Dr. Rensel is the positive energy of the Biotech Cluster. She has a good sense of humor, good at explaining concepts. and makes the most comprehensible slides (legible and organized). The class itself is not bad either. 25% final, 20% midterm, 10% weekly quizzes, 20% participation (basically free points), and 25% GMO games (it's similar to MUN). A clicker is required btw. The class is sort of reading-intensive, yet as long as you pay attention during lectures and revisit them before exams, you should be fine. Would take again.

Professor Rensel gives the most comprehensible lectures out of all the M71 cluster professors. Her material can be a bit technical (at least for non-Biology students), but put in a couple of hours and you'll realize it's pretty easy under all the gloss.
The courseload is not that heavy, if you complete your quizzes and homework in time, and the lectures are pretty engaging. The discussion sessions are my favorite part-- they get really interactive and extremely fun.
10/10 would recommend this cluster (esp Prof Rensel) to all fellow Bio-nerds out there!

Dr. Rensel teaches the biology part of this class, and only appears like 4 times as lecturer, but she makes the clearest slides and explanations of the three professors. She takes time for detailed illustration of many confusing concepts and encourages us to talk in groups if clicker answers diverge. She assigns the least reading among the professors, and they can be easy if you have learned AP biology.

Professor Rensel is awesome. She is very clear and helpful and her assigned readings are usually short and beneficial. She is the best professor out of the three that teach this class.

A lot of people are going to tell you that clusters are not worth it and a lot of work. Honestly, the workload is not that much (at least for this cluster), there's just a lot of readings. You can probably get away without doing the readings since most of the questions on the exams are taken from lectures. However, the readings do help you understand a lot of the material talked about in lecture, so that is really up to you. The midterms and finals consist of multiple choice and short answer questions. If you can answer every learning outcome from every lecture and remember the answer, I can guarantee you will get at least a 90%. I personally recommend clusters if you are not into humanities because it gives you writing 2 credit and knocks out a good number of GEs and also fulfills the diversity requirement. I really hate writing essays and there is only one major paper every quarter. A usual UCLA writing class has 3 essays a quarter, and since clusters are year long classes, the 3 essays are spread out between the 3 quarters, which puts less stress into any one of your quarters if you are really slow and bad at writing essays like me. The seminar in spring quarter is a little more writing intensive, but it is still only one major paper plus a bunch of small pass/no pass writing assignments. The nice thing about it though is that the seminars only meet once a week and there is no midterm/final, much like your typical UCLA writing class. For some people, like me, who would rather take midterms and finals, that may be a little more actual work, but for others, the spring quarter is the most chill because some people can actually BS their way through the small writing assignments.

Just like what you might also hear from others, take a cluster that you would actually enjoy. I am a science major and even though this GE only gives me 3 GE credits that I actually need (because 1 of them is a life science GE), I did not ever regret taking this cluster. I absolutely think that everything I learned in this course was so interesting and learned so much from it. The topics that are addressed in this cluster include GMOs, breast cancer, in vitro fertilization, DIY science, and a few more other topics. It brings another perspective to science that you may have never thought about, for example, ethical issues, social, political, etc. This is probably the most scientific a humanities class can ever get for a south campus major. So for all you freshmen out there, if you are interested in taking a cluster, I suggest going through each one and reading all the descriptions about them and see which one catches your eye. Of course, weigh out the pros and cons because some clusters have a lot of science GEs, which you may or may not need, and vice versa. For me, this cluster was the one that I thought would be interesting plus it gives GEs that cannot be fulfilled by any of my other prereqs.

One thing to note about for this cluster is that your TA has a good amount of power towards your grade. During fall quarter, I had a pretty harsh TA and although I aced both the midterm and final, I ended up with an A- because the TA graded me pretty harshly on the stuff she gives grades to (I am definitely not a slacker and I put in a lot of time and effort into my work but still got low Bs). I highly recommend Evelyn if she is going to be a TA again. I switched to her winter quarter and got an A. She is fun, interesting, and super nice and approachable. She understands her students and actually enjoys teaching and is good at it, most importantly, a very fair and not harsh grader. Discussions are almost 2 hours long but her discussions are always super interesting and relevant to the class. In the spring I was in Professor Rensel's seminar about GMOS. Pretty interesting but I mainly chose that one because I personally think Professor Rensel is the best professor in the cluster plus having a professor is probably more safe than a TA. But then again, the spring seminar focuses on a special topic of the cluster, so choosing a seminar you are interested in is important too.

Overall, I wouldn't say this cluster is "easy", but it is definitely worth taking if you are interested in science and/or biotechnology. Especially for science majors who want to avoid as many humanities classes as possible, this cluster is a really good blend of humanities and science. Definitely super fair class. Professor Lee has some pretty unfocused lectures, but as far as I recall, the exams don't have a lot of material from her lectures. Theres usually only 1 or 2 main points from Professor Lee's lectures even though they are really long so try to figure out which things are important (it is usually the broader stuff rather than the details she will give). Professor Rensel definitely is the most clear and if you do end up taking the cluster, you will understand you don't even need to worry about Professor Rensel's material. Panofsky and Le Goff is kind of the middle ground where the concepts are not just laid out for you but you need to do a little thinking on your side. Definitely doable cluster and if you're sincerely interested in it and put work into it, you can get an A.

Professor Rensel, unlike other professors in the cluster, uses the Learning outcomes very clearly and specifically, so that when it comes to the revision for finals, you'll never have a problem figuring out what exactly you need to know for her part of the course. Although she might come off as strict and intimidating in the first few lectures, with time you realize she's super sweet and cool. She explains everything very well and detailed, doesn't go over time and makes sure to she answers all questions that you might have. Probably the best of the 4 professors you'll have in the cluster!

Professor Rensel gives great lectures. I really liked the topics she covered in the cluster and her material was very interesting. She was also super helpful in her explanations of complex biological mechanisms. She made the class easy for me.
The workload is super heavy though. There's a lot of reading assigned for each lecture. I wouldn't say this class is an easy A.