Professor D'auria is very clear and engaging. She definitely teaches the most science-heavy part of the cluster, and I learned a lot about climate change, agriculture, and the atmosphere during her part of the class. Her tests are fair and she gives helpful study guides.

The lecture presentations are basic and lack comprehensive detail. Additionally, the professors tend to be uncoordinated and sometimes lack energy to engage students and even get their attention. Granted, this is a 100+ lecture full of freshman. Their guest lecturers are amazing and add great substance to the material being taught in class. Guest lectures are often unannounced and a surprise for the students in an effort to get them to attend class (we are given handouts to be filled out and returned to our TAs after lecture).

I took AP Environmental Science my senior year of high school, so I didn't learn any new material. It was all review, straight down to the labs we did in discussion, so the class seemed boring and repetitive to me. The workload is on the heavy side and the papers we are assigned to do are not worth enough points compared to the effort we put into it. Still, the (almost) weekly assignments are not difficult. The discussion sections are unnecessarily long (2 hrs) and pointless other than for being given assignments and turning them in. Attendance is part of your grade!

The midterm and final were not super detail oriented as I feared they would be. They weren't difficult at all if you understood the main concepts that the lectures covered and had some specific examples to use. No multiple choice, all short answer and one long essay question. The review sessions that the TAs held before tests were lacking and also uncoordinated - mostly a waste of time.

Overall, this cluster is amazing for getting rid of science GEs and a piece of cake for those who did well in AP ENVIRO. Boring and irritating, but manageable. I recommend making friends with your classmates to have study sessions together and ask each other assignment questions that are unclear.

I really did not enjoy this class and would not recommend it. It is not engaging, the lectures just follow the slides, and are super repetitive. The material was very broad, but the test asked lots of very, very specific numbers and things. It was a very frustrating class. I wouldn't take it again.

I just love environment M10 and professor d'Auria. She's funny and her lecture is intelligible. Everything seems so interesting for a math major like me. It's not a GE, but I never regret it.
If you put effort, it's easy to get an A. There's not much memorization for her part of the course (although Prof Garrison is more meticulous in exams, he's funny too)

I regret taking a cluster class. While the professor is nice and very knowledgeable about the content, there is just so much unnecessary information that you have to memorize for the tests. Honestly, it is a very straightforward class and if you study properly it is easy to get an A. I got an A- while skipping most of the lectures and bsing most of my homework.

The class is very straightforward and memorization based. I just regret taking a cluster all together. There are a lot of other easy science GE classes that you can take!

Professor D'Auria's section of GE CLST M1B is definitely the most science intensive, involving earth and atmospheric sciences and concepts along those lines. She is a very sweet professor who loves what she studies and what she teaches, but can sometimes be unclear while she is teaching. She occasionally rushes through concepts or fails to explain them in a useful way that students will understand. The midterm following her section of this class was the hardest test we had to take for this cluster throughout the entire year. Despite studying, attending review sessions, and focusing on the concepts deemed most important, many students struggled on her exam and felt the questions too were not clear in what they were asking. Overall, this was the most science-based part of the cluster, one that was slightly confusing, but with clarification could have been improved!