I took this class fall quarter of my freshman year which was online due to covid and I'm currently in 14B with Lavelle. Even though there are already a lot of reviews for Lavelle and this class, I'm gonna try to make this as unbiased as I can.

For context: I've taken honors and AP chemistry in high school so going into this class I was already pretty well versed on general chemistry but I'm gonna try to write this with consideration of those who have little to no background in chemistry.

Pros:
-Lavelle is one of the most caring and compassionate professors I've had so far and I think it's so evident even if you dont like him for other reasons you cant deny that this man truly cares about his students and wants them to succeed. Every email he sends is so heartwarming and filled with smiley faces. He is constantly encouraging students and assisting them on chemistry community in any way that he can. He even filmed all the lectures in the normal lecture hall to give us the sense that we were on campus which was a small effort but one that I think a lot of people appreciated. He also plays music at the beginning of every lecture and jams out. 10/10 Very wholesome. And he gave a lot of bonus points both in 14A and 14B (bonus questions on the midterm and an extra 10 points on the 14A final just to be kind even though he didnt have to because the average was already pretty high)

-Sooooo many resources provided by Lavelle. Basically any time of the day you want to get help you can attend an Undergraduate Assistant or TA office hours on zoom for help. Or you can ask on Chemistry Community and your question will be answered by another student relatively quickly.

Cons:
-The main con I would say is that Lavelle isnt the best lecturer. You can tell that he is very enthusiastic about what he teaches but his delivery isn't the most student friendly in the sense that he doesn't convey information the most clearly. I can say this with confidence because I'll often think back to how I learned it in high school from my AP chem teacher and see that he couldve explained it much better/clearer if he had simply done in so-and-so way instead. He's definitely not the worst lecturer but there have been times where I was confused on what he was saying even though I've learned it before.

-He always goes way over time in (virtual/recorded) lectures. Almost every lecture will be around 55 min and at least once or twice a week (out of 3 total lectures per week) they will be over an hour long. I think theyve only been under 50 minutes a few times total each quarter. This is annoying when you consider the fact that the lectures would probably be a lot shorter if they were more concise and straight to the point.

-Lack of examples in lectures is another annoying con. I feel like most students learn better by doing and seeing the concepts being applied/in action. Instead we have to do all that by ourselves in the homework and textbook problems which is annoying because for people with little to no chemistry background those problems can seem insanely difficult/confusing to do on your own the first time. When we learned electrochemistry, he barely taught us how to balance redox reactions but then all the homework problems were way more difficult and complex and required concepts he never even mentioned before in class. If I didn't have my notes from AP chemistry then I would not have been able to do them and I feel bad for the students who had to figure it out on their own because of this.

Other notes:
-The sapling homework and textbook assignments are very reflective of the exam difficulty. The midterms and exams are completely fair and not tricky at all. People just love to exaggerate in the GroupMe and say they are hard but truthfully, they are not. The averages are always 80% or above. TIP: do the textbook problems 2-3 days before the exam because you can always count on seeing AT LEAST one question copied word for word from the textbook. On one midterm prof explicitly stated that 30% of the midterm questions would be from the textbook.

-If you've taken AP chemistry in high school and didn't suck at it, you will be totally fine in this class. Itll be mainly review of AP chem. Just put in the time and effort and you will get an A. Near the end of 14A I slacked off a little to focus on my other classes and as a result I scored a little lower than normal on the final but that was expected and all my mistakes were silly ones that I could've corrected if I had just put in a little more time. The point: if you stay on top of things you'll be set.

-If you've never taken any chemistry before or only have taken a low level chemistry class in high school, honestly you're probably gonna struggle a little. There were people in my class who have never taken any chemistry before so you definitely wont be the only one but it wont be easy. If I took this class with Lavelle without any background in chem I probably wouldnt have gotten an A. Even though he starts off each new unit with "review" before moving onto the newer concepts, it still doesnt really make up for having previous chemistry knowledge. There are some things that he will simply assume you already know like molarity, how to do dimensional analysis/converting between units, what the numbers on the periodic table mean, basic polyatomics, and much more. That being said I don't know if other "better" professors will go over these things either since they are considered so fundamental to chemistry.

-DONT overlook the conceptual concepts in each unit. Even though most of the homework and textbook problems are calculation problems (depending on how math-y the unit was) the exam always has a good amount of conceptual questions which generally shouldnt be an issue if you have a good understanding of the concepts we learn and understand WHY something is happening.

There probably is another ring in Dante's Inferno specifically for Dr. Lavelle.

This man has an ego the size of the g*ddamn eiffel tower and thinks he is gods gift to the world. (ex: first day of class he played rock music or something at the beginning of class and people began to cheer thinking it would be a fun class and he literally stood in the center of the class and held out his arms as if they were giving him a standing ovation for curing cancer..)

He loves to stress how many hours of extra help are offered but neglects to mention that if you don't either know EVERYTHING from AP chem or go to ALL 23 hours/week, you wont do well in this class.

He always sped through lectures and didn't give out his slides so you couldn't go back and look at them if you missed something and he always wrote problems on the board knowing damn well that >75% of the class couldn't see the board...

He was soo obsessed with "chemistry community" basically a discussion forum where he forced us to post questions and answer them to get our participation and acted as if that was a substitute for him teaching, he wouldn't post solutions to problems and act as if he was helping us figure them out for ourselves, or that chemistry community would take care of it somehow but again neglected the fact that we had to answer questions to get credit so half the answers on there were just wrong (not people trying to sabotage you though just most people didn't understand it themselves and needed credit or even those people that *thought* they understood it and were actually trying to be helpful were often wrong).

