She's a really nice person, but not a good teacher at all. You will have to teach everything to yourself. Be sure to do the practice problems very well as these are the basis for exam questions simply studying lecture notes will not be sufficient. Take advantage of LA sessions they explain things better.

Hope she'll improve, but this year Low Pass on the final exam or paper means you don't get above B+, and no tokens for that. You'll learn stuff, but the experiments don't answer the initial research question, since classes are a mess. The final's "rubric" was posted at 11 pm the last day of the semester. Basically made the TAs teach the class.

She is widely inaccessible outside of class. She put grades on OPUS at the very last minute and does not respond to emails about them. Her grading system harms rather than helps and does not match up to what every other CHEM150 professor does.

Others have already discussed her terrible grading system. She only came twice to lab, both times because there had been a medical emergency. A student had a seizure during one class and it took her 20 minutes to come to lab and then call EMS. Instead of dismissing students, she told everyone to continue working around him and to ignore it. Yikes.

She is very nice and accessible outside class. However, she assigns too much work for a 2 credit lab class. We have pre-lab ws, in-lab ws, post-lab ws, quizzes, video discussions, presentation, and semester research paper. She claims to be understanding of student schedules but how is this workload understanding? I heard she now gives a final exam.

Dr. McKnelly explains concepts well, but the workload for her class was excessive. With quizzes, pre-labs, post-labs, in-class worksheets, discussions, and a final paper, this class took up more time than any other 3-4 credit course I had in Spring 2020. She claims to be accommodating to students, but dismissed all our complaints about the class.

lots of work for a 2 credit course, and then she lectured us about how we're bad at time management. the main thing is that her specs grading, which is criteria-based. the bad thing is that if you fail category requirements that only include one assignment, you're barred from getting a A and it could drop your GPA massively

I have never been more catfished in my life, was suppose to get an A. Got an A on all assignments except one assignment and bye bye all the hard work and hours that I put into this class. This happened to a lot of people. Grades werent put on Opus until night they were due which also added to the shock and despair.

Shes a very nice person, but this class was a bad time. The amount of assignments was absurd, especially for a 2-credit class. She asked for our feedback, we all said were overwhelmed (450 of us) and her response was maybe youre not studying correctly or efficiently. Did not adhere to rest days. Specs grading was odd and constantly changing.

Worst professor at Emory because she doesn't show up. The class itself wasn't hard all semester until our practical. If you got a low pass you had no shot at an A even if you got a perfect on every other assignment (which there was like 24? of.) It was rough and I wish I didn't take her.

DO NOT TAKE HER CHEM150 CLASS! Her specs grading is insane and it left a lot of people feeling confused. The best way I can describe this class is that you have a very low chance of not passing and an equally low chance of making an A. Insane amount of worksheets, lots of pressure on doing well on midterms/finals. Very mediocre teaching.

chem 204l was my most frustrating lab experience at emory. the canvas page is barely functional and the lab is super disorganized. also specs grading is super confusing and stuff always took forever to get graded. i feel like i barely learned anything

I won't mince words. McKnelly is an inexperienced teacher, and you can see it in everything she does. Her grading criteria are messy and confusing, her labs have no semblance of organization, and communication is a rare occurrence. She does not stay during the lab period to help students and is generally inaccessible. AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

This class was quite possibly the most unorganized class I have ever lab. When in lab, she is nowhere to be found, and gives no direction for the class. The labs themselves never have the correct materials or sufficient amounts to be used for the lab. On top of that, our products are even lost in between weeks, further wasting everyone's time.

HORRIBLE. She's literally never there and the GSIs and TAs take care of everything. She's so unorganized and ambiguous with instructions and never answers questions properly. Although assignments are easier to complete than Mulford's, this lab course is much worse than his in terms of organization and learning. I wish I could give her a 0/5.

Giving this her 1 is such an overkill, a -1 will be good for her. The class is EXTREMELY disorganized, she DID NOT come into any section the ENTIRE semester. Our poor TA and GSI have to figure out everything. The procedure is misleading and a lot of the material posted on canvas was copied from somewhere else. Other comments are valid. SO BAD

as horrible as mulford 203 was, mcknelly's 204 lab was equally as bad. we're all dreading the final that is really just going to wreck our grades.

Single handedly ruined my entire semester. Spent 10 hours every week completing the pre and post lab assignment. Tokens were cool because I could push the inevitable work off for an extra 24 hours. If you see McKnelly as the lab instructor, you're better off taking your chances and hope that she isn't teaching the next time the class is offered

This is THE most unorganized class I have ever taken at Emory. McKnelly is nowhere to be seen. The GSIs and TAs carry this class. 0 information given about the final exam. She says you can ask questions in the Slack, but she hardly responds. So many lab periods were us just standing around bc McKnelly wasn't there to help my GSI.

