Overall, Dr. Lavelle is a mediocre professor. You'll end up teaching yourself most of the course and he spends practically all class integrating equations that you'll be given on the test. He likes to talk about his many hours of review sessions, and they are helpful, though mostly for the midterms and calculation based problems. The two midterms were relatively easy and as long as you review textbook problems and chemistry community you should be good. Be careful though because you can only get 6 questions wrong all quarter to have an A. On that note, the final is honestly just a bunch of tricky conceptual questions. His wording is honestly pretty terrible and its almost like he's trying to get you marked off points on technicalities. I think this over convolution really makes it hard to prepare because you get all these calculation practice problems and then he throws some obscure concepts you've seen, but are in the back of your brain. Overall, its a manageable class but Lavelle is definitely not as good as a lot of people say.

I personally do not like chem at all, so this class was difficult for me. Either I'm not a good test taker or the material is not sticking for me. I did not take AP chem during high school and only took it for one year so I did not have a great background, but this was a struggle for me. He offers a lot of points and step up review sessions, but I still performed poorly on his tests.

Chem 14B is probably the hardest class I've taken so far, but Lavelle is a good professor who offers a ton of resources. His lectures are mainly focused on derivations, which can be boring, but the sheer number of out of class resources make the class material learnable. I personally loved the Step Up sessions and learned how to solve most problems there. His tests are really hard. They are all multiple choice with options a through f (none of the above is the answer sometimes) and will have you questioning everything you thought you knew. Each midterm is worth about 16% of your grade and the final is about 32%. The other about 40% is easy points from discussion participation and homework (which has unlimited attempts). Biggest advice is to do the textbook problems and go to as many LA led learning session as possible. Thermodynamics is really hard and the class is overall pretty time consuming if you want to do well, but Lavelle is a good professor who cares a lot about his students.

Prof Lavelle is a sweet old man and you can tell that he loves his job and he loves to teach. That being said, I personally didn’t really enjoy his teaching style. His lecture felt a bit slow to me and I disliked that weekly forum posts counted for credit. All of the exams were multiple choice, which sucked because there were 12-13 questions and getting 1 wrong brings you down like 8%. I remember plugging in 4.18 instead of 4.186 for the heat capacity of water and getting an answer that wasn’t listed, so I picked “none of the above” and got the question wrong even though my steps were all correct. I personally wouldn’t take this class again but it comes down to personal preference, there probably are people who like the way the class is set up because of how much padding is built into the grading scheme.

Lavelle gives an abundance of resources. There are always TA or UA sessions that you can attend if you feel behind. However, he is a little unclear in the lectures and he often goes off on tangents. 14b is a lot less fun than 14a because it is less conceptual and just a ton of calculations. Overall, Lavelle is a solid teacher to take this class with.

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.

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!

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!

Lavelle isn't a great lecturer. He practically whispers and anyone can hardly hear anything he is saying. Additionally, Lavelle spends too much time discussing things that are irrelevant to the objectives we need to master for the tests. His tests were not that hard. He pulls test material from the textbooks but I couldn't do well on them most of the time because he is such a bad lecturer and I had to teach myself everything. I will say that he is a sweetheart and offers many resources to help students but the execution in lectures is just not there and you will find yourself teaching yourself the material.