The class is basically a free A that as a ChemE, you just get done and over with your fall quarter. Basically, you do a weekly writing prompt, that will be in-class in the beginning of the lecture, that you get 10 minutes to do. You simply do outside research to answer prompts that are all on the syllabus. Just do research to back your stuff up with statistics and numbers, that aren't made up.

The end of the quarter test is rather tricky and oddly specific, but worth relatively little, so you can bomb it and still get a good grade.

To be honest, the professor only lectured something like 3-4 ish times, with nothing but lectures from other professors, which were extremely hit and miss. Some were basic and really didn't teach us much, others went right over the heads of everyone. A few were really good, a few were mind-numbingly boring, while others were mediocre. This is a class that helps out your GPA, but really is something to just get done and over with.

Dr. Tang is definitely trying his best to teach us biology, and he definitely cares about the subject matter. While I personally enjoyed his class, and found the subject matter interesting, many, if not most of my classmates tended to dread and/or hate the class. Unless you took AP Bio, are genuinely interested in biology, and you have a VERY thorough background in molecular biology, be prepared to drink water out of a firehose.

You're assigned 50-80 pages of reading per week. Much of the material in the book won't even show up on exams, but it might. While Dr. Tang doesn't require the reading, you have to read it to not be lost in lecture. Also, the lectures are 2 hours long of dense material. Again, I didn't hate them, and honestly enjoyed them, but the majority of my classmates couldn't wait for them to be over. Lectures are not mandatory, but you have to go to them to do well; otherwise, you won't know what's important in the book and what isn't.

By the way, DISCUSSIONS ARE MANDATORY, which are very hit-and-miss.

The exams were difficult. There's too much stuff to memorize; the exams had many oddly specific questions. Even if you memorized the slides, some questions will be hard. Even worse, you're dead in the water for the math-based questions. Dr. Tang gave us absolutely no practice for the math-based questions. You simply have to hope that the TAs covered the mathematical questions well enough during review sessions.

The projects were busy work at the best. They were mindlessly following instructions on a worksheet with 3 friends. Even if you divided the work, the 3 projects took hours to complete.

I actually enjoyed the subject material and the lectures, although I am in the minority. That said, I'm glad that this class is done and over. It felt like drinking out of a firehose. Not just that, but the exams had questions that a student couldn't be expected to answer, even if he/she had notes and the internet.

By the way, the class is definitely curved, but in your favor. I got an average of 85% on the exams and 95% on the projects and still received an A.

There's no avoiding Tang, so just take the class whenever you can/feel like it.

Professor Tang is pretty awesome and his TAs (Wei and Yanran) are also top notch. Fall 2011 was his first time teaching Chem Eng 100 and I think so far (finals next week) he has done an great job.

Lectures: Definitely go to these. While 90% of the time he just goes through examples and problems from the book, sometimes he does examples that aren't from the book (like old exam questions etc) or he'll say things like "I really like this problem" which is a big hint that he'll put some form of the example in a midterm question. I would also suggest reading the material before class as some of the later chapters (4, 6, and 9) get confusing, and then ask questions in class (don't be afraid to speak up!).

TA Discussions: They usually just ask if anyone has any questions on the homework and then set up the problem for you if anyone asks for a specific problem to be done. While some people try to get free answers out of the TAs to homework problems they haven't done yet, the better approach is to attempt the homework before discussion and then ask the questions you are unsure about (set up or how to even start). Also, the TAs are pretty hot, so they're easy to pay attention to and worth waking up on Friday morning to go see.

Professor and TA Office Hours: Definitely go to these when you're confused or have questions about lecture material or the homework, everyone is very nice in OH and it is to your benefit that Professor Tang and the TAs know you by name and face. Alternatively, they have this e-mail address set up for the class that you can mail questions to and get replies pretty quickly. This is a very nice perk that I haven't seen in any other class and would suggest you use it whenever you're between their office hours or the weekend.

Homework: Very fair problems, rarely do you see a problem that you're like "... wtf?" on. Also, the homework policy is that you can work in groups of 4 and turn in 1 set of homework between the 4 of you, which is an excellent policy because then all of the slackers and dgaf-ers leech on to their friends' homework and never do the problems by themselves and then get fubar'd on the exams and lower the curve for you! It seems like everyone and their mothers has the solution manual to the textbook, so as someone who doesn't have the solution manual (and does the homework), this works out tremendously in your favor as people just copy the solution manual and proceed to get fubar'd by the exams.

Midterms: These are very fair and partial credit grading on them is very generous. If you have truthfully done the homework and understand it, you should at the very least be able to get the average as the majority of the exam questions are similar to homework problems (although they might not look like it initially). I can't say anything about the Final since it's next week, but hopefully it'll be just as reasonable as the Midterms were.

