Environmentalism: Past Present and Future.
I'll keep this short because there are plenty of accurate and well-articulated reviews of Professor Hecht below. She's a knowledgable woman, but a terrible teacher. From the looks of BruinWalk, she first taught this class 9 years ago. The lack of improvement over the years as reflected in these reviews says a lot. She simply isn't trying to become a better teacher. A fairly easy A or B, but a miserable class.

Let me begin by saying I'm a pretty flexible guy who can roll with a lot of adversity professors give me, but Hecht has treated this class so unfairly in frighteningly sadistic ways that most of her Urban Planning M165 class from Fall 2015 is complaining to the department head. To start off, there is a substantive amount of weekly occurrences that challenge your will to stay in the class/exist in the same room as her. I have near 20/20 vision, and I can’t read her lecture slides even from a middle row, which, as stated many times below, are riddled with spelling errors, abbreviations she doesn't ever explain what they stand for, and many other issues. To make matters worse, she refuses to post slides online, because “we should be understanding them in context with her lectures”. However, her lectures tend to be a 1.5 hour odyssey through the stream of consciousness of Hecht that is nearly impossible to follow, so "in context with the lectures" actually makes them more confusing. On top of that, she’ll whip past 2-3 slides in less than 10 seconds because she’s “behind” but then still test us on those slides later; it essentially got to the point where the moment she would change to the slide, half the class would take pictures of it just in case she changed it within the next few seconds. As if that weren't enough, she also shows us some slides in SPANISH that we’re somehow supposed to understand in an Urban Planning/Geography/Environment class. If you're still somehow remotely interested in taking this class after reading this, please continue reading.

Given what we deal with week in and week out with her, I expected the final to have typical Hecht-style trickery, but that was a gross underestimation of her capabilities. She tells us Monday of 9th week before Thanksgiving break that our final is on the Monday following break, which we all expected, but then dropped on us that she’s going to TEACH A LECTURE for the first half of the class, giving us 1.5 hours to do a 3 hour test, on which is some of the content we just learned (By the way, the final is worth 40% of your overall grade). Sunday night before 10th week, at 1:30AM, less than 13 hours before the test, the TAs send us an email saying that instead of the expected format for the final that they had prepped us for all quarter, the format that Hecht herself laid out in the syllabus, and the format that Hecht told the TAs to prep us for, has changed last minute, and there’s now two entire essays that we’re somehow supposed to do alongside the test as it was initially planned in the already small time frame. I hypothesize that Hecht knew that the test was going to have essays on it all along and purposefully told us otherwise, because I got a 2013 Final from the test bank and it had the 2 essays on it, only further evidence to my notion that she’s a sadist. Then, 3 hours before the test, Hecht emails us probably the most sassy email I’ve ever gotten from a professor, saying, and I quote: "Although I actually don't think the time I allotted is onerous, in response I will give up my lecture time,( and its a really good, optimistic one ---but there you are!) so you have the whole three hours. I am forwarding some points you might usefully consider as the Paris talks go forward, and these talks after all will be deciding parts of your future, so absent the exam angst you can actually pay some attention." (Note frequent grammar and syntax errors - very similar to her lecture style.) So, finally when we are about to take the test, the TAs come into the class almost yelling about how apologetic they are for telling us 13 hours ahead of time and how much hardship Hecht has put them through, and because they’re pissed off at this point almost as much as we are, they decided to make it easier for us and go light when grading it, because even they recognize the unfairness of the situation.

TL;DR? Well, if you want to meet the Grinch in real life, have your Thanksgiving Break ruined, and your life an emotional rollercoaster controlled by that same sadistic grinch, you'll be doing yourself a favor by enrolling in her class. If this doesn't sound like a good time to you, I personally wouldn't touch her with a 29 1/2 foot pole, and I recommend you do the same. Happy Holidays!

