Professor Deifel is hands down the best professor I’ve ever had at UCLA. I’ve now taken three classes with him (Chem 20B, 30B, and 30AL) and each time, I’ve come away learning so much and actually enjoying the process. He’s incredibly passionate about chemistry, and it shows in the way he teaches and interacts with students. He makes challenging topics approachable and never makes you feel bad for asking questions.

What stands out most is how much he cares about his students’ success. He’s super approachable during office hours, always happy to re-explain concepts or just chat about chemistry and life. His lectures are engaging and filled with helpful insights that connect the theory to real applications. Plus, the labs are structured in a way that you actually understand what you’re doing rather than just following steps.

Even when things get hectic or disorganized (which is common in any lab course), Deifel is always flexible, understanding, and willing to adjust deadlines to help students. If you ever have the chance to take a class with him, I cannot recommend it enough. He’s truly one of those professors that makes a lasting impact on your education.

Deifel was super understanding and an awesome professor! I had to miss one of the labs for a graduation, and it was not a hassle. In some of my other labs classes like 20L or 30AL, that would've been trickier. The prelabs and post labs are PDFs, which is nice, so you didn't need a carbon copy notebook. Diefel explains all of the labs ahead of time during the lectures, helping us know what to do, and some background context. The workload is pretty manageable because the lab is only once a week. Overall, I would definitely take again, the labs are fun and Deifel is great!

I would say this class was a good work load and overall a not too stressful class. However the data sometimes would come out late causing stress but Professor Deifel always pushed back the deadlines. The class at times was chaotic but Deifel always had office hours and is very passionate about this course and his students. He never wants to fail students and it helps on the exam if you go to his office hours and ask questions or just listen. The final had all the content he reviewed, and nothing was out of the blue or unexpected. Overall amazing teacher!

Dr. Deifel is an interesting guy. He's not an awful professor and knows somewhat about the subject. However, I'm not sure if it is CHEM 30BL or Deifel specifically, but the class was the most unorganized class I've ever. taken. Our data from our experiments would always be uploaded late (in fact our last lab was waived because the data was not ready until finals week) and the experimental procedure was somehow wrong. So much so that our TA would frequently tell us to do something differently. The lectures being at 8am also did not help matters but that's not on the fault of the prof. Back to the assignments, they are graded pretty harshly (prelab and postlabs). From what I've heard from other students, the labs would also be graded differently, with some people being knocked out points while others would not despite having nearly identical answers. Class structure wise, there is no midterm and one final worth 30% of your grade. The rest of the class is made up of lab assignments and required lecture attendance (5 or 10% I forget). For attendance you have to sign your name and UID on a piece of paper that gets passed around in class.

Deifel is an interesting professor. Firstly, he’s very caring professor who cares about your chemistry learning and is quite a fun guy. He’s willing to really help his students. He is probably one of the most disorganized professors I have (had him twice). He is really bad with deadlines, class organization and just providing a structure to a class. His lectures are okay but pretty disorganized and half him talking about his inorganic background and half talking about random stuff in lecture. This class is pretty much just TLC and extraction. I would suggest when going to lecture, writing down the things that he says will definitely be on the final and writing down the things he repeats as those are the important takeaways he will probably put on the final. The assignments (postlabs/prelabs) are graded by the TAs and can be a mixed bag depending on who is grading your lab assignment. The final exam is pretty fair for the most part, he tells you what kind of questions he will probably ask. In terms of Lab period, the TAs will absolutely carry your lab experience, your TA will probably be the one who teaches you what you need to know specifically about the lab and how to answer certain questions on the post/pre labs. If you get the goat TA Ben Janda, you are in good hands.

DEIFEL IS MY GOAT. Despite the lab being rather dull (lots of columns, TLC, and waiting, just to get a horrible NMR) and the pre/post-labs being pretty boring, Deifel is an engaging lecturer who really conveys his passion for chemistry. Since nobody is taking this class unless they have to (or they're crazy), I would highly very highly recommend you take it with Deifel.

Some benefits are that you don't need to buy a lab notebook and there's no textbook or lab manual needed, but grading is heavily dependent on your TAs.