Bohn, Christine  

Chemistry and Biochemistry

0.95/4.00

20 evaluations


CHEM 124


Freshman
N/A
Required (Support)
Mar 2016
Knowing it is her first quarter teaching, I tried to give her a break. Sadly, she just cannot teach. She made simple concepts unbearably confusing and I learned nothing. No one is doing good in her class because she's so unclear (and not because the class is hard... or maybe it was? I can't tell.) I wish I could give her a better grade, but even in office hours, she taught me nothing.


Sophomore
N/A
Required (Support)
Mar 2016
Mrs. Bohn is an extremely nice person. However, her exuberance did not translate into being an effective professor. For some reason, she would give us quizzes and labs on new material before actually teaching the material. Also, it seems as though she doesn't understand the curriculum very well? She would frequently turn bright red as soon as a student raised their hand to ask a question, and passed the question onto the T.A. 80% of the time. That's fine, teachers make mistakes and aren't always obligated to know everything; however, she would often be on her phone texting or playing games, leaving her T.A. to address the plethora of questions we would always have due to her inability to get the material across. I have my suspicions that her T.A. was the one writing the quizzes/labs, i.e. we had a cancelled quiz the one day her T.A. called in sick. Mrs. Bohn makes sure to emphasize that it is her first year teaching, which is why her methods may seem unorthodox to students. However, she has made minimal effort to at least attempt to improve. If you are in her class, you should drop immediately. Mrs. Bohn is a nice person, but quite simply a horrible teacher that seems content to put in as little effort as I have ever seen a professor put in for a class.


Freshman
B
Required (Support)
Mar 2016
Dr.Bohn seems to be a nice professor, but simply being nice is not enough to cut it in college. This professor greatly lacks the ability to teach material or answer any questions. The only time you can kind of get a decent answer is during her office hours on labs only. Along with this, it seemed her TA knew a lot more and presented material better than her. In fact, her methods sometimes even lead the TA to be confused, ultimately wasting time trying to debug her flawed methods. I STRONGLY advise anyone to stay away from taking this class.


Freshman
N/A
Required (Support)
Mar 2016
No. That's all you need to know. She is a very nice person which makes it worse because her poor ratings are due purely to her incompetency as a professor. She simply did not teach us the material we needed to know and when approached with a question that was not explicitly stated in her slide, she would be stumped. The trick to passing her class though is to do the workbook problems. Although not technically required, they are the exact problems on her quizzes. The workbook problems though have nothing to do with anything we learned in class. Honestly, if it weren't for the labs you would not even need to go to class. My only advice if you have her is to google how to do all her workbook problems so you can pass the class. You're screwed for the final though, because it is a common final which means unless you memorized the whole Chem book, there is no way you are gonna have any idea how to do anything.

CHEM 128


Freshman
N/A
Required (Major)
Mar 2015
she is a new teacher at cal poly and a new teacher in general and it shows! she does not explain anything in lecture well and my entire class has really bad grades. her tests and quizzes are hard. everyone dreads this class.


Freshman
N/A
Required (Support)
Mar 2015
I know she is a first time teacher, so I will try and give the benefit of the doubt here. That being said, I feel the course was unsatisfactory. There is lots I can talk about, but I will just use a couple of examples. 1) We had a pop quiz on extremely specific things to do with a lab procedure. The average class grade was below 25%. She said she would curve it, but did it in such a way that it only brought the average up to just over 35%. 2) On a midterm, there was an electrochemistry question. For this, we had to calculate a very complicated volume of an object, in order to set up the problem. If this was a geometry class that would be great, but on a timed test, it takes a lot of time, testing something that is completely irrelevant to class. 3) There is no rubric for the tests and quizzes. There is no point value assigned to any problems, or a total to the test or quiz. This leaves lots of room for bias and error. When comparing with peers, I have found major discrepancies, some people loosing many more or less points for the exact same thing. This is because when grading there is nothing to compare to, it is just what she feels like adding or taking away at the time. 4) There is "Double Jeopardy" on tests and quizzes. A specific example that I experienced was a problem that used the answer from part a to solve part b. I got the answer wrong in part a, and because of this, I lost 13 out of 15 points in the second problem. I did all my work correctly, but did not have the correct answer, as I started with the incorrect numbers. I talked to her later about this, to no avail. Again, I will try and give the benefit of the doubt, as she is a first time teacher. But when it is easier to learn the material from reading a (frankly terrible) textbook then listening to the lectures (reaching three hours in length with only a 5 minute break), this is something the department should know about. Things like this make learning hard, no matter who you are. There have been good things too. Dr. Bohn is obviously very smart and wants to help us learn. This being said, I think it is absolutely ridiculous for the department to hire someone who just got their PhD, and has NO experience in teaching. She has the potential to be a great professor, but as of now, my learning (and GPA) have really suffered, and it should not have to be that way at a school of this caliber. I think this also has to do with the setup of the curriculum. There is no room for exploration by the professor. This may be good if they don't know what to teach, but it also makes it much harder to teach their way, and may make it harder for the professor to understand what is going on, as they have to learn the curriculum as well. A shit-show of a department makes things a lot harder on the professor, not to mention the student.


