Dr. Buccarelli is a nice guy and a great lecturer. The class was Tuesday/Thursday; on Tuesdays we typically had a quiz and then lecture and on Thursdays we all brought in articles concerning that week's topic and shared them in lecture. Discussion was more involved than a typical EEB class - there was a group project which was quite extensive and long, but the groups were about 6 people so the work each individual had to do wasn't too bad. Tests were fair. I would recommend this class with Dr. Buccarelli!

Bucciarelli is a great EEB professor. He has engaging lectures and good sense of humor.

The structure of the class was 2 lectures and 1 discussion per week. Although there were 2 lectures per week, one day would be lecture from the prof and the other lecture for that week was actually a discussion format. During the discussion format, everyone bought in articles related to current topic and people would share their articles with the class to discuss. Prof does amazing great facilitating this. This may not spike your interest but some of the articles were very interesting. Also, this was an easy way to get participation points.
During lectures, there are weekly quizzes to make sure you did the reading beforehand.

Discussion material is not related to the lectures at all. Your discussion grade depends on a group project you are assigned. The group project was to conduct a field study in the botanical gardens. The whole purpose is for you to gain an understanding of how ecology is studied in real life. Not a difficult project overall.

Tests were very fair. One midterm and one final (noncumulative).

Tip for class: Stay on top of the reading, textbook and articles assigned. Study for the quizzes. Take good notes on textbook and lecture slides.

This class is SO interesting. It singlehandedly made me want a career in evolution. Exams are open-everything and open for a week long, but they're like mini essays. Lectures are mandatory.

I generally really liked this class. The grading felt fair, there was some extra credit, and the content was interesting and engaging.

The weekly course load was honestly a lot. There were lectures, reading 5-8 journal articles, taking a quiz, writing an analysis about the main weekly article, and finding your own article relevant to the weekly topic and writing a short paragraph about it. The journal articles were the worst part, but just reading the abstract and the conclusion if there was one was typically enough, but a few quizzes were very specific. You generally need to read the entirety of the main weekly article that is the focus of the discussion section.

It had an unusual class structure. Tuesdays were your typical lectures, but Thursdays were where we would share the articles we found on our own. Honestly, I thought Thursdays were completely useless. I didn't bother paying attention at all, and we were never given a chance to use the articles we found afterwards. I definitely feel as if the class would have been greatly improved if both Tuesday and Thursday had actual lectures to go into further depth with the topics and then have the article sharing in discussion. Discussion always finished super early, too, so there was time for it.

For grading, there were the exams, the weekly work, some participation points, and a presentation worth 15% of your grade. You present one of the weeks on the main article and lead a discussion. My TA was extremely generous with grading, and he gave everybody perfect scores on everything as long as you did the work, which created a huge buffer. Weekly work was generally free points except for the quizzes, which you had to prepare for but were generally fair.

The exams would be rather difficult on their own, but we were given a week to do them and were allowed to collaborate. They were multi-part short answer prompt. I thought grading was mostly fair, and good grades were generally accomplished due to the time and collaboration.

Overall, I really enjoyed this class despite not particularly being a fan of the weekly structure. I definitely feel like I learned a lot, and good grades are very achievable. I would recommend this class for sure.

I enjoyed this class a lot! Gary is a kind, helpful professor and he's really approachable. I liked the article share class sessions on Thursdays because I'm pretty extroverted and liked getting to talk with my classmates and the professor. However, I only used an article from these sessions on an exam one time, so if you tend to be more quiet in class you might not enjoy this structure as much. Different strokes for different folks :~).
As other reviews have stated, there are a lot of readings and small assignments to keep track of, but I got used to it as the quarter went on. For the weekly readings (except for the ones for the longer critiques), I was able to get by without going in depth on every single one. Plus, the amount of assignments given means there's a lot of opportunities to earn points and if you've done well on most of them, you'll feel fairly secure going into the final. There's extra credit and room for you to mess up on a quiz or two.
The exams were collaborative and felt kind of stressful while working on them, since they're mostly critical thinking questions and the people you work with inevitably have varying ideas. However, they were graded fairly and they often weren't looking for one specific right answers.
Overall, this was a fun class! I would recommend it.

Have mixed review about this class. Gary is a wonderful person and he is willing to help students, but his presentation skills are meh. I played his lectures on two times speed and his speech was still choppy. The class was in depth and readings were difficult, but at the end he seemed to scaled the class and everyone got good grades

The class is pretty chill and straightforward. Gary is a pretty fun lecturer imo, and the concepts arent too bad. Though he is relatively new so he still had some issues, like not posting slides and talking fast at times.

We had random weekly quizzes based on readings. These werent bad if you actually did the readings or paid attention in lecture.

Exams were very straightforward and TAs were generous with points. Review the notes and you will be fine most likely.