2.2
Quality3.7
Difficulty47%
Would Retake99
Reviews47%
Would Retake
99
Reviews
Rating DistributionOfficial
5
8
4
14
3
16
2
30
1
31
What Students Say
“Terrible professor and even worse academic advisor”
CHEM357 - 1.0 rating“Her teaching abilities lack, well, teaching”
CHEM357 - 1.0 ratingClass Info
Online Classes
100%
Attendance Mandatory
60%
Textbook Required
79%
Grade Predictor
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Predicted Grade
B+
Grade Distribution
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4.3
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Chem used to be my favourite course...not anymore after she taught it. Horrible beyond belief...
she has a way of explaning things... if one does not pay attention bang.. theyre lost... but if u lsn to her method of solving problems.. she makes it so easy
Her notes were extremely unorganized and unclear
Did not know what went on in class because the overheads were done incorrectly or the professor was all over the place. If things were more organized class would have been better.
She is very scattered and frequently "discovers" new slides in her power point or realizes she forgot to put a slide in, which is incrediby frusturating. Doesn't seem all that interested if you understand or not - just sort of rips through the material. Not a very hard course if you practice the problem sets. Uses the iclicker so you have to go.
The textbook was way more usefull then her lectures.
The textbook was certainly more helpful than the lectures, but her teaching wasnt really THAT bad. Her final exam was pretty bs though, and she basically refused the bell it regardless of the class average
She's by far the worst professor I've seen in UW. Her lecture slides DO NOT (yes, they DO NOT) match the lecture notes. When you print your notes out, you can't follow because the lecture slides are totally different! No wonder her classes are only 1/4 filled. and Most people sleep in her class. She makes a lot of mistakes too. SWITCH TO BISONETTE!
Very nice woman, but she screwed over her entire section of Chem 123 for the final exam by explaining things wrong. Agreed about the slides. TERRIBLE slides. Print out Bisonnette's slides with the annotations.
I found it often frustrating to sit through the class. She is very disorganized: forgetting to bring her notes, mistakes in examples... She highly dislikes any talking and will abruptly address it by yelling.
simply bad
LOL. Put it this way, She needs to get a different job. She is the worst teacher ever. Her slides are empty, and all over the place. People for your own sake take from experience, do not take her......
Ummmm... she knows her stuff but just has trouble introducing the basics and simplifying ideas. I think she's entertaining though. A great person. Needs to get organized and proof read her mid-terms. Go to class to realize how much you don't know. Really good at looking for ways to give you marks.
when she does a problem on the overhead, she doesn't know how to do it and gets a wrong answer, and you cannot make out what her writing says. a lot of people sleep through her class and just goes for the sake of the clicker. the only reason why she's in the chem field is because of some chem prof she fell in love with......................
shes horrible
Lectures are a waste of time. Her notes lack major concepts! Examples in class and in the notes are not helpful! They are too simple and do not help us for more difficult questions!
Notes are barely there, and when she goes through them she hardly adds anything to them, making it seem pointless to go to lecture. She spent more time complaining about why she was going to be grumpy that day instead of teaching the material.
Somehow, this woman manages to make high school stoichiometry completely incomprehensible. Her notes often have mistakes in them, and she could not find a more complicated way of explaining simple concepts. She includes irrelevant information in her lectures yet fails to cover key concepts. GO TO BISSONNETE INSTEAD!
articulate, very available
Her lectures are completely pointless
You won't understand a word she is saying and you'll be completely lost in what she is teaching you even if you learned it in high school
What a hopeless prof.
She is the worst prof, hates life and teaching. cannot articulate to save her life. is always blanking when trying to explains things. if you must take her class, i recommend just reading the text and not wasting your time going to her extremely disorganized lectures.
Dara Gilbert redefines awful teaching. I am a 5th year student and this is the worst class I've ever taken...She didnt even know simple organic chemistry in regards to explaining fischer projections. She is a joke that thinks she knows everything, but she can't articulate any of it...What a useless waste and needs to drop a few LB's too.
Before I took this class I liked Chemistry. Now I don't. Completely dependent on powerpoint notes, which are confusing at best. To succeed in this class, read the textbook, rely on other profs' notes, and give your iClicker to someone else so that you can get the bonus 5% for attendence. exam was hard, midterms were harder.