Dr. McKnelly does not attend classes, does not teach students what they need to know, has terribly broad learning objectives that are not helpful, is inaccessible outside of class even though she tells us to use Slack, and is allergic to chemicals. The GSIs and TAs carry the lab, so you better hope to get good ones. All the experiments failed also.

Extremely disorganized, no information given about final exam, won't respond to students' questions, poor grading system, not present during or outside of class (actually did not see her once), labs did not work.

Difficult to rate my professor when I have never seen or met my professor outside of the first day of class. Specifications grading is fine throughout the semester...however...be prepared for 1) Labs not working 2) Stress at the end of the semester due to a final exam + paper both of which are the deciding factor in getting an A or not.

Students get a "high-pass" or a "low-pass" on the final, but Dr. McKnelly refuses to share what the cutoff point is. A low pass drops your grade by a whole letter, and she will not respond to questions about what the expectations are for the final exam. We are going into the final bind despite spending hours and hours preparing.

I try to be understanding and open to challenge. Emory is hard. THIS CLASS though...is just plain unfair. The specs grading? Horrible. The professor? Haven't seen her once. The final was a awful representation of the course. If the cut-off for a high pass on the final is, say, a 85%, WHY is getting an 84% the difference between an A and B student?

do not recommend I miss Mulford and that's saying a lot. it's hard when the professor doesn't show up to class at all. I don't understand how the specs grading helps us especially when your grade depends on a high pass for the final and paper. so many times we just sat in lab doing nothing and ran out of materials all the time. AVOID

unresponsive, especially during finals grading system is very confusing never shows up to lab, I've only seen her once thru zoom on the 1st day of class way too much homework for a 2 credit lab the lab overall is very unorganized, half the time the GSIs/TAs were scrambling around trying to figure out what to do or there were no supplies

This is why by far the worst class I have ever taken at Emory. Absolute chaos and little to no organization. The grading criteria is incredibly unclear and students have no way of determining their grade in the class throughout the semester. Every lab was incredibly disorganized, and McKnelly was absent from class the entire semester.

Part 1: Most disorganized class I have ever taken. 50% of your time in lab will be spent frantically searching for chemicals and the other 50% will be waiting for the centrifuge to be done spinning. The GSIs and TAs carried the whole class and their frustrations due to McKnelly's disorganized lab plan were obvious. Part 2 coming soon.

Part 2: Lab was obviosuly unpleasant for all those involved. The poor GSIs didn't know what they were signing up for and most certainly don't get paid enough to do McKnelly's job. In addition, the specs grading makes it so that it doesn't matter if you did all 24 assignments. Your score on this one test will determine if you get an A, B, or C.

The worst class I've taken at Emory. McKnelly made this class unbearable. It is way too much work throughout the semester, just to be unfairly judged on our 2 finals: the paper and the exam, which make up almost your entire grade (no guidance given). I've only seen her on zoom, and it seems that she doesn't care about her students' learning!

Professor McKnelly has made my Chem 204L experience miserable. She only showed up in class once through zoom for the entire semester. She assigned too much homework for a two-credit course, and her specs grading was confusing and irritating. Labs were disorganized as chemicals were often missing, or the experiments did not work.

I am taking a break from studying for McKnelly's final which I know nothing about to write this. The reviews are not exaggerations. I have not seen Dr. McKnelly in Lab. Considering something goes wrong every single time it may be nice if she was there to offer some help, seeing as it is her class. The grading system is unfair and unbalanced.

The grading system was unclear from Day 1. She has never been present in the lab unlike other chemistry professors at Emory. Each lab was unnecessarily difficult because materials always ran out, the GSI/TA's were stressed and could only help so much, and you really do not know what your grade is, since it all relies on the exam and paper.

weird grading system only she uses, never present in lab, only saw her once online, exam and paper dictate the grade, why is there a final exam and paper for a lab, labs were a mess, almost every lab didn't work, exam did not reflect the course content well, a low pass on the final is an auto B+, don't know the cutoff for a low pass- so fun !

What are students supposed to do when the professor does NOT teach...? She has this spec grading system that is supposed to "increase" the avg among students and relive their stress, but NO! She should just spend time at least answering students' questions if she has the time to even consider about this hilarious grading system for the class.

What kind of a professor have the final to be taken on different days? Especially, when she is going to use that average to determine the "high" or "low" pass for the students? Does she really not think people will communicate about the exam during the four day period? It's unfair for EVERYONE!

