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Carissa Eisler
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Based on 8 Users
Eisler was new to this course and did a fantastic job! She was crystal clear about expectations and really cared about student learning. Her homework was applicable directly to the test and nothing seemed like busy work. I've learned a lot from her class and would take her again as a professor in a heartbeat!
NOTE: THIS REVIEW IS FOR BOTH 101A AND 101B TAUGHT BY CARISSA EISLER.
---
New professors vary a lot at UCLA. Sometimes you get someone that doesn't want to be there. Sometimes you get someone that tries but struggles. And sometimes, you get the incarnation of Athena herself, coming down to bring us peasants salvation from the horrors of transport phenomena. "That sounds too good to be true" you say? No it's not, keep reading.
---
Let's talk logistics. 101A's grading scheme is simple:
Surveys (3%) - Honestly just free points.
Quizzes (7%) - Graded, with infinite retries. Free points.
Homework (10%) - Graded on effort. Free points.
Now here's your NOT!free points.
Tutorial (12%) - Two group project, create a video tutorial. Takes about three hours to complete each.
Mini Exam (45%) - Seven one-hour, take home, open notes exam. It was timed in the beginning, but became untimed later on (aka you have 36+ hours to do it).
Final Exam (23%) - Cumulative. "Designed to take three hours" is a lie, you will take like five hours, especially if you didn't study beforehand like me.
The concepts of this course is a little hard (it's transport bro) but the grading scheme is extremely lenient. There is a curve, and rumors were that getting an 87%+ raw score is an A.
---
101B has a different grading scheme. Tutorials were set to 20%; instead of doing two tutorials, you now do one long one, with many options for regrades. The exams were condensed into just "Exams (60%)". There are now four exams; however, they aren't exactly cumulative, so it's a lot more easier. The exams are broken up into timed (20%) multiple choice and short answer questions and untimed (40%) long answer problems; their difficulty remains about the same. Oh and did I mention that your lowest homework and exam grade is dropped for both classes? Yeah. Hit me up with more of that good stuff.
---
Now let's talk delivery. Eisler, unlike the old boomers at UCLA, is a millenial. What does that mean? She's goddamn technologically literate and has all sorts of fancy stuff in her lectures. Polls and graphs? Gotcha. Actually interactive breakout rooms? Hell yeah. Elevator music featuring Hollow Knight? Ez. She's just so approachable and friendly, and engages a lot with the class. Even though her lectures were about two hours long, I never once felt bored or had my attention taken away. It's something hard to put in words, and something you've gotta experience. If you choose to not attend lecture for whatever reason, she records and uploads all lecture material in the span of like thirty minutes after lecture ends, which is goddamn amazing.
---
More importantly, Eisler does listen to class feedback, and seriously takes measures to address their concerns. On one hand, this really helps the students connect with Eisler and adapt the class better to a virtual environment. On the other hand, this sometimes results in ping pong. "This exam is too hard" -> next exam is easier -> "this exam is too easy" (???) -> next exam is harder and so on. You might experience a bit of whiplash if you're underestimating the exams, so don't take anything for granted.
---
In summary, Eisler is an amazing professor that makes a notoriously diffuclt subject like transport seem like playing Call of Duty with an aimbot. Her lectures are engaging and fun, the coursework is reasonable, and grades are easy if you try. Make sure to pay attention, because transport is used in literally every industry.
Eisler FTW. She's definitely an above average lecturer, but I think what made her class so great was the effort she puts into the administrative stuff and quality of life things she does for her students. It's her first year teaching, and she fucking killed it.
---
First, the detail/logistics of the class. Homework every week makes a whopping 20% of your grade... thankfully a lot is on Chegg. 2 Midterms make another 40. The final is 35. Semi-regular discussion quizzes make up another 5.
---
Eisler puts so much effort into the course. She has a tablet she projects to the board and writes on. Very visible, clear, easy to see. The best part? The notes she makes up in class are uploaded as PDFs to CCLE. That's a fucking godsend. You can closely follow the textbook (text is decent at teaching, but Eisler explains the stuff better) with the PDF notes to see exactly what was covered and what can be safely skipped in the book. Better yet, go to lecture. She's engaging, relaxed, and upbeat (not to mention a qt.) She was sick for a day and uploaded the lecture material we missed to CCLE to make up for it. It's always the mark of an excellent professor when that happens.
