Dr. Illes is a great lecturer and she is good at it, but she might be the toughest teacher I have ever met. Do not take this course if you want to have a nice GPA. The class is not easy and I personally regret taking it.
For this class, there will be several labs and lab works related to that, one conservation module each week, one midterm of multiple choice and blank filling, and a similar final.

•Some pros of the class:
you really get to know animal preservation and biodiversity, and geology in general. The lectures are clear and easy to follow, although the topics are quite broad.

•Some cons of the class:
No recording for lecture; no microphone (although tons of people at the back could not hear her very well); no curving (although mean score was low); no study list for exams (which she promised to give us one); no make-up exams; no words and main points on PPT; no late submission for assignments for any reason; no textbook

The professor does not take attendance for lectures, but it is important to go to them because the only way to catch up is relying on others' notes. She also assume that students get sick only because of contagious diseases but not being aware of other physical and mental wellnesses, and she does not let student to catch up during office hour for getting sick because that is not her problem.
The conservation modules that we need to study are meaningless and get more and more confusing. The professor assign this module and expect us to be experts, but what really matters is the questions at the end of every module that might appear on the exam.
The labs are kind of fun but I don't get why we need to do these tbh.
The exam was disastrous, because every session has their own sets of questions (because she got comments about how unreasonable the tests were from past students and now she lets TAs to make the questions), which means different degree of difficulties for each sections and different point distribution; pretty unfair. Plus, the lecture covered A LOT of details and those were on the exam. You need to memorize everything on the lecture basically. No study list makes it even harder.
There is also a story map that we need to make, which I get the intent behind is to raise awareness for endangered species, but the structure of the how project does not make sense. We need to make a very specific and detailed research outline, but the presentation of the story map should not be more than 3 minutes, but also not less than 2:50 min otherwise you will not have any credit, which is again, unreasonable.

I don't understand why other comments say that the class is easy. This class isn't hard, but it is definitely not easy. Comparing to other GEs I have taken, this is the worst one. Generally it is not very friendly to students.

Second edit:
This prof gave me a NP just because the grade calculation is wrong on bruinlearn, and the TA nor her had their precious time to double check if the grade percentage is right or not; at least they corrected it after I sent them an email. But anyways, it is just not responsible to fail a student because of their problem.

Not the most engaging class, there is a of variety of topics - no textbook makes the class a bit hard to follow. Feels like we cover a wide variety of topics and the connection between them is unclear. Besides that the labs are very manageable and the workload outside of class is very small/

Yall do not take a class with this professor. I actually took GEOG 146 (originally with Juan Herrera), however, Illes took over the class a couple of days before the start of the quarter. She completely changed the content of the class and made lectures asynchronous. I've taken another class with this professor--so have a few of my friends--and she usually makes her classes asynchronous (out of laziness). Her workload is a lot and offers no help or sympathy. On the first day of class, she made it known that this class would be challenging as most students taking this course were seniors. She is not helpful if you have questions over email and gets offended that you even had questions to ask. During pivotal moments through the quarter (the attack on the Palestinian encampment), she made it known that the midterm scores that week were unexpectedly low but she didn't care. Her tests are weirdly hard and challenging as she takes small details in each lecture to put in the exams. During week 7, she randomly let us know that we'd have a final even though she mentioned on the first day of class that there would most likely not be one. This class was originally meant to be fun and interesting but because she hates joy, she wanted to ruin it for everyone.

Tbh I originally signed up for the course because I had a bad enrollment time but I ended up loving the class. The lectures were super engaging and I loved professor Illes short stories and personal anecdotes. The field labs were super fun and I enjoyed getting to look around Sage hill and the UCLA garden. The labs are graded the harshest out of any of the class material. My tip is to start them before class if you can, that way the material is more manageable during lab. The discussions overall are chill though. My TA was nice and knowledgable but didn't really understand personal space which as a woman (or really anyone) is kind of frustrating. Some things to be cautious about. The lectures ARE NOT recorded. If you don't go to class or have a very kind peer who records the lectures for you, you will not be able to obtain the material. There is no textbook for the class which is nice in terms of both having outside material to go over. There is also no actual homework which is a plus. The exams are pretty simple, mainly multiple choice and matching. For reference I studied for about an hour and got a 100% on the midterm. The final project was fun to complete and although I disliked it at the time I'm glad the professor had us turn in portions of it throughout the quarter since it made the end presentation SO much easier to complete. I'd recommend this class to anyone since an A is easily obtainable so long as you go to lecture, complete the labs, and put effort into the final project. Plus, you'll come out of the course with tons of fun animal facts :)

While Dr. Illes was generally an engaging lecturer and the content she covered was interesting, her exams and assignments unnecessarily, and excessively abstract and vague. She is also very unresponsive through email, thus you may have to heavily rely on the TA.