Freshman
N/A
Required (Support)
Mar 2015
Now I am aware that this is Dr. Bohn's first quarter teaching at Cal Poly and I do know that it can be a struggle for new professors to get going however, this class has been a real disappointment. I promise I tried to give her a chance the first couple weeks of the quarter, but after about week four this class became unbearable. I began to dread the class because i knew that all the work, studying and effort that I put into the class would result in a D or lower grade on every lab, quiz and exam I received back. She does not assign point values and she also does not check her addition therefore made comparing grades with others impossible. This was really difficult for me because I do love chemistry and I had an absolutely wonderful time in 127 and I receive a great grade, but for 128 this was not the case. Dr. Bohn rarely came prepared. She would continuously confuse us with her poorly prepared lectures and lack of examples. Then she would expect us to replicate all the problems on labs, quizzes and exams that she supposedly taught in class. She also choses the longest and most complicated way to explain things that left the whole class lost. So basically learning for this class resulted in me spending countless hours rereading the chemistry text book. Her test and quiz questions are vague and very confusing, and of course we interpreted them differently than she wanted. They were very challenging only because she did not teach us any of the material. She usually taught us the concepts after we were quizzed or tested on them which of course resulted in an uproar among the class. She also would never post answer keys for the already completed exams, labs and quizzes. She also always posts the labs super late at night so of course its the last thing anyone wants to complete. So overall, don't waste your time, Cal Poly should offer much better.


Freshman
N/A
General Ed
Mar 2015
DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND STAY AWAY.


Freshman
N/A
Required (Major)
Mar 2015
I am a chemistry major and did not find chem 127 hard (without studying). Obviously, the material has gotten a lot harder, and not only because of the material itself, but also the professor is no good at teaching. I remember the first day of class, Dr. Bohn said we were going to be her guinea pigs because we are the first class, EVER, that she was going to teach since she just got her PhD not that long ago. This woman is actually really smart, I'll give her that. I've gone to her office hours about three times and she has been really helpful. However, this is the total opposite in class. If you ask her something, she can seriously explain whatever it is that she is explaining, but makes the explanation (I kid you not,) about 5 mins long, so by the end of the explanation you're just left confused. This has happened way too many times during lecture. In the beginning of the quarter she was always unprepared with what she was going to teach that day and thus had soooooo many mistakes, which in return confuses us students too. Then, not that long ago, she started getting pre-made packets that all we had to do is follow along and just fill in the blanks (this made everything so much easier). Now, her quizzes and tests. They're awful. Not only the content of it, but also her LA. Her LA is not clear on how she grades some problems (happens in the labs too). From my knowledge, the averages for most of her quizzes and tests have been below a C. So, this professor is approachable and a great person and all, but I have not really learned a lot of chemistry FROM HER this quarter, as I've been reading the book and have gone on YouTube for better explanations.


Freshman
N/A
Required (Major)
Mar 2015
What can i say....oh bohn. I do not advise taking this class, I switched out of a 7am chem to her class and i even regret that. This is her first quarter teaching and she is incredibly disorganized and lacks any form of teaching skill. There is no preparation for the tests so you have to study everything and it is soon stressful. It is so hard to learn in class so you have to learn out of the book, self teaching chemistry is not fun at all. Just stay away from this class, or take it and get a bad grade + a lecture by your parents about your grades needing to improve. Im at a C and she's said to others that the curve isn't gonna be that substantial, which isn't fair because the class average is a C-. I liked chemistry...emphasis on liked.