---
Material-wise, the class is on the difficult side, but nothing significantly harder than what you've done before. HEAVILY physics based. A bit of math (specifically differential equation math) but she makes it a point to test your understanding of fluid theory and its applications, not how well you can solve PDE's. As such, none of the math is difficult on the exams. More importantly... the stuff is actually interesting. It's not a boring class. If you're like me, this is the first time you'll feel like an engineer. Up to now, everything has been strictly theory. For the first time, you learn things that are clearly useful (how to apply pipe roughness to see how a fluid flow will change in a pipe, conditions needed for certain types of fluid flow, finding forces ANY fluid system generates or experiences... useful stuff!). Tests are very fair. Multiple choice makes 20% of it... the other 80% is typically 2-4 long problems (2hrs for the test). Questions want you to apply what you've known to some situation. It's not so much as "Prove the Navier-Stokes equation" as it is "Use Navier-Stokes equation to find an equation that describes the velocity of molasses in an inclined pipe." Still, know your theory, because the multiple choice leans more heavily on that. You won't be asked to derive the equation, but may be asked why a certain term was dropped in the derivations and what the significance of that is. Surprisingly, the multiple choice was always the hardest part of the test since there's no partial credit. You either know it or you don't.
---
You are VERY lucky to take Eisler if you can. 101A is notoriously difficult, but Eisler made it very approachable. I am not a good student by any means, but I did put a lot of effort into this class and it paid off. Everything you need to succeed is there, and then some. Hell, she put out a math refresher for solving PDE's for the homework. Overall, she's a professor that wants to give her students the quality education UCLA promises. That's rare. Even rarer, she succeeds in doing that. I wish Eisler taught everything. 5/5
Great professor. Logistics are still being worked out but they’re definitely better than before. Definitely expect things to be different logistics-wise when you take it.
Lectures were very clear and engaging. They were podcasted and slides were released, but it’s still very worth it to go to lecture. She’s probably the best lecturer in the ChemE department, and even better at lecturing than the North Campus Professors.
Grading was definitely generous. Here’s the breakdown for my year (the COVID year):
3% Surveys, free points (3 surveys total)
7% Feedback Quizzes (Free points, after lectures). Lowest 4 dropped.
10% Homework, free points. Lowest is dropped.
60% Exams. 4 exams in lieu of a Midterm and Final. Lowest one is dropped.
20% Tutorials.
Exams were still difficult, but definitely more straightforward compared to previous quarters. There was a timed conceptual section and an untimed free response section. They were very fair. What I liked best was that we were tested on our knowledge of Heat Transfer, not on our ability to solve PDEs.
The tutorial was a group project where we solved an example problem to explain a concept. Unlike previous quarters, it was NOT free points. Some people got dinged pretty hard on it. Fortunately, we could redo it and get up to half of the points we missed.
WARNING: There's a really good grade distribution for Winter 2021. Take it with a grain of salt. That quarter, we were allowed to P/NP major classes, so many students did exactly that, which undoubtedly skewed the grade distribution towards the A range.
Eisler, despite teaching for the second time in her life is a rock-solid professor. She clearly cares about the students and their learning. She listens to feedback and actively seeks to make her class better. Furthermore, she is very, very good at teaching, probably one of the best if not the best at teaching in the ChemE department. So yeah, consider yourself lucky if you have her as an instructor.
---
Now in terms of course logistics, things were hairy in the beginning. Due to COVID, and to "reduce stress," we had weekly Mini-Exams outside of class, worth a whopping 45% of our grade and there were seven of them. Initially, they were timed to 90 minutes, but it was basically impossible to complete them in the allotted 90 minutes. Therefore, they were extended to be 24 hour exams, and usually took 2-3 hours. Most of them were around the difficulty level of the homework, but they usually had curveballs that messed even the best students up. The homework was decent practice, but there's a general lack of material to actually practice with unfortunately.
---
By the way, the homework itself was reasonable. 10% of the grade, but only took 3 hours maximum to complete per week. It was graded on effort and completion, and if you clearly tried and came up with an answer, you get full credit. In other words, 10% free points. The textbook was helpful until around week 7, and can be easily pirated, alongside the solution guide to the textbook. So with Mini-Exams, Homework, extra practice, and textbook readings, you should expect to spend 6-8 hours per week outside of class studying; not too bad.
---
We had tutorials worth 10% of the grade. We basically videoed ourselves in a group on how to solve problems. Again, basically free points ( you can expect ~95% on them).
---
Quizzes after lecture were literally free points, and same for surveys throughout the quarter, 7% and 3% respectively.
