Louis Brus

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. Do yourself a favor and get the easy A from gen chem and skip this class completely. Why kill yourself for a B when you can get an easy A doing minimal work. This class was one of the worst classes ever. He is incomprehensible, and just a terrible teacher. The tests are unpredictable, the recitations are hard to do well in (still easier to do well in than the tests), and everything about this class was unforgiving and not worth the copies time I put into it. Just do not take it.

Professor Brus is just a bad teacher. By the end of the class, less than 50% of the students went to lecture. His notes are available online, and the homework and book assignments will definitely help you learn the material if you are motivated and diligent. But going to his class is nearly pointless, as it's impossible to understand what he is saying as he teaches. I could not hear him, he mumbled a lot, he was completely unaware when his microphone was not working, etc. The only benefit from going to lecture is the consistency/focus on the class you might get because of the schedule; also, he occasionally diagrams something on the board that you will need to know for a test (something that can't be found online). Overall, if you just want to get skip a semester of chem, you have a strong chem background, and you like learning on your own--go ahead and take intensive. He's often the only professor teaching it. But if you can avoid it, don't take his gen chem.

Louis Brus is nice enough but he is straight up an awful teacher. I've taken three years of chem (including AP chem) and still found the midterms to be a little challenging. Instead of going to class, it would be better if you just read the book, did the hw problems, and studied the lecture slides. The midterms are pretty hard, but the final is super easy if you make sure to go over the midterm answer keys. He literally uses a lot of the same questions for the final- so study those answer keys! Still make sure to study though, because not all the questions are from the old exams.

Louis Brus is a nice man, and is evidently knowledgeable about his subject. That said his lectures are hard to follow because of the poor acoustics of the chemistry auditorium, and his inadequate microphone system. General Chemistry is a let down of a class, even for those interested in the field. The second two midterms basically cover orbitals and nothing else, and it can get very tedious. That said, Brus's lecture slides are phenomenal. I gained very little through my attendance, and simply read through the slides to achieve a decent grade. The midterms are challenging, but the final basically used the same questions. So study those answer keys! Also, don't forget to attend recitation in its entirety every week. The TAs are great and you'll learn a lot more through them than from the lecture.

Three midterms (one is dropped) and a final, all multiple choice which sounds good but since there are only 25 its hard to actually do well. Also a final, all of it was impossible.

If you are enticed to take Intensive General Chemistry to get out of a semester of General Chemistry, be warned that you will be miserable in this class. I absolutely hated being in this class. Louis Brus has chicken-scratch handwriting, talks to the board, fails to answer questions fully, and goes off on tangents about the Chemistry department, particularly his own research. As a pre-med, I feel like I would have been better off taking General Chemistry for two semesters and learning something rather than attempting to perfect the art of mind reading in order to figure out what exactly his disorganized lectures were aiming to teach. He does not follow the text book in a coherent pattern and will often delve into somewhat complex mathematical aspects of chemistry.

While professor Brus if obviously an extremely nice and intelligent man he was an inept professor – he knows the material all to well, but it’s as if he has forgotten what it’s like not to know the basics and is unable to translate this. The comments below are spot on about his lectures, they are powerpoints (that he apparently didn’t even make himself) that he reads in a barely audible monotonic voice. The biggest issue with his teaching style was that there was not a course syllabus and he did not put the slides up before class or let you know what chapters were going to be covered- that would have allowed you to prepare for class so you could attempt to follow along. I found it more helpful to spend the lecture time going over the previous work, waiting for the reading assignments to be posted and then teaching myself the material before deciphering his lecture slides. By the end of the semester 90% of class was not showing up to lecture – it was pretty sad. Also the fall semester of 1404 is about 90% engineering freshmen that seem to have a really good grasp of the concepts ahead of time, so if you are not in the boat be prepared to work a bit harder to stay in the curve. He doesn’t give out practice midterms for the exams so you have no forewarning of what the exams are going to be like. He said he didn’t have a big enough test bank to give out practice problems so my adv…

He is really hard to follow. Not because he is too fast or too complicated but because his voice is the most monotonic voice in the world. I really try hard. It just doesn't happen, his words don't go through. If you want to take genchem from him and you don't have a chem background, get ready to spend time with the book. I'm surviving via my TA. This is personal opinion though shared by many others.

So, I took this class last semester with Brus. To be honest, I'm still a bit uncertain if Brus was ever actually a good teacher, like some people say he is. There were a few pretty good lectures, and Brus has a very interesting brand of dry humour... In that it's hard to tell if he's making a joke or if he's naturally that depressed. I went to his office hours around three times, which is three times more than a huge amount of the class, I think I failed to ever make an impression on him. Plus it was rather awkward, every time... Essentially, this is second semester General Chemistry, and it covers some of the most interesting units in GChem, imo. In that respect I was very glad I took this instead of GChem, because it was short and to the point, whereas some of the teachers of first semester seemed to focus on somewhat trivial stuff (like crystal lattices...). At the beginning of the year he said he would do a unit on electrochem, which we ended up skipping, and we never covered titration problems, but both of those things are *huge* pains in the ass, so I'm glad. That said, having this class at 9:00 am was almost painful. Prof. Brus, while a fairly decent lecturer who likes to use the blackboard, has an almost monotonic voice... Combined with the uncomfortable chairs and somewhat dry material, it can be all too easy to fall asleep. I think I slept through about seven lecture…

This was an easy class targeted at engineers who knew basic chemistry, but didn't need it for their major. Most students in the class already know the stuff from AP Chemistry or similar classes. In fact, I had already studied Organic Chemistry in detail, but still took this class because I'm not terribly interested in chemistry. Prof. Brus' teaching style is lack luster. He switches off the lights and puts up a PowerPoint - he's basically asking you to sleep in his class. Hence most people don't turn up to lectures. He puts up his slides online anyway, so it doesn't make a difference. There are also weekly recitations with a quiz which are far more interesting than the actual class. If you're not a Chemical Engineering, BME or Material Science Engineering major and if you don't have any genuine interest in chemistry, this class is for you. Don't expect to learn much though. Its sole purpose is to fill the chemistry requirement. Note: This class is about 80% the same as 1604 intensive general chemistry, but doesn't give you AP credit. So if the credit is important to you, go for that instead.