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.

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.

Professor Lavelle has been one of the most engaging professors I've had here at UCLA so far. His passion for the subject is infectious, making me sometimes think if I should've majored in chemistry instead. Although I love him as a person, I do feel some things could have been done better.

1. Organization
His slides are all on a powerpoint that feels like it was made 30 years ago. It's all walls of text with a few pictures every now and then that you need to quickly grasp since Lavelle moves at a rapid pace. This course is taught under the quarter system, so I'll give Lavelle some slack, but it was sometimes an uphill battle trying to simultaneously write down notes from the powerpoint while he lectures about key concepts not found on those same powerpoints.

2. Use of Lecture Time
He would sometimes spend half the class deriving an equation we'd then use on the homework when I feel it would have been better to spend that time understanding its application and meaning. He often times lost and confused me when deriving chemistry equations.

3. Exam Contents
A lot of the midterm & final questions were conceptual based that required practically no math. It made the hours I poured into doing and studying the assigned homework problems feel a little fruitless. I say "a little fruitless" because I acknowledge that his homework problems helped reinforce the concepts in my head and let me understand it better than someone who skipped the homework, but it's a bit frustrating because his syllabus explicitly states the homework mimics what will be on the exam. That was hardly the case.

All things considered, I would still say Chem14B with Lavelle was one of the best classes I've taken so far at UCLA. I truly felt like I was learning and understanding the concepts taught in class because he gives his students so many resources to become chemistry masters. There was never a doubt in my mind that he truly cares for the well-being of his students.

It truly makes me sad I'll probably never get to take another class with him again, but I'll treasure my experience in Chem14B.

Good chemistry.

He is my favorite professor ive had so far because he is an excellent teacher with decades of experience, which many many other professors here cannot claim. He is very intelligent and there is not a single chemistry question he would be unable to answer.

However, the lectures and homework and exams did not relate. I feel like I learned more in this class than any other class I've ever taken, but the exams did not allow me to demonstrate my learning because they were based on tiny little things he said in lecture, instead of difficult chemistry/math questions that required a whole page of solving (like the homework).

This is also the hardest class I've ever taken but it is not too bad since I feel like for this class (unlike many other classes with different professors) the more you study, the better you will do.

Lavelle is funny and enjoys teaching and TAs had excellent communication with the professor which made the whole class experience ideal.

Nice guy, but exams sucked. First and second midterm was like 14 questions (All multiple choice, mostly conceptual), final was 20 or so questions (also all multiple choice). He expects 16 hours of independent study per week, which is a lot when managing other classes. Don't take this class unless you're willing to sacrifice most of your time studying for it.
Lavelle also never answers emails, and did not give clear answers to TAs about exams or otherwise. I think the average for the midterms and final were all around a C. However, the final grade was curved up and above a 50% in the class is considered a pass, which is nice.

Overall I feel like my experience in this class would have been way better if not for Lavelle's tests. When I first started in the class, I enjoyed Lavelle's teaching style, thought the homework was manageable, and enjoyed the content. However, my biggest issues began with the midterms. Lavelle recently switched so that all his exams were multiple choice. Now, I already am not a fan of multiple choice exams when it comes to chemistry. I personally prefer free response so that it allows for the opportunity for partial credit. What made Lavelle's multiple choice the worst was that they were not only largely conceptual and worded very confusingly, there were also very few questions. Midterm 1 and 2 both only had 15 questions but were each worth 60 points, while the final had 25 questions and was worth 100 points. This means each question was worth 4 points and missing even a few could add a detrimental hit to your grade. To succeed in this class takes a combination of a lot of hard work and luck. Lavelle will test on material he does not cover in lecture, so, to be honest, it is extremely helpful to read the textbook and do all the optional textbook questions he assigns. Also, Lavelle does not have office hours so I found the most helpful resource to be the UA hours. While the UAs did have sessions throughout the week to also review content, I would say only spend your time going to sessions when they are midterm or final prep based. In general I did not think all the UAs were the best at explaining the material, however since they all had Lavelle in the past they did provide good practice for the exams. The one saving grace for my grade was that Lavelle did provide an extra credit opportunity at the end of the quarter, which I am super grateful for. However keep in mind, that without the extra credit opportunity accounted for, I believe you can only miss 4 multiple choice questions across the board in order to get an A in this class. Also, when Lavelle lectured I often found he went on side tangents and discussed derivations that to me seemed useless, but he did sometimes test on these so make sure you pay attention.