Grading: I believe getting average in the class gets you in the B/B- range, so it is definitely possible to walk away with an A in the class if you study hard.

In the end, I recommend you take Professor Tang's class over anyone else who might teach it in the future. If you put in the work it'll give you (or so I believe) a great foundation for future classes.

Professor Tang's Chem Eng 100 midterms and finals are open book open notes WITHOUT being hard enough to require delving through the textbook looking for arcane shit that other professors with open book/note tests usually throw at you; reason enough to take his class over the next guy.

ChemE 100 with Prof. Tang was a very disappointing course. All 3 TAs didn't seem to care very much whatsoever. Tang did not even show up like 4 or 5 times (thats about 25% of the time) and had the TAs lecture which was horrible. ChemE department should really get it together...

No effort at all was made to make chemE 100 an interesting class. It was very dry and Tang did nothing and instead just went through slides. He did not show us problem-solving methods at all.

Additionally, the problems on his exams were way more difficult than the HW. They were very tedious and involved tons of reactors and material balancing. The problems took forever and there are way too many places to mess up. Tang had completely unreasonable expectations for us given the way he teachers. I certainly hope the future courses aren't like this otherwise I'm switching out.

Ignore the previous reviews, Tang is a terrible professor and very unenthusiastic. You are basically expected to learn the material on your own. I'm sure he is deliberately trying to weed ChemEs out.

I thought Tang's lectures were pretty good. Although 80% of time was spent doing examples, he focused on examples that were similar, albeit more simple than those we would see on the exams. His exams are fair-- quite difficult but what difference does it make when you're competing only with other students? I liked that each exam is worth 30% of the grade although this does mean you have to be very consistent. I think his grading policy is absolutely absurd. On the syllabus it said that 2 standard deviations above the median was the border between A- and A and the median was on the border of a B- and a B. I scored in the top 10 percent on two of the midterms and around average on the third and ended up with a B.

There is a strong correlation between doing the homework and doing well in the class. Most people just copy the solutions manual which but if you at least try the problems then copy the solutions manual to correct your mistakes you are bound to learn a lot. Whether this will translate into the grade you want is another story.

Awesome teacher and quality person as well. He is very direct, simple, and to the point. He tries to make everything as simple as possible without making the problems facile, which is a massive accomplishment in itself considering the complexity of some of these problems. He is also very open, willing to help, and easy to understand.

Homework is the most important part of this class for actually learning the material. Tests are a bit harder than homework problems but are based on very similar material. Lectures are useful to attend because he gives out good info and you don't really have to read the book.

9/10 For sure.

ChemE 10 is a pretty straight forward class. Show up to class, and prepare a few things for the quiz and you will get an A.

Tang was not particularly motivating in the class as his attendance was poor. However, this is of minor importance as the purpose of ChemE 10 is to inspire interest rather than impart knowledge.

This class is shlight work. Regular quizzes, but the quiz prompts are given out beforehand. Quiz format is writing a paragraph based on the prompt. Final is based on the slides that the ChemE department faculty present in the class.

This is a very new ChemE class--I believe it replaces around 3 other classes, so that's nice. I had a hard time finding ANYTHING out about this class, so I've decided to put up a review to change that.

If I could rename this class it would be "DNA, Protein, and Enzyme Engineering." The course is broken up into three parts--the first deals with learning the mechanics and structure of proteins, the second is about enzymes and thermodynamics (light, baby-thermo, nothing scary) in biology, the last is about DNA and modern-day engineering. It's a very "story-time" like class. There's no real hard-engineering. No hardcore derivations, multi-page problems, mass/energy balances, systems design, etc. But that's pretty obvious, considering it's a bio course.

You essentially have three jobs in this course: read the book (or just go to lecture) and study for tests, go to mandatory discussion, do the homework. Tests are each 23% (even the final) and are restricted to the phase of the course--there's no cumulative tests at all. Homework involves a pretty dope biomolecular modeling program called JMOL and answering some questions about some proteins and enzymes you download from a library. HW is easy, lasting 2-4 hrs work time and there's only three in the entire quarter (7% grade per HW). You can even work in groups of 4 for them!

The material is not hard. It's really about creating a "story" of what is happening at the molecular level. The class isn't meant to give you a hard time--just show some mild interest in the course and you'll be fine--I'd say you have to try to actually fail this class. Exams averaged about ~75-80% and there is a curve. Lecture is fairly important as some free-response questions would be almost impossible to answer if you were just going off of Tang's slides that he posts. You had to derive one equilibrium equation, for example, which wasn't on the slides that we devoted half a lecture to.

Overall, I personally liked this course. DNA is incredibly fascinating and I ended up appreciating the bio-chemical engineering field enough to want to start researching a bit in it. It's an interesting class and I'd rate it 9/10 in terms of enjoyability and 5/10 in terms of difficulty. Tang is a solid lecturer and is pretty funny.