Idk who will actually read this since all MSE majors have to take this class, but it might as well be documented how much of a mess this class was in winter 2022

This class needs to be redesigned. Pozuelo basically said hurry up and pick a project with little guidance whatsoever, but we quickly learned that if you're not characterizing something metallic or alloy-based, there is pretty much no equipment available to do the necessary tests to identify your materials. However, if you pick something not containing metals, she seems to be much more chill with presentation feedback since apparently if she doesn't have much experience with your topic, she won't have much criticism for you (or helpful feedback). Since my group was analyzing a polymer structure, we basically suggested wildly complicated and lowkey bunk characterization methods that she didn't have enough knowledge about to question, and we did pretty alright lol. If you pick metals, which she knows very well, she will probably rip your presentation apart regardless of quality, picking apart the most meaningless things. The papers end up being stupidly long and you will likely end up with absurd levels of criticism for formatting things that don't even stay consistent between the mid-quarter and final report. Your final report will basically be the same thing as the mid-quarter report except with way more sources and maybe a bit more data

Ultimately, the department is trying to get this class accredited by ABET after it lost its accreditation a couple years ago, so if the prof is pushing for things that seem trivial and meaningless, that's probably why. This class needs more clarity and direction if she's going to be so picky about everything

This is probably an age-old story, but the professor is a nice person who makes life hell as the teacher of this class. Her grading is completely subjective and is probably dependent on her day to day mood. Her grading scale started as not good, good, excellent and eventually devolved into very good but not excellent, ok, and a bunch of other subgrades that never really made any sense with the amount of feedback given

This class is not hard content, but the lab reports are miserable because she is extremely picky and inconsistent with the criteria. ALSO, she likes to do this thing where she discusses the grade for each lab report in front of the entire class, so if you screw up, she will likely roast your entire group in a public forum. Even if you do well, she might find something to pick on and roast you for that as well. The material itself is boring but it's not too big of a deal. Clear out your day for the lab reports because that will be a massive time sink in this class

I pretty much agree with the first review! Pozuelo is absurd. I've gone through almost 4 years of undergrad in ucla and never met any professor like her before. She's nicky-picky to an extent that is driving people crazy. I was in her another class where I got points deducted for the midterm because I didn't use a ruler to draw vertical line down to the x-axis when reading a plot, which has log(time) as its x-axis. The unit increment was 100 min and the line fell between 100 and 200 and i wrote 150. She said the answer was 120 and only gave me one point for that question, the reason being "if you use a ruler and draw a straight line, you should've got 120 not 150". I think that's enough explaining her absurdity.
Now, let's talk about why she shouldn't be a lecturer. Her lecture is no more than just directly reading off her slides. You learn nothing more from her. She spends on average 1 min per slide and often dismisses the class early. She flies through the slides, going through a broad scope of topics but only touching the surface level of each. Her evaluation of each topic is always less than (at maximum equal to) the words on the ppt. Students learn nothing from her lectures.
The previous reviewer commented that the 140A needs to be redesigned. However, I think the problem of MAT SCI 140A - Winter 2022, COMPLETELY lies on Marta Pozuelo. She only went through her few-of-words slides and provided zero guideline, but she expected EVERYTHING FROM YOU!!!! Unlike regular classes with hw, midterm, final, the freedom of capstone only augmented her absurdity. You will never meet her expectation because she only tells you three when she has ten million requirements from you. The idea of the capstone is ok. It's just the professor that made it a hell.

I was in the same project group as the other review here, and I concur with everything that they said. Professor Pozuelo clearly had favorites in the class, and my group was not one of them. Her research is in metals, and it was blatantly obvious that she favored the groups that did projects on metals (ex: giving them effusive praise during presentations, while my group did not get any of that despite following her instructions and putting in the work). My group studied a tempered-glass screen protector and sought to improve its optical and mechanical properties, and it appeared that she was very unfamiliar with our topic. For example, she was confused that we would want to optimize transmission of visible light yet also account for blue-light filtering. Even though optics is not her field of expertise, I was very surprised that she asked that question. I think the class would be more effective if the professor had a breadth of knowledge of topics that would useful for advising students on their projects.

