This was a classic Lavelle class, so if you've had Lavelle before there is going to be no surprise. He has lectures that he thinks is helpful, and they are, but they don't help for a lot of the questions that he asks. He thinks he is helping, but not really. It would be like him lecturing about how to do addition, and then on the tests he is asking you do to 324 multiplied by 473. However, his grading scheme is helpful. I didn't do well on either of the midterms, and did okay on the final and was able to pass the class. TAs are super helpful, so that's who I would go to if you need help.

not the most engaging lecturer, but he has so many office hours, worksheets, TA office hours, and outside help that an A is definitely achievable if you put in the time to use his resources. His exams were a bit tougher than I expected, but if you do the textbook homework (which is optional) you can recognize some of the questions and how to approach them.

Before reading this review please know that Dr. Lavelle is in the process of reverting back to his pre COVID tests which were a bit harder than the tests we had. Our tests were still half multiple choice, but Dr. Lavelle may change this. Dr. Lavelle's class is definitely not going to be the easiest A you will get at UCLA. The material covered in CHEM 14B is defiantly much tougher than the material covered in CHEM 14A. Overall, however, Dr. Lavelle does provide with the tools needed for one to succeed in his class. His midterms and final were very fair and contained the problems provided in his syllabus (DO THEM). He also provides UA review sessions which proved to be very helpful. I will say that Dr. Lavelle's lectures themselves are not very useful and tend to be very boring. They oftentimes are spent deriving equations rather than actually doing problems. In past midterms and final he has used these derivations but not on ours. However as he is transitioning back to his pre COVID style, I would expect these lectures to be more useful. The UA sessions were by far the most useful portion of this class. They happen outside of lecture and discussion and help solidify understanding on topics. Shoutout to Gabriel! The reason I got this A was partially because I attended his UA sessions every week. Closer to midterms and finals I would definitely recommend trying to do at least 3 UA sessions to cover all your bases. Remember that just like with any class you get out of this class as much as you put into it. If you really put all your effort in, it is not a difficult class to get a B+ or A- in. Going for the A requires more effort than what is expected though so be warned.
In all honesty I am very neutral on Dr. Lavelle. I think his difficulty (or perceived difficulty) is very much to do with the fact that CHEM 14B is a jump from 14A. I would recommend taking Lavelle any day over Scerri. Good luck if you plan on taking this class!!!!

I had this professor for both Chem 14A and 14B. For me, the biggest pain was the shift in their exam types: 14A used Bruinlearn, 14B in-person on paper. The formatting of the paper exams left much to be desired, especially with the clumsiness of check-marking the multiple choice answer you wanted for your question, and that slight confusion led to some misunderstandings and hurt my scores a little.
Lavelle's lectures are recorded, great when I couldn't attend them. This term he focused the bulk of his lectures on deriving, particularly thermochemistry equations for that unit, which only clicked after I did the practice problems. Derivations were not on the exam. Focus easily strayed during lectures when he stretched such background on a couple work equations across one day's 90 minute lecture, which to be fair was warranted considering how confusing the work and entropy unit was. I felt that he assigned a lot of textbook readings and problems that overemphasized the difficulty and extent of content taught, as most of his recommended outline problems were not really in the exams. This problem was present to me for both the thermochemistry and electrochemistry unit, where I focused much attention on practice only to discover how 'easy' the real exam was. Each exam is 10-12 questions, very short, some worth partial credit. The final exam had questions for content proportional to weeks the units were taught.
While he teaches many, many equations, you will probably only use very few on the exam, so don't worry about memorization and understanding every specific residual, just get the broad strokes and particular conditions down then spend time somewhere else.
Generally alright if you have your schedule together. I never attended UA sessions and my TA was newer so I didn't really rely on him for much more than pep talks and the occasional gem of insight for practice exam questions, so you can get an A if you give a certain minimal effort here.