Somehow can twist the simplest concepts into the most complicated facts to be ever learned. Classes are sometimes pointless to go to since you never really learn anything from her directly. Stick with the textbook; it helps.
Best advice: don't take any class that she teaches
i like her :) she isn't as bad as people say she is. she's truly helpful and midterms and assignments are very fair. although she may post the notes late or give you an assignment before she teaches the material.. but she's fair.
WHAT a waste of time class is. She can make the simplest concepts into the hardest things you ever learned. PPT slides are confusing and irrelevant material is often on it. And she's always telling the class to be quiet while teaching, but WHAT teaching does she do?!? Best bet: read the textbook, go to BISSONNETTE'S class/study his notes.
shes wack. she needs to retire and sit next to me in class so we can both learn
Completely useless prof......lecture notes are confusing, sparse, repetitive, and she puts in slides that contain info we aren't responsible for on exams. She can make simple concepts like titrations and electrochemical cells extremely confusing.....my advice: don't go to her lectures and just do bissonnettes mini-lectures if they are available
I have learned NOTHING from this Prof. She shouldn't even be labeled a professor. She probably teaches for the sake of teaching to continue research? She has trouble with her OWN notes which can honestly be the worst notes ever. Just buy the textbook and study at home. A petition should get signed to fire her.
lectures notes always posted 20 minutes before a 9:30 class. annotated notes even worse. it's just gibberish that you're supposed to understand. always missing lecture slides. slides don't match text. can't explain simple concepts. ALWAYS WRITES SOMETHING AND THEN GOES TO THE NEXT SLIDE RIGHT AFTER. WTF
Terribly scattered notes with lack of clear concepts. Example of typical behaviour involves adding upwards of 12 slides (entire new topics) to her annotated notes that are put online a week after the lecture had been covered. She the doesn't tell the students and that new material is tested on the exam. Also very unenthusiastic about teaching.
1. University students are not supposed to be spoon-fed. 2. She does* know what she is talking about - completely in alignment with textbook (although every1 have off-days). 3. She is enthusiastic and not doing this as routine - those extra slides!.. they are to keep you more up to pace with science and the biG picture - which I believe she has.u?
AVOID AT ALL COSTS! Her lectures and lecture notes are absolutely pointless, you will learn more from reading the text.
Worst professor ever. You might as well not attend her lectures as you don't even learn anything from her notes. Dont bother printing off her notes, they are very scattered and her annotations are useless. Does not explain iClicker questions. AVOID TAKING HER CLASSES.
Messy, unorganized lecture slides. Lazy prof. When asked questions, she replies back with more questions to "lead" you to the answer - which is irritating. Likes to brag about her achievements. Knowledgeable prof but lacks enthusiasm and will to help students succeed. Student of her chem 123 and chem 237 class. why is she still here?
Very disorganized lecture slides. She changes them before you go to class (adding slides, removing slides, changing the order) so you spend most of the time looking through notes to see where she is. She doesn't keep the slides on the screen long enough to copy down notes. Not very helpful when you email her questions.
Dr. Gilbert rushes through example problems so fast it will make you (and everyone around you) choose to do the crossword puzzle in the imprint instead of listening to her confusing lectures. She tries to make bad jokes and seems kind of moody. avoid!
Three words: Terr-ib-le.For a fun game in class, try to count the number of times she says the word "Right". I hit 200 in a 50 minute lecture and stopped counting.
Goes through examples very fast, if chemistry puzzles you then she will only make it worse. The only reason I did well was because I really like chemistry, much of the material was review and I read the text book. So much useless info in her power points... Very knowledgeable prof but ultimately an unenthusiastic and quite frankly not happy prof.
Terrible teaching. Ive had her for two classes. If you want questions to your questions, this is the professor, leaves open ended questions everywhere during the term and than they end up on the midterm, like we have time to go home and take out 100 biochemistry journals to find one stupid answer. Just teach us, that is what we are paying for
Brutally disorganized. Flies through material. Doesn't care about her students. Just a poor attitude.
