Course taken: LS4

ABOUT THE PROF:
Pham is one of the professors who you describe as "He's a good person at heart, but just insane when he writes his tests" it's not all his fault, the LS Office sets standards on what the curves should be, politics, blah blah, etc.

TESTS:
HIS TESTS ARE HARD!
You need to be a wiz kid to be in the top 5%, and if you study what you would normally to get average to B+ (relative to the curve). I took the class in Spring 2013 and the averages were 65% and 67% for the midterms.

THE CLASS:
The material is like you can learn on your own.
Pham explains things slowly sometimes spends 45 minutes on an example. If you have trouble understanding accents, Best of Luck. A good alternative is to try using your TA sections to introduce the concepts, do some self study, and go to office hours.

RESOURCES:
Best resource to study for this class are the practice tests. For some topics, the book helps as well. Don't buy the textbook, it's available online so are the solutions! Just ask around your friends.

THINGS I WOULD'VE DONE DIFFERENTLY:
I'm not gonna say don't study the night before the test. But more importantly get good sleep (none of that 8 hour B.S. I'm talking a solid 9-12 hours of sleep) It's in your hands, make it happen and best of luck!

Sorry, this system has no way to edit a post, but I submitted the previous evaluation and noticed an error. I took MCDB 50 with Pham during Fall of 2010, not 2011.

Classes taken with Dr. Pham: LS 4 - Genetics and MCDB 50 - stem cell ethics.

LS4 - Spring 2011:
Genetics is a tough subject. During the quarter I took it, it was either Pham or Merriam teaching it. Since Pham opted to only have 2 midterms as opposed to Merriam's 4 and drop 1 midterms, I took Pham. Pham is one of professors who are concerned with student learning, even though it might take him a few tries to get the point across. I find that this is the decent combination for me because I wouldn't have my hand held by the professor yet I could still ask him for help.

As the others have said, by the time people take LS4, they're all pretty smart. The curves were definitely not optimistic, but I hunkered down and got through Pham's class with a good grade.

MCDB 50 - Fall 2011:
Pham taught the second half of this course, the ethics portion. Again, he was concerned with student learning, but ethics required more teacher-pupil communication. I felt that his accent greatly hurt his ability to teach this class *well*, but that's not to say this class was horrible. Every quarter, this class is taught by a different professor and they keep changing the way the class is structured, so your mileage may vary. Having prior knowledge of genetics, embryology, or philosophy goes a long way in this class, but they are definitely not required to do well. It can be a tough class, definitely wouldn't recommend it as an easy A, but interesting material.

Overall:
Yes, Dr. Pham has a standard Vietnamese accent, but he has good teaching intentions, something that many professors don't have. I would take him if you want a challenging, yet entirely possible to get a good grade if you're willing to put in the work kind of class.

He is OK and has an accent. And I am a non-science major and take this class as a GE. This is being said everything I learned in this class is new to me. However there is crap load of science majors in this class but I ended up with a B. The reason why I got B is because there is 30% free credit (attendance+discussion assignment+participation). Trust me, if you are not science major, you will suffer a lot in this class, but I wouldn't say to avoid this class.