The absolute worst professor. She has a huge ego about the difficulty of her Gen Chem class and makes it nearly impossible to succeed just to be able to say how difficult her class is. Honors is less work, so save yourselves.

Dr. Novack is not a compassionate teacher. If you ask a question she feels is below her, she will simply stare at you for a moment then tell you to read your book. She is very much set in her ways so if her years old slides don't do it for you then youre in for a wild ride.

Dr. Novack might show you slides talking about how Chem 11a isn't a "weed out course," but everyone who has taken the class (including her TAs, university BUGS tutors, and previous students) knows it as such. She claims she doesn't want to focus on memorization, but then expects students to have memorized large portions of content to succeed.

Dr. Novack is condescending and has very grandiose delusions about giving students a larger perspective and seems to build her brand around making students do more than just memorize rules, but the strategies she seems to want students to apply are never actually taught or explained, only demonstrated in passing as topics she describes as "easy."

Unkind and a terrible teacher. Material made tricky but for no reason. Took orgo and realized I am very good at chem and learned literally nothing from her class except how to deal with her unapproachable personality.

Novack seems to take it upon herself to punish students she thinks are lazy. If you perform poorly because of her inflexible teaching style and don't learn best the way she wants you to, she will assume you don't care and are being lazy. Not sure why she assumes the worst of every student unless they suck up or get an A. Extremely disrespectful.

Prof Novack is a nice person, but her class really killed me. It developed a serious reputation for being absolutely awful. Just staying afloat in her class took up ALL of my free time. There were days when I'd spend 5 hours in her Zoom sessions, not even including time spent on homework. Ugh.

If you're a math person, not a visual learner, and have a high tolerance for hundreds of slides with chintzy animations, you're probably one of the people who leaves Novack good reviews. Otherwise, get ready for an unnecessarily difficult course, uncalled for favoritism and sass, and virtually impossible tests based around a monotonous textbook.

Dr. Novack majored in music and then realized it wasn't a lucrative career, so she used her failed experience as a pre-vet student to vicariously live off of the happiness of the favorite students she turns into SI leaders, and use the rest of the class to feel better about her failure by deliberately destroying their mental health and self esteem.

Melissa needs to stop leaving reviews like the one below to hide the fact that Novack is an awful professor with no empathy and horrific personality issues. The course has rampant favoritism, but could actually be manageable if only the professor actually cared about the success of students that weren't future SI leaders.

Has openly admitted to students that she gets drunk before grading tests and reading course evaluations. If "Dr." Novack put as much effort into drinking alcohol and playing favorites as she did into making sure more than a few AP chem alumni did well in her class, Brandeis would be a far better place and the country would have far more scientists.

Just know that if you didn't take AP chem in high school or don't have a good grasp of chemistry coming in, you're about to struggle. Overall, I didn't find her to be mean, I just thought the way she taught was catered to one type of student and if you weren't that, she came off as very intimidating.

Attitude problems

Novack may be a good lecturer, but she is the most unapproachable and pessimistic professor I've ever had. She blamed students for getting covid or close-contacted during a surge of cases on campus and did the bare minimum to accommodate students. Overall does not seem to care about students' mental health.

Most traumatizing class I have ever taken. I was experienced in chem (from Highschool) and when coming to that class I felt so out of place and stupid. Great lecturer but terrible teacher. Expected us to be experts in things we just learned. Just all around terrible.

Her tests come directly from HelI.... like .. I'm trying to girlboss on this B-word but it ain't working you hear.

Novack's Class is really tough and her tests do not reflect what is taught in class. Always do the redemption challenges after the tests and take the final :) People say the honors gen chem class is easier than Chem 11 so take that into consideration when choosing classes

Literally 90% of the positive reviews on here are written by the same handful of people who obsess over her because she gives them validation. From an educational perspective, she is a mediocre educator at best who knows her stuff but is very inflexible and bad at simplifying. From a human perspective, she is cruel and judgemental.

