Walker, Randon  

Walker is the man. He is so chill for lab. If you forget your lab reports he's very understanding and lets you turn them in next class. You can also use your lab notebook for the quizzes.

Walker, like many scientists, is an acquired taste, and not for everyone. He is sarcastic, stunningly direct and to-the-point, and has an unnerving habit of staring at objects and people for prolonged periods. If you can deal with his eccentricities, you are set to have an extremely instructive quarter. Consider meeting him before signing up for his section. That said, I sincerely enjoyed his lab. He never failed to provide a knowledgeable and especially *practical* explanations to any question asked, with an excess of patience. His assignments were administered with flexibility, as well as understanding when students aren't able to submit on time, or are confused. Take Walker's section if you can deal with eccentricities, because it is ultimately very worth it.

Walker seems like a pretty nice guy and he is able to present information decently. However, he gives you no feedback whatsoever throughout the quarter and doesn't hand back your work. You have no idea how you're doing until he posts the total, final grade (with no breakdown). To make things worse, he doesn't reply to emails. Ever.

Dr. Walker is really helpful in explaining concepts and why you do what you're doing in lab. Downside to that is if you have a question about something, you have to wait for a while for your question to get answered because he spends a lot of time talking to each student. He is also helpful in office hours too! Dr. Walker never returned any work so you just see your grade on PolyLearn at the end of the quarter and THAT'S IT LOL.

Very helpful, laid back, and wants you to do well. Main thing he taught was that the solution to pollution is dilution. He does not hand back a single assignment, so your grade is a mystery.

Dr. Walker is an above average lab instructor. He is very helpful when asking for help. I would recommend taking his class.

Dr. Walker is the chilliest lab prof ever. If you don't understand what you're doing he will just walk you through it and explain all the steps. Unfortunately, he doesn't do a very good pre-lab lecture and tended to ramble for 45 minutes before letting us free. There are a LOT of IRs and NMRs to take in lab. Make sure to use SDBS to check that you got the right spectra before leaving because the machines were really finicky. He had two small quizzes, one notebook quiz and one NMR quiz. There were only three prelabs the whole quarter and a post-lab for every experiment. His final took about two hours and was mostly safety, lab calculations, and spectra interpretation. DO NOT expect to get ANY work back. He didn't input grades nor did he have things graded when I went in to collect lab reports. You basically will not know what you have in the class. He tends to test more on what was on his lab reports so make sure you understand what you're doing when you fill it out. He has lots of office hours and is willing to help if you go in with questions.

Dr. Walker is a really nice guy with a dry sense of humor. He is so so so helpful in office hours and will tell you exactly what he wants on the lab reports. He is helpful in lab, but not overbearing so you can call him over when you need help. His quizzes are super easy and worth like 5 points, and you can use your lab notebook. Make sure that your lab notebook is neat because he checks them at the end of the quarter. Do NOT expect to know what your grade is throughout the quarter; he handed like 2 things back during week 9 and that was it. But, if you make your lab notebook good and get help on the lab reports, you should definitely go into the final with and A. His final was pretty hard and covered some things that we hadn't really talked about. But I think that he curved them. I would definitely recommend Walker, the lab is pretty easy and he's really nice.

This guy's a schmuck. He doesn't return any assignments until week 9, so I made the same stupid mistake on 6 of my assignments when I should've learned not to after the first time I made it. If you understand lecture then you should understand lab too but Walker's idiotic grading will drag you down and undermine an entire quarter's worth of work. This guy is actively jeopardizing my future. When I'm living in a box underneath the freeway in 2030 I'll think of Walker destroying everything I ever loved.

Definitely the most chill lab instructor you could get. Super helpful in office hours and I never really had to worry about the class. The only bad thing is that he doesn't give back work so you literally don't know your grade until you get your final grade back. Finals seem kinda hard, but never really seemed to affect my grade too much.

Walker is a smart guy and knows chem but he's a god awful teacher. The average score of the first midterm was a 58%. Nobody knew what was going on the entire quarter. He was always so far behind on grading and never knew what anyone's grades were. He'd just tell you that you had an "average grade" but he didn't know what the class average was, so it wasn't helpful at all. Just avoid him if possible!

Dr. Walker is a great guy that really wants his students to succeed if they are willing to put in the effort. Make sure you join the supplemental workshop because the practice problems he gives you are very unorganized. also the class moves very quickly so having that required extra study time really helps you succeed. i would recommend Walker to anyone that puts a lot of effort into your classes because he definitely rewards you for it!

