there's QUITE a bit of work for this class, but nothing is difficult.
I think a lot of negative reviews here are from COVID season, and I don't think it's because of Dr. Russell herself. It's because online lab is an impossible concept. Ours was half online / half in person, and the in-person lab was completely different, and significantly easier. Given the circumstances, Dr. Russell has done a fantastic job.
She's a sweetie, she cares a lot about students, responds to emails fast, and is very knowledgeable. All of my graduated friends look back on her lab fondly. :')
tl;dr negative reviews are because online lab sucks (not dr russell), and she's quite a lovely person and good lecturer

Taking this class with Pang and Russel is like day and night. With pang everything was super clear, the midterm and final felt fair and everything and the class just seemed super organized. I don't know if it was just due to everything being online but I absolutely loathed this class because I didn't feel like I was learning anything at all. My lab section TA didn't talk to us at all and just sent us to groups where me and my partner finished super quickly and then just left which didn't really cement the material. The midterm was super wonky with a 70ish average but the final was insanely easy probably due to that and the lab reports nearing the end of the quarter were also super easy. In sum I think this class was an easy A online but I actually didn't learn anything and definitely consider it to be my least favorite class in the department so far.

I didn't mind this class at all! The workload wasn't that heavy - just one lecture per week and 2 lab sections (which sometimes last up to 2.5 hours but usually are around 1-1.5 depending on the assignment). There were only 5 lab reports and the final ones were much more chill/shorter than the first two. I had Gilbert as a TA who was super helpful and always gave us useful tips for the lab reports and assignments, and did a really good job of summarizing the info we needed to know, so def take him if you can!! From past reviews, I feel like Arlene really listened to the feedback from previous quarters of limiting the workload for this class, and her lectures were pretty clear. She's super nice and I enjoyed the class as much as I could given its online. Midterm was a bit tricky - some questions had a weird explanation/trick that I wouldn't have noticed, but overall manageable. Bottom line is you should take this class whenever you can get in/when it is offered and not weigh in too strongly on the professor because as someone who had both Pang and Russell for 20L/30AL neither were that much work or added stress.

Arlene is a dense lecturer. Her rubric isn’t clear and her instructions are beyond unhelpful. She would take off points for every single assignment for her class and require so much out of her students. Midterm was difficult not because it was hard material, but because she did not teach us the majority of what was given. I have taken both 30A and 30B and got A and A- but will most likely get a B for this lab class because of how Arlene teaches. I wouldn’t recommend taking her and taking Pang instead .

I loved this class and Professor Russell is fantastic. The workload is super variable throughout the quarter, but I think that the class was very manageable and fair.

UCLA's attempt at a hands-on laboratory course somehow still feels like an exercise in bureaucracy, and this is exacerbated by the anachronistic professor that is fully on board with teaching a lab like it's a high school class. It's honestly tragic because the material you learn is pretty interesting and useful.

Russell's 30AL class was tortuous. Not because the material was hard--it was the sheer tedium of the class that made it so bad. I'll tackle each facet of the class that you will be graded on.

Labs will constitute most of your grade. Prelabs require you to copy from a poorly written lab manual (it's riddled with typos and Russell always has to "modify" a manual she wrote herself--as if her paycheck from Pearson was so fat that she forgot she can actually release new updated editions) and copy NFPA symbols, and cite the references used every single time. You'll feel like you're in high school again. "I will not add water to acid. I will not add water to acid. I will..." Why not have a quiz on the procedure before each lab? Ironically, requiring us to mindlessly copy promotes people not actually understanding what we're doing in class. Post-labs can be long, but require thinking, so I don't have an issue with them. The pre-labs require no thought and can be done in 20 minutes, but I always took over an hour to do them--it's literally more interesting to sit there and do nothing than copy three pages of procedures. World-class education, folks.

There are a few small homework assignments. Don't let the fact that it's a pretty minimal amount of work detract from how stupid you'll feel doing it. Arlene believes that the best way for you to learn how to graph is to write essays about graphs, critique essays about graphs, critique people's critiques of graphs, and ensure your critique of a critique matches Arlene's subjective critique. I'm not exaggerating. It's incredibly stupid and I had a hard time believing the professor truly swears by this method of "teaching" so I did research and found out she actually worked on the stupid program herself. It's obvious self-promotion for a really bad program. She could have just made a handout, but the emphasis of this course is to waste as much of your time as possible doing menial tasks.

The exams were actually very fair--probably the best part of the class that Arlene created herself. You're allowed a page of notes, but honestly, none of the material is difficult. Just pay attention to what you're doing in lab--don't worry about the practice problems she posts. I'd focus on the post-labs and theory behind the lab-work. Her lectures are also pretty average, so that's another thing that isn't really bad about the course.