Take this class with a different professor.

Easiness of class: If you took AP Chem in high school, it's mostly review. Quantum was unfamiliar to me, but it's conceptually pretty easy to understand.

Workload: There isn't much graded homework (there are weekly online assignments graded based on participation and weekly Chemistry Community Posts), but if you want to do well on the tests, I suggest that you do the recommended textbook problems which can take a lot of time.

Clarity: It's sometimes hard to follow along during Dr. Lavelle's lectures since he elaborates on the bullet points while you're trying to take notes on what's on the screen. Also, he always dims the lights, so try not to fall asleep or it'll make it very difficult to understand what's going on.

Helpfulness: Dr. Lavelle organizes a lot of resources outside of class including TA office hours and UA workshops. I highly recommend going to the UA workshops, especially in the weeks leading up to midterms/finals! Chemistry Community is also very helpful since someone is bound to have a similar question as you.

Overall: You get what you give!

General tips: Read the textbook or rewatch the recorded lectures if you don't understand something. Do the textbook problems. Chemistry Community has pretty thorough answers to most of the textbook problems. Most of his midterms/finals focus on conceptual problems, and he sometimes tests random details that he mentioned once in a lecture.

From even before the first day of class, Dr. Lavelle gives you the resources you need to get an A in this class. His style is very much where if you do not do well in the class, it is on you. His lectures are adequate; the real resources are the UA sessions and the textbook problems. He has UAs (undergrads who have aced this class) offer workshops, drop-in office hours, and step-up sessions to reteach the course content and to provide practice. Finding UA sessions that work with your learning style is what I recommend you do in the first couple of weeks.

Your grade in his class is composed of Achieve homework questions (unlimited attempts and takes less than 20 mins--great practice for exams though), Chemistry Community (Dr. Lavaelle's creation where you have to make 50 posts: questions, answers, chemistry memes, etc.), midterm 1, midterm 2, and the final exam. He also has a website where you can find all of the resources in one place, USE IT! Do the textbook problems and actually start studying at least four days before the exams. If you took AP Chem in high school you are already ahead, but if you didn't or if your AP Chem was a joke like in my school, don't sweat it because you can do well. :) Hope this helps

While he isn't the worst teacher in the world, he definitely wasn't great. His lectures were boring as hell and made no sense. Maybe this is just a personal problem but I didn't absorb a single thing he said in lecture, I was just scrambling to write down everything on the slides. I've taken AP chemistry in high school and I did relatively well, and I feel that Lavelle really overcomplicated the material. I found the tests to be unfair, as there were plenty of questions that were never covered in the lectures. Perhaps I should've read the textbook, but there was no reason for him to make the test that hard. The homework questions were not reflective of the test questions at all, and the chemistry community posts felt more like a hassle rather than a way of learning. I will admit that he provides a lot of resources, but it's not possible to devote all of our time to attending these sessions as we have other classes to worry about. Essentially, it's just a ton of self-studying.
As a person, Lavelle seems very kind and wholesome (though I have never spoken to him). He plays music at the beginning of lectures and includes memes occasionally in his slides, but once you see your final grade in the class you won't be feeling lighthearted. I can appreciate the effort he put in to organize workshops and step-up sessions to help us learn, but at the end of the day, I feel like he doesn't really care about his students.

f

I took this class Fall quarter of 2020 on the online format and had a terrible experience. Lavelle's lectures are clear but boring and he talks really slow. But that's not even relevant. The material feels easy/manageable during lecture and the sapling assignments. In fact, you feel like you actually understand the material! But the tests are literally the hardest tests I've ever taken. Lavelle came out and said he wrote the final to be too hard and he curved it. Still only raised my F to a D, though. Anyway, he provides a lot of study sessions with TA and LAs so definitely attend those, especially workshops. Set-ups are pretty rudimentary and not helpful for tests because the tests are anything but rudimentary. It's a shame Lavelle has been teaching here for decades and yet still thinks treating Chem 14A as a weeder is a good way to inspire undergrads, especially freshmen. He's (part of) the reason I gave up on becoming a doctor :)

When I first looked at reviews for Lavelle before taking the class, I didn't have a good opinion of him because I was just parroting off what people had said about him only caring about his metrics and the 100+ hours of chem help offered, and the success of his website chem community.
But honestly, after taking both Chem14A and Chem14B with Lavelle, that is completely false. He constantly mentions his extra help UA sessions and they are so helpful. And later in the quarter I really felt that he cared for the students as he boosted our final exam scores by 10 points when it was really hard.
His class is not a free A, but it is a very doable A if you watch lectures, go to at least 1 UA session a week, do all the textbook practice problems (he includes some in his tests).
Stats: MT1 100%, MT2 100%, Final 83%

I did not do the greatest, but I have always struggled with chemistry. He does offer a lot of help which is so worth going to. But I will say this, it is very possible to pass. He was very proud of himself for my quarter 98% of students passed his class. To pass, you just need 50% of all the points possible. I barely got over that and I got a C- so it doable!

This professor is very clear and good at explaining. There is barely any mandatory class homework. However, for this class you really have to put in a lot of work yourself if you don't have a strong chemistry background. The tests are very similar to the textbook problems so I suggest even if it is not mandatory to do all of the textbook problems. The lectures are asynchronous which is nice but make sure to stay on top of watching them and take notes of everything. The hardest part about it being online is that the tests are multiple choice and short so if you miss more than one question you are already at a B. Tests are also proctored on zoom with your TA. Although you need to put a lot of work into this class it is very rewarding. There are also tons and tons of resources if you are confused on anything.