I don't know what's up with the crazypants comments below. I liked the class. Her lectures were nicely organized and had great clarity. She's good at explaining material.

Halpin... Hmmm. Halpin. This class seems pretty easy when you walk in the first day. THE FIRST DAY. Tells you of what your grade will consist of. Weekly lab assignments, two midterms, weekly reading quizzes and of course, a final. Let me start with labs. The labs are not too difficult, BUT my T.A. marked every little mistake and took off points (EVEN IF THEY WERE GRAMMATICAL). I hope you get a good T.A. Each lab is only worth 10 points BUT every single point counts in this class because she grades by points. Whatever you get out of a total of a 1000 is your grade. The weekly reading quizzes that we had to do on the mastering biology website were easy. I usually got a perfect score on those by googling articles on the subject. Midterms were NOT easy at all. You have to memorize the slides, but its still not enough. Like someone mentioned her grading is ridiculous. 4 points for a multiple choice question, really? Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is that Halpin is just not a good professor at all. Like, at first when I saw her I thought she couldn't be that bad that the reviews were lying. But oh my gosh was I wrong. Halpin just reads off the slides, and gives busy work just so you have something to do. (I mean like the two quizzes per week and the labs per week). She is very awkward when you try to talk to her. I remember someone asked a question when she asked her usual question (any questions?) and all she did was repeat what she had just said. the student just remained confused (as well as the rest of us.) Anyway, good luck is all I can say and wish for you. Enjoy the course.

Professor Halpin was not a very good teacher. I mean all she pretty much did was read off what she had in her slide shows which I thought was pretty pathetic. It would be nice if she would've gone in depth more. Also, the labs were a waste of time, and the T.A.'s were harsh graders. It's seriously not an English class and at least if we are grasping the material, it's logical to base the grading on that. Ok her midterms and finals were the worst. GO TO LECTURE. She excludes things on her slides and you need to write those down for your refernce. Also she makes you memorise alot and half the things aren't even on the test which sucks. GET HER PAST EXAMS. Will helo trust. Well at least for the midterms. Also, I find it a waste of money for her to make students buy an online access pass that makes studetns answer questions whci count as attendance. IDC if it was 20 bucks I am a broke college student!! And seriously if a students wants to miss class that's on them to get the material or not. Like whats the point of that. Well any who, just study your ass off for her finals and midterms which are a killer. Most people I knew dropped the course. I think the reason most people dislike her is for her grading policy and her hard exams. If you can avoid the course, then do so and take another better professor.

DO NOT TAKE HALPIN. I REPEAT. DO NOT TAKE HALPIN. Now that you have been warned let me tell you why you should try to avoid this "professor." Where do I start off.

First the lectures. There is no lecture besides her reading off of her stupid slides. A 10 year old can also read off slides

Second she is a marine biologist by profession. EVERY FREAKING LECTURE, she would either try to A. make students sign up for her dumb class that she was going to be teaching next quarter or try to tie in some marine biology crap into the lectures. REALLY ANNOYING !!!

Next is the clicker, she uses it to enforce attendance and treats the class like they're in middle school or what not

NOW THE GRADING. FIRST OF ALL THERE IS NO CURVE IN THE CLASS. SECOND OF ALL SHE EXPECTS YOU TO MEMORIZE ALL THE BULLSHIT INFORMATION AND SPIT IT BACK OUT ON THE TEST. SHE SAYS THAT THE TEXTBOOK WILL BE USED IN CLASS. THAT IS TOTAL GARBAGE. HER GRADING OF THE TESTS ARE RIDICULOUS, IF YOU HAVE ONE DETAIL WRONG, ITS BASICALLY NO CREDIT. WTFFF !!!!! THE LABS ARE REALLY LAME. THEY FEEL LIKE THEY ARE SOME RANDOM MADE UP "ACTIVITIES"

I could go on and on but I'll stop, do not take her, she is horrible, you will regret having her !!!

Most of the stuff on here is accurate. Her lectures boring, exams hard, and clickers useless but easy 60 pts. I actually wouldn't mind all this if it weren't for the fact that she could care less about her students. I emailed her her about 4 times concerning grading and she ignored them all except for 1 where she actually told me what she expected out of some assigned online lecture questions she assigns. Sad to say her email was misleading too--she said she did not grade hard on those questions yet she gave me an 5/10 on one of them for no apparent reason.
Along the same lines, some TAs could careless about points too. They must figure the class is out of a thousand so 3 or 4 points won't matter. THEY DO! especially when you loose them unexpectedly and for some stupid "guidelines" she will never change. This class is ridiculous and kinda sad if anyone likes it.
If you want to avoid listening to an annoying voice for 20 lectures, don't take her. Hope this helped. (memorize the phyla! this will save you tons of points on exams)

i took halpin for eeb142 and trust me it is not as easy as it sounds. What gets you is that they are too picky on the answers; you have to actually put everything they have as the answers to get full points which is ridiculous since the questions are vague, so basically you have to write down everything she says word for word, come on that's ridiculous. BEWARE of discussion class, the TA is so anal on participation that she actually tallys up how many times you talk. all i got to say is come on seriously? who gives a crap about discussion man some classes dont even care if you go or participate in discussion. totally unfair and onesided. Jesus christ im so pissed off right now my final grade in the class was a 86% but if i had full participation points i would have gotten 90%. MAN i totally got screwed in this class.

