Kingsbury, Kevin  

Dr. Kingsbury is a very smart individual. He's a little boring but that's partial to the fact that lab instructors lecture to 25 people who most likely want to be anywhere else but that lab for the next 3 hours. He helped me understand a lot of the concepts from the lecture and how it relates in the lab. Take notes during the beginning because they'll most likely come up during quiz time.

Overall, I

Prof. Kingsbury is an excellent teacher. He is available to help students but the student must be willing. Although I did not do well in the class it was in no way dependant upon the ability of myself. He has a very good abiility to communicate the material effectively.

Instructor seems timid and out of place in front of a classroom.

he's a joke, he's always hesitant, and what's up with the faces he makes

Professor Kingsbury is very intelligent and wants everybody in the class to know so by giving "trick" questions on the tests. I did, however, enjoy his experiments during lectures. He isn't very helpful in office hours unless you enjoy feeling stupid! *HINT* If you take his lab MAKE SURE you read the lab manual VERY WELL and understand it all.

I agree with what has been said before me. Kingsbury may be a smart guy but he does not lecture well. He moves really fast on information that we should have spent more time on and then other information that is easier he spends a couple days on. I talked with others in my class and we had gone to his office hours and were treated like we were stupid. He is a nice guy but i didn't get much out of the class. I taught myself buffers, which wasnt fun. if you can take someone else, do it.

If you are unfortunate enough to get stuck with this instructor, make sure you sit in the front row. Otherwise, you will not be able to hear him! Nice guy, I suppose, but seems really awkward in front of a classroom.

Dr. Kingsbury is a very nice guy, like everyone has said above. HOWEVER, he will talk about the material as if it is very easy, yet when you take the exams, you will stare at some questions and think "HUH?" I'm sure he would be a very good upper-division professor where we are to know the basics, but he doesn't do a very good job at EXPLAINING the basics to us who need them. For a good note on the guy, he plays jazz during lab (if you like jazz) and also does a pretty thorough job (I think) of explaining what to do in lab.

This professor is by far one of the worst teachers I have had here at Poly. I went form receiving high grades in 127 and 128, to barely passing this class. He is smart, but he is not cut out to teach. He skips over steps because he assumes the class knows what just happened, and is not at all helpful in office hours. What is on the tests seem to be very unfair and tricky. Sometimes things are on there that I don't even think were lectured on. Your tests are your only grades. He is a bad lecturer and his tests are unfair, what a horrible combination! DON'T TAKE HIM, I'm not taking Organic chem next quarter only because he is the teacher teaching it. I will avoid him at all costs!!!!

He's a pretty good professor but he's really boring. His tests are pretty fair though.

Dr. Kingsbury is a very sweet professor who always seems so excited to teach chemistry. He is a very intelligent professor who presents the information in a clear and concise way. He does his best to incorporate the information covered to the real world. His tests/quizzes seemed relatively fair and did not cover any "surprising" questions. The lecture section is comprised of about 5 quizzes (5pts each), two exams (100 pts each) and a final exam. He provides many problems from the book as suggestions but does not offer his own practice problems which is a bummer. I definitely could have worked harder in his class but overall I think he is a great teacher who respects his students. I would recommend taking him for Organic Chemistry I.

I've had Dr. Kingsbury for the entire ochem series and I seriously can't say enough good things about this professor. 216 was really hard for me because I didn't put in nearly as much work as it required, but as the series went on, I realized that he's not joking when he says that you should be studying every day. Granted, I'm still not studying EVERY day, but once you start putting in a reasonable amount of effort, it starts to make sense. Dr. Kingsbury is an amazing lecturer and is so helpful in office hours, and he KNOWS who does and doesn't try. He's nerdy and awkward but genuinely one of the nicest, smartest professors I've ever had. Tests are straightforward and the weekly quizzes are really helpful for keeping you up to speed!

