Professor Mays is one of the WORST professors, by far, at UCLA, if not the entire UC system. She preaches equitable accommodations and resources, but ENSURES that her course was taught with an unequal and unfair disadvantage to her students, as well as with her unprofessionalism and her mocking of her students. She claims she shares positions on multiple committees - of which I question their reputability in anointing her a position - but never once treated this course and her students with the respect she demands for herself. I was thoroughly interested in the field of study the course aimed to educate, but after a quarter with Professor Mays, I can eagerly and most sincerely say that I will never take a course taught by her EVER again, no matter how interesting the course may be. Professor Mays has not yet ONCE (EVER) read her course evaluations - her being tenured only makes her a worse example of how poorly trained some educators truly are. She is an example of an abuse of power, and an individual who shares no respect for her students AND her teaching assistant. Shelby was the ONLY source of compassion and understanding this quarter, yet was treated with disrespect the ENTIRE quarter. I believe Shelby was mentally and emotionally strained this quarter, and it had to do with how Professor Mays treated her and this course. I understand my voice as a student will not be heard, but if this does reach individuals and committees of power, do INVESTIGATE PROFESSOR MAYS - she does NOT deserve her role as an educator here at UCLA.

If you do read this, DO NOT take this class with Professor Mays. Before taking this class, I did read the BruinWalk reviews and very ignorantly ignored my peers. Professor Mays is everything her reviews say she is - none of these reviews are exaggerations. I do believe taking this class remotely with the current state of the world made this class and this professor all the more WORSE. She was NOT understanding. After the final "midterm," one week before the final exam, approximately 90 students remained in the Zoom meeting to voice their concerns about her offering an optional or no-harm final - to which she mocked us and claimed that she had no power in altering HER already-flawed syllabus to which she failed to abide to throughout the quarter. Do not take this class with Professor Mays.

I feel compelled to write this review after I see that Professor Mays has continued to receive awards and committee appointments (ex: award for lifetime contributions to mental health, special advisor to chancellor on Black life). I truly cannot believe how she receives such prestigious positions and awards. I hope that higher-ups at UCLA eventually see student reviews and and look into her as an educator. If she is an exceptional researcher and provides value in these university positions, fine - but she has absolutely NO place educating undergraduate students.

I will say first that I don't regret taking the class because I am very interested in the material and I gained value from doing the weekly assigned reading. I also didn't think the class was super difficult. PROCEED WITH CAUTION though when choosing to take this class because the reviews below are true - you will be putting yourself through a bunch of nonsense in order to get access to some interesting articles.

That said, Professor Mays is a worse educator than any high school or middle school teacher I ever had - not an exaggeration. All she does is show hundreds of slides with 0 organization and then ramble for an hour. Then, to assess you, she gives poorly-written 10-question multiple choice exams that do not assess your true understanding of the material. SHE NEEDS TO STICK TO RESEARCH. Especially at a school like UCLA, students deserve better.

She's also the rudest professor I ever had experience with in my 4 years at UCLA. I don't know if all of the recognition for her work has gone to her head or what, but she is self-centered and arrogant. She is rude and dismissive to students. I can't imagine how she would be pleasant to work with in her role as an advisor to the chancellor or her other committee roles. I hope that UCLA considers the character of their researchers and educators in the future when making decisions, not just their "achievements."

If you are looking for a straight-forward class where you are tested on what you learn, look elsewhere. Although the course material seems easy to understand and very intuitive, professor Mays somehow found a way to make it appear somewhat confusing. The tests were really poorly written, and some questions made little sense. I would disagree with the previous reviewer about the rudeness; I found professor Mays friendly and sweet. However, I would not recommend taking this class, even though I was interested in the topics discussed throughout the quarter. Prof. Mays is a great researcher, but not a good teacher. This course, tests in particular, caused me a lot of stress.

It is an extremely tough class. Part of the pandemic/protest quarter, her accommodations were little to none. You miss 8 points throughout the quarter, you will be getting an A-.

I took this course because of a genuine interest in race-based health disparities, and although the content of this class met my expectations and I learned a lot of practical and interesting concepts, I would not take this class again because of the environment and confusion that Dr. Mays created. The class is a "point system" in which there are two 20 point midterms, a 30 point cumulative final, 5 point weekly summaries that add up to 30 points, and a potential for 2 points of extra credit through questions of the day.

The two midterms are 20 questions each, so each question is theoretically worth 1% of your grade. After our first midterm, she asked for student feedback, so we all asked for more questions on the tests because the test was manageable to complete in the time period and we felt that it was very difficult to show what we learned in just 20 questions, to which she responded that "that wasn't actually what we wanted." Around this same time, Dr. Mays gave us the option to drop a midterm score, which shows that she doesn't understand her own point system, because since it is not on a distribution scale, we would just be losing an opportunity to gain more points. The second midterm occurs in WEEK 10, in addition to the final during finals week. The tests themselves are supposed to be an equal distribution between slides and readings, which I would say was the case. However, they are extremely application-based, so you are asked questions on case-study vignettes, and it's often confusing which part of the course each question is alluding to, and since there are so many different sources each week that overlapped in content, it was impossible to know which reading she was testing on.

