Ellingson is a good teacher. He's pretty easy to follow and a likable, approachable guy. I liked his material, and his spring seminar was the most popular by far. Like the rest of the cluster, just pay attention, take good notes, and review (preferably in groups), and you'll be fine. Definitely a doable class.

Professor Ellingson is a very approachable and likable person, so getting help during office hours is no problem. It's fun to talk to him about other things as well.
He can get a little messy with lectures, but it's not too bad if you read the assigned reading beforehand. The concepts are not so difficult that you can't figure it out later either. But if you can't, again, office hours.
His sense of humor and funny videos also helped me to keep me attentive during lecture.
I highly recommend GE Cluster 70. I assume his other lectures would be good too.

Great Dude! I have him for LS7B (that not an option so I picked LS1) and he's one of the best professors I've had thus far. Not condescending like most other professors in the LS department and his lectures and engaging, he has a very entertaining teaching style and makes sure people understand the material before moving on to another topic. Great guy, not robotic like other professors are sometimes. Enjoying this class a lot, although the midterms are kind of difficult.

I’m coming back almost a year later just to write a review for this professor because he is amazing! Professor Ellingson is an excellent teacher, very clear, funny without trying, and super helpful. I am a North Campus person but loved this class so much I decided to minor in conservation biology. Who knew plant classifications could be so interesting?! The class takes some work (online quizzes, labs, iClicker points) but the tests were totally reasonable. Super super helpful for establishing a basic understanding of evolution which you can use in almost any subject area. Would totally take this class again if I could. Thanks Ellingson!!!

I love this guy! His lectures are never ever boring and he always finds a way to integrate sea slugs into them. He is neither robotic nor condescending like most professors in the sciences and he goes out of his way to make sure that his students really understand what is going on. He is a really generous grader and it is not hard at all to do well in his class as long as you keep up with the lecture slides since his exams come directly from the notes. He is fair and he won't try to trick you with exam questions. If I could have him as my professor for more classes, trust me, I would, without a doubt!!!
11/10 recommend! Ellingson, if you're reading this, please know you're great!

Not an LS major so I took LS1 for my GE. Ellingson is hilarious sometimes and geeks out so hard about his slug research which I think is kinda cute. He explains his slides very clearly so if you miss lectures and just watch his podcasts it should be more than enough to ace the exams. I do suggest attending lectures for the clicker questions, the only reason I got a B+ was because his lecture was at 9am and I missed about half of them lol.
Labs were okay, like most other labs it depends who your lab TA is. Mine was Crystal Gianvecchio, I think it was her first time TA-ing the class so she was a little shy but super helpful.
I recommend Ellingson's LS1 class if you wanna have some fun while learning cool stuff about the natural world.

Dr. Ellingson is amazing! His lectures are so engaging, fun and hilarious. He is extremely dedicated to teaching (and also sea slugs and the dodgers) and he genuinely cares about his students, even individually. His class is easy if you are consistent with your work. His grading scheme is very generous and he goes out of his way to make sure students get good grades. LS 1 is phasing out but do take him for the 7 series!

I definitely recommend Professor Ellingson for LS1 (I know this series is gone now, but this professor is also teaching LS 7B, as I know it).

Professor - Professor Ellingson is not only very approachable but an awesome speaker, as well. He doesn't just read off the slides but adds important information to clarify the presentation, so I highly recommend taking notes in class and watching Bruincast. He is really funny, even making the cranky 8am students laugh. Unfortunately, he had gotten into an accident during my quarter, unable to come to lecture for a few days in order to get treated for his injuries. But, he definitely made up for his unavailability (which wasn't even his fault) by offering office hours online. Not only is he a great professor, he is a very fair and thoughtful individual, too!

Grading system (in LS 1) - Total: 910 points
Lecture Participation (iClickers): 75 points
LaunchPad Reading quizzes: 100 points
LaunchPad Activities: 75 points
Lab quizzes & assignments: 180 points
Midterm #1: 140 points
Midterm #2: 140 points
Final Exam: 200 points
**Straight scale grading (might curve but only to improve student's grade)

Exams - The exams are definitely fair. As mentioned previously, watch Bruincast if you miss something from lecture. Mostly all of the material on the exams are based on the lecture slides and on what he says.

Textbook - The textbook is helpful for better understanding but only necessary for the reading quizzes on Launchpad. Because you have to get Launchpad (which comes with an eText) anyways, I would recommend skimming through the chapters (not necessary to read as thoroughly for tests because Professor Ellingson definitely clarifies everything you need to know for the exams).

LaunchPad - Activities are based on completion, but the online reading quizzes (20 min ea.) are based on accuracy. This is where the textbook comes in handy because these were pretty detailed and textbook-heavy.

Lab Quizzes and Assignments - Like the reading quizzes, lab quizzes (20 min ea.) are also based on accuracy and a worse part about this is that you can't go back on all of the questions. Instead, each question pops up one by one, and I can't remember all too well, but I think you can only go back on three (?) questions by flagging them, so make sure you know your stuff! The material covered on these quizzes are based on readings that you can access on CCLE.

Participation - iClickers points are not based on accuracy, and you usually get 2 free absences. You have to answer at least 75% of the questions each day.

**Make sure to read the syllabus carefully to make sure this information isn't outdated because the course might be a little different. All in all, I recommend taking Professor Ellingson because he is just AWESOME!!!!!!!!!

Love this dude. Definitely cares about not only teaching, but getting your grade up lol. Well this is the last quarter this class is being offered here at UCLA, but he's teaching LS 7B, I definitely recommend this guy. Kinda take a good amount of work and memorizing, but overall thought it was very worthwhile. A lot of people say he's slightly harder than Kane, but IMO it sounds like amongst all UCLA Life Science Professors, Kane and Ellingson are the best.

This is actually for LS 7B, but the classes are essentially the same. Ryan’s a cool guy! And this class is pretty easy, so no complaints on my part about taking him. In the beginning, things are super dry with genetics. You can obviously tell that Ryan has no passion or idea what he’s talking about. It was pretty blah to be honest. But once we moved on to evolution, things got a lot better. We watched cool nature videos, Ryan talked about his gobbies, and everyone was happy. However, my favorite part was the last two weeks or so when we talked about conservation. Ryan was great at telling us how we destroy the earth! But he did it with such passion and energy that it was fun to listen to him, even if it was a bit sad to do so. Overall, if you can get past the drabness of genetics, then he’s actually a pretty fun professor to learn from. Sure, he can make mistakes here and there, but he knows his stuff for the most part. As for grading, it’s very standard and very easy. The whole Launchpad, clickers, lab stuff. Labs were actually pretty fun and actually good extensions of what we learned in lecture. I didn’t find them completely useless like I did LS 7A discussions. As for midterms, no problem at all. Piece of cake. Are there some tricky questions? Yeah, but that’s just the life science curriculum here. It’s not really that much of having the facts down, but being able to apply them, without having to know a lot of specifics, which is great. Appropriate level of challenge for a life science class i.e. little to none. Final was good too. There were even some questions that he took exactly from the practice exam questions on Launchpad.

Overall, A+ class. Easy, very light to moderate workload, and pretty good instruction.