Took 14A with him in fall and continued with him in winter, and I'd say I had a very similar, overall super positive experience. In short, I feel Lavelle is super fair. His lectures are clear and his slides/notes he writes are very good. Even simply copying them down while listening to lecture was enough imo as I could go back and review the notes and understood them well.

I definitely don't think going to lecture is enough to do well on the exams because he teaches concepts and some of the more basic problems. However, his lectures are super aligned with the textbook and he assigns specific practice problems (optional, but definitely fo them). I'd typically read the section and do the practice problems before attending the lecture associated with them, and that helped me stay on top of the class super well.

I didn't attend the UA sessions but I heard they were super useful. Even though I didn't attend, each UA would post weekly worksheets and answer keys so they were soo helpful in studying for the exams. There were at least 2 instances I can think of where the exam tested a concept that I went over in a UA worksheet a couple hours before taking it.

The only major downside is that there's not a lot of room for error, and some of the questions can be worth a lot. Partial credit is offered though, and the questions are all fair. Some come directly from the textbook, and even the more conceptual ones are not too challenging. Time isn't really an issue either so plenty of time to check your work. No surprises at all. I got a 56/60 on the first midterm and he added an extra 4 points to that one so 60/60, then 58/60 on the second and 116/120 on the final. Several students got hundreds on the exams so it's super doable.

Be prepared to do some self studying to supplement the lectures and you'll do well.

Dr. Lavelle is a great lecturer, and you can really tell how passionate he is about chemistry. He always comes to class with a smile on his face, puts on some intro music and does a little jig before class begins, and embraces all topics and questions with a positive attitude. Many people say that Lavelle is slow and boring, but both quarters that I've taken his class we've actually been ahead of schedule. He speaks at an understandable pace in my opinion. If it happens to be too slow for you, the lectures are recorded and posted on BruinLearn so you can set that puppy to 2x speed if you wish. One pet peeve I had about Lavelle's teaching was that he'd spend a lot of lecture time deriving equations using calculus or all kinds of substitutions, but these were never tested nor discussed again, we just got the already-derived versions on an equation sheet. Compared to Chem 14A, the tests in 14B were quite a step up in difficulty. Free response took over the exam format and the weight of those are quite heavy compared to that of multiple choice. The practice problems he recommended from the textbook were extremely useful and the weekly homework was very manageable. Everything on the exams is discussed in class, so there's no trickery there. Overall, I would recommend taking this class with Dr. Lavelle!

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.

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.

Took this for my major, it was a continuation of 14A so I knew what I was getting into, and it's all basically a repeat of high school chemistry, but since I took this as a sophomore, it's been a while since I did chem (especially since I took it 4 years prior when the pandemic started). The LAs are amazing and so so so useful, definitely go to as many sessions as you can because there's so many problems from the textbook to review and it gets overwhelming, fast. Lavelle is a nice professor, and both times I took him he curved the grading up so more people passed (he wants as many to pass as possible). I think this class was good, especially to take it at the same time as 14BL, but obviously if you're taking this you are doing so because you have to, so good luck!

If I had to choose between shooting my left foot or taking this class, I would shoot my right foot also. Laurence has the characteristics and quality of a houseplant, except I think they get more sunlight than he does. Actually, I think a houseplant could teach this class better than he does. In fact, if he ever were to get an award for teaching it would be for rambling because that is about all he does well. And, to make matters worse, his tests are nothing like the practice tests. You would think that, in all his generosity and lovingkindness, he would at least throw in a couple familiar questions. He eats your sufferings for breakfast. He does not care.

Dr. Lavelle is such a sweet, funny guy, but his lectures just were not as helpful as they could have been for his tests. He was an engaging and clear lecturer that broke down chemistry really well with easy-to-understand analogies and jokes, but for thermodynamics, much of his lectures were deriving equations, but we never needed to derive equations for the exam. I wish he could have spent his lecture time going over the conceptual understanding that is necessary for success on his test. His exams are very short, so you can only really miss a question or two to come out with a good score. Doing all the assigned textbook question in the syllabus is a MUST. There's a lot of questions, and it's extremely time consuming (almost all my homework time was spent on this), but you just have to push through them. He doesn't check them or give credit for them, but they will prepare you for the calculations on the test extremely well. He often includes a syllabus textbook question on the exams, too. If you complete those textbook questions and go to some of his peer review problem solving sessions for the subjects you need extra help on, you'll be all good to go for the math questions on the tests! For the conceptual questions... I don't know. Good luck. I missed a lot of points with those and didn't know what to do. When I went to him for help, he just said that the best way to prepare for the exams is to just do the textbook problems on the syllabus and go to the problem solving sessions, but this only helps with the math, and half of the test is conceptual... It is also worth noting that he said that each unit would be allotted an equal amount of questions on the final, but it ended up being mostly thermodynamics, which was the subject that students tested poorest on during the midterm and struggled with most. He ended up curving our final up by a generous amount, which saved my life and grade.

That being said, he has great energy and starts every Friday lecture with music and a little dance, which helps.

Lavelle is a very confident lecturer and definitely thinks he is doing what is best for his students with his website, but his lectures are fairly confusing and this is accompanied by very difficult only multiple choice exams.

Even if you feel confident in your chem knowledge in the class, his exams are very tricky and usually have material that was not covered in lecture. Since exams are the only thing in the grade book aside from participation (extra credit at the end usually because he needs to curve the grades), your grade in the class in my opinion does not properly reflect how you feel about the material.

I loved Dr. Lavelle. He is so sweet and cares about student learning. However, it is unhelpful when he goes ahead. This quarter, Dr. Lavelle got like a week ahead, which was great because we got to review, but I was so behind on the textbook readings and I didn't understand what was going on in class or the discussions. This was very stressful. I think that it would have been more helpful to either follow the syllabus or structure the class to have a review week from the start.
All of the textbook readings was just a lot. If you take this class, make sure you keep up with the textbook and GO TO EVERY CLASS. This is not a class you want to get behind in. After every lecture, go home and make sure you understood everything. Go to discussion and the step-up sessions. It was hard but you can do better than I did if you make sure you keep up with everything and read the textbook. Also, Lavelle *says* his tests will be very math intensive and to do all the textbook problems, but they're really more conceptual. Don't focus on doing every single textbook problem. I would say definitely focus more on concepts and understanding what is going on and the meaning of everything.

I don't know if it is just how my brain works or something but this was the worst grade and most struggle I've ever had in any class. I got an A+ in 14A and an A in 14bl so I don't think that it is the chemistry that I am not understanding but for some reason, I can not wrap my head around the tests. He says that they will be just like the textbook but I spent hours in the library doing every single suggested problem in the textbook and went into the exams confident that I could do all of the calculations in the textbook but the midterms had 15 questions total with like 12 being conceptual and 3 being similar format to the textbook, and none of the 12 conceptual questions were really covered anywhere ( I read the textbook in detail too). Other people didn't seem to struggle too hard with this class but for some reason, no matter how much studying I did, I got two C's and an F on the final. He did scale cause I ended up with a B- which everyone says I should be grateful for but I've never struggled so hard just to get a 54 on the final. He does not give you any practice tests or indication of how he will test, and he will not show you what you got wrong. What's the point of a midterm if you can't even study the concepts you didn't understand and improve on them for the later exams? Isn't that the whole point of teaching something? To allow students to learn?? I am so salty.