This guy is a pretentious FUCK! This class is difficult to start I will not ignore that fact, but he makes this class 28647376278643920934873654x more difficult than it has to be. He expects everyone in this class to be a fucking genius and if you are in the lower part of the class (the less smart people) he treats you like a peasant. The actual class material doesn't suck any more than ochem 1 & 2 but the shit he expects you to know for this class is actually absurd. The tests actually do not test anything you learn in class or in the practice problems. The tests actually leave you feeling like an incompetent idiot because nothing you studied even matters. All of his questions are the exceptions to the rules so don't even bother. If you actually plan on going to grad school, take a different professor because this guy will wreck your GPA, your self-esteem, and your mental health.

Although I didnt have him for the whole quarter (he left three weeks before the quarter ended) I thought he presented the material very clearly and at a level that a non-chem major could understand. He was helpful in asking additional questions after class and I thought he was an overall nice guy. He class is definelty a hard one- there is alot of matieral to know and seeing that I have Meisenheimer for the last three weeks of lecture and for lab- I dont think the material is any different or harder in Kingsburys class. Therefore I thought he was fair and although quiet he still presented the material very well and seemed genuinely concerned about how the class was doing I slowed down in spots that seemed difficult to us.

Absolutely amazing! I was terrified going into o chem after all the horror stories I had heard, but Kingsbury actually made me enjoy the subject. You can tell he's a pretty shy guy and he's a little quiet, but his lectures were very clear and easy to follow. There is a quiz every non-midterm week based on the newest material he lectures on and they're pretty easy. Just study your notes for about a half hour for each one and you should be fine. There are 3 midterms which are pretty straightforward - he doesn't try to trick you at all - and he curves them. The final was cumulative but he took 1/3 of the points from previous midterm questions which made things a lot easier during finals week. Overall, I definitely recommend Kingsbury!

I highly recommend this professor. There is a required text but I bought it and never used/referred to it. For every lecture he posts an outline on blackboard ahead of time that is to be used as a professor-guided worksheet in class. DONT FORGET TO PRINT OUT AHEAD OF TIME, or you will end up doing a large amount of unecessary writing. In addition to this he does normal lecture notes which should be kept separate in a notebook. If you keep the printed outlines and your notes well organized the midterms and finals should be managable. Don\'t miss any lectures, his tests are directly from in-class material. He is very step-by-step making organic chemistry approachable.

I really enjoyed taking this guy. He is really cool and tries to make the class interesting by showing cool examples and making funny jokes. He is really nice and helpful in office hours. He does have quizzes almost every week which sucks, but they help you prepare for the midterms. His tests are pretty hard because he likes to trick you. You have to really understand the material, but he usually curves. I would definitely recommend taking him!!!

Best O chem teacher!!! Presents material very clearly and if you don't understand it he's very helpful during office hours and wants you to learn. He keeps class fun, I really enjoyed taking this class even though I'm terrified of chem. Weekly quizzes help you keep up with the material and he even gives out extra credit. I highly recommend this teacher!

I HIGHLY recommend this preofessor! He was soo nice and made organic chemistry seem almost easy. He presented material very clearly and gave quizzes(lab/lecture) twice a week so that forced you to keep up with the class which was nice around midterms. It is a difficult class with a lot of material but if you keep up with the work, ask for help, its an easy A. He genuinely cares about students!

Greatest teacher ever for a really tough subject, this guy deserves national recognition.

Dr. Kingsbury made O Chem interesting and not too challenging. He went slowly and made sure the students understood before moving on. He is seriously the nicest man and really cares about his students. His office hours were really mini study sessions where he often would go in front of the board and go over any problems or questions the students had. They are definitely worth going to!

Seriously, Dr. K is the greatest. He's a little sweet old man and always had the greatest attitude. I HATE chemistry and was completely dreading this class, having constant daydreams about not graduating because I couldn't pass this class. Dr. K was the greatest at presenting the material and knows that this is a tough class. He does his best to make sure no one falls behind. Go to office hours-he's the SWEETEST and most HELPFUL. Take advantage of this guy. Do the recommended problems, all the worksheets, and ask questions. It will be fine.

