Kevin is very engaging and very passionate about geology and getting students engaged. He's very approachable and likes to get students involved in lectures, usually with some jokes, gimmicks, and demonstrations. It's a science lab GE, so a lot of people are just taking it to fulfill a lab requirement but he definitely ended up getting a lot of those students to enjoy the course. Lab is not too difficult and is a pretty light workload, be prepared to be able to memorize and name certain rocks and minerals. How enjoyable lab is really just comes down to the TA. I would definitely take a class with him again! He's been the most fun professor I've had so far at UCLA.

Kevin was awesome! He is uber-passionate about geology and geophysics and is super knowledgeable. I learned a lot in his class and found myself laughing at all his jokes. The class does require memorization of key concepts and ideas for two midterms and one final, but it's pretty manageable. I think South Campus majors might be disappointed by the lack of technical speak in the class, but North Campus majors will love Kevin's GOT analogies and simplified, easy-to-understand geo models. Not much homework at all, except for weekly labs which were essentially just really tedious busy-work. Lots of people stopped going to section since labs were online, so not very collaborative, and they're worth 30% of your grade. The TA's also grade the science-book presentation quite harshly for some reason. That would be my only complaint with this class, Kevin is an amazing and engaging Professor. He's super clear on what is expected on exams, and he actually made me interested in geology. He's very affable and always down for a chat during Office Hours. It's super easy to get an A if you put a little effort in — I bombed the first midterm and still ended up with an A-. At the final lecture, one of my classmates gave a send-off to Kevin by saying, "From Plate Tectonics to Kevin's mineral collection. This class rocks!" If you think this an abhorrent pun, this may not be the class for you, but if you're into that kind of cheesiness and candidness, I think you'll find a lot to love in this class.

TL;DR: Cool, casual, and genuinely kind-hearted Professor, very approachable Science GE with interesting concepts.

I would like to preface this review by saying that Professor Coffey might be the coolest and most caring Professor I have ever had at UCLA. He is funny, kind, understanding, and overall pretty knowledgeable about the stuff he teaches. Having taken him for EPS 1 and EPS 61 and had various conversations with him personally, he is seriously just an all-around good guy. However, if you are going for an A and need it for graduate school, avoid his classes. I have maintained a near 4.0 through my course at UCLA and have had to P/F his classes to avoid a GPA drop. He grades very toughly (including the T.As), tests can be tricky if you don't know your stuff all the way (the "goals" on his slides he tells you to study will get you a B, you have to know things significantly more in depth than what is listed for the A), and he makes percentages of things small so everything counts. His classes were harder for me than most tough pre-med classes at UCLA, so unless you are super passionate about EPS stuff or care for learning more than getting an A, avoid his classes forsure. Personally, it was just not worth it.

Professor Coffey himself was pretty good. He was funny and engaging and I didn't really have much of a problem with him. But if anyone in the future gets Heather Kirkpatrick as the lab TA, I'm sorry. Ms. Kirkpatrick is one of the most difficult, unfair, harsh people you will ever encounter in your life. She makes the lab really difficult, grades too harshly, and is less than a help during lab sessions. She is very incompetent and really doesn't even know what she is doing to be honest. Overall, I have absolutely nothing against Professor Coffey and would 100% recommend him as long Heather Kirkpatrick is not involved.

This class is really great and honestly made me super interested in earth science. The lectures are fun and pretty engaging but many people do not show up to the lectures because they are broadcasted. I think this makes the class more flexible. Office hours are super helpful. There is A LOT of term memorization in this class and was more work than I though from the reviews. I really liked the subject so it was worth the work. The labs are not too bad just rock identifying and the TAs are pretty good. YES I would take this again.

I took this class as a freshman at UCLA in my fall 2021 quarter. Everyone on BruinWalk said it was really easy, the professor was great, etc., so I decided to take it for my science GE lab credit. However, don't be fooled by these reviews, as this class is not as easy as everyone says. Professor Coffey is great and gives pretty engaging lectures. He makes learning about rocks as interesting as it can be. But he went into pretty vivid detail about the concepts and I was surprised by how much we were required to know for an intro level course. (To be fair, I am not a science person, so if you love science, you probably won't struggle too much in this class.) The material isn't hard to understand, but there is a lot of it that you have to know. I studied maybe 3-4 hours each for the 2 midterms and the final and got a fairly low grade on each one. I had to pass/fail the class because the tests and labs were pretty difficult and were bringing down my grade. Some of the labs are tricky as well. We did the labs through CCLE and they were mostly multiple choice with a few short answers, but you do not really receive partial credit for anything in the labs. The labs consisted of identifying different types of rocks (harder than it looks when you have 10 black rocks in front of you that look exactly the same) and going through Google Earth stimulations (these were pretty easy as you just follow the instructions that guide you through it.) There is also a 5 or so minute presentation on a science book at the end of the quarter. This presentation is pretty easy and you can skim the book, make a slideshow, and still get an A. Overall, this class wasn't necessarily hard, but it is definitely not a super easy science GE. You are required to go into pretty vivid detail on the midterms and final in order to get an A. You really need to know the material inside and out because the TAs are looking for detailed, specific answers on the exams. You definitely can't bs your way through this class, and you have to put in a pretty big amount of effort to get an A. There is basically no math in this class besides converting measurements, and it is easier than any chem, physics, or bio class I have taken previously. Also, I had Jake as my TA and he was pretty chill, nice, and funny. He let our lab section retake a lab because the average score was like a D or something like that. Anyway, this class is overall one of the easier science GEs at UCLA, but is by no means easy. Put in a LOT of effort into really studying and memorizing the material, and take the labs seriously (don't slack off), and you should be fine.

Love Coffey! Took this class as recommended by many friends and I can see why. Prof is super engaging, even over zoom, and anytime I had a question, he'd be able to answer right then and there. Exams are not too hard, with the second midterm being much easier than the first. However, he does not want you to use your notes during exams, and study his goals to make sure you can do your best. The exams are not weighted too heavily though, so don't worry too much.

Lab over zoom was meh, but my TA Marina was great! While trying to be accomadating with Google Earth, she allowed us to work off a single screen in breakout rooms and always answered any questions we struggled with. Lab wasn't too hard anyways, just technical difficulties.

Overall loved this class and if it wasn't for chemistry and physics, I'd definitely major in Earth Science for my guy Kevin. Also he kinda cute or is it just me <3 sorry for being a whore

Dr. Coffey is a very fun and engaging professor. His lectures are entertaining, and he does his best to try to make the material understandable by using real world examples, personal anecdotes, etc.
The workload is very light, and typically no work needs to be done outside of the weekly lab sections.
Exams are generally very fair and based directly off of lecture slides, though he does like to throw in trick questions.
Overall great professor.

Coffey is a really great professor I enjoyed this class a lot!! Despite things being online he tried his best to make it engaging for us and you can tell that he’s really passionate about the material. The two midterms and final were fairly easy as long as you studied the ‘goals for this unit’ that he posted with every slide show. I recommend answering them after every lecture so you don’t fall behind and that way before the exams you can study them rather than have to rewatch every lecture searching for the answers. Lab got pretty boring and tedious, but on the bright side you got to work with other students and most of the time you can finish the work in the lab time. My TA was Marina and she was really nice and organized, plus she was always willing to help if you asked. Overall, I would definitely recommend this class, workload is pretty light and the material was fun :)

I loved this professor! You can really tell he is passionate about what he teaches. Even though everything was online, he managed to make class engaging.