this meant that we were presenting every 3 class-days – but I heard that there are typically more people in the class which would lessen the workload significantly (as usually the professor assigns pairs of people to present instead of individuals). We took turns presenting on pretty dense papers about very interesting hydrological issues such as the effect of drought-produced dust on snowmelt rates, how wildfires impact stream runoff, atmospheric causes of California droughts/extreme precipitation periods, etc. It sounds overwhelming to lead an hour and 15 minute class, but Professor Lettenmaier essentially used our presentations as scaffolding for his own lecture: I felt that for every few sentences I said on the topic, he would speak for 3-7 minutes. This ends up making it so that you do not have to be the expert on your paper, you just have to clearly outline the key results, methods, and have somewhat of a grasp on how to interpret the scientific figures. His contributions were very informative and I liked the Socratic style of discussion where he was basically creating a conversation around the figures we pulled from the papers. I also liked this style because it was a pretty free-flowing discussion where I could ask him many questions as well.

Outside of these assignments we had a couple projects due which involved analyzing real data on droughts. These were challenging but he made a point to check in with us every class on our progress and was lenient with what we were able to accomplish given our lack of experience with R, for example.

Overall, he's pretty gruff and old-school but kind, and seems to be genuinely interested in teaching. He just doesn't do a lot of hand-holding, and expects that you do the work and put in effort. It's not the easiest class but the workload is manageable. I appreciated this class a lot more than I was expecting to, and it actually made me more excited about the scientific process and potentially studying climatology or something related in grad school in the future! Would recommend if you are genuinely interested in hydrology and in getting a taste of what hydrological scientists are doing/how they think in a smaller, more seminar-style class format.

Seemed like an interested class but soon turned out to be the hardest class I was enrolled in taking up the most time during my week with extremely ambiguous weekly assignments.

The best way to describe this class: It felt like an intermediate or advanced hydrology class that I and everyone else in the class somehow missed the introductory class.

The best way to describe this professor: It felt like every time he lectured or you spoke in office hours, he was conversing with another one of his hydrology/remote sensing/engineering PhD buddies or another old colleague from NASA.

And yes, search his bio. He's a beast. He has a PhD in Civil Engineering from UW and before coming to UCLA, worked as the program manager of NASA’s Land Surface Hydrology Program at NASA Headquarters in VA.

Bottom line: Extremely smart professor, but not fit for teaching.