Best professor I have experienced in. the HBS department. He truly cares about the students being successful and his lectures are engaging. One of the few classes that impacted me to the point where I thought about the class material after class. Great experience I highly recommend taking Allard for anything.

This class was really engaging and interesting. Dr. Allard is really accomplished in his field, incredibly knowledgeable, and also really approachable. He cares so much about the students and making sure that everyone is doing well in his courses. The course material was engaging and he made the course itself really applicable to our personal lives, which was a nice touch. This was a great class with a great professor!

Dr. Allard is a really engaging lecturer and you can tell how much he cares about student learning and engagement. Our course discussed Environmental Public Health with a focus on toxicity and pesticides. He organized the lectures where we learned background information about the science, history, and public health impacts of pesticides before we engaged in an in-class debate about pesticides––where students got to share in-class their opinion about a particular pesticide. Dr. Allard would also ask for our feedback on the class and made sure to address any course issues (i.e. logistics, Canvas) right away. Participation was only recorded during discussion sections which were also very chill and were basically a discussion on a reading for the week. We also had weekly quizzes that were based on the lectures (mostly recall!) and weekly assignments on Perusall where we had to annotate a reading (which took around ~30 min to an hour to finish). Overall, super interesting course with a wonderful professor!

This is an extraordinary class that you won’t find anywhere else. The lectures were amazing. Dr. Allard presented cutting-edge research (including his own - he’s humble about it:) as well as classic cases in gene and environment interaction. We learnt why different people process alcohol differently or get different effects from chemical exposure, why some people may get sick from eating red meat, while others don’t, about the genetic predisposition to melanoma, connection between the genome and microbiome and many more aspects of GxE. For each GxE issue we looked at biochemical pathways which were pretty complex, but Dr. Allard explained and clarified the nuances. We looked critically at many research papers, analyzed the results and discussed their validity. Some topics were challenging for me, because I’m not a science major, but Dr. Allard was helpful and understanding. He made the class engaging and fun. There was a lot of conceptual learning, memorization and hard work. Dr. Allard was always available to answer any questions and consult about our research. He really required everyone to be logical, sound and detailed in our papers and presentations. He gave me constructive feedback on how to improve and organize my work. Overall, the class expanded my horizons, and I learned a lot. A truly innovative and unique course.

Dr. Allard is an amazing lecturer! His lectures are organized, dynamic, dense with information and full of great visuals. He's so passionate about genetics and has a gift for explaining concepts. Time flies in class, and there is never a dull moment. In just ten weeks he managed to cover so much material and make it accessible and interesting. After each lecture he encouraged thought-provoking, inclusive discussions that connected the topics to relevant social issues. He really welcomed everyone’s opinion and made us feel safe to express our thoughts. He keeps his standards high, he gives a lot and he asks a lot. Exams require a thorough understanding of concepts and a lot of memorization. As a person, Dr. Allard is really humble, funny and helpful. He answered my e-mails quickly and when I struggled, I went to his office and he explained the concepts and helped me develop my paper (he requires immaculate organization and clarity). If you mastered LS 2 or 3, you’ll be prepared. If not (like me), read the book in advance. I ended up with two thick notebooks full of hand-written lecture notes. Prepare to study a lot! In return you’ll learn fascinating material on genetics of immunity, aging, cancer, behavior and on biotechnology. This class inspired me to take his course on genes and environment which is a more in-depth study of epigenetics, equally fascinating. Gained a lot of knowledge in such a short time! An amazing and truly worthwhile class.

The class is pretty easy and straightforward, especially if you have a biology background. Its really interesting and Allard is a thorough lecturer who covers everything you need to know while keeping it interesting. The worst part about this class is all the homework assignments that are due in discussion that are like 1% of your grade but literally take hours to complete like the problem sets. But otherwise the exams are straightforward and the class is interesting.

no required attendance, perusall which is just completion graded annotations on a short research article (5 or 6 in the whole quarter), and weekly multiple choice quizzes that are only about 5 questions. The quizzes can be tricky, but take your time and rewatch the lectures and use the slides and you will be fine. I spent about 45 minutes on each but thats pretty much the only work you have to do in the class until the final "argument list" which is a 2 page paper on why a pesticide should or should not be banned. pretty sure everyone got an A+. Dr. Allard is super cute and we are sad he is going on sabbatical.

Soc Gen 5 was one of my favorite classes I've taken at UCLA, and Dr. Allard is incredibly passionate and knowledgeable on the subject material. When I took this class, Dr. Allard taught the latter half of the quarter, which was focused on endocrine disruption. As he has a background in toxicology, he brought in personal anecdotes based on the work he has done and tied them well into our class curriculum. This class overall is very informative and not too challenging. I definitely recommend (even if you aren't pre-HBS) and you want to learn more about some of the biosocial factors of healthcare, medicine, or toxicology.

Took soc gen 5 with Professor Allard. He is a very nice, welcoming professor. However, 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 also selling the actual book of Island of Dr. Moreau for 5 dollars. Feel free to message me at **********