Had an asynchronous class with him, absolutely horrible. He was so monotone and made it as difficult as possible to follow the lectures. His lack of enthusiasm has drained already a very draining academic year. He grades on a curve and he does not give any indication of how you did on exams. (I got D on midterm because I "misinterpreted" one of the prompts"). I do not recommend at all.

Great upper division elective that satisfies sociology major requirements.

Class is broken down into 4 grades: midterm exam, final exam, discussion attendance, and a writing assignment.

Exams are in person blue book exams that are written. On the exam day, you will be given a sheet of paper with about 14 questions to choose from. You will only answer 4 of the prompts.

Discussion attendance is a guaranteed A+ if you attend all of them. Every week you will be assigned discussion questions that are based on the reading. They are due the day of your section meeting date. Nothing needs to be submitted online, just be ready to share your answers in class with you group which consists of 4 classmates (groups are stablished the first week of class). In discussion, make sure to take notes of any questions the TA may add. Those will be on the exams.

Prior to every midterm and final, Professor Jepson provides students with an extensive study guide of both the in class lectures and the discussion section. You can disregard the lecture study guide as the exam consists of only the discussion section study guide questions.

On the midterm exam most students did well with the highest grade being a 38/40. For the final, the highest grade was a 35/40 (class average for the final was a 31/40). Don't worry though because your grade at the end of the quarter that's posted on BruinLearn is not your final grade. Professor Jepson curves your grade and the class is also made of points which is another factor. Even if your grade may be a B on BruinLearn, you need to check MyUCLA to see your accurate final grades.

Overall I highly recommend taking this class. Professor Jepson is similar to Professor Sigmon incase you enjoyed his class. Just be prepared that for an 8am, he is a very monotone speaker so try not to fall asleep lol. Good luck!

I like many things about this class, but I like the structure of the class the most. In the first half of the course, prof Jepson taught us about power and the relationship between the nation-state and business. Then, he taught us about how powerful people use ideology to keep their power and influence democracy. His classes have many examples relating to current events in the US and the world, and he asked us to talk about our own experiences, so I felt very engaged in his lecture even though I did not talk a lot during class. Prof Jepson gave us many jokes to help us understand the concepts he covered. For example, when he talked about how the structure influences the voter turn-out, he described a person waiting in a long line on a rainy day just to vote to show how allowing to vote on one day prevents many people from voting. Prof did not use slides, so I felt a little uncomfortable during the first lectures. Then, I’m ok with it because I care about the content more than the slides, and the outline helps me organize concepts very well. I’m not a sociology major, and I don’t know any about politics. After this class, I feel much more confident about both sociology and political science.

Honestly, not my favorite. Walking to class at 8 am just to see Prof Jepson standing in front of what looks like a google doc with a million bullet points, talking at you with no variation in the way he speaks was not my favorite. I skipped most lectures after that. Abigail, my TA, was wonderful, though. Grade is only made up of two exams, a final paper, and discussion attendance so kind of unforgiving. After talking to people who've had Jepson multiple times, though, I realized all you had to do to study for the exams was take the discussion study guide (no need to look at lecture one) and know the answers toe ach of the questions on there, which are given to you in discussion anyways. The discussion questions are usually the exact ones on the exams, so know those and you're golden. Other than that, though, Jepson as a lecturer was just so dull and droning, so I'll probably try to avoid him in the future. If you're looking for a class you can get an A with little effort, though, you've found the right place.

Honestly, Professor Jepson was a fair professor. If you attend lecture and discussion, you will get a great grasp of the material. The class consisted of weekly discussion posts, a midterm, a non-cumulative final, and a paper (you have to pick from a small list of prompts he gives in the syllabus). He gives study guides for both the midterm and the final a little over a week in advance so you can prepare. Discussion posts are based on weekly readings (the readings were kinda dense but fairly easy to understand and were not long). The TA I had was super helpful in preparing for tests and breaking down weekly discussion posts (which made up the questions on both the midterm and final). His lectures can be kind of monotone, but he would crack jokes that were pretty funny and made his lectures engaging and easy to understand. I would recommend this class and take another class with Professor Jepson again!

Jepson has a lot of bad reviews, but his class was not nearly as bad as I expected it to be. It was very straightforward, and if you attend lecture and discussion, you'll be fine.
I took it during COVID so lectures were all asynchronous and recorded. Lectures were not anything special. Jepson basically reads off of a script, and it's kind of boring. But they were often shorter than the 75 minute lecture period, and I could watch them whenever I wanted. I usually watched at 1.25 or 1.5 speed while I took notes because he talked pretty slow, so I could get through them pretty quick. There was also a transcript that I could copy and paste into my notes or read through if I needed to find something quickly. He always posted a lecture outline that was a great guide for taking notes. With asynchronous it's really tempting to get behind in lecture, but keeping up with it is the easiest way to do well on the exams.
Midterm and final were a little challenging, but very manageable for me. They are both completely open note, but you only have 75 min to take the midterm, which feels tight. You answer whatever 4 questions you want out of 12. Final is not cumulative and has the same structure but with more time. He posted separate study guides for the discussion section (based on the class readings) and the lecture for both exams. The lecture guide is basically just notes that you can reference (you don't have to do any additional work), and the discussion guide is sample questions you have to fill out. If you fill it out and have multiple examples for every question, you can do good on the exams. I would study the day before the exam and be fine.
Each week we had to answer a question about the reading for discussion section. I usually did not read the entire passage, and only did what was necessary to answer my question, but having those responses every week was normally good enough for the discussion related questions on the exams. I never read the lecture specific readings as he covers them in class, so it's really not necessary to read them yourself.
Again, I thought this was a really straightforward class. The exams seemed really fair to me being open note and only having to answer a third of the questions. If you watch lecture and do the weekly discussion question, you'll be fine.

Great professor, took is SOC 182 class. One paper and two blue book tests.

I am selling the course reader for SOC 182 by Jepson.

email me at: *************