i loved this class! the lectures were interesting and the assignments were so straightforward, free A's as long as you followed the instructions. Dr. Square put out study guides for his lectures and those honestly carried my grade. HOWEVER, there is a ton of memorization and having to learn the diff biochemical processes can be challenging

you really learn about DNA, RNA, proteins, and gene editing in depth. i took this class with other hard classes (orgo 1) so the workload felt worse than it actually is. every week, you'll have 2-3 lectures (each 30-60 min long) and then a quiz with 3 attempts. you'll have a couple assignments but they're very doable and sometimes he even gives out a tutorial walkthrough video. exams will be your biggest challenge tbh

Dr. Square is nice, funny, and wants students to do well in his class. he gave bonus extra credit at the end of the semester and on the last exam :D

the time blocked out on the schedule was actually just his zoom office hours. watch all the lectures as you do the quizzes so you dont have to cram them all in before the exam. i ended with an A in this class by paying close attention to the lectures and then annotating the study guides before the exams.

He is a great professor but make sure to watch his how to study for the class video and actually follow it.

He is vary forgiving and will allow extensions on every exam

This is a class I highly recommend!

Course content is difficult and the volume of content is INSANE, but it is all memorization rather than application so that makes it a little easier. There are many extra credit opportunities. This is the most I think I've ever learned in a course.

Dr. Gurley is by far my favorite professor! He is very clear about what content will and will not be on exams, and he shares his memorization tricks. He is also very funny and makes the material entertaining.

You cannot get away with under preparing for an exam. Diagrams, diagrams, diagrams. The bootcamp videos will save you!

I thought the course was extremely interesting. There is information that does feel useless (such as specific parts of a certain protein or certain numbers) but overall, it's an informative course.

It's very heavy on the processes of transcription and translation in different organisms like yeast, bacteria, and eukaryotes. The topics in general are useful and I've regurgitated some of the information in my research lab. I've applied some of what I've learned in my research as well. However, the specifics feel useless.

Dr. Gurley is extremely helpful and is willing to do anything to help his students. There are a lot of extra credit opportunities and detailed instructions on how to complete them.

This course was great! Dr. Gurley makes the lectures really interesting and the course content is very straightforward.

I work in a genetics lab and use a lot of this information every day!

I highly recommend watching the lectures thoroughly (even though they're quite long).

The course itself was very straightforward, in that you're basically just given a list of information for rote memorization. No critical thought required, next to no applications were given, and it wasn't very organized. Your grade in the course is based almost solely on how well you can cram info before your exams. I regret taking the course, given that if you actually needed to know any of this material in the future, any reference material on advanced genetics would be the completely acceptable, preferred choice. Online proctored exams required you to have an external web camera, but they went very smoothly, and Dr. Gurley did a great job of making the process simple and straightforward. Extra credit assignments were also abundant, and Dr. Gurley basically holds your hand throughout t...read more

The content itself was way too localized, we basically just read Powerpoint slides and were told to memorize unnecessary or arbitrary terms, or things subject to change, (ie., was it really necessary to memorize the ribosomal transcription rate of a(n) arabidopsis/yeast species under very specific conditions? No.) No broad overviews of chapter topics were ever really given us, so usually we "couldn't see the forest for the trees". Because of that, the info we were asked to memorize was often without context and seemingly random, even if it might have made sense given the broader scope of the topic. No stone was left unturned material-wise though, and Dr. Gurley did routinely update his slides throughout the semester to reflect new (ie., within the last few weeks/months) research being done...read more

He definitely makes my list of top 5 professors; rarely have I seen a man more willing to help his students, in the classroom or otherwise. Super nice, very responsive, and his lectures were usually animated, with some jokes thrown in there too.

All of that being said, I would say the content throughout the course was more-or-less too specific to be useful, (in that, it was information that reference books are made for); If you just need regurgitate genetics info for the MCAT or med-school, you really don't need to take this course, since flashcards on your own would accomplish the same thing. Had I known I would have been asked to just regurgitate material for exams, I would have chosen a different course that focused on critical thought, understanding, and application of its material instead.

Dr. Gurley

Very detailed course with lots of information. Interesting, but be prepared to spend a lot of time studying. I took it with a lot of summer classes, so was unable to devote as much time as I would have liked to this class.

Great professor! Very knowledgeable and doesn't read straight from the lecture slides. Always answers your questions and emails quickly. A little disorganized on the Canvas page, but manageable.

Always review the lecture slides and leave yourself plenty of time to study before the test. The homework and practice quizzes are super helpful. Also make sure you known the pictures/diagrams.

Very well taught and interesting course - average weekly workload is not too heavy and projects are very easy to follow and complete

Dr. Gurley is likely the best professor I've had. He's an amazing lecturer and is very understanding, kind, and helpful.

Make sure to watch all the lectures (even though they're long) and do the relevant homework before the exam date. Everything on the exams is on the powerpoint slides, so memorize that information very well.