The professor does not accommodate student conditions, especially during covid-19. He takes an incredibly long time to reply to emails (if ever), his "practice exams" were rushed and did not even have a mark scheme, and you have nothing to use for studying for the exam aside from his slides. His final contains many questions that were incredibly difficult to answer from simply learning the slides. The grade distributions were also quite bad this quarter (don't believe the grade distributions from previous years!!):
0% A+
7.1% A
14.3% A-
7.1% B+
38% B
14.3% B-
19% C+

This professor makes MCDB 138 and MCDB 165A seem like incredibly organized and relatively easy classes.

When I saw the grading distributions for this class, I was terrified to take it with Lowry, but I ended up getting an A with minimal work. The only work you have to do is read papers, so this class is not a large time commitment. I took lots of notes on his presentations, and when it came time to take the midterm/final, I heavily reviewed the powerpoints but it was not difficult to study for. I think he is a very fair professor. He talks a lot about his work which is incredibly interesting to me, but he is a bit dry so it is easy to become distracted or tired during the class.

I loved this class with Professor Lowry!! He was honestly so so chill. There was only one midterm and one final and they were all free response but very easily found in slides. For discussion section, we just read a research paper and had small quizzes before and after discussion which were alll super manageable. The TA I had (Brandon B.) was super patient and helped us all understand the papers. Dr. Lowry was also super nice and helpful during office hours. I would take this class with him if you can. There is a lot of material but it's some review from like LS classes and when he got to stem cells it was super interesting.

This class lived up to its reputation. MCDB 144 has always been known to be a difficult class and everyone recommends taking it after other MCDB core classes. I found that this course was challenging but doable. I think most students find this class hard because of the amount of information they need to know. TA office hours are super helpful because they are more specific with their answers (when you ask them questions).

I appreciate how Dr. Lowry brought it historical connections or fun videos to spice up his lectures. I think Dr. Lowry is funny and informative, but some of his presentations a little dry and little hard to follow.

There is one midterm, one final, and some pre/post discussion questions. It was kinda annoying how the midterm was out of 38 points and the final was out of 50 something points. If you lost one point, you would drop a good amount of percentage. Overall, it was doable!

As a non-MCDB major, I don't believe that any person should be scared to take the course with Lowry. If you put in the work (study lecture slides, questions given, all methods of experiments, and everything the TA tells you to do), then you will be totally fine (: . Never fear friends, If a non-MCDB major can get an A, so can you!

One midterm, one final and a discussion make up your whole grade. Tests format is a couple short response and some multipart long response question. His tests are pretty straightforward but involve a lot of memorization of specific details from his lecture. Discussion section just covers assigned scientific articles. As a lecturer, I found Dr. Lowry to be a bit boring and repetitive. Overall, it's a fair, standard class.

I thought the course was well taught, but the final asked a lot of questions I felt were not emphasized on in lecture or discussion.

Don't take him!!!