Urban Ecology is a pretty good class! Kleinhesselink is super sweet and enthusiastic. He sometimes show a little bit of disorganization, like not understanding parts of Bruinlearn or assigning groups to the wrong presentation dates. But his actual lecture slides and assignments are actually pretty well-made in my opinion. He is also extremely passionate, and you can see this when you on field trips to Sage Hill and watch him point out random organisms in the middle of talking. There's a midterm-exam that's fairly tradition, on-paper and in the classroom, and it definitely wasn't difficult but make sure you know the principle points of content you learn in class (he gives a study guide that helps with this. There are also give assignments; make sure to read the instructions carefully on them since the grader can be strict. The bulk of the work in the class comes from the group research project in the last half of the quarter where you select an organism group to study (birds, bees, bats, etc.) and form a research question and do in-field research to present at the end of class. This and a final report makes up the "final", so no final exam. Overall, recommend this especially as an Environmental Science major, though there was a fair amount of other majors including Pub Aff and Poli Sci. Do note though that it is fairly STEM-oriented (even if the Science isn't that hard).

Urban Ecology is a pretty good class! Kleinhesselink is super sweet and enthusiastic. He sometimes show a little bit of disorganization, like not understanding parts of Bruinlearn or assigning groups to the wrong presentation dates. But his actual lecture slides and assignments are actually pretty well-made in my opinion. He is also extremely passionate, and you can see this when you on field trips to Sage Hill and watch him point out random organisms in the middle of talking. There's a midterm-exam that's fairly tradition, on-paper and in the classroom, and it definitely wasn't difficult but make sure you know the principle points of content you learn in class (he gives a study guide that helps with this. There are also give assignments; make sure to read the instructions carefully on them since the grader can be strict. The bulk of the work in the class comes from the group research project in the last half of the quarter where you select an organism group to study (birds, bees, bats, etc.) and form a research question and do in-field research to present at the end of class. This and a final report makes up the "final", so no final exam. Overall, recommend this especially as an Environmental Science major, though there was a fair amount of other majors including Pub Aff and Poli Sci. Do note though that it is fairly STEM-oriented (even if the Science isn't that hard).