Dr. Lavelle's class is definitely not going to be the easiest A you will get at UCLA. The material covered in CHEM 14B is defiantly much tougher than the material covered in CHEM 14A. Overall, however, Dr. Lavelle does provide with the tools needed for one to succeed in his class. His midterms and final were very fair and contained the problems provided in his syllabus (DO THEM). He also provides UA review sessions which proved to be very helpful. I will say that Dr. Lavelle's lectures themselves are not very useful and tend to be very boring. They oftentimes are spent deriving equations rather than actually doing problems. In past midterms and final he has used these derivations but not on ours. However as he is transitioning back to his pre COVID style, I would expect these lectures to be more useful. The UA sessions were by far the most useful portion of this class. They happen outside of lecture and discussion and help solidify understanding on topics. Shoutout to Gabriel! The reason I got this A was partially because I attended his UA sessions every week. Closer to midterms and finals I would definitely recommend trying to do at least 3 UA sessions to cover all your bases.

In all honesty I am very neutral on Dr. Lavelle. I think his difficulty (or perceived difficulty) is very much to do with the fact that CHEM 14B is a jump from 14A. I would recommend taking Lavelle any day over Scerri. Good luck if you plan on taking this class!!!!

The class isn't too hard as long as you dedicate time to doing a lot of independent practice and studying. Attendance is required for discussion, but not lecture, and lectures are recorded. Discussion sections are helpful for expanding on concepts in lecture and doing practice problems. Overall the class was manageable, just do the textbook readings and practice problems he recommends!

Honestly, this class is truly about how much work you want to put in. The class itself can be difficult at times, but totally, totally manageable. I would say the worst part of this class that I am not seeing enough reviews about is the fact that his tests are in person and are hard. I guess thats subjective, but I came into the class thinking they were going to be a similar format to what he did in 14A, where we had multiple questions that varied in difficulty level, but that were all worth 4 points. In 14B, its almost all free response, and the tests are on paper, meaning you have to really really know exactly what you need to do. Each midterm is out of 60 points and often the midterms each had one 12 point question. It was normally extremely hard, so if you got it wrong, you would get a 48/60 which is an 80. You don't think its that bad until you realize that you can only miss 26 points in the whole class if you want to get an A. The class is out of 370 points and you need a 344/370 to get a 93 because he doesn't round up lol. Be prepared to spend stupid amount of time on this class if you want to do well.

Dr. Lavelle is super sweet and very knowledgable in his field of study. His lectures and presentations were always well prepared and he goes at a decent pace. Homework consists of weekly or sometimes bi-weekly questions on Achieve (usually 10-20 questions) that you have unlimited attempts on (you can get 100% if you just make sure to get all the right answers by the due date!) It is annoying that there are 2 sets of midterms but they are evenly spaced out and are only an hour long. Doing the mandatory Chemistry Community questions on a weekly basis does get annoying at times and it feels forced when we have to ask questions, when sometimes I don't even know what to ask! But overall, Dr. Lavelle provides a plethora of resources that are very flexible for all students and he really does want all his students to succeed.

This class consists of two midterm exams, one final exam, weekly homeworks, attendance at discussion sections, and participation in the online chemistry forum. The tests are not overly difficult, and the participation based assignments give you a good amount of buffer in your grade.

Lavelle's lectures are very clear, and he never puts anything on exams that was not explicitly covered in class. The exams are often very similar to the textbook problems, so students who do all the weekly problems can succeed easily. Additionally, the UA sessions offer great support to students who need extra help.

This was a great class and I recommend taking it with Lavelle!

I do think that with CHEM 14A there are enough resources to succeed. That being said, I do think you really need to read the textbook to do well in this class. The review sessions are not that equivalent to the tests he gives. The TAs and LAs tend to just reuse textbook questions which honestly do not show up as much as people claim they do. Achieve is more helpful that people give it credit for. Honestly, I thought it was more effective than the homework questions and maybe equally reflective. This is one of those classes where you just need to devote a lot of time to do well on. Make sure to really understand the concepts of the class. The workload is not bad whatsoever, very manageable but you will need to do lots of outside review should you want a good grade.