Honestly one of the most poorly organized classes I've taken at UCLA. Lecture presentations consistently had spelling errors and none of the world she put on the slides made sense. Furthermore, she talked too fast for students to take accurate notes and them refused to post the slides on the class website. Overall this class was a waste of my time and I feel like my interest in the subject was extinguished. Additionally, the fact that the final exam format was changed and the students were notified less than 12 hours before the exam is completely unacceptable and we will all be contacting the department.

I have never actually met this woman but she was the professor for my class this Summer Session A. A TA was the one doing the teaching. The guy was cool so that's all fine and dandy.

But the problem is, the whole entire class got a grade of "NR" (No Report) because apparently, she has to be the one to hit some button on my UCLA to post the grades. Where is she? BRAZIL. I am supposed to graduate with the minor and this was one of the last classes I needed but now, I have a big red X on my DPR where there was a green progress bar before.

Why would you go off the grid when you're teaching a class? Why would you go off the grid without internet when it's most necessary? Wtf are they paying her for if she can't even push that one submit all grades button? Clearly, the comments about this professor in the past are well warranted even if she's just the fellow's mentor. BEWARE!

Although I wouldn't go so far as to say she is the worst professor I've had at UCLA, she's pretty close. Her lectures are the most disorganized I have ever seen throughout my career here and the concepts are completely different than what you would anticipate learning in this class from reading the course description and course title. In this class, you learn big abstract concepts of environmentalist past, and often I found myself wondering what the hell a particular reading or lecture had anything to do with what I had wanted to learn from the class. In addition to being the worst slideshow maker in the world (not an exaggeration), I felt like I was attending a conference watching her present her research the entire quarter, rather than learning something valuable in a class. At the beginning of the quarter, she told us that we would be getting into heavy reading, but it turned out to be completely unreasonable (assigning chapters of multiple books per week). She seems to treat all of us as graduate students who either don't have a social life or don't have any other classes. She is an intelligent and extremely learned woman and I do not deny her of any of her capabilities, but teaching is not her forté.

I took environmentalism: past, present, future. While i know quite a few of the other students in the class did not like Susanna, I thought she was a pretty descent teacher. She definitly has A LOT of knowledge about the material and certainly doesnt dumb it down trying to explain it. However, the concepts were not very difficult to understand when you let them sink in and then you have a good TA named adam. he was great. the midterm and test composed of around 7 or 8 key 'words'. Basically she would name a concept such as ' Great Chain of Being', 'Scientific Revolution', 'Reductionism', etc, and you would have to explain them in 2-3 paragraphs from the past, present and implications for the future. Mainly you would discuss the fundamentals of the concept and especially relating them to the other concepts you learned about makes the TA know you understand the material. I did not find it difficult at all, however i took good notes on my laptop and i did not see many people taking notes in her class. So when they complain of not getting good grades, its cause they arent taking notes. THEY HELP! Also the ta was amazing. I would recommend her. I think the class was very enlightening, i definitly learned a loooot more about nautre then i had intended. You talk about a variety of impacts of nature such as natural magic, witches, sacred gardens, nature as a machine etc.Definitly really cool stuff. She insists you buy all the books, which i bought 5, but i had barelllly even read them and still got an A in the class. I recommend just skimming the material before the test and the TA gave hints as to what articles to look into.

Professor Hecht is a sweet woman, BUT she cannot lecturer or teach for that matter. The course is titled "Environmentalism: past, present, and future" I thought it was going to be one the best classes considering it was in my interests. But, every time I would go to lecture I had to fight myself to not sleep. The powerpoint presentations have numerous, numerous, numerous errors and typos. Hecht's lectures are unorganized. But, she's a great research (like many UCLA professors). Most of the class lecture is spent on learning about the past environmental events including ancient things. Mostly revolves around the idea of environmental past. The readings are unnecessary to do. You'll get tested on the general themes. The class got more interesting towards the end, but never reach peak environmental issues.