Sophomore
N/A
Required (Support)
Mar 2015
Dr. Bohn is the worst professor I have had so far at cal poly. She avoids questions honestly because I don't think she knows how to answer them. Despite being unable to teach the subject, she is clueless and condescending and I would sincerely advise to not take this course. I found this quarter extremely chaotic and disorganized and very, very frustrating. I will not end up failing this class. In fact, I might even get and A, so I am not writing this review based on the grade I'm going to get. I am writing this to further save people from the torture that our class went through this quarter. I hope that whoever you are, you can find someone else to take!


Freshman
B
Required (Major)
Mar 2015
It should be noted that all the comments below that don't have grades were posted just after a Midterm that was very hard, they need to be taken with a grain of salt. Anyway, Winter 2015 was Dr. Bohn's first time teaching ever. With that, it was very disoriented, so if you appreciate a very organized class, stay clear until probably 2016 or so. She was very nice is you went and talked to her during office hours or made an appointment (which is better because it's guaranteed one-on-one time. He lectures were dry, and at times overwhelming due to Dr. Bohn's confusion as well as ours. This is will improve in time. We were given two Mid Terms, both of which the class average was a low B. She offered a ton of extra credit toward the end and offered to curve the class if the grades were too low. All in all, Dr. Bohn is currently a decent professor in the making. She will not try and fail you. She offers tons of help and opportunities to raise your grade. We had two pop-quizzes (both on the lab that we were doing that day) and the first one had an average of 20%. As a class, no one read the pre-lab so we all pretty much deserved that, but since we all did so poorly, she erased the grade. Currently her class isn't a prime class to take for chem, but it won't wreck your GPA if you keep your act together.


Freshman
B
Required (Major)
Mar 2015
I am going to start off by saying that I am not a bad chemistry student. I worked hard in 127 and got a B when most of my class got a C and I ended up with a B in 128. I had to work five times harder than I did in 127 because of this professor.Therefore, this post is not out of anger for my grade, but a very honest overview on Dr. Bohn. This lady is very young and she just finished school so we were her first class she has ever taught.The first day of class she seemed extremely unsure of herself and nervous. I understood this as it was her first day teaching. I gave her the benefit of the doubt for a few weeks but by week 4 I felt like she really should have had her act together. This lack of confidence went on the entire quarter and I really believe the reason for this was because she didn’t know what she was teaching. The problem with Dr. Bohn is not that she is unintelligent but that she is very unprepared. As a first year teacher with only one class to focus on, you would think that she would come to class having already reviewed the lecture and lab procedures/protocol she was going to teach that day. She was always very confused in class when teaching how to do problems and she continuously made mistakes which made lecture very confusing. She also did not know how to do any labs and relied on the LA for help who was just as bad. Furthermore, Dr. Bohn, made and printed her tests at the very last minute and all of her exams had so many mistakes and a lot of her questions were worded very poorly. The lecture is the worst part of this class though. Sometimes she used the full three hours to ramble on and on about the material. I wouldn’t normally mind this but she teaches the textbook. She would print these 20 page packets for the class which was copies of the textbook and all of her sample problems were the exact same thing as in the book. Typically, the textbook is used as a supplement…In this class, it was the EXACT same thing as a the notes. It was pointless going to lecture when you could read the textbook. When asking Dr. Bohn a question, she would give a 5 minute answer that did not petain to the actual question what so ever. This entire class was self teach… and then she would give these hard quizzes and exams. We had about 5 quizzes and 2 pop quizzes in which most of these the averages were lower than a C. The two midterms were not easy by any means and the final was not easy either. Dr. Bohn is a very nice women who is not intimidating at all which I was appreciative of. By the end of the quarter, many students went in to complain to her about grades and she really made an effort to give us extra credit and a very slight curve to boost her average. However, I would NOT recommend taking her for a few years. I think once she familiarizes herself with the material and learns how to make fair tests then she will be a decent teacher but for now be careful.


