Avoid Prof. Felker and let me tell you why:
1. His lectures are very conceptual
2. He never goes over homework or tells you how to apply all the formulas and theories into problems.
3. The wording of some problems on the tests is unconventional and designed to trick you as if he intentionally wants you to get a bad grade. The problems themselves are not hard but it takes forever to understand what it is saying. I understand that chemistry is supposed to be hard but getting a bad grade just bc of the unusual wording is not quite acceptable.
4. The online learning program he requires has a bunch of typos. I hate the feeling when I get stuck on a problem for a long time and start to doubt my intelligence and then find out that it's just that the answer key is wrong.

But there are two things about Felker that I have to defend. I see people complaining that there is a lot of math involved in his hw problems. I hate math too but hey it is a college level chemistry and it is supposed to have this much math. I don't think Felker should be blamed for this one. Also people say that his lectures are boring. Again it is college level chemistry so the lectures are supposed to be boring (physics lectures can be interesting but I've never seen a prof who can make their chem lectures not boring).

Try to avoid taking his 20A. But if you really have to, make sure that you took AP chem in high school. 4 or 5 on the AP chem definitely helps you understand his stuff better and makes your life less miserable.

I took Professor Felker because I was desperate for a chemistry class for my first quarter since the regular chem 20a classes were all filled out during my chance to sign up for classes during freshman orientation. I'm actually glad that my desperation forced me to choose him because he was not that hard at all, even in Chem 20AH. In fact, he said that the only difference between Chem 20A and Chem 20AH is that Chem 20AH just has mandatory online homework, which was easy 20% of your grade. The first midterm was easy since it was the first three chapters, which are considered the fundamentals or review for those who have taken AP Chemistry. However, second midterm was alright, but tricky, and he finally made it honors level when he threw in "separation of variables." However, if you score at least 10 points above the average, you're fine. For the final, it was doable , but when I saw the answer key he posted a few days after the final, I realized that I wrote some BS and if the grade was not curved, well, my GPA would have been screwed. My final grade for the class was an A and I did not have to work as hard as the students who took Baugh.

As for his teaching style, he teaches alright for the first three chapters, but when he gets to quantum mechanics, it becomes unorganized. Despite that, I would still take him for the Chem 110 series.

And for the textbook, I did not like it at all because the textbook was extremely unorganized in explaining quantum mechanics that I would get lost in reading it and there were errors that the professor pointed out.

Felker is a very hard-working professor who is always around if you need him. He is very monotonous though and he consistently teaches conceptual topics in class with little review on actual problems. The tests take questions that are similar in difficulty from the book and a good TA will definitely help you understand all the problems in the chapter. Be expected to do perfectly on homework or you will be marked off points and be expected for only calculation problems on the tests, no conceptual problems.

I really liked Felker's lectures, which I found to be quite insightful and very clear. His homework was never too long and really helped me to know what was going to be on the midterms and the finals. His tests were not very diffucult, the first midterm the average was 73/100 and on the second was 83/100, and the final was just as straightforward. If you dont mind his slightly slow lectures you can easily get an A in his classes.