I think my gripe with this class can best be explained by comparing it to Corbin's style of teaching. In any of Brent Corbin's physics classes, you get graded on three things: 2 midterms and 1 final. No homework, no quizzes, just you and your mastery of the material. There's nothing that can get in the way of you sitting down to legitimately learn the material--it's a no bullshit, show up and *learn* sort of class. In that sense, these two classes are polar opposites. You will feel like you're back in high school and can't be trusted to wipe your own ass without copying the procedure for it twenty times and writing+reviewing essays about it. And that's so tragic--a lot of the stuff you do in the labs is really cool. You eventually develop the skills to identify chemical species in crude soil. I had a really laid-back TA and the labs were definitely the best part of the course. Those 6 hours of lab per week are great, but every minute put into the class outside those 6 hours are horrible.

She really doesn't teach her lessons that well, which is very ironic when she is in charge of the UCLA CalTeach program. She does not seem friendly during office hours neither. Her exams are unreasonably hard compared to what she teaches in class. CPR was annoying, and it wasn't so wonderful an assignment to do for our "improvement in writing", as she put it. She made us do it because it could save A LOT of her time! The way she assigns grades is very unfair. Some of my friends and I, who have taken the whole Chem 30 series before taking the course and who supposedly know the material fairly well (I aced the whole series), have received B's from her. Avoid taking her class. You might not get the grade that reflects how much effort you put in.

lectures are hella boring and at the worst possible time in the morning (8 am tuesday anybody???) and i am sorry to say, but pang definitely teaches the lecture material better than arlene a russell, THE AUTHOR OF THE FUCKING LAB MANUAL. open note exams are pretty nice but they dont really help much tbqh, i much prefer pang. outside of that, the class is typical south campus tedious shit (lab reports anybody?) thats really not too hard to understand conceptually but just takes a long ass time.

also choose your TA very very very wisely -- the first day of lab for me there was some (female) sub TA that was stacked and quite attractive and i had thought i hit the jackpot and quite possibly found my future wife. to my misfortune, she announced that she was not the actual TA and in the end I had to deal with BRIAN FUCKING KECK, quite possibly the douchiest and shittiest TA possible for undergraduate lab TAing. the shitbag clearly did not want to be dealing with undergraduate students at all and made it very obvious -- on all lab reports he would constantly took off points for EVERY MINOR FUCKING 'UNACCEPTABLE' detail (example: taking points off for using the 'unacceptable' abbreviation m-bar (an m with a line over it) for 'moles'.) dont even get me started on taking points off for COPYING THE FUCKING LAB MANUAL PROCEDURES ONTO THE LAB REPORT BUT TURNS OUT ARLENE MADE A MODIFICATION TO THE PROCEDURE WITHOUT TELLING US THAT WE WERE SUPPOSED TO FIND ON THE SHITTY VOH SITE??? AND ADJUST OUR PROCEDURES ACCORDINGLY WELL IM SORRY BRIAN KECK I WAS JUST FOLLOWING THE GODDAMN OLD AS FUCK LAB MANUAL. let me also describe his bitchy attitude towards undergraduate students and taking off lab technique points for staying even a single minute late, while next door the chill as fuck TA lets the slow chemists go through overtime, no big deal. need i mention his very very very very poor attempts at explaining chemistry concepts and NOT ANSWERING STUDENT CHEMISTRY RELATED QUESTIONS IN A CLEAR AND RATIONAL MANNER. seriously, you would ask the shitstick a basic chemistry question and he would either answer your question with a vaguely related cryptic response or, more often than not, another question. WELL NO SHIT BUCKO, THE ENTIRE REASON I'M FUCKING ASKING YOU THE QUESTION IS BECAUSE I WANT AN ANSWER, NOT ANOTHER GODDAMN RIDDLE, jesus fucking christ.

finally, for the soil project - choose your partners wisely. i know brian keck randomly assigned groups for my section and i got stuck with a bunch of social nitwits. out of the group of four (me included), we essentially split the group in half , with one half being 'the guy/girl asian partners' who worked completely independently of me & one completely stereotypical asian kid that that did not properly create a written procedure or even record experimental data properly, ending up falsifying their data in the end and making up procedures on the fly.

not much else to say about arlene besides the fact that shes a sweet old lady but seriously, FUCK BRIAN KECK, im sure many who took him can agree

Dr. Russell is a really sweet lady! Lectures are quite boring, partially because she talks very slowly and partially because it is at eight o'clock in the AM. She prints out handouts for you to pick up in class to take notes on, which is seriously a lifesaver because I'm half asleep on the days I make it to lecture. Midterm and final are open-note (lecture notes and lab reports, no lab manual). If you do better on the final than on the midterm, she will replace your midterm score with your final. She was accommodating to me when I missed a CPR deadline and she was really sweet to give everyone a little pep talk/congratulatory speech after everyone had finished giving their soil presentation.

the class sucks, and lectures were super early in the morning but she is not a bad teacher. very boring, but generous with the curve and lets you have open-note midterm and finals. not that the notes help too much, but still. russell is boring and the material is boring, but she's just as good as anyone else and very helpful in office hours.