I took Professor Kingsbury's Ochem class over first summer session. Overall, he was an above average teacher. I thought he was INCREDIBLE HEAVEN SENT MAN TEACHER for the first few weeks of summer, however, once midterm 1 was given, the material for midterm 2 was eons harder, and because of the condensed 5-week course, Kingsbury sped through the material without really thoroughly explaining concepts. I mean, he is an incredibly nice and approachable teacher, but I don't think the fast paced summer environment did the subject justice. I'm very surprised I pulled off the grade I did barely understanding the last chunk of subject matter... There are two midterms and two quizzes a week; the questions are far from tricky. You will get a great grade if you spend a few hours going over the assigned reading pages/notes at home a night. Lab was pretty easy. Two labs a week, quiz before each lab on the previous week's material as well as a reading question for that day. Lab quiz was a little hard, judging lab concepts were not covered in lecture. Again, I'm not sure if the material was not covered because of summer session. With very little work, you'd be able to earn a C.

I just want to warn anyone that needs to take O Chem DO NOT TAKE AS A FRESHMAN!!!! I took it because the only prerequisite was Chem 111 so I figured I was ready but I was mistaken. I literally looked like a 12 year old in a class of 4th and 5th years and I could tell I was always behind everyone else. I recommend taking it much later than I did it would have been better to get more classes under me before taking this difficult course. With that being said Kingsbury is a great professor and really helped me down the stretch when times got tough. He is ALWAYS busy during office hours so make sure to get there early if you need help. The only complaint I have of K Kings is he favored the girls over the guys when it came to helping us. He would spend a solid hour with an attractive young girl in the class but spent less than 10 minutes when I would go to office hours. Other than that he is a good professor and definitely a must take.

I have a good deal of experience, and with no amount of judgment -- gay.

I'm about to finish up survey of organic chem with Dr. Kingsbury. Positives: He does a good job of simplifying jargon or providing analogous vocabulary that non-chem majors can catch onto. In this way, the concepts weren't so lofty that you can't grasp them if you showed up to class and did the homeworks. He's very approachable, patient, and willing to work with you if you need to work with him. He provides powerpoints before class so you can print them out and follow along**. DO THIS. However.. Negatives: Speed: It all sounds like it makes sense with the simple verbage and all, but before you can get that lightbulb moment from having a few seconds to absorb the material for yourself, he's already halfway into the next topic. I only wish I could see our faces from his perspective. Presentation**: the powerpoints are great too, but unfortunately he tends to fill slides with things that, sure, may be relevant and interesting to him, but for students just trying to pass the class, it can only serve as more confusion and excess material. Also, if you miss a class or can't write fast enough (if you don't decide to print the slides out), going back to the slides after class won't help! He obviously has two sets of powerpoints for every lecture, one with a ton of holes in it, which is what's posted online, and the other for when he's actually lecturing and has those blanks filled in. On top of that, he switches from blackboard to powerpoint info erratically and sometimes out of order. I would suggest posting the blank powerpoint before class so students can fill them out, and then after class posting the filled in one for anyone who missed anything vital or couldn't make the class for whatever reason. LASTLY: the textbook. My god, the textbook. We pay triple digits for this fat stack which is a Cal Poly edited version, yet some chapters are just plain missing. Where are the pages on Sn2 and E2 reactions? The few pages on ethers? The entire benzene chapter with electrophilic aromatic sub? The chapter on amines? Why are pages covering things we're learning about in class completely gone? Makes zero sense to me. I like the guy, and he knows what he's talking about. But trying to get the raw material the class is based on that I paid for to try to confirm or relearn in a different way what we discuss... for some reason, this is proving to be illogically difficult.

Nice guy. You can tell he enjoys teaching and usually has interesting examples he will do in front of the class. I had him for Survey of OCHEM and he definitely simplified stuff which was nice. Pretty fair and consistent with grading. Would recommend.

