Professor
Thomas Gillespie
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Most Helpful Review
wow... do take a class with him, go to his office hours, talk to him and get to know him, he is THE most awesome prof you'll ever get to know here. totally cool, really great sense of humor, wonderful and very relevant stories relate to lecture and readings, love the exclamation marks!! loved the sloths and the coati and the porcupine and the fennic fox! i would probably never have had the chance to see them up close and personal like that if it weren't for his class. WOW! take as many of his classes as you can, easy reading, good lectures, covers everything you need to know, really flexible with students and totally accessible and easy to talk to, lab's a breeze, if you're in love with Hawaii and the tropics and every cool place on the planet this is the class & prof for you! like he says, as long as you go to lecture and you don't have a nasty heroine addiction there's NO way you can't get an A in his class. ccccccoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooolllll!!!
wow... do take a class with him, go to his office hours, talk to him and get to know him, he is THE most awesome prof you'll ever get to know here. totally cool, really great sense of humor, wonderful and very relevant stories relate to lecture and readings, love the exclamation marks!! loved the sloths and the coati and the porcupine and the fennic fox! i would probably never have had the chance to see them up close and personal like that if it weren't for his class. WOW! take as many of his classes as you can, easy reading, good lectures, covers everything you need to know, really flexible with students and totally accessible and easy to talk to, lab's a breeze, if you're in love with Hawaii and the tropics and every cool place on the planet this is the class & prof for you! like he says, as long as you go to lecture and you don't have a nasty heroine addiction there's NO way you can't get an A in his class. ccccccoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooolllll!!!
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2025 - I am taking this class this quarter (Winter 2025), and it's probably the best GE I’ve taken at UCLA. The course is mostly memorization-based, with a midterm, a final, and weekly labs. The professor is amazing; he’s passionate about his research and work but understands that most students are taking this class as a GE, not a major requirement. He just wants us to learn the material, and he makes it so clear and straightforward. He’s also really funny and has a great personality, which makes lectures engaging. Since the key information is well-structured, studying for the midterm and final is fairly easy.
Winter 2025 - I am taking this class this quarter (Winter 2025), and it's probably the best GE I’ve taken at UCLA. The course is mostly memorization-based, with a midterm, a final, and weekly labs. The professor is amazing; he’s passionate about his research and work but understands that most students are taking this class as a GE, not a major requirement. He just wants us to learn the material, and he makes it so clear and straightforward. He’s also really funny and has a great personality, which makes lectures engaging. Since the key information is well-structured, studying for the midterm and final is fairly easy.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2020 - This class is an easy A if you do your part. You need to memorize a sizeable amount of information, but it is pure memorization. On the midterm, I got a 92% and the mean was 85%, so I already knew I was on track for an A. The lab portion of the grade is an easy A as long as you participate at least once per discussion, do the bare minimum on the group project, and you do the 2-3 worksheets assigned throughout the quarter. I got bailed by not taking the final because I think I would have gotten a B+ on it and maybe ended with an A- instead of an A for my final grade. However, I might just be underestimating myself so just believe in yourself! Professor Gillespie is such a character! He made this class so great I actually looked forward to going to lecture, which is out of the norm for me. He is an amazing professor who gives easy tests as long as you memorize simple and straightforward information. I suggest you guys make a collaborative study guide through the discussion section on CCLE like my class did so you can answer the study guide questions as quickly as possible in order to have more than enough time to study for the midterm and final. All in all, I'd rate this class 10/10! No regrets!
Winter 2020 - This class is an easy A if you do your part. You need to memorize a sizeable amount of information, but it is pure memorization. On the midterm, I got a 92% and the mean was 85%, so I already knew I was on track for an A. The lab portion of the grade is an easy A as long as you participate at least once per discussion, do the bare minimum on the group project, and you do the 2-3 worksheets assigned throughout the quarter. I got bailed by not taking the final because I think I would have gotten a B+ on it and maybe ended with an A- instead of an A for my final grade. However, I might just be underestimating myself so just believe in yourself! Professor Gillespie is such a character! He made this class so great I actually looked forward to going to lecture, which is out of the norm for me. He is an amazing professor who gives easy tests as long as you memorize simple and straightforward information. I suggest you guys make a collaborative study guide through the discussion section on CCLE like my class did so you can answer the study guide questions as quickly as possible in order to have more than enough time to study for the midterm and final. All in all, I'd rate this class 10/10! No regrets!
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Most Helpful Review
As always, Professor Gillespie made a potentially boring topic super interesting. His lectures were very fun & entertaining and the course involved lots of hands-on work in a computer program called ENVI. The course was a very simple midterm, weekly projects, & a final project. I definitely gained an appreciation for remote sensing technology and it was a good complement to other GIS courses which all use ArcGIS. I would definitely be sure to take this with him; I've heard other professors teaching this class are much more difficult and boring.
As always, Professor Gillespie made a potentially boring topic super interesting. His lectures were very fun & entertaining and the course involved lots of hands-on work in a computer program called ENVI. The course was a very simple midterm, weekly projects, & a final project. I definitely gained an appreciation for remote sensing technology and it was a good complement to other GIS courses which all use ArcGIS. I would definitely be sure to take this with him; I've heard other professors teaching this class are much more difficult and boring.
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