Professor Eagle was a decent lecturer. Fair warning, he reads directly off his slides and has a pretty quiet, monotone voice. Lecture attendance isn't mandatory and CAN give you extra credit if you don't miss more than a certain number (I think around four or six). The content is very YMMV; if you love talking about plankton, you'll find it interesting. If reading research papers (and writing and presenting about them every week) sounds boring and tedious to you, you won't like this class very much. He does show some fun videos about jellyfish and has guest speakers occasionally. I guess an apt word for this class is just... tedious. We had upwards of five deadlines per week, depending on the content, and got very little explanation on the final projects, which were to write our own NSF style grant proposals and create some kind of community science/science education media. I don't feel like I learned all that much considering how much time I spent listening to him talk, but you live and you learn.

ALSO be warned that though he does not specify this whatsoever in the syllabus, he WILL curve DOWN. I personally had my grade curved from an A (95%) to a B+ after getting a perfect score on the final and was not super excited about that. It was especially irritating that he told us he would be generous with us considering all that was happening on campus and in the world... and then preceded to do the opposite of that. I would not take this class again, but if the topic really appeals to you it's not the worst class ever.

This class was very interesting and I really enjoyed it. Professor Eagle used slides and recorded lectures almost every week, except one where we had a live guest lecturer. This class is interesting because there are a lot of sections in the grade breakdown, and as a result not one aspect of the class dominates over the others, its fairly even. Every week you read a scientific paper and discusses it in section, then write a 1 and a half page summary of it. These were difficult to write at first, but once you get the hang of it they are fairly easy. There is also a "research proposal" style paper at the end of the quarter that took some work but ended up actually being really fun. The midterm and final were relatively easy in this class as well. Overall, I'd recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about life in the ocean and the physical processes that sustain it.