Way too much HW for a 2 credit course. Spent twice as much time figuring out mcKnelly's instructions for assignments than I did actually studying for chem 204 lecture. Emory chem department is a a joke.

Mcknelly make be a bad professor, but some of the comments are out of pocket and unnecessary

My issue with McKnelly was she was extremely disorganized and hard to work with. I think basing a final grade based on one exam, which was taken on different days for different sections is unfair. I also think she should be a more active role in a class which she teaches. She could proctor exams or do pre lab lectures.

Avoid if possible. Although the in-labs and post-labs are graded for completion, your final grade is determined heavily by one exam (no practice papers btw!) and a paper. Extremely disorganized and why are you making us work with a carcinogen that literally went flying EVERYWHERE during lab.

Part 1: She sits behind her laptop and views us not as students but as chess pieces or experimental mice. She emphasized that her grading scale allows for mistakes but it is the total opposite. Your grade is determined by the final exam and only the final exam, which is graded on a curve that only allows 20% of her students to get an A.

It's so disappointing that one of our only chances to actually gain some skills that would have been useful for working in research labs in the future was taken away because Dr. McKnelly was never there to actually support/teach us anything or fix any of the problems mentioned in the reviews all semester.

I calculated the percent accuracy of the labs in total this semester -- 0.083% accuracy, EMBARRASSING. Not only that, but we have to write a paper that is for half our grade based on 1/12 labs that worked? Ridiculous. The paper also has to be very detailed about experiments that did not work. Make it make sense. McKnelly is the worst, she is BAD.

Unorganized lab, commonly find chemicals missing and wait for no reason, avoid at all costs.

Our semester was spent studying how FAP and MIP bind Malachite Green (MG). We obtained fluorescent data for FAP and absorbance data for MIP, but we need to write a paper concluding which binds and detects MG better. This is very difficult and Dr. McKnelly is unresponsive. Getting a low pass on this paper drops your grade from a "+" to a "-" !!

I saw McKnelly one time this entire semester. She never did a good job of preparing the GSIs for any of our labs, let alone did she make sure students understood what was going on. I have never had a more disorganized class in my life.

To reitterate key points already listed by 100 reviews: Entire semester centered around 1 research question that our data can't answer bc we collected 2 different types of data. We don't even have data bc experiments never worked & she didn't show up even after multiple failed labs. Misleading insinuations of easy As; no (promised) study materials.

It's ridiculous for a professor to tell students to come to office hours while disrespecting their students' time by never showing up to class. All mistakes/confusion in lab could have been alleviated if she just showed her face.

Like everyone else is saying, the CHEM 204L grading scale is entirely unfair. Dr. McKnelly is very unavailable for discussion about the course and has dropped meetings or never responded to messages on multiple platforms. Do NOT recommend her and this class if you can avoid it. For any premeds, good luck

Horrible. Never showed up to class, lab materials constantly missing, TAs lost our products. We had to scavenge for beakers bc there were no supplies available. Sent an email blaming all of us for the mess in the lab. Bad grading system that puts all pressure on the final. Everything was unclear.

She uses specifications grading which is fine until you can only miss 2 questions on the final exam for an A. Promised study materials and office hours but McKnelly never showed up. Impossible to reach or get help. Easy material but a waste of 4 hours every week for labs to just simply fail. I have no results to write my final paper on.

the issue is that everyone is right. yes its mcknlley's 1st time blah blah but students at emory expect a certain level of quality to labs... it's unfortunate mknelley's learning curve is soo steep though.

Riddle me this, if you aren't in lab, creating + proofreading procedures, or showing up to office hours, what are you doing? Because it certainly isn't communicating with students or responding to their emails and Slack messages. We have a paper due in less than 24 hours and the last time anyone has heard from Dr. McKnelly was the 22nd. Absurd

It is impossible to reach her, and she has never shown up in most of the labs we had. The lab was the most chaotic and disorganized lab I have ever had. Although the GSIs and the TAs are trying their best, they were also struggling to figure out what was going on in lab.

Term paper due tonight and McKnelly has ignored all student question on the slack since the 22nd. Students have been frantically messaging her and she continues to ignore questions. She did not show up to a single lab all semester, and played no role in teaching the course. I cant believe that this is the education Emory provides its students.

Dr. McKnelly is shamefully absent from her students. Not only was she never present in lab (excusable due to her allergies), but she was never even present for pre-lab lecture, which is the bare minimum she could have done for us students. When we all needed her the most (final exam and paper clarification) she muted her notifications. Shameful.

very vague specs grading, and basically didn't know my grade until I passed the final

im ready to killmyself

GSIs/TA led-course. Consistently late to office hours. Lab experience and grading is GSI/TA-dependent. No clear grading criteria. Got PTSD from taking over and teaching a disorganized section of peers as a undergraduate. Experiments worked in research labs, but not in Atwood 253. Did instill research independence, as I was always utterly alone.

