Honestly a nice enough professor with reasonable expectations and class policies. Not great, but not even near the worst class/professor I've had here. Pay attention, do the practice problems and it's pretty much a guaranteed B.
Great professor, I really enjoyed this class, It was super easy homework-wise and also very interesting. He's a great guy and you can tell he enjoys teaching the subject. Take this class!
I respect his expertise in genetics, but I feel like he does not know how to teach this knowledge to students and/or make lectures exciting. Many of my peers who attend lectures also agree his many of his problem explanations are confusing. However, I appreciate the additional practice problems he provided and his occasional quiz hints.
He is nice enough and wants people to succeed, and I thought his tests were reasonable for the most part. They are very similar to the practice. His lectures are a bit all over the place, I feel like he would mention something once and it would show up on an exam. He made the class total the average of the top 10 scores. A bit condescending though.
Professor Christoffersen has been my favorite professor here at UCSB! MCDB28 is a great class with no midterm or final exams. We do weekly quizzes and have two short essays that get peer-reviewed and revised. He is a really amazing guy, super sweet and funny! I took this class for fun since it doesn't go towards my major, and I am SOOO glad I did!!
Christoffersen's lectures were nowhere near amazing, but he provides resources like extra practice problems to help students succeed on his portion of the final. Once you do all of the practice, the problems are not that difficult, so don't be discouraged if you don't understand anything after his lectures. Also, utilize CLAS.
Genetics is a hard part of the MCDB 1A class, so expect to do a lot of practice problems. He is accessible in office hours, and if you ask questions he will make the effort to work it out or show why something is going wrong. Know that you have to work, but you can really use him to your advantage to do well in the class. Fat curve btw
He made everything so easily able to be understood- technically attendance was mandatory but he would give credit if you watched the online lecture. Small assignments every week but done in class and 2 paper assignments.
I took MCDB 28 and genuinely loved it. The lecture slides are not super interesting in my opinion but Rolf conducts really great and thought-provoking class discussions. He’s really funny, clearly super smart, and it wasn’t hard to get a good grade.
I took MCDB 28. As a non-stem major and someone who hates math & science, I loved this class. There was no math involved and he makes confusing scientific concepts extremely digestible. He's an easy grader. Discussions and questions are always encouraged. Its an extremely manageable class and he goes over extremely interesting genetic topics.
The material wasn't that difficult but the way he went about explaining it made it harder than it needed to be. I was able to decipher his lectures because of high school AP Bio, but my friends who did not take that class struggled. He had many iClicker questions that most of the class would get wrong, which I think shows he couldn't explain well.
He's been a genetic professor for several decades so I feel like he's just disconnected from being able to teach something to students that do not have a background in genetics. It's like he doesn't know what it's like to not know what's going on. All explanations he gave were matter of fact statements. Does not teach.
Lectures are very difficult to listen to--- talks about useless information while not going over the more difficult concepts. He works out genetics problems but does not give any explanation and moves on immediately. Lecture content feels disconnected and confusing
Very dense lectures, nice guy, and willing to help during office hours. However, his tests followed by the time crunch can be very difficult. Really makes you work for an average grade which for his tests was around a C-. Be prepared to use the book for his assigned practice problems.
Christoffersen clearly knows his stuff but is so so with the teaching and has brutal exams. He'd give a one-sentence explanation for a problem in office hours and the answer key would be an entire paragraph with a drawing. His lectures were all over the place and had super unclear annotations. Refused to curve even when the exam average was 64%.
no curve. long lectures full of useless information that arent helpful for solving midterm problems. spends too much time explaining useless concepts and barely spends any time going over problems and gives rlly rlly bad explanations. expectations for exams are unclear. wants clear/concise answers, but takes off points if u don't give details :/
great professor to take for 101B covid edition. All recorded lectures with question embedded in. Tests are 80% of the grade but the midterms were very doable and easy if you solved all the practices tests and the homework problems. Professor was very assessible outside of class. 55% of the class got an A or A-!!! Great class.
101B in general is a hard class and requires a lot of time to do well. Some concepts he dosent explain clearly but he tries hard to make sure you can do problems. He curves pretty well too. I think hes the best option for 101B profs.
He's very smart and knows genetics well. His lectures are dense and it was nice to be able to listen at a faster speed (online due to rona). He was not very accommodating during this time, which is why I'm rating him lower. It's hard material and even harder during a pandemic, so I think he could've been more understanding
Not really sure how I feel about this guy. He clearly is a master of genetics and is a good lecturer, but I feel like he cared more about his dog than his students. Especially during this pandemic he refused to be flexible and kept a heavy work load--understandable because its a weed out class but a lot of students were going through things.
I wish I knew that this class is not curved whatsoever. IMO the class is so dense with information that no matter how hard you study, the exams are always so picky and graded on so many details too. Rolf is very unapproachable and sometimes makes you feel dumb for asking questions. He is not understanding of student's situations either.
He spends much efforts to ensure students understand what is going on. He gives much review problems and answer students' questions very seriously. The final review session also does great help.
Just a bad prof. Lecture is incredibly boring and goes off on tangents constantly. Writes out lots of examples but doesn't explain them. Refuses to answer student's questions, even when a lot of people ask for a problem to be repeated. Talks to you before lecture and is the most boring person ever. Teach yourself using KhanAcademy. He sucks
One of my favorite professor in the MCDB department. Had Low for 101A and hated him. Low was terrible at transitioning from one concept to the next so it was hard to make connection and understand the big picture in his class. Rolf, on the other hand, is a much better lecturer. He also record his lectures so if you don't get it in class you can lis