I think the professor is a great lecturer and does a fantastic job of explaining the content in a way that is digestible to the students. That being said, I think the way that the exams were graded were honestly ridiculous; you could put an answer that is completely correct but if you do not explain it in his words or use specific terms that he feels is important then you will get points off. I thought the difficulty of the rubric for the exams ruined this class for me, as well as the fact that there were little to no accommodations for this course given the stressful circumstances of campus this quarter. For every single one of my other classes, my professors had made accommodations to help ease stress and anxiety among students, but professor Lannan does not care about his students in the way that my other professors have shown to care. Overall, professor Lannan is obviously extremely intelligent and knowledgeable about the course content, and he is a great lecturer, but I feel that being a great professor is more than simply being able to eloquently teach difficult concepts, and I think Lannan could have been a better professor if he prioritized students' mental health and wellbeing.

I liked Lannan a lot as a professor. He's a good professor, gives fair exams, and lectures keep students engaged. One thing I will note is that his slides do NOT have all the information he will test you on - you need to actually pay attention to what he's saying, or you will likely miss points that will show up on the exam. There is EC for LA evaluations, instructor evaluations, and an EC group project at the end of the quarter. Exams sometimes have a few EC points on them. Study off his learning objectives that he gives you and you will probably be fine. He doesn't curve. People who complain about grading being harsh frankly just sound entitled, given the exam averages below...

Midterm 1: Mean = 83%, Median = 86%
Midterm 2: Wasn't released
Final: Mean = 80.7%, Median = 83.9%

This was Ryan's first time teaching Chem 153A, with insufficient time to prepare. Nonetheless, I saw significant improvement in how he presented the material throughout the quarter.

A lot of people were bashing him on group me because they thought the exams were graded harshly. They don't understand that Ryan is not actually the one grading the exam. Each exam consisted of 8 questions and Ryan had 8 TAs combined from two lectures, meaning each TA graded 1 questions. Students were very rude and critical of him on the group chat after each exam. This is biochem though, it is not supposed to be easy. It shouldn't be an easy A. You got to work hard for the grade you earn.

To be frank, I thought that all his exams were very fair. I sure didn't get a 100% on them, but they were fair. The study guides he provided us were very extensive, but it was an accurate representation of exam content, along with the homework. In all of the classes I have taken at UCLA, this is the first time a professor offered midterm and final study guides. So be thankful.

Now moving on to the quizzes, they were all memorization based. I literally memorized everything the night before and still got 100% on all quizzes. Is there a lot of memorization in this class? YES, is it as bad as Chem 14D, NO!!

Lastly, I really respect Ryan's efforts to correcting mistakes throughout this quarter. He said he would give people some points back on midterm I because he understood that the answer key and some questions weren't as clear as he hoped. On top of that, he said that he was doing all the regrades himself! With a mountain of regrades to do, he had to deal with some impatient and inappreciative students that were constantly rushing him. He has a life too, you know.

I think the professor is a great lecturer and does a fantastic job of explaining the content in a way that is digestible to the students. That being said, I think the way that the exams were graded were honestly ridiculous; you could put an answer that is completely correct but if you do not explain it in his words or use specific terms that he feels is important then you will get points off. I thought the difficulty of the rubric for the exams ruined this class for me, as well as the fact that there were little to no accommodations for this course given the stressful circumstances of campus this quarter. For every single one of my other classes, my professors had made accommodations to help ease stress and anxiety among students, but professor Lannan does not care about his students in the way that my other professors have shown to care. Overall, professor Lannan is obviously extremely intelligent and knowledgeable about the course content, and he is a great lecturer, but I feel that being a great professor is more than simply being able to eloquently teach difficult concepts, and I think Lannan could have been a better professor if he prioritized students' mental health and wellbeing.

Dr. Lannon is an energetic, engaging, and overall excellent professor. I am happy to have had him teach 153A, my main problems were with the course pacing. I really struggled with keeping up, but it is difficult to distinguish where my decisions and time-management is at fault and where it is with the course. So I will just say that balancing this course with another content heavy 5 unit course (Physics 5B), a lab internship, and time with friends was difficult. Dr. Lannon really does his best to meet us in the middle while getting to all the content vital to the course. He is very passionate about biochemistry and when a student's question meets him in terms of energy he really engages with it. Since I was struggling to keep up with the course and he covered so much content every lecture I regret not going to office hours at all. I think that would have really changed my grades, but it is what it is. We move. Anyway, Dr. Lannon is great and makes a very heavy, draining curriculum more manageable. As long as he maintains that young passion for the subject I think he will continue to be a great professor. If there was one improvement to suggest, it would be to emphasize the importance of engaging with students during discussion sections. He designs engaging discussion section assignments, but I felt like execution of these assignments were not as engaging as intended. Maybe it was different for the other discussion sections that weren't at 8 in the morning.

Overall I think Lannan is a safe choice for a biochem professor, so if he is an option, take it. His lectures are engaging and clear, and the overall flow of content from the beginning to the end of the quarter makes sense at building on top of each other.

