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I highly recommend this professor. There's one midterm, final, and wiki article project. The textbook is not necessary but MAKE SURE you study his PowerPoint slides. No homework. For the wiki project it's actually quite fun; just make sure you pick a topic you like. There's also plenty of extra credit points if you mess up. Spokoyny is also a very good lecturer, very clear, relates concepts to current topics. Overall fun class and awesome professor.

Alex is a fantastic professor who teaches a great class that is an broad overview of inorganic chemistry as applied to biology and bionanoscience. Very relevant topics. Assignment is a presentation on a researcher and an NIH style research proposal. Great class for anyone planning on continuing in science or medicine.

Alex is one of the most engaging professors I've ever met. He really wants you to understand the implications of inorganic chemistry as well as the research that has been done to further advance the field today. It will be relevant for those who wish to pursue a career in research. Even if you aren't, it was a really fun class where you'll get to meet other people and bond together! He also gets you pizza <3 Would take again.

I really appreciate how Alex designed this class to better prepare us for the real world. Each of us was assigned one researcher to present on. I know that I can get nervous when talking about formal things in front of crowds, but by giving us opportunities like these, we become a little more confident in our words. No matter where you go after UCLA, this skill is important. Also, he asks you some questions on the spot about your presentation and the researcher's work that you have to think about, which some are difficult but he doesn't drill you. The point is to get you thinking. The presentation and also the proposal assignment really make you have to learn how to read journal articles. I really liked the proposal because you have the freedom to propose a research project that hasn't been done before. Getting started is really hard though, but go to his office hours and he'll help guide you. In addition, besides the proposal's final deadline, there was only one deadline which was for your specific aims (3rd week) to get you thinking and working on it. However, between that time and when it was due (like 9th week?), pretty much no one really worked on it. Yeah, that's pretty much on the students themselves and to not procrastinate real world stuff, but I don't think we would've peer-reviewed lots of seemingly incomplete proposals if we had more deadlines. There's no midterm and no textbook. All of his lectures were on PowerPoint and he lectures for the first hour; the second hour is two student presentations. He really encourages questions during his or student presentations, also this counts towards your participation points. But besides that, I encourage you ask questions too because all the topics are really cool. We were only allowed to collaborate among ourselves for the take-home final. The final required reading papers and this is where how you interpret his lectures come in. Overall, Alex is a great and engaging lecturer who really cares about his students. He's funny and understanding and really wants us to learn and appreciate the many interesting aspects of research in inorganic chemistry. You gain valuable life experience in presenting, and also being able to extract the important things in really long and loaded papers.

He is a new professor who taught 171 without the conceptual rigor that the material required. Instead, he talked a ton about historical things and lecture just felt like being exposed to a ton of trivia about elements. When it actually came down to chemistry things, like drawing correlation diagrams for metal complexes, many people are confused and have to seek help because Spokoyny didnt properly emphasize how orbitals work, just assuming you remember all the way from chem 20A. For exams, just go through the slides and copy every random trivia onto the cheat sheet that you are allowed (write really tiny).

So yes, he is well-meaning and entertaining, and the class is pretty fun overall, but you will not feel like you learned any cohesive concepts about inorganic chemistry and you will be very poorly prepared for 172 (good thing im biochem so i dont need 172)

I really enjoyed this class, and as a chemistry major, I am now very much leaning towards the inorganic chemistry side because of this class. Alex is super cool, funny, and understanding. The material itself is very interesting and covers many, many real-world/relatable topics that I didn't even know had to do so closely with inorganic chemistry. With that said, most of it is introductory and general. It only gets specific and more problem-solve-y towards the end with NMR and orbitals stuff, which I really liked. Demos are informational fun (know why they happen). I went to his office hours almost every week and most of the time I would learn from other people's questions, and we also just talked about normal every day things. I definitely recommend office hours if you're not confident in the problem-solve-y stuff; he'll go over it with you real quick and easy. The Wikipedia group project was literally my first group project at UCLA and I believe was really helpful in that 1) you gotta get social with different types of people, 2) you have the freedom to venture into any topic that is inorganic chemistry-related, 3) read some real science/journal articles. Overall, I understand some people were a little frustrated with his style, but it was his first quarter and he was obviously trying what was best for us, and I thought it was a pretty neat way to do it. He also curved generously and gave extra credit. The extra credit thing was fun and you get placed and win little prizes (and extra credit). For studying, I recommend that you print out the PowerPoint and take notes directly on this since his lecture slides are mostly pictures. He tests directly from what he says about the slides. Most exam questions were short answer facts about general inorganic chemistry topics. Some bigger problems are the problem-solve-y ones. He doesn't try to trick you and it's all really fair. Mostly, just have fun in this class and if you find it genuinely interesting, then you'll do great.

He's a FANTASTIC professor. One of my memorable events while taking this class was the flexibility of his lecture. One time a student asked a very good question and Spokoyny asked the whole class if they are also interested in this question. Once he got a yes he changed his lecture on the spot! He addressed the student's question thoroughly in a clear and engaging manner. We resumed his planned lecture the following class. The point is he KNOWS his material VERY WELL...so well that he can adjust his lecture on the spot. No book is required for his class but I recommend buying it as reference especially in this day in age for any working chemist - for class sake you can save money since the book is not very necessary. Don't let the salty reviews fool you! You're only at UCLA once (maybe twice) so don't let some reviews written out of anger stop you from participating in classes taught by GREAT professors.

Just out of curiosity in regard to the last poster below: If you don't need chem 172 (and thus have not and will never even take 172), how do you know if the way Spokoyny taught will not prepare for 172 in any way? To be honest, 172 can be taken independently from 171 material-wise. I'm not sure why 171 is a pre-requisite; 172 is very straightforward because you just follow the motions of solving the same problems over and over again. I feel 172 is just an intro class for group theory and 171 helps establish appreciation and recognition of what's out there in 171. It's not the teacher's fault if the student can't put two concepts together and has to have the teacher spell out every single thing...that's called studying at home. Spookily is a great teacher and does not trick you.

For the second poster: ok sure he asked some history questions...look back at the test again...you may have missed 4 points out of 100 AND he curves in everybody's favor. Also recall the solid state chemistry questions that took a whole page. How about the page of quantum mechanics and conceptual mass spec questions on the next page? It's a lot to learn but it comes down to the student's responsibility. Good luck!

Alex Spokoyny is great. He really cares about his students and the subjects that he teaches. All of his lectures are well thought out and engaging. He usually adds a funny slide to each lecture. He is very nice and approachable. His tests are quite hard, but he adjusts the scores well (not exactly curving them). I would recommend him to anyone.