Sophomore
A
Required (Support)
Mar 2015
I had Dr. Bohn during her first quarter ever teaching, and it was a pretty bad experience. I would say my biggest problem with her as a teacher is that she was really bad at teaching! Her lectures were super unclear and she would usually just read directly off her slides and go really fast. She also seemed very unprepared for her lectures because she oftentimes confused herself while lecturing and seemed unsure of answers to students' questions. To learn in this class, I mostly had to teach myself from the textbook, and if I had further questions I would ask her, but a lot of the time she wouldn't even know the answer to my question. For the lab portion of class, I thought that she did a decent job. The labs seemed to always run smoothly and she was able to answer most questions during the lab. The only downside of the lab in this class is that she makes you keep a lab notebook with pretty much the exact same stuff that you put into your lab report, so it's pretty pointless, repetitive, and a waste of time. In terms of grading, I'm going to deviate from the rest of the reviews and say that she was pretty fair. I personally felt like the difficulty of the two midterms were pretty standard. They were by no means easy, but not impossibly difficult either if you really studied. If you only "studied" by going to class and didn't really read the textbook much or put in any extra effort, then you would probably find the test extremely difficult. But I studied a lot and went to office hours whenever I had questions, and was able to get an A on both tests. I would say that the difficulty of the class started out quite high, but then around halfway through the quarter or so, as Dr. Bohn realized that the class was doing pretty badly, she started giving us easier quizzes, grading labs easier, and giving us extra credit opportunities. I think that Dr. Bohn is a truly kind professor who is very approachable and wants her students to succeed, but she is just really disorganized, unclear, and bad at teaching. Even though I did well in this class, I would say that it was overall still a really unenjoyable experience and would not recommend this professor at least for another few quarters until she has learned to teach and run a class better.


Freshman
B
Required (Support)
Apr 2015
I do realize that Winter 2015 was her first quarter, but she could not teach for the life of her. She made mistakes on every single test or quiz and was high incapable of explaining simple concepts. I dreaded going to her class because I had it for 3 hours TR. Although she is a sweet person, I do no think she is fit to teach this course. She did not curve anything, but somehow I passed with a B. Do not take Chemistry with her, or prepare to teach yourself everything.


Junior
N/A
Required (Support)
May 2015
WORST TEACHER I HAVE EVER HAD IN COLLEGE. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME BECAUSE YOU WILL END UP TEACHING YOURSELF THE ENTIRE COURSE WORK


Freshman
A
Required (Major)
Feb 2016
Christine Bohn helped me conceptualize the abstract physical world that surrounds me. I've learned so much and gained a large appreciation for the subject.

CHEM 129


Sophomore
N/A
Required (Support)
May 2017
It takes an exceptionally poor professor to be a bad lab instructor. You know its ridiculous when your lab is 10000X better when she has someone else cover the class. You ask her a simple question and she will return with a long-winded response that never actually answers your question. I have only had to suffer through a lab with this woman, I am so sorry to all of those of you who actually have a lecture with her. Do yourself a favor, unless you are trying to be confused and hate every lab for a class that usually has a very interesting, fun lab section - DO NOT TAKE THIS PROFESSOR! She is unclear in her instructions, grades ridiculously harshly, and is all round one of the most insufferable, condescending professors I've ever had in a class. Also blue eyeshadow.... just saying thats not the mark of a stable person. This isn't even a rant about her, she is truly just is not cut out to teach anyone about chemistry.

CHEM 312


Sophomore
A
Required (Support)
Jun 2017
Dr. Bohn does not deserve the rating she currently has. I was scared to take her lab section for CHEM-312, but she ended up being a great teacher. She encourages you to write down everything that is on the board (AND YOU SHOULD). She's always willing to answer your questions if you go up to her and try and understand a concept. Her quizzes are really fair just do the study guide and reread the notes she gave you in class. I barely put any effort into this class-- I went to class, actively participated in lab, wrote down her notes, did the lab reports, lab notebook, and study guides. Don't be discouraged!!

IME 722


Graduate Student
B
Required (Major)
Nov 2016
This is the first C I have recieved in my entire life. I hope that says something to all of you out there watching their GPA. Do not take him--this class was a nightmare!