EEB 100 was not a very difficult class overall.

halpin sucks because she is a boring lecturer, but the class/tests werent that hard so I dont think she deserves all these terrible ratings just because she sucked in lecture.
Lectures were power points that were really boring, and I usually fell asleep in class. Didn't use the textbook once, especially considering it was optional to buy. All material on tests are from lecture.
tests were fair, a little on the more difficult side, but i dont think they were that bad. they were multiple choice, fill in the blank, and short answer.

the shittiest part was not halpin or lectures. it was boring and time consuming discussions. it was mandatory to go to discussions, and most of the time you didn't learn anything useful. we had 3 papers. two small field reports that were pretty easy (hand written, one page), and one research paper (typed, a few pages). For the research paper you had to create your own experiment you would want to conduct (all about animals of course) and explain in detail how you would run the experiment. It was basically a miniature scientific report (intro, materials, procedure, results, discussion) but you never actually carry out the experiment. You basically just explain what results would mean had you gotten a specific result. Boring.

This is my honest review of LS1. Halpin stumbles every two words as she paraphrases her lecture slides. The lectures do provide a broad overview of the topics covered (if you don't fall asleep) that can be reinforced by reading the textbook. The lecture slides are posted the same day as the lecture (giving students barely enough time to print notes) and sometimes the slides are even posted just a couple hours before lecture (I have class all morning until lecture, so a couple times I ended up having to type her powerpoints). There is a lot of work in this class for such a basic level of Biology. There are lecture participation points using a clicker to click in your answer, labs, lab assignments, lab quizzes, and reading quizzes. In the beginning few weeks, Halpin will spend half the lecture trying to get the clicker program to work and sometimes you will miss a question because there is a malfunction with your clicker (this is okay though because you can miss 4 participation points and only need to answer 1 question per lecture regardless of if it is the correct answer). From what I was aware of, there wasn't a curve in the class. The midterms have repeats of old exam questions (which can be very useful), but you are on your own for the final.

I'm trying to sound unbiased (I got A's for both midterms and I just took the final), but I really disliked the class. The WEEKLY TAKE-HOME lab and reading quizzes will always have 1 or 2 trick questions (like a filling-in-the-blank) that isn't explicitly stated in the reading and is pretty much a toss-up. This gets annoying really fast on the reading quizzes, where there is some advanced formula that calculates your grade, giving you a 84.7% when there were 10 questions and you have no idea what you missed.

To me this class felt like high school all over again with petty little assignments. Although she may have good intentions, I do not recommend Halpin.

FOR MOST OF YOU WHO ARE READING THIS LOOKING FOR A GOOD EEB CLASS TO TAKE SO THAT YOU CAN FULFILL A REQUIREMENT, GRADUATE AND GO TO THE MED/DENT/PHARM SCHOOL OF YOUR CHOICE, DONT TAKE THIS CLASS.

Halpin was BY FAR one of the WORST professors I have ever had the unfortunate luck (or lack thereof) of taking here at UCLA. First of all, NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND IS GOING TO BE AN ECOLOGIST OR A SQUIRREL BEHAVIOR SCIENTIST OR A CLAM SHELL ECOLOGICAL BIOLOGIST OR ANYTHING RELATED TO ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY. Most, if not all students take this class to fulfill requirements and graduate to go to Medical, Dental, or pharmacy school. And with this in mind, Halpin was by far the most unaccommodating professor Ive ever met. During the quarter I had several med school interviews scheduled that were out of state, but Professor Halpin didnt see them as legitimate excuses and was not the least bit lenient with my absences. Sorry to burst her bubble, but nobody gives a shit about bugs or ducks or sea shells or albino Indonesian clam pinching beetles.

On another note, Halpin treats her kids like they're in 4th grade again, taking attendance at lecture and giving "pop" lecture quizzes. She makes us purchase PRS clickers, which are her way of making sure people attend her god-forsaken lectures and dont fall asleep because honestly, what can be more exciting at 9:30 in the morning than studying the changes in kelp in the Pacific Ocean? We only use the clickers for the first half of the quarter, and for the first few weeks Halpin cant even figure out how to use the damn things so we end up buying these clickers and staying awake for absolutely no reason.

Im going to stop myself here because I feel myself getting actually angry about how terrible this class really was.

I took Aquatic Communities with Dr. Tonya Kane in the Fall. She is amazing lecturer and leaves with you with a greater appreciation for the ocean and all aquatic communities. One of the better EEB courses offered. 2 midterms that she provides a study guide for. Final is little bit more challenging than the midterms but its nothing she hasn't taught or believes you can't do. Loved this class so much and would take it again.