---
Final was hard AF, and there was no way one could've finished within the 3 hours it was supposed to have taken. But, the homework and study guide were somewhat helpful in terms of completing it, and we had 32 hours to do it. It was also graded pretty generously
---
Tl;dr: One of the best professors in terms of teaching ability. Professor is inexperienced, so bugs in terms of course logistics are still being worked out. Subject is inherently hard, and course logistics really don't help.
Also:
Surveys+Quizzes: 10% free points, take 5-10 minutes
HW: 10% free points, 2-3 hours/week
Tutorials: 12% of grade, basically free points, 2 per quarter and each take around 4 hours to do
Mini-Exams: 45% of grade. Fairly difficult. 7 in the quarter, approximately weekly. Generally take 2-3 hours to do, but you have around 32 hours to work on them (basically unlimited time).
Final: 23% of grade. She made it way too hard, but you have basically unlimited time to work on it (32 hours, same deal as mini-exam).
Professor Eisler is by far my favorite professor at this school. I had her for 101A and 101B, and for both classes she is easily the most compassionate and understanding professor I've ever had. If other classes have conflicting exams/projects, or things like power outages happen, she gives extensions when possible and is always willing to accommodate you. I had some medical issues that made it extremely difficult to keep up with the class, and accepted plenty of late work (as I had documentation of proof) as well as communicated well to make sure I was always doing alright. She truly cares about students' learning and not just the grade, so she seems happy to work with you so that you'll leave the class successful. I will always recommend her, her and her TAs/LAs are great.
This was her first class at UCLA, but she really cares about her students and the class saw improvements in every lecture.
She is very engaging, where she asks the class questions to the conversation going. Her tests can be a mix of hard and easy but most importantly: fair.
You will walk out of the class knowing the material.
On another note, she is very nice and willing to help. She seems to really enjoy teaching.
Professor Eisler is by far one of the best lecturers in the ChemE department. Her lectures are very well organized, clear, and incorporate fun activities and examples that keep you engaged.
The main drawback is that the class is a massive amount of work. On average we had 2 quizzes/week, 1 homework assignment/week, 1 test every 3 weeks, and various other projects and graded surveys due. The exams are untimed which is nice to relieve the pressure of a time crunch, but also means that exams typically take 4+ hours to complete.
Overall Professor Eisler is a fantastic professor and I definitely recommend taking her if you can, but be aware that you might need to drop other classes or commitments to accommodate the workload of 101B.
Eisler was new to this course and did a fantastic job! She was crystal clear about expectations and really cared about student learning. Her homework was applicable directly to the test and nothing seemed like busy work. I've learned a lot from her class and would take her again as a professor in a heartbeat!
NOTE: THIS REVIEW IS FOR BOTH 101A AND 101B TAUGHT BY CARISSA EISLER.
---
New professors vary a lot at UCLA. Sometimes you get someone that doesn't want to be there. Sometimes you get someone that tries but struggles. And sometimes, you get the incarnation of Athena herself, coming down to bring us peasants salvation from the horrors of transport phenomena. "That sounds too good to be true" you say? No it's not, keep reading.
---
Let's talk logistics. 101A's grading scheme is simple:
Surveys (3%) - Honestly just free points.
Quizzes (7%) - Graded, with infinite retries. Free points.
Homework (10%) - Graded on effort. Free points.
Now here's your NOT!free points.
Tutorial (12%) - Two group project, create a video tutorial. Takes about three hours to complete each.
Mini Exam (45%) - Seven one-hour, take home, open notes exam. It was timed in the beginning, but became untimed later on (aka you have 36+ hours to do it).
Final Exam (23%) - Cumulative. "Designed to take three hours" is a lie, you will take like five hours, especially if you didn't study beforehand like me.
The concepts of this course is a little hard (it's transport bro) but the grading scheme is extremely lenient. There is a curve, and rumors were that getting an 87%+ raw score is an A.
---
101B has a different grading scheme. Tutorials were set to 20%; instead of doing two tutorials, you now do one long one, with many options for regrades. The exams were condensed into just "Exams (60%)". There are now four exams; however, they aren't exactly cumulative, so it's a lot more easier. The exams are broken up into timed (20%) multiple choice and short answer questions and untimed (40%) long answer problems; their difficulty remains about the same. Oh and did I mention that your lowest homework and exam grade is dropped for both classes? Yeah. Hit me up with more of that good stuff.