Overall this was a solid and straightforward class. The material was presented pretty well and isn't that difficult if you spend the time to go through the reactions once or twice on your own. I'll go through a few things in detail: Lecture / Exams: Lecture is from a powerpoint and drawing reactions on the board. The powerpoints are posted online, and there are also optional worksheets + solutions that are SUPER USEFUL. The worksheets give you a good idea of what's on quizzes and exams - you're not going to be asked about big, complicated reactions, more like the simpler examples from class just to make sure you know what a Grignard reaction is. Later in the quarter, spend the time to MEMORIZE the reactions and some of the simpler mechanisms. In fact, entire pages on the later midterm / final were devoted to these reactions. Memorization is extremely useful because I doubt you'll be able to go from reactant -> product using just your knowledge of electrons and electronegativity etc. I bought a whiteboard and spent lots of time drawing and redrawing reactions until I could do it from memory. Lab: I also had Kingsbury for 312 lab. I really enjoyed this lab. It was laid back and focused more on the actual experiments than the report forms, which I really appreciated. There were also 2 labs that focused on difficult lecture concepts (structural isomers and stereoisomers) which was VERY helpful. Some of the experiments were cool, especially making soap and polymers toward the end of the quarter. I'd recommend spending like 5 mins after each lab and writing down what you did and WHY, because there is a lab final that had everyone a little scrambled at the end of the quarter! Textbook: this quarter we tried an online site called TopHat. I think most of the class didn't like it; I thought the text was useless and the assigned questions typically far exceeded the scope of the class. Do them anyways though, it's free points. However, Kingsbury said it was an experiment and he was open to our feedback, so I'm not sure this will be offered in future quarters. I personally didn't need a textbook; I thought the lectures and lecture examples were sufficient, and if I had any questions I'd just ask Kingsbury.

Dr. Kingsbury was the best chem teacher I've ever had, and I have had over 5 chem teachers. He teaches in a very informative and easy to understand way, and he really gets on the students level when presenting material. He is not one of those know-it-all chem teachers that is ignorant when you can't understand material, even though he is the smartest chem professor I've ever had. If you have any question he will go to any length to help you understand, and he will meet you for personal office hours even if he didn't have them scheduled. Best of all, he believes in the students who are trying and he gives them the grade that he thinks they worked for which is always on the better side. He also curves A LOT because he knows the material is hard. Choose kevin!

Dr. Kingsbury was a great teacher for organic chemistry. I was terrified going into it, but he started out slowly and made sure all the students really understand the material. He\'s very nice and always willing to help. His tests did get pretty hard, and the final was pretty much impossible but he curves ALOT, which is great. Definitely recommend Kingsbury!

I just noticed that no one from Organic has evaluated KBK yet. There is a lot of homework, the material is difficult, and the lectures are cram-packed with information that make your brain feel like explosion would be a relief. But that's how it is in any ochem class, and unlike other teachers (yes, I took the class twice, so I know...) when one of those brain explosions occurs, he helps you pick up the pieces and put them back together again. He has group problem sessions (on request) to help you learn the material and is very willing to talk through stuff with you in office hours or during free time in his labs. There were two midterms, and the final. Having only two midterms means you have to remember more bits of information at once, which is kind of a pain, but prepares you for the final. There are problem sets to do (not for a grade), which he got from Vandraanan, so they don't always correspond perfectly to his lectures. Just good to keep that in mind before you get all worked up over a problem you can't figure out. His tests use only the material covered in class, so if you have to choose between reading the book and memorizing mechanisms, ditch the book.

Wow. O chem is really difficult in itself, but I feel that Dr. Kingsbury is an excellent professor. It's true that he kind of talks to you like you are younger than you are, but I would prefer a prof who talks slow to me when describing a tough subject than assuming we know everything already. He is REALLY approachable in his office (and he is there WAY more than his office hours) and really wants you to do well. His tests are hard, but not too long or TOO hard. You really need to know the material to get an A, but it's hard to fail if you try at all. I highly recommend him, because when you are through with this you will have learned tons of material.

