I enjoyed Eps Sci 15 with Professor Jewitt. He's a knowledgeable astronomer, and he's also able to link his expertise in astronomy with oceanography, which is pretty eye-opening for me. All of his lectures during this quarter are pre-recorded, and that just gives us lots of flexibility. His lectures are pretty engaging and worth listening to. Labs are online; you just have to watch to TA video and complete the quiz, which is minimal effort. The two midterms are not the easiest, but manageable if you take good notes from his lecture. Jewitt loves to give out extra credit opportunities, so you should be fine if you complete those. The final is a bit harder, I thought I totally bombed it, but it turned out okay. I wouldn't say it is an easy GE but definitely an interesting one if you want to learn something new. I would recommend ppl to take it as a science GE with lab.

Easy A but can be frustrating b/c of those stupid lab quizzes and exams that had some impossible questions to answer. I think the breakdown of the grade was something like 35% lab grade, and 20% midterm grade, and 45% final grade (not completely sure). Although the lowest lab quiz grade got dropped, the quizzes were often very challenging; like they were usually manageable as long as you watched the lab video (I did not watch a single lecture video before my midterm and gave up watching them for my final), but some of the quizzes really messed me up and were stressful. You also have to post on the discussion forum w/ the answer to your TA's question of the week which was annoying but easy as long as you used the Internet lol. Honestly, the only reason why I (and majority of the class) enrolled in this class was b/c of the 30% extra credit he gives out normally, but for this class, he only gave out 10% (5 for completing these easy 3 assignments and 5 for writing a whole 5 page-ish report) which is still good but disappointing. The midterms were easy b/c most of the questions were similar to the ones in the quizzlets I studied before, but the final was super challenging for me and it took me such a long time to finish b/c not only you were only given 75 mins for 60 questions, but also the questions were genuinely hard. I surprisingly did great on the final, and with the 5% extra credit, I ended up w/ an A+, but idk man the content didn't completely intrigue me, and the final being worth almost half of the course grade seemed ridiculous to me. Also, Jewitt didn't really seem to really care about his students; he often got political during his lectures and sent out emails that contained some insensitive comments about the BLM movement. Jewitt kinda seemed to be pissed about the whole movement and him having to accommodate the final due to it. Overall, an easy class to get an A as long as you put in some effort, but I didn't really enjoy the class that much.

I took EPS15 with Jewitt and immediately signed up for EPS9 the following quarter when I found out he would be teaching it. One of the best professors at UCLA. Jewitt is very talented at teaching complicated science in a very basic and interesting way that leaves you more knowledgable about the natural world. I'm in humanities and always thought I'd hate science but after taking classes with Jewitt I have such a great appreciation for it. If you have any interest in the earth/environment/ocean take this class!

Do not buy the textbooks! I bought 1 of the books and did not open it the entire quarter. The midterm and final are based off of lecture, slides, and lab. I got Bs on both midterms and the final and still ended the class with an A+ — the extra credit really helps!! The tests are not too hard, but there are some trick questions in there so make sure to read questions carefully. Because class was online, he posted all the lectures (no live zooms). Labs were in person and were mainly there to ask questions about the activity. Would highly recommend and the content is interesting!!
Grade is based off of lab quizzes (lowest grade is dropped), 2 midterms, and final. I had TA Xiyuan and he was very helpful!!

I’m an ecology major who took this class to fulfill a lower div requirement for my minor. The content wasn’t particularly interesting to me, but I thought the class was decent as a whole.
I only watched around 3 of the lectures, since the slides were posted anyway and were relatively detailed. He had a huge tendency to go off on tangents and discuss irrelevant topics. The content was relatively straightforward, and I learned it well enough from the slides.
Because I didn’t really watch the lectures, I can’t really speak to how he was as a whole—apparently he did make quite a few questionably racist/bigoted remarks.
The grading was extremely generous:
-There was just under 10% of extra credit—essentially a whole letter grade. The extra credit was extremely easy. There were several opportunities with the labs and one big opportunity with a report; both took little time. If you do it, it’s very hard to get a bad grade.
-Labs: Didn’t go to a single session, since they were basically do the activity with other people and weren’t required. They consisted of posting a short reply on a discussion forum (takes like 5 min and was 20% of your lab score), and a quiz that was 80% of your lab score. The quizzes were sometimes worded really weirdly, and since labs make up 35% of your grade, they can hurt you if you don’t do well. I think I averaged an 85% on them or so.
-Tests: the rest of your grade was tests, which were two midterms (10% each) and a final (45%). Like the quizzes, questions were often worded weirdly, and I remember looking at a few questions confused on where it was discussed in the content that was covered. I did decently well on them, as they weren’t particularly challenging, but they weren’t the easiest to take.

Overall I’d recommend the class if it fulfills a credit you need based on the fact that it has an obscene amount of extra credit. Getting good grades on exams wasn’t the easiest, and I felt indifferent towards learning about the material. However, it is was extremely easy to get a good grade and had a decent amount of available resources.

Difficult class, extremely hard midterm, do the EC and you will end up with a good grade

This cluster is really cool and gets plenty of your GE's out of the way if you aren't in STEM. The class itself is pretty fast paced and covers a vast amount of information so it is important to pay attention to the professors' slides. The cluster was taught by different professors, depending on the subject being taught at the time, so every professor was well equipped with knowledge and experience in regards to the topic they were teaching. Professor Jewitt is remarkable! He is very well accomplished in his field of study and has very good knowledge of the topic. The workload is pretty heavy - there are labs almost every week, and in my case because of COVID-19, there were quizzes on lecture every two weeks instead of midterms. There is also a fall writing assignment that requires you to do a lot of research, but the benefits from taking the cluster are amazing! I highly recommend this cluster, and TA Jesus Salas is so funny and helpful.

Professor Jewitt is a super cool guy, super passionate about space and is extremely well known among scientists for his work/discoveries. Because he is so passionate, he doesn't want to see anyone do poorly and focus on their grades but rather stress less and actually try to enjoy the content. His midterm and finals were extremely difficult, but it didn't matter because he gave so many extra credit opportunities. I cannot even remember my horrible test grades because the extra credits boosted me so high over an A+. The key is to do the extra credit work, however, it can be heavy at times so plan accordingly.

Definitely the best professor in the whole Cluster 70A program. His lectures were incredibly engaging, and you can truly see the enthusiasm and passion he has for the field of astronomy. He makes them fun by adding in Sci-Fi movie references while also maintaining very strong clarity. Also, he was really helpful (he would even answer questions that were asked during his walk-through of lecture slides). Really wish more professors were like him.

Pretty easy and fun class. Prof gives a ton of extra credit which I took advantage of all to get an A+ in the class.