---
Now let's talk delivery. Eisler, unlike the old boomers at UCLA, is a millenial. What does that mean? She's goddamn technologically literate and has all sorts of fancy stuff in her lectures. Polls and graphs? Gotcha. Actually interactive breakout rooms? Hell yeah. Elevator music featuring Hollow Knight? Ez. She's just so approachable and friendly, and engages a lot with the class. Even though her lectures were about two hours long, I never once felt bored or had my attention taken away. It's something hard to put in words, and something you've gotta experience. If you choose to not attend lecture for whatever reason, she records and uploads all lecture material in the span of like thirty minutes after lecture ends, which is goddamn amazing.
---
More importantly, Eisler does listen to class feedback, and seriously takes measures to address their concerns. On one hand, this really helps the students connect with Eisler and adapt the class better to a virtual environment. On the other hand, this sometimes results in ping pong. "This exam is too hard" -> next exam is easier -> "this exam is too easy" (???) -> next exam is harder and so on. You might experience a bit of whiplash if you're underestimating the exams, so don't take anything for granted.
---
In summary, Eisler is an amazing professor that makes a notoriously diffuclt subject like transport seem like playing Call of Duty with an aimbot. Her lectures are engaging and fun, the coursework is reasonable, and grades are easy if you try. Make sure to pay attention, because transport is used in literally every industry.
Eisler FTW. She's definitely an above average lecturer, but I think what made her class so great was the effort she puts into the administrative stuff and quality of life things she does for her students. It's her first year teaching, and she fucking killed it.
---
First, the detail/logistics of the class. Homework every week makes a whopping 20% of your grade... thankfully a lot is on Chegg. 2 Midterms make another 40. The final is 35. Semi-regular discussion quizzes make up another 5.
---
Eisler puts so much effort into the course. She has a tablet she projects to the board and writes on. Very visible, clear, easy to see. The best part? The notes she makes up in class are uploaded as PDFs to CCLE. That's a fucking godsend. You can closely follow the textbook (text is decent at teaching, but Eisler explains the stuff better) with the PDF notes to see exactly what was covered and what can be safely skipped in the book. Better yet, go to lecture. She's engaging, relaxed, and upbeat (not to mention a qt.) She was sick for a day and uploaded the lecture material we missed to CCLE to make up for it. It's always the mark of an excellent professor when that happens.
---
Material-wise, the class is on the difficult side, but nothing significantly harder than what you've done before. HEAVILY physics based. A bit of math (specifically differential equation math) but she makes it a point to test your understanding of fluid theory and its applications, not how well you can solve PDE's. As such, none of the math is difficult on the exams. More importantly... the stuff is actually interesting. It's not a boring class. If you're like me, this is the first time you'll feel like an engineer. Up to now, everything has been strictly theory. For the first time, you learn things that are clearly useful (how to apply pipe roughness to see how a fluid flow will change in a pipe, conditions needed for certain types of fluid flow, finding forces ANY fluid system generates or experiences... useful stuff!). Tests are very fair. Multiple choice makes 20% of it... the other 80% is typically 2-4 long problems (2hrs for the test). Questions want you to apply what you've known to some situation. It's not so much as "Prove the Navier-Stokes equation" as it is "Use Navier-Stokes equation to find an equation that describes the velocity of molasses in an inclined pipe." Still, know your theory, because the multiple choice leans more heavily on that. You won't be asked to derive the equation, but may be asked why a certain term was dropped in the derivations and what the significance of that is. Surprisingly, the multiple choice was always the hardest part of the test since there's no partial credit. You either know it or you don't.
---
You are VERY lucky to take Eisler if you can. 101A is notoriously difficult, but Eisler made it very approachable. I am not a good student by any means, but I did put a lot of effort into this class and it paid off. Everything you need to succeed is there, and then some. Hell, she put out a math refresher for solving PDE's for the homework. Overall, she's a professor that wants to give her students the quality education UCLA promises. That's rare. Even rarer, she succeeds in doing that. I wish Eisler taught everything. 5/5
Great professor. Logistics are still being worked out but they’re definitely better than before. Definitely expect things to be different logistics-wise when you take it.
Lectures were very clear and engaging. They were podcasted and slides were released, but it’s still very worth it to go to lecture. She’s probably the best lecturer in the ChemE department, and even better at lecturing than the North Campus Professors.
Grading was definitely generous. Here’s the breakdown for my year (the COVID year):
3% Surveys, free points (3 surveys total)
7% Feedback Quizzes (Free points, after lectures). Lowest 4 dropped.
10% Homework, free points. Lowest is dropped.
60% Exams. 4 exams in lieu of a Midterm and Final. Lowest one is dropped.
20% Tutorials.