The weekly summaries aren't a bad idea because it makes sure that students do the weekly reading (which I did find worthwhile), but this class somehow found a way to make them difficult. You are required to submit 6 out of 9 weeks and are able to do more if you don't get full points on a summary, but they are extremely time consuming since there are at least 5 sources each week and the summary itself has to be 500 words. I often got 4.9/5 points for apparently no reason, but the most frustrating part is that they are due at noon on Sunday, which is hard for students like me that have a lot of commitments outside of school. I would understand midnight on Saturday or Sunday, but this deadline seemed arbitrary and somewhat unfair.

The TAs offer Q&A sessions before each exam (not review sessions), but Dr. Mays attends and is almost intolerant when students don't understand something , which makes this class really discouraging. Overall communication was messy and incohesive, especially when dictating grades - days would pass after when they said they were going to be posted.

There were supposed to be ten questions of the day throughout the quarter that took place in the first few minutes of lecture, and if you got nine of the ten right, you grade would move up to the next letter grade if you were within two points of it (so if you had an 88 in the course, you could be moved up to a 90). It was week nine and we had done maybe four of them. When we asked if the test questions would be like the questions of the day, they said no... so it didn't make sense why we were doing them if they weren't preparing us for anything.

The slides are posted, but I really wish this class was podcasted because the slides do not at all translate into the exam material. Basically, this class is extremely unorganized and unreceptive to student feedback, and I really wish this wasn't the case because the content itself is worth learning.

Workload is fairly light, no textbook, readings each week on CCLE, with six 500 word reading responses due over the course. Two midterms, one is in week 10, plus a final. All multiple choice. Grading is extremely vague - an 'A' is the second highest grade in the class, so you never know how you're doing really. Mays is also the rudest, most unpleasant professor I've had - she's passive aggressive and plain mean to many students who ask questions. She also interjects her own accomplishments into every lecture, and not in a way that's meant to enhance the students knowledge; it's very much "look at how amazing I am and how important I am and how great I am." Work isn't difficult but she made the class unpleasant.

She's gotta be one of the worst f****** professors at ucla... tbh, idk why or how she got into the uc system. She is horrible at teaching so save yourself the trouble. Do NOT take a class taught by her.

Read the previous reviews. They do a pretty accurate job at describing the whirlwind you will go on if you decide to take this class.

Graded work:
- 8 weekly assignments, lowest 2 dropped
- 3 midterms, lowest 1 dropped
- 1 final
Extra credit opportunities:
- 3 "question of the day," there was supposed to be 5-8
- Honors presentation rating
Structure of the class: Preview content via weekly readings/videos (which is what the weekly assignments were based on), attend lectures, slides posted each week

My main struggle in this class was navigating the midterms. Do not think this is an easy class and rely on common sense. You will learn a lot of new or very specific information that will definitely be applied in the exams. Even if the professor didn't finish going over the slides, you were responsible for understanding the material. Also, the poor grammar of the exam questions was so distracting. Approaching the professor or TA for help was also challenging because the professor would often be passive-aggressive and both our former and new TA were limited in how much they could help us. So the review sessions they hosted were basically a Q&A with no use of slides or a study guide. The Q&A sessions were always in-person/live on Zoom and never recorded for those who couldn't make it. I don't think it's fair for people who have other obligations and didn't plan for random review sessions not already stated in the syllabus. I noticed the class size visibly shrank after the first midterm. Other than that, I am glad I managed to succeed despite the circumstances.

TL;DR: Don't take this class if you aren't used to bluntness in academia and exams with really bad errors and grammar. If you have other obligations, you need to find a study buddy who is willing to share notes with you. Very few accommodations will be made for you.

Contrary to the other reviews, I loved this class and I thought it was a great class to take to finish my senior year considering everything going on with the world at the moment with covid-19 and the protests. While I do agree that Professor Mays can be blunt sometimes, I don't consider her to be a rude professor at all and most of the time what she says gets misunderstood.

The exams were completely fair and while her lectures and slides may be lengthy, there are general themes that are clearly outlined throughout each topic and as long as you understand the concept you're good to go. She even gave us bonus questions on the exams so even if we miss one question we could still get 10/10.

What I thought was a bit annoying was the fact that you can get docked points by the decimal on the weekly responses and read many long articles, but after you get the hang of it you should be getting the full points.

Even though the grading scheme of the class seemed unforgiving, Professor Mays allowed us to vote on the option to make the final optional and curved the class to help us get better grades (there are limited extra credit opportunities). I truly think that everything that she's said and done has been misunderstood and taken in a wrong way and she isn't intentionally rude. The contents of this class are incredibly interesting and I honestly loved every bit of it.

I thought this class was very interesting in terms of the actual content, but the lectures and disorganization of the professor were a bit frustrating. The slides are a bit all over the place and have a lot of information on them which can be difficult when studying since the midterms and final are about 20 multiple choice questions. Try to start the weekly assignments early so you don't miss out on points as I did! I only attended lectures about 4 times this past quarter and got A-/B+ on the midterms/finals by reviewing the slides at home and reviewing my own + other peers weekly reading summaries.