By the end of the quarter I felt as if I REALLY knew how to do organic chemistry problems. The midterms are everything he prepares you for in class (practice tests, quizzes, etc). There is no surprise material. I did study a decent amount for this class and went to one of his study sessions and passed. Its definitely doable. I hated Chem 127 but loved solving the problems he gave us because they were presented in a clear way. In class I often felt as if I was behind or didnt understand the material, but he always spends 25+ minutes on the same problem, so its hard to not get it after that long.

i am now a third year at poly and this is my first professor review because i have never felt so strongly that people need to be warned to avoid randon walker at all costs. he is indeed a very smart guy who is a master of all things chemistry, but this mastery for some reason instills in him a need to speak condescendingly to to his students, and brush right over difficult material with little explanation. this was by far the most difficult class i have ever taken, and doctor walker chooses to make it this way because its all so easy for him. friends of mine taking the course at the same time, but with a different professor said the course was difficult, but very doable do to good teaching methods by their professor, a class quality that randon pretty much ignores. he literally tells you he's going to make the class difficult on purpose, i went to every single class and sat in the front row and still struggled, the only saving grace and reason i ended up with a b is that he curves the entire course because everyone does so bad. just take ANY other o chem professor and youre fine,kingsbury was a phenomenal lab instructor and said he usually teaches lecture but happened to not be that quarter so if possible take him

Randon Walker does a great job of teaching a really hard subject. He truly does care about his students and takes the time to answer any questions whether in office hours or in class. I'm not saying this is an easy class. You have to put the time and effort into studying and learning the material or else you will not succeed. Walker gives you the tools to truly learn the material, but ultimately it's up to you. The only thing I would say is his online notes can be messy sometimes, but it didn't hinder me from my learning that much.

honestly, this professor is not that bad. I actually ended up liking him way more than I disliked him. His class has a quiz every week, 2 midterms and a final. The lab is super fun and really easy. There aren't any formal lab reports, just worksheets that you can get done during class. Dr. Walker is super patient and helpful in lab. Its so chill and he really makes an effort to be clear and concise. There are two very easy lab quizzes which he will announce. He is a bit different in lecture though. I thought he really complicated the material and had trouble conveying the different concepts. He was more disorganized and really struggling to articulate simple concepts. I really liked how he related concepts we were learning back to our majors...it made it seem like the topic is applicable. His quizzes were pretty fair, but his midterms were VERY HARD! The final is terrible, its so hard. He told our class that he tries to get a D average on all the tests. He doesn't curve individual exams but he ends up curving the class a ton. Im guessing the curve was about 10-15%. This class takes a lot of studying. You need to be studying every single day and go to office hours!! He is VERY helpful in office hours and he appreciates it if you go. I went every single week and he helped me so much. I felt as if I got to know him really well and he always would ask me about my other classes. He was always willing to help and if you ask about 1 question, he will go through 5 or 6 that are similar so you really understand it. The more you get to know Dr. Walker, the more you will like him, and the better you will do in the class. Ochem is hard, and Dr. Walker makes it harder but it forces you to really understand the concepts. Work hard, put in many many hours, and you can get a B... even an A if it comes more naturally to you.

Dr. Walker is a great professor. The subject matter is really difficult, but he is always willing to help and will speak to you on your level. Going to office hours helps a ton and just realize you will have to study the material at least every other day. If you do what you're supposed to and hunker down from the very beginning, you will do fine. I can be a slow learner, so I was in the workshop, had a tutor and went to office hours. Do those things and you'll definitely pass

Dr. Walker is an okay professor. He seems well educated, however, he seems very bored and unenthusiastic when teaching. He does not actively engage us so it is tough to learn during class, and it is especially tough to follow his lectures and retain the material. Especially when he does not thoroughly explain the causation for the chemical reactions. I just felt that at times, material was not very clearly presented and was very confusing. I would have appreciated more homework graded assignments, as we had none, causing it to be very challenging to find practice problems to work on, besides the few PDF's on the portal. Pretty willing to help and answer questions!

A lot of the reviews for Dr. Walker are mixed but I considered him to be a great professor. He is kind of sarcastic but I think deep down he really does care about his students. Just be warned pay attention at all times during the class otherwise it might be hard to catch up! As long as you do practice problems after EVERY CLASS and memorize the mechanisms, you should be fine. Honestly, you don't really need to buy the book for his class because he posts all of his old tests and quizzes for practice online.

Dr. Walker is a fantastic professor who provides great resources as study material and is patient and helpful in lecture and office hours. The class was challenging, as to be expected, however Dr. Walker explained the concepts thoroughly and had reasonable expectations and those expectations were reflected on the quizzes and exams. Coming from a minimal general chemistry background I felt capable of understanding the concepts and performing well on the quizzes and exams. I would highly recommend Dr. Walker to anyone!

Dr. Walker is an interesting man. He talks very slowly and will never answer your question directly. He just kinda poses other questions in hopes that you come around eventually. There is a weekly quiz worth 20 points and 2 exams both worth 100 points. He offers more points on the quizzes and exams than they are out of, so there is automatically a little curve (like I got a 22/20 on one quiz just because of those extra points). He also must curve the class SO MUCH because I went into the final with an 83 but got a solid A in the class, so that's clutch. I never went to office hours because he made me uncomfortable but I bet that would have helped. He does this thing where he makes eye contact with someone in class and then practically give the entire lecture to that person. Overall, he's a nice guy but not the best or worst option for OChem. He was pretty slow at getting papers back, and we never got any of our lab reports back whatsoever. