Dr. Turlo is clearly passionate about this course, and is a compassionate and kind person. I learned something new everyday, and I learned useful skills on analyzing research and learning to interpret things myself. I liked how we learned about relevant things, like COVID-19, vaccines, and the media surrounding it. It was also helpful to hear from guest speakers about their experiences in the field of biomedical research. Lectures on the grant and publishing process helped me solidify that I don't want to be a biomedical researcher, but I still benefited from taking this course.
I LOVED that Dr. Turlo made lecture so accessible, having recordings, live zoom lectures, and live in person lectures. This was a pretty easy GE, I only got a B+ because I turned in my last problem set late and I don't think my TA graded it lol but if you turn in your assignments in on time you'll be fine.

This class was very enlightening for me, it covered issues of inequities in STEM and the basics of research. The class itself was pretty dense workload-wise. There was a quiz every lecture, but the professor said she might change it to once a week in the future, and there were assignments called problem sets. In terms of quizzes, they are multiple choice and sometimes are worded pretty vaguely and it can be difficult to know what Dr. Turlo is asking, but for the questions that affect the majority of the class, she usually takes them off/gives everyone the points for it. In terms of the problem sets, they are written assignments. Depending on the TA, the problem sets may be graded very rigorously. The problem sets themselves took the place of midterms and the Final was pretty similarly structured to those problem sets. I would recommend taking advantage of the office hours, Dr. Turlo and the TAs will clarify what they are looking for in the problem sets if you ask. I would also recommend having a basic understanding of biology, as learning key biological concepts all at once can be a bit jarring, but the TAs try to fill the students in on the bio context during discussion. I would not consider this class to be an easy A, but if you're interested in the topics I would highly recommend, this class was very enlightening regarding research and diversity in STEM.