This class was is not an easy one but Dr. Rigueur made it so easy. She is amazing and you won’t regret taking the class with her

Dr. Rigueur is by far my favorite professor at UCLA thus far! To cut this into a short review ill breakdown pros and cons very simply below... keeping in mind this class was amazing.
Pros:
- Very approachable professor
- Lectures were so interesting and engaging
- Lectures were bruin cast and saved to view later
- Canvas was pretty organized
- Content was difficult but was not memorization, content was applicable and real world
- Her Test questions came DIRECTLY from the lecture slides, scientific papers and recorded lectures... the questions many times are to asses if you understood what she lectured on with a minor twist
- short answer and written portions where I got a majority of my points as they would give points for attempting to answer correctly

Cons:
- The tests were INTENSE (although I passed them)
- If you don't attend OH then don't expect much. OH is a huge source of help
- If you miss a lecture then expect your exam grade to drop at least 5-10%
- If you miss discussion you lose participation points
- MC portions of exams wrecked everyone LOL

All in all if I had to rate out of 10, I would give Dr. Rigueur a 9 out of 10! Take her class its far more digestible than any other professor in the MCDB department!

I recently transferred here from a different university, and I have to say that Dr. Rigueur is the best professor for this class ever! She is extremely passionate about the subject which you can clearly see from her tone of voice. She also deeply cares about her student's success and their ability to learn -- she will spend much time with you 1-on-1 to help you understand the topic or help direct you to anything you might need. Her exams are fair and are what is supposed to be administered in a high-caliber university such as UCLA. I have seen this class be taught by other universities and other professors at UCLA, and honestly, Dr. Rigueur is overall the best despite her being the newest professor for the class. Her slides are a god-send and are extremely easy to follow. I personally loved the contrast in color in the text when discussing each slide. Some of the class is based on active learning as well, and she often will ask people to volunteer to answer some questions. Understanding the answers to those questions on a deeper level is what will get you an A. Not to mention that she is very FLEXIBLE! Other professors are very stern about timings etc., but honestly, Dr. Riguer really cares about the class and will adjust timings of quizzes/exams as needed. Overall, really recommend taking this class or other classes with her. She speaks extremely clearly, is very aware of her tone of voice when describing different topics, has a great and easy to approach personality and is overall an excellent teacher! 1000/10!

Selling Principles of Development Wolpert 6 edition pdf for $30. Text **********

Amazing professor and TAs

Lectures - majority of content on lecture slides will show up on the exams. The drawback is that there is a ton of content.

Content - I enjoyed the subject a lot and it was very interesting. It's actually heavy on genetics and seeing how gene expression controls cell diversity, leading to the complexity of development. Stem cells come up as well which is super interesting.

Discussion - Rachel was an amazing TA, but the way the discussion was set up, nobody ever really learned much from discussion. You have to read one full research paper before discussion, but the papers are often very long and complex so it wasn't possible to ever feel like you understood the paper. There's also a report due every week on each paper you read.

Professor - Dr. Rigueur offered plenty of OH and encouraged to ask questions, and she is overall very kind. Her lecture style was ok but sometimes she spoke extremely fast so laptops are good to take notes.

Midterms - Each midterm covered 5 lectures + 2-3 research papers covered in discussion. It's multiple choice, short response, and true/false. Most of the class had trouble with the multiple choice and you can lose quite a lot of points just by missing a couple. The short response has a lot of experimental questions, so it all depends on whether you understand the concepts. Average for the first midterm was around 70%, so I guess it's not that different from other MCDB classes.

Final - The final covered 8 lectures plus it was cumulative, and also covered the research papers covered in discussion....this was a lot of content. Luckily, she decided to make the final open notes/book/slides due to COVID-19. If this was not open notes, I would have 100% done very poorly. For the exams, no matter how early you study, it was really difficult to ever feel confident about the material due to the sheer volume of material.

Extra credit - she made clicker questions extra credit, so if you attend every lecture you'll get free extra credit points for just being there. she also had one extra credit question on every exam.

Tip - use OH and ask as many questions, and email the TAs with questions