Professor Avila is a very passionate professor. He did a great job keep people engaged with his lectures and was interactive and opened to questions during his class. (Please keep in mind I did his class on zoom.) But I did find a lot of fault in the way that he conducted his midterms, on his syllabus he had part 2 of the midterms listed as “Short Answer” only to know a few days before that it was in fact a 2+ page double spaced essay. He also had the ridiculous request to cite our sources using MLA format yet the exam was closed notes. The summer class went by quick, and it's easy to get behind on the readings. I would suggest buying the $20 textbook ahead of time to avoid that. But yeah, as a person he's great, as a teacher I did find some faults.

This class is really good with Avila. The reading may be a lot at times, but overall enjoyed and learned a lot from this class. My TA was super chill too.

took this class for fsp. readings of the textbook were crucial and really the only thing you needed for the midterm and final essay. we never really used what he mentioned during lectures. long chapters to read tho.

Professor Avila was very hard, and pretty boring. I learned some stuff on the course, even if I did ALL of the readings and went to EVERY lecture and sections. Your grade practically depends on your T.A. Choose wisely. Do NOT take Ocampo; she teaches an Honors section and the regular one. She can make you feel intimidated and inferior to everyone else when you try to engage in the discussions because of how "smart" she is. My T.A. made my experience in this class horrible, and I hope that my next Chicano Studies class is way better than this one. And btw I received a B on my midterm.

I felt Avila was a good professor, given that I took this course for a GE and had no background in Chicana/o Studies. I learned a lot from his lectures, and they were always a very interesting. The readings, on the other hand, were dry and boring. His lectures were 20x better than the readings.

I had a really awesome TA who got the whole class to think and bounce off each other. I really enjoyed my section. The midterms and finals were ok, if you studied, you'd do fine. Avila gave us a list of IDs to study off of, which helped greatly. He tried to ease the fear of finals and midterms for the freshmen, which was extremely kind of him.

If you take this class, be willing to rest your entire fate in your TA's hands. Looking back I know that it was literally impossible for me to have gotten an A in this class. My TA gave only 3 A's out of 54 students, and on my definitions portion of the midterm she wrote comments that not only differed from comments she wrote on my friend's test who wrote basically the same stuff that I did since we had studied the same definitions, but she also wrote comments about things that we had never gone over in the class, such as communism. If you're lucky, you can get an A I think with not too many problems, but if your T.A. is bad like mine was, you won't do well.

Avila is a good professor. He's not the easiest, especially in the Chicano Studies department but the effort was well worth the knowledge I gained. There is quite a bit of reading and the paper topics aren't the easiest. But if you do the work and take the time to write a well thought out paper you'll be fine! Plus all the TA's are great and supportive.

Professor Avila can be a bit challenging, but if you are interested in the subject, it is all worth it. There are a lot of readings, but most are interesting, and the work is do-able. The final was a take-home essay. I didn't agree with some of the points he made, but overall, he is very well educated and his main point is to make you THINK. So if you are willing to work hard, and actually learn, take his class. :]

Professor Avila has been one of the most interesting professors I have ever had in UCLA. He makes his lectures very interesting and poses a lot of new ideas to the students. I might not have agreed with everything he said but he does make you think about your beliefs. I enjoyed his class a lot because it really challenged what I really knew. Going to the lectures is important if you want to get an A in his class. Reading and going to section is also really important. I would recommend this class for anyone who actually likes to learn, not for students who want to get an easy A, at least not with Avila.

Professor Avila is somewhat interesting in his lectures. As time goes on though, you realize how repetitive he is. Not only that, but the TA's he chooses are not very helpful. The one i had was completely close minded. I had to agree with everything she says and if i didn't i would barely pass a quiz or exam. If you can really be interested in something that is half common sense and you are good history writer AND YOU ARE PRETTY CLOSE MINDED AND BELIEVE EVERYTHING THEY WILL TELL YOU, take this class. otherwise..it was pretty boring and uneffective.