Darcy Kelley

I totally agree about the problems described in the May 7, 2025 review. Other than that, I feel like this specific semester of Neurobiology was great for people working in labs, e.g. at ZI, because the course shows you a lot of papers, methods, names of people, teaches you relevant things that you could apply to your own research, and puts you in contact with lab members (TAs and the professor herself) that can help you with you neuroscience journey. Just the testing process in this class was super disorganized and faulty versus last semester in Neurobiology I with Abdus-Saboor, which was waaayy better in terms of lectures and grading.

Professor Kelley is one of my favorite professors that I have encountered thus far in my 2 years at Columbia. I was wary of the course going in, since I'm not too fond of science in general, but Darcy made the material come to life. Her genuine enthusiasm for the subject was contagious, and I found that soon I was even reading Science Times to read about the breaking science news. I can see how people with a strong science background might be frustrated with the course, since even I was bored at some points by the simple material that people still didn't seem to get. But, I bet that those people could gain a lot by talking to Darcy outside of the classroom, since she loves talking about science in general. The course itself did not involve much work. The problem sets were time consuming, but there were only 4 of them all semester. The readings are totally not necessary, but make sure you go to lecture since all the material from the problem sets will be presented there, and some of it even involves topics that the average science major won't be totally familiar with (quantum mechanics, etc.). If you get assigned to Darcy's section, you will get a lot out of it - just go in with an open mind about science.

Professor Kelley is clearly brilliant and deeply knowledgeable about neuroscience, but unfortunately, that didn’t translate into effective teaching. Her lectures were often disorganized and hard to follow, making it difficult to piece together what we were actually supposed to take away from each class. The “key points” she provided before exams were somewhat helpful, but they often felt like a crutch to compensate for lectures that lacked clarity and structure. The biggest issue by far was with the exams. Even though we used scantrons, Professor Kelley insisted on grading them by hand which made no sense and caused a lot of unnecessary stress. Pretty much every test I took had multiple grading errors, and I wasn’t alone. Students were constantly going to office hours to get points back for questions that were marked wrong despite being correct. It felt chaotic and unfair, especially when the mistakes were due to poor wording or questions that didn’t have a clear right answer. For the final worth 40% of our grade Professor Kelley told the class she had written it at 2 a.m. the night before and admitted that some questions were “problematic.” That kind of last-minute preparation is just not acceptable at this level. Losing people's exams and misgrading exams is ridiculous, and should not be the hardest part of this course. To her credit, she was usually open to fixing mistakes…

I feel as though this review should focus more on the class itself than Prof. Kelley's particular teaching style, which plays only a minor role in the whole FroSci experience. The newly designed science core course has many bugs to work out yet. The problem sets are easy, but very frustrating (there's a lot of independent, online research involved that gets tedious really quickly). The lectures themselves were interesting and valuable, though their unfortunate placement on friday mornings meant I slept through many of them. As for the discussion sections, they often had only nominal connection to the lectures. Prof. Kelley had some creative ideas in her approach to each subject matter, but often times our meetings were simply a bore. She resorted to a lot of group and individual presentations later in the semester, which I got almost nothing out of. Don't get me wrong, she's a sweet lady whose passionate about the course, and her quirkiness is rather charming, but every aspect of the course retains a coarseness that needs to be sorted out. Probably my biggest problem with the course was how much the professors involved taught down to their students. The class claims to be designed for science and non-science people, but I can' t imagine that anyone who manage to get accepted to Columbia was as science-ignorant as they assumed us to be. I sincerely hope this does not become a r…

Very interesting class filled with lots of good information. Not much effort is needed to pass the class other than memorization and active recall. Darcy Kelley is very helpful and does a good job in helping you understand certain topics and also helps you find further information based on material she teaches.

Dr. Kelley is really quite remarkable. I don't think I've ever come across someone who has the same level of mastery of such a broad range of topics within a discipline. Ok, most professors at Columbia have their specific realm of expertise, and know their stuff within that, but her knowledge of all things neuroscience and biology is profound. Classes are interesting, she lectures from the top of her head - you never really know what she might say next. Expect a lot of interesting asides and anecdotes. She has obviously taught this class many times before, so the structure is very organized. That said, she still brings in plenty of very recent research into the lectures. Dr. Kelley clearly reads a lot of journals! She will respond to emails, although she can be a little blunt, even gruff. It's hardly a let down though, she's a great lecturer and always happily fielded questions in class. This is obviously not a course for history majors! Most of the class were neuroscience majors who are premed. The course is clearly geared to such people. That said, I am a psychology major with no background in biology, physics or chemistry and I was ok. The papers we read for recitation were challenging at first read, but usually made sense after discussion in seminar. I'm glad I took this course - it's really broadened my knowledge base of neuroscience.

Darcy is an amazing teacher. She is funny, comes well prepared for the lectures and her breath of the subject is extraordinary. The exams are well made and thoroughly enjoyable. She has also started putting the audio recording of the lectures on courseworks along with the entire set of slides she shows in the lectures. I don't know of any other biology professor who takes her/his job that seriously. Her selection of the papers for discussion is also good. She does go a little overboard when explaining her frog sexual behavior stuff, but she usually doesn't give it unnecessary importance in the exam.

4 different tests all done before finals week. No large cumulative “final exam” per se. Mandatory recitation.

The workload is fine. 3 MCQ exams, not hard except her weird wording and the fact that she marks correct answers as incorrect despite using scantrons!!! Final exam based on primary papers (3 options pick 2) which was fine but similar exam and grading issues. Recitation was mandatory and fine.

All exams are mulitple choice. Final exam is not cumulative and not based on new material but rather based on 2 of 3 research papers of your choice (also multiple choice). Mandatory recitation section where more research papers will be discussed.