Professor Deifel is by far the best Chemistry 20A professor out there. Although his class was at 8 am, he was always full of energy which certainly kept me awake. He is hilarious, kind, and so incredibly helpful. He allows you to text him through his Google Voice number with any questions you may have. This has been a huge help for me during times that I couldn't make it to office hours. He cares about his students and he is always willing to help by opening extra office hours and review sessions. There is only one homework due a week, 2 midterms, and 1 final. If you take this class, please take advantage of his office hours! I cannot recommend his class more!

Review:
Prof: Deifel is a nice guy. He genuinely cares about the content and genuinely wants you to learn. However, he is really scattered during lectures. It’s hard to determine sometimes what’s important or if he’s just going off on a tangent. His lectures have a weak structure and could really benefit from some guidance, although it is his first quarter teaching. I think his lectures could follow more of a structure like, explain the theory and why we use it where it came from etc., application of concept in problems, then proceed with a tangent based on his experience in different fields of chemistry. That being said he is fair with his midterms and gives you practice problems that might be of similar difficulty to the exam. I highly suggest going to his office hours if you do not understand a concept because he would be happy to explain it to you.

Class:
The class is pretty straightforward. Homework, mandatory discussion, mandatory lecture (at 8 am was death) 2 midterms (They are pretty long) and a final (very long). The homework is long and annoying sometimes. The discussions are super helpful and mandatory so just go to them, don’t skip. He makes lecture mandatory and does check ins based on iclicker. However, during my quarter, he did not know how to use it properly, so we used it once. He talks about giving pop quizzes sometimes and I believe it mentions it in the syllabus, but he hasn’t actually given us a pop quiz that was worth any points during my quarter (might be different for future quarters).

Extra Notes: Just some extra stuff, the easiness bar might be a bit biased this quarter, before our final the TA’s said that the chem department said that Deifel’s class avg was too high so he had to make the final harder. So following quarters, it might not be as easy. Additionally, I used to watch Huiling Shao’s she posted online from Winter Quarter 2023 lectures right after attending a Deifel lecture. It would really help, Deifel would give you an overview and what he expects from you, and then you could learn the more detailed stuff after by watching Huiling Shao’s lecture. If you want to learn the content thoroughly or are just interested in chem, I suggest doing the same, here’s the playlist:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1OwzlifIAf2muZQd7v4RAJ79in96fW3&si=FvF3jNwxwpqoHgwh

Overall, I highly recommend taking Chem 20A with Deifel its clear he is super knowledgeable in many fields of chemistry and has a lot of experience and passion for the subject. I have never met a teacher that cares as much for his students as he does. Take it with him if you can because Deifel is a good person.

I had to take this class at 8am because all other professors had chem times that conflicted with a mandatory intro class for my major, and it's one of the best things that has happened to me. Listening to horror stories about Scerri makes me so glad I got Deifel instead.

Participation matters, but only in that you need to attend the discussion sections to get credit, and you don't even really need to be paying attention in the discussion sections to be honest. It's purely attendance-based, and I spent a couple discussion sections just zoning out the entire time. My TA was great! I just despise chem.

Attendance was not mandatory, although it was initially supposed to be part of our grades. This might change in other quarters, but this is mainly because iClicker didn't work for our class. If it did work, Deifel would have had iClicker questions as part of participation during the lectures to monitor attendance. Keep this in mind if this is offered as an 8am again. Also, lectures are not recorded.

You have to buy the textbook since the homework is on OWL, but I think that's the case for all 20a classes. Office hours are great, make sure you go to them if you have trouble understanding anything. Deifel can be somewhat unclear and rambly in lecture when he gets more passionate about the subject, but in a smaller setting, he's really helpful with explaining things and he'll go over sample problems. It's also a good way for him to get to know you better.

Homework is difficult and tedious unless you submit a blank page and use the solutions to solve. Then it's easy. You get a ton of checks on OWL too, so it's great, and whenever there's a glitch with the program where it won't accept certain answers, he makes sure to let everyone know. I also submitted homework 5 minutes late before and I was worried he'd be hard on the deadline but I asked him about it and he didn't care at all. Just don't make it a habit. Technically, I probably could've been later and it still would've been fine. He gives homework extensions a lot if you ask for it and have a good reason.

He also gave out his google home number so that you can text him if you have questions. I found that really nice of him--he's super accessible and invested in your learning. Definitely the best professor I've had so far at UCLA.

