Gainer is very passionate about his work and shows that he actually cares about his students. I took this class over summer and Gainer once spawned behind me and asked me a question, he's funny.

This professor has ridiculous standards. No direction is given for the first lab report. You will not get feedback for your report until you've submitted two more, setting up students for failure. The quizzes were tough, asking students to memorize up to three complicated mechanisms and to be able to recreate any one of them on paper from memory.

6AL and 6BL took a lot of effort and lab reports took forever, but also some of the most interesting, fulfilling, and rewarding content and classes I have EVER taken. Everything Gainer says really clicks. He's a great lecturer and amazing person to ask questions to. Absolutely adored him and ended up really loving these labs.

y'know what? smash.

I love this professor. He is so helpful in office hours and will help with lab reports and study for the quizzes. But this class takes a lot of time and effort which is equivalent to what I feel like is at least 2 hard STEM courses so plan your schedule accordingly. Concepts are way more interesting than in 6AL. Lab reports are graded harder.

Definitely feels like a heavier class than other lab I've taken. You have to go to lecture or you will be soooo lost. A lot of grading depends on what TA you get but overall if you put in the work it's doable.

Chem 6BL workload is too much but Gainer is extremely helpful in office hours. Just ask him questions, and he'll tell you the answer for lab reports. Quizzes are TA dependent, but office hours really help for the final. (Nice professor but I'd never want to take 6BL ever again, make sure you have the time)

Gainer Challenge: Try not to assign an insane amount of monotonous work every week Impossible

When I started my degree at UCSB, I was told by everyone that Gainer was the worst and 6BL was the hardest class ever. Obviously, the class is not easy and requires a lot of time and work, but Dr. Gainer's expectations are reasonable and he makes himself available outside of class. Work hard and you will get an A.

He is one of the professors that does not care about his students (which was hard coming from Lewis who goes above and beyond). Slides are mostly blank. Recorded lectures missing chucks of material. He lectures in the barest bones of chemistry and expects you to teach yourself. Highly elitist.

Morgan Gainer is my favorite organic chemistry professor among all that I met at UCSB. He may not be as knowledgeable as Dr. Lipshutz, but his teaching is way better. He is the best evidence that UC treats the employees so awfully. He deserves to be tenured more than many of his colleagues in the department.

Gainer does his best to make this class as bearable as possible. He's a decent teacher who definitely has a passion for teaching. CHEM 6BL is seriously the most difficult and time consuming class I've taken. I highly recommend taking a light course load with this class, cause it's seriously a time-sink. Go to TA office hours and ask for help.

Tough class obviously, Gainer's lectures are pretty good though and the quizzes reflect the material. Class is still a pain but could be very much worse.

Very disorganized. Very charismatic person who is very fun and love to help his students.

I have taken many hard professors but he takes the cake. Weird deadlines, weird rules. The class is full of absolutes. The curve is down not up. I had a 80% raw score on the final and ended up with a 67% after the curve. DO NOT TAKE HIM IF THERES ANOTHER OPTION>

This review may be biased, due to the temporary shift to online instruction. The lab class was enjoyable, and I learned a lot, even though I could not be there to do the experiments. Dr. Gainer clearly tried his best to accommodate the CHEM 6BL students. Be sure to go to office hours to address any concerns about grading or lab concepts.

least favorite class and least favorite professor of my entire education

He makes this class so much harder than he needs to be. All of my friends who've taken ochem at other schools say that their series is nowhere near as hard as ours. It takes the joy out of learning about ochem and even about my other classes because I don't have the time to focus on them at all. Admin seriously needs to talk to him about this.

You will be expected to know things that nobody has told you and your lab reports will be scrutinized. It's now week 7 and I have not seen Dr. Gainer once. The fact that the class is solely taught by an overworked and underpaid graduate student should tell you enough. How the course goes will entirely depend on which TA you receive.

Disclaimer: This review is only for the ochem lab classes. He makes the quizzes unreasonably difficult and also makes the TAs grade lab reports extremely hard. On top of that, TAs tend to give you grades back really late so you don't receive feedback. Unfortunately, this class is required for the bio/chem major so good luck lol.

I took Chem 6AL and 6BL with Dr. Gainer and I thought the labs were a lot of work definitely, but also felt like getting an A in both came pretty naturally with a proper amount of effort. The curve is very generous and you can tell he truly cares. This isn't a class where you can scathe by not knowing what's going on, but it is very fair.

Gainer seems like he genuinely cares, and I will say that the actual labs didn't waste my time like the gen chem labs do; we learned relevant skills we could take into industry. He also curves to a B, which is very fair, and the tests weren't that hard. However, I don't understand his rationale for the impossible final.

Gainer was a nice guy who cared about his students. HOWEVER, that man has an evil final exam. I got As on all of the midterms and the final, not only felt out of the blue, but also brought me down almost 10%. There's no way to properly study for it, try to get the small points on everything else.

As long as you try to understand the fundamentals of the lab techniques and put effort into learning IR/NMR/Mass Spec, an A/B is pretty much guaranteed. Gainer gives you enough resources to succeed in the class. I'd recommend doing all the book problems, and showing up to lecture/labs so that you can drop the lab practical for your lowest lab.