She relies too much on her power point presentations. Her computer once failed in class and she was completely lost... Just stood there and waited for her computer to load, then blamed her computer for everything. Her notes are extremely vague and she rushes through examples way too fast.
Just do your work and you'll be fine. First exam was east, second was hard, final was ridiculous if you didn't do the practice questions she gave beforehand. She seems harsh sometimes but just do your work and ask questions and you'll survive.
She does post a lot of superfluous stuff on ACE making it harder to find whatever you may be looking for. She also let's her life outside of class affect how she addresses students within class- you can tell when she's in a bad mood because she'll let everyone who asks a question know that they are stupid for asking questions.
A great person. She is a lot better with upper years then first years. I find that she is more interested in the upper year topics then the first year material and that really shows. She provides you with plenty of chances to check your understanding and material to study from. Understanding professor who wants her students to do well. Quirky proff
Had her for chem 120/123/237. She isn't that bad. Lots of useless stuff in the power point slides which led to my binder being a textbook itself. Midterms were easy. Final was a little more challenging, but still easy. Written assignment 2 was the only hard thing in this course. To do well, just memorize everything and understand the material.
I actually enjoyed CHEM 237 in spite of all the comments about Gilbert for CHEM 120. She is approachable and tries her best to give students a chance to learn and do well. The tests are fair and the exam wasn't that difficult either. You don't need the textbook since her tests and assignments are from her notes.
Her lecture notes are literally just single words that don't really make a lot of sense. Her communication during lectures was not concise and was often convoluted. Her midterm exams were of moderate difficulty but the final exam was extremely difficult for the AVERAGE person. I wonder why UW even allows her to teach CHEM 237.
I only went to the first week of class and ending up with a 95. I suggest that you find the DE lectures, watch them several times, and then look at her lecture notes for the few things the DE didn't cover. She's not a good lecturer, but is very accommodating with the overal mark distribution. Most importantly, don't procrastinate!
She's just terrible. Her notes are skeleton notes which she barely fills in most times. Even if you take notes in class based on what she says most of them are useless cause she talks about anything and everything from tissue paper to dinosaurs. Avoid her at all costs, I've had about 4-5 different uni chem profs and she is by FAR the WORST
If there is one word to describe her teaching style, its awful. Truly a burden to your semester taking a class with Dara. She is incompetent, rude, and cant figure out how to use her laptop, wasting 15min at the beginning of every class which she makes up for by flying through material that should be explained thoroughly.
When you ask question, she laughs at you (make you feel stupid) and she does not give you the definite answer. She may lead you into the wrong direction in finding the solution. Her lectures are very boring and her lecture notes are a mess (her hand writing are messy as well). Some of her questions for exams are vague.
dr. gilbert is not bad at all. she may appear "cynical" but is really a good teacher and is interested in having us do well. She gave a good review and answered questions well as well as gave good outlines as to what we needed to know. I literally learned everything just by going to class and never had to consult the textbook just used lecture nots
I've had Dr. Gilbert for CHEM 237 and her quality of teaching has not changed. Her lecture notes are poorly created, they lack any sort of important information that will help students learn the concepts covered in class. You will find many useless diagrams in her notes and her explanations in class are poorly constructed. Avoid at all costs!
absolute nutcase!!! i was unfortunate enough to have her for 3 chem courses and her vague, nonsensical so-called teaching left many people in the hole- seems as though she tries her hardest to confuse people.pointless powerpoints and equally as ridiculous explanations
Doesn't know how to teach. I find that she blabs on about things that don't matter and then flips through lecture slides so fast you can barely read them. She doesn't take the time to explain slides properly and i find they are usually a jumbled mess. I don't even know which material is relevant in her lectures sometimes.
Scatterbrained; lectures are disorganized and makes it killer to decide what is important when you are going back to study. Somewhat snobby- does bare minimum answering questions. Assignments are useful however, and she tests and grades fairly if you're able to muddle through enough to get proper studying done.
She has difficult gauging the appropriate difficulty level and grading scheme for all assessments. Depending on your luck, midterms may be extremely easy or extremely hard, but the final is consistently easy. Notes and lectures are difficult to follow. On the bright side, bonus questions (on assignments or tests) are ridiculously worth a lot.