In addition, she had very arbitrary grading that she would not explain. For example, in my group's final presentation, I read off the slides and she (rightfully) criticized me for it. I ended up getting a B in the class, while the rest of my groupmates got A-'s and B+'s. While I was not the most involved in the project, I took an active role and I don't think reading off of the slides warrants that much of a grade decrease. I emailed her politely asking why I got the grade I did, and she wouldn't directly address my question, only mentioning that I shouldn't have read off the slides. In contrast to my situation, I know there were a few students (in different groups from me) who put in very little work and never came to lab meetings to the point where Pozuelo noticed, and they got A's and A-'s. She should have provided a rubric to explain how the final grade was determined, otherwise it appears to be very subjective.

This is a review for MSE 104, which isn’t listed yet. I thought she was a decent professor, but not super engaging and sometimes hard to understand. Her tests were tricky and often focused on tiny details. A lot of the information on the tests came directly from lecture and were really hard to find anywhere else, so it was pretty important to pay attention in lecture. She was super nice and tried to learn everyone’s name. If you’re super interested in materials science I would definitely go to her office hours and talk to her about the detailed stuff! If not, you can probably take this class and just read the textbook and do just fine. I thought it was a little harder than I would’ve hoped for this class. The grade scheme was very nice (2 quizzes, 1 midterm, HW, final).

The class material is very manageable, but her grading unnecessarily picky. Even if you get the right answer on your homework or midterm, you might end up with a low score because of wrong graph readings (if you read 550C instead of 560C on a super rough scale, for example). Or, your short answer doesn't hit the specific vocabularies she is looking for. You will have no idea what grade you have the entire time. The rubric is not clear at all.

Amazing teacher, puts in a lot of effort to make sure her students learn!

Pozuelo was a kind person and clearly knowledgeable about materials science, but she really was not good at lecturing. I didn't watch most of her lectures and chose to read slides and the textbook instead, but it was abundantly clear in the few hours I did spend that she simply does not know how to explain stuff in a way that is appropriate for an introductory class. The lecture alternated between basic level info that you probably already know to higher level info that was clearly not useful nor testable, with not nearly enough time spent at an intermediate level appropriate for the course. Far too frequently there would be questions on the homework that were absolutely not answerable with the content given in lecture, as if she somehow expected us to read 50 pages of the textbook every week as well as attend the lectures. The textbook, btw, is actually great and absolutely reading it is a great way to learn, but the quality understanding you can get from the book is way overkill for what the class actually requires and I stopped reading the book when I realized it was not time effective. Back to homework, the problems were a strange blend of dense computation and straight up short response to conceptual questions, in such a way that made it completely unclear what the professor wanted you to actually know. There were two quizzes, a midterm, and a final, of which the first two to occur were pretty darn hard, and the second two were way easier. There was a curve at the end of about 1/3 of a letter grade, which was annoyingly small.

TLDR; the course was poorly organized and unclear in its objective, and the lecturing by the professor was not worth watching. I would avoid Pozuelo.

Most of the time TAs run this class and the professor only shows up during your presentations. Many people say that the way the professor critiques your presentations and reports is very random. I (more or less) do agree cuz sometimes when I read her comments on our presentations and lab reports I get confused as if there's nothing else for her to criticize and she's intentionally looking for something to criticize. Her labs are poorly designed because in all of the lab sessions we probably spent more time waiting for our turn than actually doing the lab itself. Furthermore, it is so hard to get meaningful data in some of the experiments because of poor lab preparation and equipment. People say this is TA's fault but I was given the impression the TA also received very little instruction from the professor. But to be honest it is hard to teach a class in a lab format so I guess I can't blame the professor too much. It is sometimes frustrating to do the work in this class but I guess that's just what actually happens when you do materials science experiments in real life. On the plus side, you do get to visualize what you are learning in 131 so I'll say this class is pretty useful.

The subject itself is a lot in one go so you will feel rushed. The TA's do a bad job at explaining so I suggest talking to the professor. Tests are open book/open note so I suggest taking notes on paper or print the slides. The homework was strange in the sense it would have some computational stuff then short answer so it feels so jumbled and disorganized, and when you ask the TA's they give such non-helpful hints and the prof won't answer homework questions. Sometimes the homework/tests ask for things not on the slides so read the textbook. There is a tiny curve she gives you as leeway but its not a lot. If you can avoid Pozuelo for this class do it but if you have to I suggest be prepared to do a lot of reading the textbook and learning yourself.

Homework 10%
2 Quizes 30%
Midterm 25%
Final 35%
2% EC for filling out the evaluation survey thing