Exams were still difficult, but definitely more straightforward compared to previous quarters. There was a timed conceptual section and an untimed free response section. They were very fair. What I liked best was that we were tested on our knowledge of Heat Transfer, not on our ability to solve PDEs.
The tutorial was a group project where we solved an example problem to explain a concept. Unlike previous quarters, it was NOT free points. Some people got dinged pretty hard on it. Fortunately, we could redo it and get up to half of the points we missed.
WARNING: There's a really good grade distribution for Winter 2021. Take it with a grain of salt. That quarter, we were allowed to P/NP major classes, so many students did exactly that, which undoubtedly skewed the grade distribution towards the A range.
Eisler, despite teaching for the second time in her life is a rock-solid professor. She clearly cares about the students and their learning. She listens to feedback and actively seeks to make her class better. Furthermore, she is very, very good at teaching, probably one of the best if not the best at teaching in the ChemE department. So yeah, consider yourself lucky if you have her as an instructor.
---
Now in terms of course logistics, things were hairy in the beginning. Due to COVID, and to "reduce stress," we had weekly Mini-Exams outside of class, worth a whopping 45% of our grade and there were seven of them. Initially, they were timed to 90 minutes, but it was basically impossible to complete them in the allotted 90 minutes. Therefore, they were extended to be 24 hour exams, and usually took 2-3 hours. Most of them were around the difficulty level of the homework, but they usually had curveballs that messed even the best students up. The homework was decent practice, but there's a general lack of material to actually practice with unfortunately.
---
By the way, the homework itself was reasonable. 10% of the grade, but only took 3 hours maximum to complete per week. It was graded on effort and completion, and if you clearly tried and came up with an answer, you get full credit. In other words, 10% free points. The textbook was helpful until around week 7, and can be easily pirated, alongside the solution guide to the textbook. So with Mini-Exams, Homework, extra practice, and textbook readings, you should expect to spend 6-8 hours per week outside of class studying; not too bad.
---
We had tutorials worth 10% of the grade. We basically videoed ourselves in a group on how to solve problems. Again, basically free points ( you can expect ~95% on them).
---
Quizzes after lecture were literally free points, and same for surveys throughout the quarter, 7% and 3% respectively.
---
Final was hard AF, and there was no way one could've finished within the 3 hours it was supposed to have taken. But, the homework and study guide were somewhat helpful in terms of completing it, and we had 32 hours to do it. It was also graded pretty generously
---
Tl;dr: One of the best professors in terms of teaching ability. Professor is inexperienced, so bugs in terms of course logistics are still being worked out. Subject is inherently hard, and course logistics really don't help.
Also:
Surveys+Quizzes: 10% free points, take 5-10 minutes
HW: 10% free points, 2-3 hours/week
Tutorials: 12% of grade, basically free points, 2 per quarter and each take around 4 hours to do
Mini-Exams: 45% of grade. Fairly difficult. 7 in the quarter, approximately weekly. Generally take 2-3 hours to do, but you have around 32 hours to work on them (basically unlimited time).
Final: 23% of grade. She made it way too hard, but you have basically unlimited time to work on it (32 hours, same deal as mini-exam).
Professor Eisler is by far my favorite professor at this school. I had her for 101A and 101B, and for both classes she is easily the most compassionate and understanding professor I've ever had. If other classes have conflicting exams/projects, or things like power outages happen, she gives extensions when possible and is always willing to accommodate you. I had some medical issues that made it extremely difficult to keep up with the class, and accepted plenty of late work (as I had documentation of proof) as well as communicated well to make sure I was always doing alright. She truly cares about students' learning and not just the grade, so she seems happy to work with you so that you'll leave the class successful. I will always recommend her, her and her TAs/LAs are great.
This was her first class at UCLA, but she really cares about her students and the class saw improvements in every lecture.
She is very engaging, where she asks the class questions to the conversation going. Her tests can be a mix of hard and easy but most importantly: fair.
You will walk out of the class knowing the material.
On another note, she is very nice and willing to help. She seems to really enjoy teaching.
Professor Eisler is by far one of the best lecturers in the ChemE department. Her lectures are very well organized, clear, and incorporate fun activities and examples that keep you engaged.
The main drawback is that the class is a massive amount of work. On average we had 2 quizzes/week, 1 homework assignment/week, 1 test every 3 weeks, and various other projects and graded surveys due. The exams are untimed which is nice to relieve the pressure of a time crunch, but also means that exams typically take 4+ hours to complete.
Overall Professor Eisler is a fantastic professor and I definitely recommend taking her if you can, but be aware that you might need to drop other classes or commitments to accommodate the workload of 101B.