Dr. Kingsbury was a really nice guy in class, but when I went to his office hours I didn't feel like he really wanted me to be there. His lectures were kind of intense...there's a lot of material to cover. He did a pretty good job presenting it clearly, but I don't think he knew when the class was having problems. He was really enthusiastic and so his classes weren't really boring. The homework was kind of helpful but really hard and you don't get it back for a while. The tests were fair...but watch out because some of the things that he says will not be on there are. Overall he's a pretty good professor...but keep up with the reading in the book...it really helps.

I dont like this class....he is to quiet when teaching a big class, is very unenthusiastic....overall, he doesn't explain stuff that clearly...be prepared to read alot and teach yourself

this is a very hard class. his test are hard. for the final, he crammed all kinds of crap in the last class so it could be on the final, which was shitty of him. he gave me a D, even though i totally deserved an F, so that was nice of him. i retook the class with silvestri and i liked him better.

Kingsbury is a good professor, but don't expect to be prepared for tests by just going off lecture materials. Read the book, play with the models (it really helps), and DO PROBLEMS. Do them in the morning. Do them at night. Do them in your sleep. One thing that took me a while to notice is that despite his nerdy chem prof appearance he has a hot body. Just a side note. ;)

Dr. Kingsbury is exactly what you think of when you think of an organic chemistry professor, a big nerd. However, with that being said I found him to be very approachable and to generally just be a very good guy. He presents the difficult material as best as anyone can and is always open for office hours (even sometimes that arent posted). I'm not saying he was the greatest professor ever, but it's organic chemistry and he did a fair job of presenting the material and testing us.

He's an allright dude, but damn wow does he ever write the hardest tests ever. Even for 316, which is hard but not as hard as 317, the averages were in the 50s. I studied really hard and pulled off a B in 316, but that was with the curve. He's a really organized guy though, and that is the main reason I chose to stick with him. If you dont like demoralizing tests that smash your hopes of doing well if you study, than its probably better to take Carrol or something.

I am going to be retaking the class but that was based solely on the fact that the class was super early in the morning and I don't do well on quizzes *which added up to a midterm*. I really liked how he presented his notes. They were organized, thought out and clear. Go to office hours! I didn't and paid for it. His tests are very difficult, but they do get curved. O Chem is a difficult subject and this may be the hardest 3 unit class I have ever taken.

Kingsbury was a good 319 professor. I hadn't had organic in a couple of quarters but he was really helpful in brushing us up on lab techniques. Very no-stress in the lab and reasonable when it comes to time. The reports aren't too bad either.

Amazing... SIMPLY AMAZING! Best Chem professor I've ever had. Nicest dude in the world, and explains anything you ask clearly. Take Kingsbury if you can. His tests may be hard, but is teaching is unmatched.

He's the most reluctant, unenthusiastic [person] to ever be awarded a Stanford PhD. But then again, Cal Poly's a daycare center for people with PhD's.

Dr K is a great teacher. It does often feel like he is talking down to you, but he just wants to make sure he doesn't go over your head. He is very approachable. This class covers a lot of material, and he does a really good job presenting the material. The homework load is minimal, but the tests cover everything. He is very thorough to cover everything he has talked about. Read the book, it's pretty interesting, and go over the material often. I would probably have done more homework problems if I did it over.

Kingsbury was a bit disorganized in the beginning of the quarter, but by the end he had very nice notes and good explanations. There was only one pretty difficult and long midterm, which made it sorta difficult to figure out how you were doing in the class. Homework was not collected, but he figured out how to give students more points and adjusted the averages so that students did better than they thought. This class would be better taught over 2 quarters or more hours a week because there is so much material. I think Kingsbury did a good job based on the limited time spent in class. Oh yeah, I got a D on the midterm, and average on the quizes, and turned out with a B in the class.

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!