This professor is very clear, and has good slides. For the midterm, you should just review the slides and understand those thoroughly. HOWEVER, the 40% of the grade is composed of 4 homework assignments which TA's grade. Be warned of Joan. Majority of discussions she needs student's help or to correct her teaching because she doesn't even know what she's talking about. On top of that, she thinks we are in some high level class and grades the assignments SO harsh. So I guess if you have a good TA, you will be fine. But if you have Joan, or any TA on a high horse, you will be screwed. Like the other reviews from Winter 2025, I have never been compelled to write a review before the class is even over. But LITERALLY do not trust these "very easy GE" . THE TAs ARE SO BAD. PARK IS AMAZING HIS STAFF IS NOT.

I took this class for an easy GE course that seemed like it might be interesting. For the most part, I agree with past reviews. The subject material itself is entry level and straightforward making for relatively easy exams. Professor Williams is a very engaging lecturer and it’s clear how passionate he is about the subject and sharing his knowledge with others. The lectures are not necessarily mandatory as the professor does not take attendance and the slides are posted. However, I would recommend attending the lectures anyway as they are far more informative than the slides alone and were actually very engaging and interesting. This course counts for lab credit but the labs are basically just fifty minute discussions. The only thing that ruined this class was my TA. Beware of the possibility of Joan as your TA. Not only is she condescending and very unconcerned with the success and understanding of her students, but she almost never has any semblance of an understanding of the material she is supposed to be explaining to us. Any questions asked in sections were either met with the longest, most irrelevant response that didn’t actually pertain to the question, or with a simple “I don’t know” followed by her asking us if anyone else knew the answer. She would say multiple times in a day that she didn’t understand a concept from lecture and would have to google it later. To be perfectly honest, it seemed like she was learning the material in lectures with us, in which case she should be taking the class not teaching it. Furthermore, she was tasked with grading our assignments, each worth ten percent of our grade, and she did so in an unbelievably harsh manner considering that she could not answer the questions herself.
By no means should this discourage you from taking the course as Professor Williams is one of my favorite professors and his office hours make up for her lack of help, just be warned Joan will do her best to mark you down for as much as she can.

Professor Williams was by far the best professor I’ve had at UCLA. He was extremely engaging every lecture and made learning intro material so much fun! He is also extremely willing to help students find opportunities outside of school.

Amazing class! Not a single complaint. Professor Williams is super passionate about what he teaches and incorporates his own research into the lectures. When preparing for the tests, make sure to go over all the slides and know how to respond to each question in blue font. Some of the exam questions were tricky.

The former reviews are all accurate. This class is very straightforward and the lectures are very clear. If you need a lab GE, choose this class when you see it opens.

This is one of my favorite classes I have ever taken and much of that stems from how great of a professor Mr. Williams is. His passion for the Earth's atmospheric and oceanic systems makes this class engaging and incredibly entertaining. Great teacher, great class!

This class was a very easy GE. There were only 4 assignments, which we mostly did in discussion, a midterm, and a final. Lectures were recorded and the textbook was not necessary. Discussion attendance was part of your grade. The midterm and final were multiple choice and if you just reviewed your notes/the slides you'd do well. Professor Williams was super engaging, fun, and effective at explaining the material. Overall, this was a great class and I'd definitely recommend.

All the above reviews are pretty accurate. This is a very easy and interesting (you learn a lot) class. Class lectures are very organized and Professor Williams posts lecture slides (very useful when reviewing) on BruinLearn. I am a humanities major taking this class for my science lab GE and this was just so easy of a class. The class says it has a "lab" component so I thought we would have to spend a lot of times doing lab works outside of the twice-weekly lectures, because after all, I assumed a lab science GE would require more work than a non-lab science GE. However this was not the case at all as we only had short discussion sections that required no additional work. Speaking of those discussion sections, they are very short, useful, and productive. TAs essentially review class concepts and go over some HW problems with you.

Regarding grading, I swear this class has one of the easiest—if not the easiest—syllabus at UCLA. HW (4 total, 12% each) is worth literally 48% of your overall grade. Those HW are very, very short problem sets that you can easily answer from reviewing class lecture slides or Googling. Midterm is only worth 15% and the final is only worth 25%. Discussion sections are attendance based; each section is worth 1.5% of your grade and you get the point for just going to them. Also, if you go to all 8 weeks (I believe you can miss one; I am not too sure though) you get 1.5% extra credit.

I can't speak for geography majors, but if you're a humanities major who is not strong at science, then just take this class as your lab GE when you see it offered. This class is not only very easy, it also teaches you a lot of very interesting & relevant concepts about...well, geography I guess? An easy class that is engaging and not at all a waste of time—oh also, Professor Williams is a very knowledgeable professor; he makes lectures interesting, so I suggest you go to them.

MC for both the midterm and the final. Also the class rounds your grade (e.g., 89.5 is an A-, 92.5 is an A, etc.).

Park Williams was amazing as a professor for this class. S. Feldblum was an amazing TA too. I loveee this type of material and this class single-handedly made me decide to add Geography/Enviro Studies as my second major. The class goes over geology, atmospheric studies, oceanography, meteorology, ecology, etc. It is sooo so interesting and quite easy if you take good notes on the lectures slides and review them adequately before the exams. The problem sets were also easy and the TAs and even the prof himself were helpful if you had any questions.

This class was fantastic and even helped me decide on my Major. Professor Williams is an amazing lecturer and is accommodating by providing PowerPoint prior to his lectures for those who would like to get a head start on some of the material that would be covered in the lecture that day. In his lectures, the Big Idea Questions are highlighted in blue font and all of the key terms to know for the quarter were in red font. This made it extremely easy to study for midterms and finals which were both multiple-choice. On top of this, professor Williams is especially interested during his lectures because he uses his own data collected in the field and by running model algorithms. These figures scattered throughout the lecture provided an immense amount of detail and insight into what we were covering that day in the lecture and added to my overall enjoyment of the class. Outside of class, professor Williams is helpful and was happy to answer many of the questions that I had about the course. If you have the opportunity to take this class with professor Williams JUST DO IT.