This was the worst class I've ever taken. Novack wants us to learn so much in so little time and the exams are extremely hard. She does not care how much you try, is super judgemental, and makes you feel stupid by not getting what she's saying. This class is supposed to teach basic chemistry, however, she expects that you have knowledge beforehand

She's a nice person, but a TERRIBLE teacher. She gives information but no explanation, so the information is useless. She moves way too fast and expects you to know information you can't possibly know yet. Even with 6+ hours of studying a day, I still don't know if I can pass the class. For an intro chem class, this is in now way introductory.

I rated her 1 star not because I'm a lazy student who party 24/7 but I'm actually a try hard, and I don't deserve a grade that is made because of her careless clarification on the RPC grading requirement which waste my 8 hours of hard work and no sympathy toward students. don't take her class. I'm a try hard and I highly don't recommend you to try.

Moves very quickly through material, doesn't take questions, always holds class past time

By God, if losing a kidney meant that she would stop teaching this class I would perform surgery on myself with a paper clip and dig out both of my kidneys. Her grading is pedantic and objectively just terrible, just like her. She's so stunningly condescending and she'll spend the entire time blaming her lack of teaching ability on her students.

Always says "disappointed" to students after a test, and never thinks of her own teaching style. If u wanna take the course, ready to sacrifice all ur time into chem, not kidding.

I'm literally failing rn, and yea it's my fault for not studying enough. But she keeps saying it's ENTIRELY our fault. I know people who are working so hard and still not doing well. By the numbers, she should realize her teaching methods are not working. Those who succeed already mastered chem in high school. To pass, study up and START EARLY.

Like the other reviews said, the only people who succeed are the ones who already mastered chem in high school. No joke. Sure, it's not as if every student is blameless if they perform poorly, but given the amount of students that regularly struggle to pass the course it shouldn't matter, because she should be reevaluating her flawed teaching style

fw laoshi, very sb. never take it.

Decent lecturer, horrible person. Would honestly recommend brushing up on chem or taking it over the summer (Brandeis is very strict on counting outside chem classes for credit). Go to SI because you actually learn there!

Good lecture, tough grading. SI isn't that useful if u don't know anything, since some of the TAs teach pretty slow, but problem sets help a lot since she always come up with exam questions from there. My only advice is to read ahead, otherwise you will be screwed. For checkpoint don't try to rely on your teammates cuz most of the time their trash.

so mean...........

Wish the SI leader who is writing the good reviews really change up their wording because its PAINFULLY obvious the same person is writing the reviews...really smart. If you take it during the fall/spring, don't do as you hoped, and it makes you feel bad, dont let this get to you, it gets WAY better from here! Don't let her make you hate chemistry

Worst class, has a rep for 1 of the worst teachers. This course was unnecessarily hard, & grading was harsh. The SI sessions were not helpful and sometimes, the information taught was wrong. AP chem or not, you're in for a ride. Luckily I was able to teach myself the information to pass but it cut into lots of my studying time for other classes. GL

Tainting the school & teaching community. Doesn't even have a chemistry degree/background experience. "My background is in the humanities--my PhD is in Slavic linguistics from Brown--but I would say that teaching is teaching." No, do not simplify teaching, effective teaching is complex and takes lots of skill that she clearly does not have.

Her lectures aren't useful most time is spent reviewing outside of class. SAVE URSELF DONT TAKE ITTT

Prepare to self-study if you don't have any chemistry base. No mercy for ppl who haven't learn chemistry in high school. Goes over material super fast and the test is super hard and tricky!

She is so mean! Don't go to her OH. I asked her question once and I feel like she is bullying me!!!

If you want a life, don't take this class.

Glad we managed to outlast her lol

Dr. Novack's lectures are purely based on the textbook readings; I learned very little from her as I only focused on the textbook. Her practice problems in class can be helpful at times but a majority of the time it only furthered my confusion. Thus, I stuck to the homework textbook problems instead.

I'm just laughing at the fact that she was forced to resign and yet she's still on here posting good reviews of herself pretending to be a student. Only Novack and her SI leaders would blame students for her bad attitude. I did fine in the class but that didn't change the fact that she was always condescending for no reason.