Dr. Li is one of the sweetest MIMG professors I’ve ever had teaching the most fascinating course I’ve ever taken. You can tell she is very passionate about viruses and giving her students the help they need. In winter 2020, the structure of the class was such that Dr. Dasgupta taught about bacteriophages and Poliovirus, Dr. Li taught about RNA viruses, and Dr. Fregoso (also an amazing professor) taught about human DNA viruses. The grading was such that the top 25% (at least) would have some kind of A. Starting in Winter 2021, only Dr. Li and Dr. Fregoso will be teaching the class. I heard that in future quarters, the grading will be a straight scale (which may or may not be as forgiving as the tests are still quite hard, but doable if you study equally as hard). Not confirmed, just what I heard. Also they’re doing an entire course restructuring than what I experienced, but the way Dr. Li explained the restructured course makes a lot of sense and sounds like the students will learn many concepts and ideas earlier on which will make learning in general easier. But overall, the content of the course is unmatched to any MIMG course I’ve ever taken. The class may be challenging, but learning all about viruses made it always fun and interesting.

But more on Dr. Li, she is just fantastic. Highly recommend going to her office hours. She learns her students names there and clarifies class material (lots of things might not make sense the first go-around e.g. coronaviruses and measles were tough ones for me). She explains things much like an LA would, which I really like because it promotes long-term learning & understanding. She also loves talking about life in general - she’ll pick up any conversation with you and you really feel a lot of MIMG care, something that may feel absent in large lecture halls or from colder professors. She has so much experience in virology/innate immunity/research so ask her about that for a very fascinating conversation about what’s new in those fields.

Anyways I don’t want to drone on, but Dr. Li was truly the best MIMG professor I’ve ever had. The care, the knowledge, the teaching, EVERYTHING. It made MIMG 102 my favorite MIMG class I’ve ever taken, so I highly recommend taking it to anyone reading this.

Side note: Emily Yang was my TA. She’s phenomenal. She goes above and beyond what any TA should do for their students, but it made a huge difference for me when I took the course. Definitely the best TA I’ve ever had imo. Take Emily if you can, and go to her OH too!

Professor’s Melody Li and Oliver Fregoso co-teach this class in the Winter, and they are both amazing lecturers who truly care about their students’ learning. The beginning of the class covers very introductory virology concepts and mechanisms. Thus, the concepts themselves are not very difficult, but be aware that they do expect you to know a lot of information for the tests. The exams are challenging and focus mainly on viral mechanisms, not straight memorization. However, the two midterms are not cumulative and the length of each exam is pretty reasonable. In my experience, the best way to study for this class is to attend lectures or rewatch the Bruincasts since anything from their lectures are fair game. Both Dr. Fregoso and Dr. Li hold very engaging office hours, and they really enjoy students who talk about virology topics beyond the scope of the class.
Importantly, the class only has 2 midterm exams and 1 final project. The final project is typically a group presentation about a virology topic. The final project is graded extremely leniently (eg. students typically score 90-100%). I took this class as a MIMG major, however, I think this is such an interesting and fun class for any life science student. The topics covered in this class were really interesting for me, and once I set up a studying schedule the workload was really manageable. Discussions aren't mandatory but I would really recommend attending. Overall I really liked this class, and I would definitely recommend Dr. Li as a professor! This was my favorite MIMG class by far.

Looking at the past reviews and the public grade distribution for this class, I am very confused. I expected an engaging and interesting class about virology and an easy A. Yet somehow Melody and Oliver Fregoso managed to frustrated practically everybody taking this course.
This frustration comes mainly from the fact that such a large portion of our grade being made up of the midterm. Forgive my language, but the midterms were absolute bullshit. The midterms were comprised of a couple of questions, each with sub-questions (for example, question 1 would have an a, b, and c section). However, these questions were so poorly worded that everybody I talked to openly complained about how difficult it was to interpret what they were asking. As such, if you interpreted it incorrectly, your entire answer would be wrong. I tried asking the TAs for clarification regarding what the question was trying to ask me, but the answers they gave were vague and unhelpful, probably because they didn't want to give away the answer.

--This part is just a rant--

I'm not sure what professor with a giant stick up their ass designed this course because their policies regarding late submissions or word limits are borderline dictatorial. Instead of a final exam, we are assigned a final project in which you are assigned groups and record a presentation on a virus or some shit like that. They strictly said that there is a 20 minute time limit, and anything past that time limit will be disregarded. Additionally, for the first midterm, they said that the free response answers should not exceed 25 words or something like that. So many people complained because they would spend time compressing their answers and choosing which key terms to remove so that they can meet this bullshit, arbitrary word count. And in some cases, they would remove a key term that was a part of the correct answer, so they would be docked points for not having the key term. Why the professors decided this was a good idea, I have no fucking clue. They're not even the ones grading the fucking midterms. The TAs are, and I don't think that a 25 word limit will make their lives any better when they're slaving away as free labor for the professors to abuse.
According to the public grade distributions for this class, about 70% of the past classes ended with an A- or A, but with how much bullshit was in this quarter, I am genuinely curious to see what the grade distribution will be like, and I am slightly scared about my GPA (ik its annoying but its just some classic premed shit).