Reviews of professor Jordan Ward

Rating: 4.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Professor Ward really cares about his students' success. He implemented lecture notes, useful pre-reading resources, web-casted, and gave a PDF of the slides. He was always flexible with office hours time, and never was condescending. His one drawback is how fast he talks. I had to watch each lectures multiple times to get everything.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
He's passionate about what he does, but in lecture he always goes on about something off topic for the longest time and his lectures are so dry. you don't really know what's going to be on the exam ONLY if you go to multiple sections and OH beforehand. doesn't really explain concepts clearly, but if you watch webcast it'll be a little easier

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
he's very meh. Not the worst professor I've had, but far from the best. Seems like a nice guy but is very hard to follow in class. His slides are nearly useless, you have to watch the webcast bc he says the important information really quickly and its almost impossible to catch in person. Goes on tangents, use of class time feels inefficient.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Professor Ward is clear on what he puts on exams. He webcasts lectures so make sure to refer back to them to solidify concepts. I went to all his office hours which helped A LOT. It's a hard class (obviously, it's an upper div) but if you actively put in effort it will pay off.

Rating: 4.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Jordan is a good professor, very knowledgeable and caring. The material can be boring or hard to wrap your head around. But as long as you review lectures, do problems, and attend sections, exams should be no problem.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
He was easily the worst instructor I've ever had. His class was messy. His lectures were full of jargon, scattered details that you had to piece together to form a concept, and painfully boring. The test is short answer only and the grading was ridiculous. He wasn't helpful one on one either, basically told me good luck and have a nice day. RUN.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Professor Ward has got to be one of my favorite professors I've ever had at UCSC. He's easy to talk to outside of lectures and cares deeply for his students. The course content can be quite complicated and Jordan always found a way to make it understandable. Tests were straightforward, homework was challenging and very helpful. Highly recommended!

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Jordan is extremely accomodating and helpful. BIOL 101 is a difficult class but the way he teaches as well as his grading system makes it so much less stressful than most STEM classes. If you can take this class with him, even in a pandemic his class did not stress me out nearly as much as the rest of them.