Professor
Gwin Jack Kolb
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Most Helpful Review
After taking Professor Kolb, I can say that there are a lot of advantages and disadvantages to his teaching style and the way in which his course was run. He had a lot of health problems, so several classes were cancelled, sometimes without notice. Although it was a nice surprise to show up to the door and suddenly have a free 2 hours, some might view this as a liability. The department eventually enlisted another teacher, Professor Beesmeyer to help him teach the course. After learning from both Professor Kolb and Beesemeyer, I can honestly say that Kolb is one of the more brilliant professors that I have ever had at UCLA. Rather than giving us a traditional read of the texts, he really dug deep and found a lot of insightful and original things to say about the texts that he was actually able to substantiate with evidence (unlike some professors, who throw out a lot of baseless theories that make no sense). The downside to this is that often lecture consisted of him simply talking for two hours straight (which he is able to do, and do well) without following any kind of clear structure. Despite his brilliant capacity to lecture, I found that none of it helped whatsoever on the midterm, which was just a simple exam in which we answered factual questions about the texts without having to explicate them in any way. The midterm was incredibly easy, as we only needed to answer 20 out of 42 (!) questions. The final consisted of a 4-page take home paper (the prompts were quite difficult) and explicating 5 out of 18 quotations in class. We also had a paper to do, but it was cancelled because of his absences. Overall, I disagree with many raters saying that he is the best professor at UCLA, but Kolb is definitely worth taking - his class is straightforward, not stressful, and he's a charming and witty guy.
After taking Professor Kolb, I can say that there are a lot of advantages and disadvantages to his teaching style and the way in which his course was run. He had a lot of health problems, so several classes were cancelled, sometimes without notice. Although it was a nice surprise to show up to the door and suddenly have a free 2 hours, some might view this as a liability. The department eventually enlisted another teacher, Professor Beesmeyer to help him teach the course. After learning from both Professor Kolb and Beesemeyer, I can honestly say that Kolb is one of the more brilliant professors that I have ever had at UCLA. Rather than giving us a traditional read of the texts, he really dug deep and found a lot of insightful and original things to say about the texts that he was actually able to substantiate with evidence (unlike some professors, who throw out a lot of baseless theories that make no sense). The downside to this is that often lecture consisted of him simply talking for two hours straight (which he is able to do, and do well) without following any kind of clear structure. Despite his brilliant capacity to lecture, I found that none of it helped whatsoever on the midterm, which was just a simple exam in which we answered factual questions about the texts without having to explicate them in any way. The midterm was incredibly easy, as we only needed to answer 20 out of 42 (!) questions. The final consisted of a 4-page take home paper (the prompts were quite difficult) and explicating 5 out of 18 quotations in class. We also had a paper to do, but it was cancelled because of his absences. Overall, I disagree with many raters saying that he is the best professor at UCLA, but Kolb is definitely worth taking - his class is straightforward, not stressful, and he's a charming and witty guy.
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