Nick Shapiro is a KING. Take any and every class you can with him. He cares a lot about student learning and makes lectures interesting. Honestly, I wasn't a *huge* fan of the curriculum of this course as I thought it sometimes went completely over my head, but I really loved all of his lectures. He did a great job of keeping the course flexible, accommodating, and engaging during virtual learning.

I absolutely loved this class. Hands down the best class I've taken in my three years at UCLA. Dr. Shapiro is incredibly knowledgeable, engaging, and humble. He wants to teach us as much as possible about exactly what we're interested in. The class was co-taught by Dr. Shapiro and a recently released previously incarcerated person. They combined their academic and lived experiences to teach us about prisons in the US as effectively as possible. There are a lot of readings for the first half of the class and you need to annotate them using Perusall which can be annoying, but the readings chosen were usually really good. I wished the class went a little deeper into each topic because we usually only spent one class on each huge issue with prisons (e.g. toxic environment or healthcare in prisons). The second half of the class is experiential and everyone got to choose a project to work on. Initially we were going to work with community organizers in LA, but we pivoted (per students' requests and professor facilitation) to conducting different research projects at UCLA. The projects were incredibly valuable to me and I learned a lot about conducting research/collecting archives. The grading is super easy. Dr. Shapiro wants you to show that you learned and were engaged in the class, but really doesn't want to make you stress about a grade so everything is super chill.

Shapiro is a very easygoing and understanding professor, I would absolutely recommend him! The course involved:
- 15%: 2 readings per week, with at least 5 annotations each on Perusall
- 5%: 6 quizzes throughout the quarter, based on lecture (5 questions, very easy)
- 40%: open book, take home midterm and final essays (500 words, 20% each)
- 20%: self selected assignment (basically up to you to do a short presentation/video/paper on a topic related to course ideas)
- 20%: participation in discussion (depending on TA, you could get away with like 1 comment every now and then)
Overall, the workload wasn't too demanding, but the readings could get pretty long. Lectures could be a little dry, but they were still interesting (and podcasted anyway). The essay prompts were a little open ended or vague, but ultimately it was to encourage individual creativity. Lectures ended in week 8 and we just watched presentations/did review for the rest of the quarter. Honestly, a fun time if you simply enjoy what you learn and understand the major ideas.

This class was fantastic. When I took this class, Dr. Shapiro taught the first half and Dr. Allard taught the second half, and I absolutely loved this class. Dr. Shapiro had a great understanding of antibiotic resistance and environmental racism, the topics that the first half of the quarter touched on. The class wasn't difficult and was very informative. It's very interdisciplinary and great if you're interested in healthcare.

Dr. Shapiro is such a gem of an instructor and he is incredibly approachable. He is such a great lecturer and has a great way of phrasing and describing some incredibly engaging topics. Participation matters in discussion sections (show up and engage) but this professor clearly wants to help everyone pass and succeed in this course by giving quizzes, reading assignments, and taking questions throughout lecture. He livestreamed zooms which was useful for those who got ill or couldn't show up for class and he posts slides. TA's were also great. If you get the chance, take this professor! I highly recommend him, he's one of the best I have had at UCLA.