You can tell he's super passionate about the subject, and he's fairly young so there's a bit more engagement and energy to things. Personality-wise he is also fairly geeky and and can be funny, plus posts pictures of cats on Campuswire, so I think he can keep morale up. I respect him for sharing his views too outside of class on UCLA Radio during the time of the encampment, I think it showed his education about world events and also not just a soulless STEM professor.

It's true his rubrics for exams can seem strict, but honestly I think they're not outrageous. The medians for Midterm 1 and 2 were 75% and 85%, respectively, and that is definitely within the norm for a STEM class like this, so I disagree with assertions that his exams are "tougher" than any other similar upper-div class.

When you're doing exam questions, just always make sure to ask yourself "Why?" or "So what? and write down the answer. I think a lot of people (at least when you're not used to the rubric) make the mistake of writing something like "Thing A makes Process 2 stop", but they miss the rubric point about how Thing A actually made Process 2 stop. Make sure though that you understand the wording he uses in his slides/lectures, and that you really understand the consequences of processes that you learn. He likes to ask questions that make you apply content to a completely different context (e.g. how would this alien's cell membrane be different from Earth's).

Speaking of aliens, there's a extra credit group project at the end of the quarter about creating your own alien organism based off unique biochemistry that's varies from biochemistry of Earth (i.e. stuff we learned in class).

For our lecture's final, a third of the questions were literally the exact same as the ones on the practice final (which he gave the answer sheet to).

There's iClicker (mandatory lectures) and assignments. The assignments are not too bad but they really do force you to review what you learned well.

Discussions are fine (and mandatory), really specific to the TA whether it's good or not (shout-out to Katie!).

Lannan was thrown into the course with two weeks warning. It was his first quarter teaching, and I thought he did an excellent job. I have had less prepared and less organized professors who have been teaching the course for years. Overall I really enjoyed having him as a professor and would take a class he is teaching again. Ryan truly cared about our success, which you would think would be something you could say about all professors, but I cannot say I can. He seemed to relate to us and empathize more, having finished his own PhD and school relatively recently. You could tell he wanted us to succeed, and his problem sets reflected the difficulty of his exams, which was extremely nice. There were weekly problem sets, and going to both his and the TA office hours was extremely helpful for working through them. This is the only class I have ever attended office hours for, and I highly recommend going because they made the class very manageable. His exams were very reasonable and did not throw any surprisingly terrible questions at us. They were also scaled up to match the average of the other 14C lecture for the exam we had a lower average for. There was also extra credit given for discussion attendance and a video project at the end. I think people were unfairly judgmental of him and too harsh all quarter… he did an amazing job and I felt I really understood the material more than in 14A and B. This class made me thing I liked chemistry (but I am being proven wrong in 14D), which just shows that Ryan is good at his job, especially given this was his first quarter.

Professor Lannan is a very fair lecturer, with tests that take a bit of getting used to. Once you learn the rubric of the exams and what he expects out of answers, it becomes more manageable. His lectures are engaging and mandatory, and the discussions were helpful as well. At the end of the quarter, there is an extra credit project, and all of the extra credit totals to around 2% which is generous. The homeworks are for the most part completion based as he only grades one of the questions, and the quizzes are pure memory. It really comes down to the exams, but once you get the hang of it, it is a fair test. Overall, I would recommend taking Lannan for 153A.

CHEM 153A with Lannan was definitely not easy but if you really study it is definitely possible to get an A. I would recommend reviewing the learning objectives and rewatching the lectures because he expects you to know things that he mentions, sometimes just in passing. I would also highly recommend going to his office hours, they're really helpful. And the reviews which complain about the specificity with which he grades are accurate, he expects a lot of detail in his rubrics, so honestly try to write down every little detail you can think of on the tests. I liked Lannan though, he was tough but mostly fair and very concerned with student learning.

I'm not sure if it's me personally, but I didn't like Lannan much. His slides were pretty good and the class structure was fair, but his lectures felt really jumpy and rushed towards the end of the year. He'd use an abbreviation once and assumed you knew it by heart after that (within the same slide). Typically, it would be fine until he would forget to introduce a protein's or enzyme's abbreviation while using other introduced abbreviations that were similar, making it extremely confusing.

On the topic of feeling unorganized, a lot of the homework deadlines would frequently get pushed back without notice to how far they got pushed back. He typically wouldn't make announcements about the new due date or post the homework on gradescope until 1-2 days before the new due date that he didn't disclose. Although checking gradescope is a student's responsibility, a courtesy reminder of homework due date extensions would've been nice, especially since they did not match the due dates on the front page of the homework or the syllabus.

Also, it's important to note that his homeworks cover the same content as his midterms/finals, but are not similar in depth, format, or expectations. The main way to study is looking at the practice midterms/finals he fortunately gives you. On the topic of midterms, be careful about submitting a regrade request which you'll be tempted to use. His rubric is incredibly strict on wording, meaning lots of students felt that they explained the concept correctly but didn't word it the right way (even if the reasoning and key words were correct). Because of this, he took points off for "bad" regrade requests and threatened to cancel all regrade requests if the number passed a certain threshold which is unreasonable in my opinion. In fact, I checked over with a TA on one of the questions and he agreed it was graded incorrectly but because of the threats he gave, I never ended up submitting the regrade request.