Took this class in winter '22 along with Dr. Venkat. Dr. McEvoy is great and I enjoyed all that she had to teach! The course is split into two topics: antibiotic resistance and heat and society. Super interesting stuff! Both are great lecturers and they make the class simple to follow for examinations and whatnot if you take thorough notes during lectures. There is a relatively light workload and make sure to participate in discussions because it's 20% of your grade. Lectures are also recorded. Great class!

Took soc gen 5 with Mcevoy. She is a very typical dry professor. However, she is kind and helpful in answering questions. Beware of the amount of reading required for this class. The exams are alright as long as you did the study guide and understood all the terms. Overall, this was a pretty generic GE. I am selling the actual book of Island of Dr. Moreau for 5 dollars. Feel free to message me at **********

this class is hands down one of the most genuinely interesting courses i've taken at ucla. i took this for HBS as a prerequisite but i truly really loved it. Professor McEvoy was an engaging lecturer with clear slides and i learned a lot about antibiotic resistance. Many of the readings seemed to overlap at times, but they were very important to participating in discussion and getting those points. In most cases, I would do half the readings and I got the gist of it (you don't need to read Island of Dr. Moreau sparknotes is fine). Professor Venkat was equally amazing!!! The heat & society unit was truly so fascinating and I actually really enjoyed the readings. It was such an interesting topic that I had never learned about before.

The class breakdown is mostly participation in discussion sections, 2 unit exams that were open note and available all day, and a final paper in the structure of a congressional hearing testimony. Since there were 2 weeks where discussion was cancelled bc of holidays, we had mini assignments that discussed the readings within 300 words. There were other options like a mini podcast or visual map but writing was easiest for me. Overall, this class was so cool and really solidified that I wanna be an HBS major!!

You have been warned.

This is legitimately the worst professor you could ever take for this class. I kid you not, the testing format was the most absurd system I’ve ever seen. I composed of almost all multiple choice, and every single question was ‘Select all that apply.’ The worst part of this system was, if you didn’t select all (eg some of the correct answers but missed one), you wouldn’t receive credit for the entire question. Legitimately, the average grade on the exam was a 66% and everyone was screwed. This wasn’t just me, as someone who studied their butt off and got 100% on the FRQ’s which only accounted for maybe 30% of the test, this did me no good. I still didn’t do well in the class because of how horrible her exams are, and how unengaging she is in lectures. Take this class with another professor, I promise you it’s worth your mental health.

Don’t rely on the grading distributions, as these were all recorded during covid. The average grade in her class during my quarter was a B. Don’t recommend, literally harder than most of my STEM classes.

the class is very interesting but very hard. The unit exam was 10 times more difficult than expected and asked questions we had never heard of. the average was a D and yet there was no curve. I took this because I am HBS but I would recommend taking it with a different professor. the class is interesting tho

Not to be pretentious or a know-it-all…but I honestly think this class is pretty easy and really really interesting. You learn a lot about antibiotic resistance and why feeding it to animals is a thing/problematic at the same time, and right now we’re learning about heat and it’s super cool. I will say that the past reviews are a little bit inaccurate—you don’t need to go to lecture at all because 1. they’re recorded (without video though—just audio) and 2. they literally just read off the slide. I don’t know about Venkat, but McEvoy definitely does. If anything, just go over the slides on your own and skip the recording to a part whenever you need some explanation. And not all of the readings are necessary—they repeat pretty much exactly what’s said in lecture, with a little extra information. I just skimmed through a lot of them and skipped the ones I deemed unimportant. The weekly assignments are super easy, just about like 200-300 words (I forgot how long) and discussion is just based off of attendance, with you being allowed to skip 1 as a buffer.
I will say that a lot of the questions on the Unit 1 Exam were very specific about things she brushed over for like 2 seconds during lecture and dedicated half a slide to, and the MCQ was kind of mean (2 of the above. Not even ‘A and B’ or ‘B and C’—just 2. seriously?) but it’s not as bad as people make it out to be. I’d say this class is really insightful and worth taking.