I have never written a review of an instructor if it’s not for extra credit before, but I made an exception for this professor due to his singular lack of respect and the dysfunctional learning environment in this course. He does not provide any recordings or written records of his lectures, which results in everyone coming to class sick or missing important material. His tests, according to him, are best studied for using lecture material, which is why it’s so peculiar that he does not provide any notes on the website or zoom recordings if you are unable to be present for an emergency or illness. He also does not provide any practice problems in the style of his tests (no numbers on a physics exam, which I have never encountered before and is not anything like the homework for this course), and does not provide us with formula sheets even though all other 5C classes I know of get to have one. He expects students to have an understanding of levels of calculus not required for this course and thinks it's funny when we do not even though this is supposed to be an algebra based class. I have taken AP calc AB and BC as well as the LS 30 series and cannot begin to understand some of the math he does casually, skipping many steps along the way. Graduate students in the tutoring zooms have told us that we shouldn’t have to know the math he is teaching us on more than one occasion. Only one person is brave enough to ask questions in class, because he will routinely respond with little jokes and one word answers, so none of the rest of us want to try. I am not a professor, but this seems like a terrible way to engage students in a difficult subject and does not make me want to learn more about anything he teaches.
He also regularly discusses the shortcomings of the 5 series like lack of depth and calculus even though we are doing physics for life science majors and he clearly has a background in a different level/type of physics and does not care enough to adjust his style of teaching or topics covered to the job at hand. The average grade on both midterms we took were in the 45-55% range and he claims he’s not curving which would result in the entirety of the class failing. In any other job, if I was 50% effective at my task and callous about it, I would expect to be fired. He has said that he is grading on the sense of how well he thinks we understand the material, which is all well and good except for that I am a senior hoping to graduate next quarter and would like a more quantitative assessment that is not dependent on someone’s mood. Half of my time studying is spent decoding his notes, which are all proofs and derivations, the steps to which he does not explain adequately. The only person I feel has supported us in this course is our singular TA, who is commonly upset with Corbin’s communication style and decisions.
Corbin has also made many inappropriate remarks and jokes about mental health, wearing masks, alcohol and drug use, and violence. I know we’re all adults, but I don’t really feel the need to have this present. He regularly claims that the inability to pass this class will result in our inability to succeed in graduate programs, even those not involving physics or hard math, which seems inequitable and unfair. Do not take 5C with this professor.

In my three years of attending UCLA, I have never chosen to write an instructor review that was not for extra credit. Yet, Brent Corbin has won the award for being the worst professor I have ever had. I would never speak about an instructor like this, that being said Brent has never once shown myself or any of his students an ounce of respect, therefore I will not be providing any myself. To begin with the course itself, Physics 5C is majorly supposed to be algebra-based physics. Yet, Brent made it very clear at the beginning he had no intention of sticking with the status quo, as we were expected to be doing multivariable calculus with absolutely no prior knowledge. With that, he never taught us any basic principles of such mathematics, making the lectures nearly impossible to follow. I had taken AP Calculus AB/BC, as well as LS 30A/B, and I still did not even begin to recognize the math we were expected to conduct. His lectures were a scattered mess of derivations that even a graduate physics student at UCLA who tutored me AND a tutor at the drop-in physics tutoring hours stated that this is not material that we should be expected to know. His lectures had absolutely no structure at all. It was derivation after derivation of the most specific and inapplicable concepts imaginable, failing to start with the most basic concepts of the course that we would actually need for the future. In terms of Brent’s instructing style, he was rude, condescending, and created one of the worst learning environments I could have imagined. There was quite literally ONE individual in the lecture brave enough to ask questions, yet every time he shut her down with one word answers, even sometimes laughing in her face at the ask of her question. It was like he was actively trying to make his students feel stupid. However, I should have known that this was the case, as on the first day of class he stated UCLA’s instruction is less adequate, and I quote, because of “that mental health sh*t”. He does not care about the well-being of students, he only cares about being the end all be all of electromagnetism. He once bragged about making textbook writers cry because of how rude he was to them when reviewing their writing. He also constantly talked about how the pre-med curriculum is too easy at UCLA now, and that we would never succeed in med school if we could not understand the graduate-level physics he was providing us with. He was actively discouraging students from pursuing higher education, and if anyone else is like me, I never had trepidations in regard to going to med school prior to this course. In addition, he constantly made inconsiderate and inappropriate remarks, making light of mental health, violence, and substance abuse. His exams were always written the night of, never providing us with practice exams, or even practice questions in general. The homework we were assigned was completely application based, making it mostly irrelevant when studying for a solely derivation based exam that has never used an actual number - only variables. On top of this, there was no equation or cheat sheet provided, forcing students to rely on pure memorization over conceptual understanding. The only thing similar to the exams was the lectures, which were not recorded nor had uploaded notes. If you were sick, or could not keep up with his fast paced mathematics, there was no option for you to absorb the missed material. It was impossible to prepare for his exams, because it was impossible to even know what topics would be covered. On top of these exams being extremely difficult, he even started our second midterm late because one student arrived late, and did not provide us with any extra time. Overall, he was the least empathetic, respectful, and socially aware instructor I have had, and certainly does not exude the core values that UCLA is supposed to be emphasizing. Myself, along with every other student enrolled in this class, did not experience an equitable or even comparable Physics 5C course. It is simply unfair for other students to be able to take this course with other instructors and be subjected to a level of material that is expected for undergraduate students.

Don’t take 5C with Corbin. He doesn’t agree with the curriculum design so simply does not teach it the way it is meant to be taught. Focuses on the theoretical with no practice problems. GREAT curve though I definitely should have failed. No calculators or cheat sheets on tests.