Great class to meet your Soc requirements. His class is very structured and organized, assignments and expectations are clear, and he does care about student's success. In my opinion, his lectures are not very engaging and because attendance to lecture wasn't mandatory, not a lot of people always showed up. The readings he assigns are interesting and connect well with class material. He gives a lot of time to work on the research paper and we had a midterm and final. MC questions and a short written response. I could have been a more productive student, going to class every week, taking better notes, studying more, but I still was able to get an A-. Also, the TAs are so helpful, shoutout to Rohan!

One of the sociology department's gems. I don't understand the slander of the review below mine because this class was so standout to me. Not only are Professor Speer's expectations clear, but the structure of his class is very fair. If you work hard, it pays off. If you slack off, don't expect a good grade. I think that should go for any class at UCLA, although it doesn't always, as so many classes don't feel that your work actually translates to your overall grade. I also appreciated how he didn't let students use the restroom during the final, mandated masks/pushed for testing, and even provided pencils if we forgot them...can't say my other professors have been as applaudable with any of that. He was also very responsive via email and was always available to provide feedback or help where needed. His class was very interesting. I would definitely recommend any of his classes and look forward to taking more with him in the future.

Very boring lecturer so it’s hard to stay engaged. Doesn’t give back grades on research paper, final, and other until minutes before the deadline, long after class is finished. TAs weren’t consistent with grading. This was a non math methods course but if it weren’t for that, I would stay away from this professor

Speer is just a great professor! He always tries to make concepts/readings as understandable as possible. The workload is really manageable and it is not too much. As long as you the readings and take notes you can definitely get an A. Also, Speer is a very nice and approachable professor who goes above and beyond to help students understand the materials!
I would definitely take another class with him.

They changed Soc 110 to Sociohistorical Methods, a methods course, and this was the first time it had been taught in this way. It was a lot of work and prof Speer was still working out the best way to teach the class. There was a midterm, a final, weekly readings of papers that used historical methods (sometimes really dense/boring), homeworks about the readings that were only graded on completeness, a final paper, and discussion section was worth 10% of the grade. You got to choose your topic for the final paper which was good. Overall I enjoyed the class and thought Speer was really great and lectures were engaging. It's a good way to get the methods requirement out of the way especially since there's no math.