This administrator seemed like she never looked at the curriculum we are teaching.

She is horrible at teaching. The only way to pass this class is by doing tons of out of class work-you can't rely on lectures to learn all of the material and she ofter doesn't keep up with the pace that the syllabus dictates.

She spends too much time talking about her grading system and random reflections during lab time when we should be doing experiments. Her grading is all over the place and completely dependent on the Graduate student you are assigned. She's allergic to chem labs (understandable) but teaches a lab class (not so much).

She is always late responding to my emails. Her lab lectures take way too long and could've been easily covered with some light reading. Most of her course materials are recycled from last year and are full of typos and mislabeled dates since she doesn't bother proofreading them before publishing. The grading is fine only if you fight for it.

The literal worst professor I have ever taken. So condescending, I've been shushed by her on multiple occasions. Her office hours were at 8am, she was so inaccessible, her lectures were awful and she was always behind. If you can afford to take with a different professor, please do for your sake. She makes chem so much harder.

I took her a few semesters ago. Three words to summarize her lectures: disorganized, unnecessary, and patronizing. Prelab lectures and modules always contain mistakes, not changed since the previous years). Quizzes and assignment instructions are vague, wasting our time to decipher what she is trying to get at instead of content. Avoid if you can.

i am so glad she's not teaching this course anymore. so much busywork and the infantilizing way she treated her class - of TWENTY YEAR OLDS - lik middle schoolers. never available at lab (bcs of an allergy but like why would you teach the lab then) also THE FINAL PAPER IF YOU MISS A FEW PTS YOUR GRADE CAN GO FROM AN A>C ???

McKnelly literally never taught in class. She would spend 5 minutes of class reading out announcements and LOs spend 10 minutes teaching - in a way that never got any information into your head - and then gave the rest of class time to complete the worksheet with LAs offering guidance and I often found the LAs didnt know what was going on as well.

She spends the entire class having us complete worksheet problems without discussing or teaching the material. Her class is consistenly behind every other chem 150 class, and the reading guides that she has us complete have nothing to do with lectures. This class requires students to teach themselves chem 150 entirely,

I already had 2 years of chem with credit going into 150 so I already knew most of the material. McKnelly is incapable of teaching. Take a different professor if you aren't confident in chemistry. All the tests are standardized so the other teachers will save your GPA. She's nice, but that doesn't take away from how bad a professor she is.

Terrible lecturer. Her lecture is not organized and logical at all. She seems have poor idea on what she is teaching. The most answer you can hear from her is arbitrary and unclear. I learned nothing from her. She likes to put students into groups and work on worksheets in the class and assign tons of homework which are not helpful at all.

I had to teach myself literally everything. her lectures are so useless, there is no point in going but she takes attendance through polleverywhere. she "lectures" for 10-15 minutes then gives the next hour to work on worksheets. her grading system is also super weird and are test heavy. if you have no background in chem take another professor

Absolutely awful all around, does not teach, lectures are not actually information based, only do worksheets in class without teaching the material before, does not know how to explain concepts to students, if you have a time conflict with office hours you just won't be able to go since she is awful about answering her emails.

Not passionate at all. Lectures and slides are not helpful. All we do is pretty much solving worksheets and she doesnt even explain most of the problems during class so there is noo point going to classes. But attendance still accounts for 3 percent of total grades.

She is a super nice and kind person, but I would suggest you avoid her courses. She spends 1/4th of the class talking about irrelevant material than finishes the rest of the class doing group work where you and other students will collectively struggle to complete complicated questions. Be prepared to teach yourself. Good luck!

The last lecture that I went to, she stayed on the same slide for 1 hour. She is hard to reach outside of class and gets flustered when asked questions. She will talk for maybe 15 minutes and make students get into a group and figure out worksheets amongst themselves. Tbh avoid her at all costs.

I would strongly not recommend this professor. Most of the learning is done outside of class through homework (reading guides, reflections, OYO). Typically does not even finish going over slides and spends most of the class time working on problems without teaching the material. Exams are not too bad, but are graded pretty harsh.

She doesn't know how to teach

She is a terrible teacher. You do worksheets for the entire class and she doesn't seem to know anything. She is also not the nicest, despite the way she presents herself. The content in 150 was easy. At Emory, chemistry is taught slightly differently so it is difficult to completely self-study. She is not accessible and explains poorly. Do not take