For the final exam, there was not a single person that received >89%, and no, she did not curve the final grade...

This is the WORST professor I have ever taken at UCLA. I am at a loss for words of how bad she is. If I have one piece of advice for anyone reading this, DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH THIS PROFESSOR. All of my friends cruised by this class with literally any professor with flying colors. I expected the same, but boy was I wrong.

The class seems deceptively easy because the lectures are relatively straightforward and easy to grasp. It seems like pure memorization. The labs were practically a joke, having absolutely nothing to do with the course material. But still really easy and you get 100% for just completing it. Then the midterm comes around, and any nitty gritty question is asked. I got a C+ on the midterm which was 2% above the average for my TA section. I thought it must be a joke or curved, but the TA announced there would be no curve. The entire class was furious. The professor said she refused to make a study guide (I believe due to laziness) and is extremely stubborn and unresponsive to student needs.

The TA then said the final should be much easier and that the professor was listening to our feedback. She even made us a study guide, which really wasn't much of a study guide and rather any broad topic that she has ever covered, and it honestly did not help at all. The final was just as hard as the midterm, with the class average being in the low B's. For a notoriously easy GE, this is ridiculous. This professor is a mean and rude lady who does not care about her students. WORST PROFESSOR EVER!!

the exams in this class are hard. however all the lectures are recordings. my ta was really nice and the labs themselves are easy. you just need to study hard for the exams.

Overall pretty easy GE class, felt like a high school class tbh. Lab participation is mandatory, but It's just group work that you'll always get 100% in as long as you do it. The class itself is asynchronous, which was pretty nice. All you had to do each week was watch 4-5 25-50 min lectures and create 3 questions with answers for each lecture.

The structure of the class is good and manageable, the only thing I didn't really enjoy was the professor and how she lectured and created her midterm/final. Illesburg was lowkey annoying in her lectures because it felt like all she did was rant in the recordings, but its tolerable if you skip past her rants. The midterm wasn't that bad, I got around an 87% even though she changed her test structure from 90 MCQ to 85 MCQ and 5 short answer questions. She also changed the structure of the final to be around 40 MCQ and 10 short answer questions because the class voted to have more free response, which didn't work in my favor because I forgot a lot of stuff and didn't have 4 options to choose from.

I didn't take this class that seriously, as I didn't watch the lectures thoroughly until the last couple of weeks leading up to the midterm and did fine thanks to my friend's notes combined with 2x speed. My advice to pass this class would be to work together with your lab group to make notes from recorded lectures and study it thoroughly before the exams.

I don’t know if I can necessarily recommend this class. This class is an online class with a required in person lab once a week. The labs and homework assignments are so easy and you will likely get 100% on all of them. The tests, however, are pretty difficult. A lot of people did really badly on the midterm because we were given no information on what to study and what content would be on the exam. To do well on the tests, you basically need to memorize everything the prof says in all the lecture videos. Every stat, fact, and random statement is fair game to be on the exam. Overall, this class is definitely not the easiest GE you could take, but is doable.

I thought that this class was really engaging and enjoyed Dr. Illes's lectures. I liked that it was online/async and we could watch the lecture videos on our own schedule. The TAs run the in-person labs and exams, so you will never see Dr. Illes unless you go to her office hours. I loved my TA which made the labs enjoyable. You really need to take notes about every single thing in the lectures because you will be tested on it. There were some questions on the midterm that felt a little tricky, leaving not one person to get a 100%. Since many people did badly in the midterm, she decided to make the final easier. The workload was manageable, but if you take this class in the fall, keep in mind that the biggest workload will be over Thanksgiving break; you will have a group project/presentation that requires on campus work outside of class and you will have a lot of homework due. Overall I enjoyed this class and would enroll in another class of hers again, especially if it were online. Another piece of advice is to make flashcards as you go, so you don’t end up having to cram study at the last minute. One last thing: there was no textbook! I enjoyed this because my other classes were loaded with reading, so this was a nice break from that.