If I could take chemistry with Deifel again, I would. Attendance and homework is worth majority of your final grade, making midterms and the final not make that much of an impact on your final grade. This is especially helpful since homework assignments are pretty easy to get a 100 on since you can redo all the questions until you get them right. Besides that, he holds review sessions before midterms, which are extremely helpful since he goes over similar problems and topics he would cover on the midterms. From my experience with his exams, they were all extremely manageable and he genuinely prepares you for what you see on the exams. Although lectures can be pretty confusing and you have to teach yourself most of the time topics you don't understand that well, he has office hours many days in the week and loves connecting with his students, so he loves helping his students! Overall, Deifel is extremely reasonable, helpful, funny, and supportive. Take him if you can!

Deifel is one of the most caring Professors on campus. He is very passionate about teaching chemistry and is dedicated to his students. He has a lot of office hours and he is very responsive. 50% of the grade is based on homework and discussion attendance. His lectures are engaging and funny. I would recommend you take the professor, Deifel makes Chemistry fun.

Deifel was honestly one of the best and funniest professors I've had at UCLA so far. I'm a math major so I had to take a chem class and I didn't know what to expect coming in with a new prof but he turned out to be amazing. The workload is manageable and I never really read the textbooks and did fine on exams. Remember the rules of sigfigs for the exam questions though! The tests are pretty fair in my opinion and Deifel even holds review sessions for each and goes over what he'd tests which was super helpful. Overall a funny and fantastic professor. Would 100% recommend.

Amazing professor who is really passionate about chemistry and about helping his students understand as much as possible, even in hard to understand concepts like quantum physics. He is super supportive for his students and knows several by first name basis despite 200+ class size. Overall, take his class!!

great teacher. great vibes. material is not hard it's just new. basically a rave in his office hours

TL;DR: Highly recommend this class and professor! This class transformed my uncertainty (borderline distaste) about chemistry into appreciation and comfortability.
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General Workload: 9/10. Workload was pretty decent and manageable. In terms of specific assignments that were not exams or personal studying, we had weekly HW that took roughly 3-5 hours per week at MAX. If the class had trouble with assignments or found that deadlines weren't manageable, it was very easy to communicate with Dr. Deifel and have them reasonably extended!
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Grading Scheme: 9/10. Offered a reasonable balance of formative assessments (HW, etc.) and summative assessments (midterms and final). The weight for participation (discussion attendance, etc.) matches that for the final (25% discussion attendance and work, 20% final). Other categories are also easy to get full points in as long as you put in effort and go to office hours consistently (25% HW, 30% midterms).
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Readings/Textbook: 7/10. I'd say that the textbook can be helpful to supplement lecture material since they proceed pretty quickly! I also found that the readings could be substituted with extra time in office hours instead, where you could practice different assessment problems and apply skills. However, the textbook was necessary because HW assignments were assigned through the online textbook platform (Cengage).
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Quizzes/Exams: 8/10. Midterms were extremely reasonable for the covered material and didn't contain anything unexpected. Something really helpful that Deifel did before the midterm was hold topic review sessions a few days beforehand. During these, we discussed how to work on certain problems relevant to the listed study topics, as well as reviewed certain conceptual ideas that would be helpful. As of this review, the results of the final are TBA (formatted as 1 hour MCQs, 2 hour FRQs). Occasional tricky conceptual questions, but most of the FRQs were straightforward and mimicked problems covered in office hours or the textbook.
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Material: 8/10. Material is a fair difficulty and doing the textbook HW is essential to doing well in the class. my biggest recommendation would be going to office hours, which are held consistently throughout the week and for long hours. Deifel + the TAs put in a lot of effort into making sure students were supported.
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Lectures: 7/10. Lectures are decently organized. However, sometimes Deifel would get a bit excited and go over advanced chemistry class topics that aren't 100% necessary for 20A (like the real-world job applications of spectroscopy).
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Support: 10/10. Deifel + the TAs value supporting students and hold review sessions for midterms. My biggest takeaway from this class is that you will be 100% supported if you put in even the slightest effort to email questions, go to office hours a few times, etc. TA Cohen was specifically super, super helpful during discussions because she created study guides for difficult topics and was relatively available for office hours / by email.

Amazing teacher. Very manageable workload as long as you don't wait until the last minute to do homework assignments. You do have to pay for the textbook, since he uses Cengage. And 50% of our grade is based on homework and attendance, which are both very easy to get 100% on. Overall, a great teacher and I would definitely take him again if I could.