I took Animal Geography (112) and African Ecology (135) with Illes. Both classes were great, not too hard, and very interesting. I recommend 112 more, I found it more interesting, probably because animals are Illes' specialty. African Ecology & Development turned out to be about 90% development and hardly any ecology or connection to the environment, which I probably would have found more interesting, but it was still an extremely educational class. Take both or any other class Illes teaches, she is an awesome professor and is easy to get a good grade in if you go to lecture. You have to go to lecture because she doesn't post any slides and the readings aren't covered on exams, but it's worth it because they're usually interesting and if you do go to lecture you won't have much to study for and can get an A on the exam.

I took both Geog 112 and 135 with Illes this past quarter, and loved both, especially 112. I was pleasantly surprised at what a great lecturer she was - she is one of those rare people who has an infinite amount of knowledge about absolutely everything the class is about, including the tiniest details, so she was able to lecture for the full 3 hours of lecture with no notes or reading off of anything. She just talked about what she knew, which made the lectures much more interesting and animated. That being said, she would give at least one, usually two breaks during the lecture because it was 3 hours long, which I really appreciated. So by the end of the week you didn't have a crazy amount of material. She was also very reasonable with homework assignments, with a very manageable reading load and just a one page response each week. Exams were very doable, completely based off her lecture and graded very fairly. I really appreciated how concerned she was with students, being one of the only professors I've had who didn't assign extra reading and work on midterms and finals week to let us study. Overall, extremely knowledgeable and a great lecturer and fair teacher.