I took Professor Phelan's class during spring quarter of 2024. He is an extremely engaging professor who is passionate about his job. His love for teaching and class content is extremely contagious. I was genuinely excited to attend his lectures because I knew I'd learn something new each time. This is a great class for students with a limited background in biology.

In terms of workload, it was very manageable as long as you keep up with the readings. The final exam is cumulative, so if you aren't up to date with the readings then you'll have a really hard time cramming everything a few nights before. I definitely would recommend this class to everyone. Everyone I know that took this class with me walked away with a lot of important and interesting life lessons!

If you can take this course I think it is so worth taking. Prof. Phelan is my favorite professor I have had at UCLA so far. He is so smart and makes science (which I didn't think I was that interested in) SO ENGAGING. I highly recommend this course I could not imagine not enjoying it. Also, go to office hours and get to know him, he cares about his students and will give his valuable time in helping you understand anything.

If you are not a STEM person and thinking about taking this class as a science GE, TAKE THIS CLASS!!! I usually HATE biology, but I found myself looking forward to every Phelan lecture and leaving feeling like I really learned a lot. His midterm and final are not easy, but after I got an average score on the midterm, I learned that you really just have to study all the material and practice being asked about a random topic. Professor Phelan offered an extra credit music video opportunity, and you should definitely take advantage because I'm pretty sure that my EC is what got me to the A. Overall, Professor Phelan is super engaging, entertaining, and charismatic. Highly recommend this class

Part of me took this class (for Cogsci and a GE) just to see what the hype was all about.

GUYS. It's worth the hype. Some play it off and try to be different but this professor is SOOO interesting and engaging! The concepts that he taught were just so applicable to real life, and as a humanities major that used to love STEM and ponders everything in life to exist ever this got me back into both while integrating BOTH. DNA, reproductive success, altruism, friends, family, everything. I think that it was a little difficult at times bc of bio content (I hadn't taken AP Bio in the past), but there were a lot of apes concepts and overall, while complicated, you could learn bio from a friend or something. I would say a heavy stem focus but also heavily interesting.

The teaching style was so engaging too. I remember the first day I sat in the class, bro went up to me immediately and asked me a fun question abt the subject. Jay the goat walks around during lecture! We were kinda surprised to discover some lore abt him, but he in general was soooo nice and interesting and helped me FBI stuff. Only downside is that he hasn't ever responded to one of my emails and his OOs are far af. But my probably ADHD Tiktok Gen Z brain was properly overstimulated when he had a slideshow presentation in the background, two pictures of animals, and talked about stuff; I genuinely felt like I was watching someone play subway surfers while telling a storytime abt something crazy. Take this class if you go to school to learn. Lots of EC opportunities so advantage of those too.

This class is absolutely fantastic to take as a GE if you aren't a bio major. The content is super understandable and Phelan is an amazing lecturer. One piece of advice I would strongly recommend is to *keep up with readings!!* You cover a ton of content in the class and the readings add a lot of context that makes answering problems on quizzes a lot easier.

Dr. Phelan is just awesome. He manages to be so engaging and informative in every lecture. I learned so much more than I thought from this class, and I would definitely recommend it! It requires some work, but it is definitely worth it.

Dr. Phelan is the best and most engaging professor I’ve had at UCLA. He genuinely cares about his students and is passionate about the topics addressed in LS15. Overall the material in the class is super relevant to life, which makes it easy to stay engaged. Workload and readings were very manageable. I recommend this class to anyone who has space to take it!

best professor and one of the most interesting classes at ucla. take him and take this class !!!

Professor Phelan is amazing!! His lectures are super engaging and are always packed. His tests are super hard but the curve is very nice (i.e. I got below 70 on both midterm and final and still got a B+ in the course). He is a world-class professor who is very invested in the topic of biology as is obvious in his very engaging lectures. He has written lots of books all of which you will struggle to stop reading because they are written so well. He taught me new studying techniques which has helped me get better grades at UCLA. He is unbelievably helpful during office hours and cares deeply about the success of his students. As others have said, he is a life-changing professor. The extra credit was a lot of fun and as long as you follow the directions in the syllabus you should be able to get at least 20 points. The quizzes weren't too bad as long as you did the problem set beforehand. It is really important to go to the discussion as it accounts for a large portion of your grade, and the points are pretty easy to get in the discussion section. The course may be one of the hardest GEs out there but it is very rewarding and I would recommend it to anyone.

I love Professor Phelan so much. The midterm and final are very easy to pass if you study exactly what he tells you to and there are plenty of extra credit opportunities if you don't feel too confident about your test/quiz scores. If you think you're bad at science, take this class and it'll change your mind :)!