Not helpful at all, provides nothing but confusion, and she gets sidetracked so often that it's hard to tell when she's saying relevant info and when she's just babbling. She tries painfully hard to make jokes and talk with one particular group of girls in the class DURING the lecture as if they're all friends.
Like everyone below me has said...a mess. Babbles and her slides are a waste of paper. I wish she would take public speaking lessons so at least she stops saying "uhm" every other word. She's trying to make the tests easy, but it's still hard to study when her notes suck. Avoid her at all costs, she will drain your life away.
She doesn't care about her students, calls people stupid. Her assignments are killer. DONT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH HER!!!
I didn't mind her as a teacher. I agree that her lecturing style has room for improvement and her slides could be cleaned up. But overall, I found her to very helpful. She does enjoy Biochemistry and she's great to talk to if you need extra help. The quizzes and assignments were very fair.
Had her for this course, never went to her lecture after the first 2 days. Bought a new iPad, didn't know how to use it so struggled with it all term long and wasted time not teaching. Never followed course notes, the only day i went to class is during course evaluation. Take this course with Marta or Bissonnette, best profs ever!
Not the best I've had.
She really likes biochemistry but cannot teach. She goes off on tangents, and goes through important concepts too fast. She is quite arrogant when you talk to her one on one. You need the textbook for her class because you won't be learning much from her.
She is not the greatest prof. If you send her questions she'll often respond with questions and doesn't give clear cut answers. Her lecture slides are horrible and disorganized and you'll have to learn a lot of the material on your own.
She is one of the worst professors I have ever had. Her slides are very unclear with random diagrams everywhere and no text. She also speeds through all of the important material (sometimes going over 80 slides in 40 mins) Also, class often starts late since she doesn't know how to use her iPad. Avoid this prof! Focus on Dr. Palmer's notes to pass.
Horrible professor. The material is hard and she doesn't make it easier by simply reading off her crammed unorganized slides and going off on tangents all the time. You will have to learn most the course on your own. Take the course with another prof if you can.
I've had her for 2 years now and I honestly don't think she's that bad. She's really trying to help us, but you really need to know your stuff and attend class. Definitely read the Palmer notes since they'll help you understand better but as long as you can reason out how processes in the body work, you shouldn't have much of a problem.
Had Gilbert for 3 years now and she teaches better in higher level courses. Although some may argue that she doesn't teach well, I argue against that. She is the nicest professor I know. She won't spoon feed you, but you have to put in work to understand the material yourself. Her tests are fair and requires you to actually use the textbook.
I would say she is by far the worse professor I have ever had. She doesn't answer student's questions in class. One student asked her to repeat something mentioned in class, she refused. MUST read textbook to understand, and exams are marked really hard. She used to give negative percentages, for this term she finally decided not to.
She's a nice lady overall kinda funny too unfortunately, she's not the greatest prof for first year university chemistry. I think the fact that she teachers upper years makes it difficult for her to understand that for some of us it is the first time learning some concepts. Go to other prof's lectures!
Dara is quite funny if you get to know her and a great lab instructor i personally have enjoyed taking chem 266 L despite it being hard she made it fun
I'm not sure why Dara has so many bad ratings. Yeah she's tough on you, but all she's doing is testing you. If you can't handle it, you shouldn't be in university. I thought she was awesome: hilarious, insightful, and always helps you out. I got a lesson in tough love and lost plenty of marks here and there but I still ended up with a 92.
Objectively my worst professor so far after 2 years of sciences. If you ask her questions she can be condescending in an attempt to amuse herself. If you get to know her she is nicer. Textbook is necessary for good grades. Although she is a bad teacher her testing is easy with fair bonus marks.
She was a bit unclear with some concepts, but her slides were very helpful if reread. She tries to raise up the class average by bonus assignments and her way of marking. She also has a good sense of humour.
She's aight
Generally a pretty good professor. Enjoyable just to talk to, and helpful when you ask her questions. Make sure you don't do stupid, dangerous things though, as she can get cranky. Grading is tough, as the allowed margin of error is small, and the marking scheme really focuses on getting the right values..
Great professor, really personable and fair with grading. Its a hard course but Dara makes it way better
This lab is horrendous for out of lab pre-labs and lab reports, and is terribly stressful in lab as well. Dara does her best to adapt to everyone's needs and actually cares about how well her students do. She is funny and cracks jokes which really lightens the mood of a stressful lab environment
It was a 6 hours lab and Dara had it 4 days in a week with students in the summer, in a windowless room. To be fair I do not think anyone can be cheerful the whole day in that situation. I guess that is why she seems a bit frustrated sometimes. I failed my pre-labs sometimes and she was always there to help until I got it right. I learned a lot.
One of the most horrendous profs I have ever had in my undergraduate career thus far. This woman does not have any organization or time management skills. Her teaching abilities lack, well, teaching. She cannot convey her thoughts, her lectures are all over the place and has unreasonable expectations for her students. My suggestion? Run.
If I had a dime for the amount of times she said "Sorry, I'm not a morning person" after she made countless mistakes, I would be able to pay off my tuition. Terrible professor and even worse academic advisor. She is not approachable at all so don't even bother trying to go to her office hours because she will run you out. She ruins careers & lives.
Dr. Gilbert is the worst professor I have ever had and there cannot be a more disorganized talentless teacher. She brings disgrace only to art of teaching. I cannot even fathom why she stills has a position.
I am sitting in her class right now. This Prof is all over the place. Unorganized is an understatement to describe Prof Gilbert. The content on learn is also uploaded in a very disorganized manor causing confusion. It hurts, i was looking forward to class.
She's not the most organized and she does go off on tangents so you must be able to filter through everything she says and to get the main idea. Thankfully, lectures were recorded and the quizzes she gives were actually helpful when it came to studying for exams.
The most unclear prof I have ever had. She even said at the beginning of the term that lots of past students didn't understand her teaching... then do a better job?? I took this course to give me a foundation for the mcat and it destroyed my GPA. Most unfair class I've ever taken.
She can definitely be disorganized, but shes super helpful if you ask questions, provides lots of resources, posts video lectures. I think shes a really funny lecturer but, lots of dry comments as long as you know not to take everything she says seriously. Lots of material but shes very helpful if you ask. Seems to really care about her students
terrible prof, makes easy material difficult to understand
Had her Fall 2019. She teaches like it's an in-depth review of material and ties it in to real-world examples. She doesn't *teach* the material, she *talks* about it, and her slides reflect that - can't study from them if you're absent! So do the readings before class and make notes so that lecture will be a review! Great prof, but atypical style.
Not saying she was the best, but she wasnt as bad as how everyone described her. She jokes a lot during class. She records all of her lectures and tutorials. There weren't any pop quizzes or anything like that. She was available for questions and helped a lot with those weekly online quizzes. Give her a chance.
Probably one of the worst courses I took in undergrad. Her slides have no info, she talks so fast, she has no practice midterms or finals, I found her tutorials irrelevant, her grading scheme is horrible, she doesn't answer questions directly and she expects you to read 50 pages in the book for one lecture & does't even mention any of it in class
Worst prof ever. She can't teach. Uploads 80+ "auxiliary" notes first day of class which is so overwhelming. Has you download random software for a tutorial??? JUST SUCKS. She's uploading lectures from when she taught in person? She needs to go back to doing whatever she was doing before teaching cause this is definitely not the career for her.
The professor cares a lot about her students and puts the effort in the answer all your questions. However, the lecture slides are all over the place and extremely difficult to follow. She also over complicates things. The midterm and final are extremely difficult (midterm class average was 60% and she was content with this).
Amazing professor! She went over important concepts multiple times and had lightly weighted weekly quizzes to reinforce material. She answered questions in class well and was accessible outside of class.
Class Info
Online Classes
100%
Attendance Mandatory
60%
Textbook Required
79%
Grade Predictor
Your expected effort level
Predicted Grade
B+
Grade Distribution
Common Tags
Rating Trend
Improving
+0.21 avg changeRatings by Course
CHEMS000
5.0
(1)CHEM224L
5.0
(1)CHEM224
5.0
(1)CHEM220L
4.5
(2)CHEM266L
4.3
(3)Difficulty by Course
NE224
5.0
CHEM226
5.0
CHEMCHEM
5.0
CHEM231
5.0
CHEM224
5.0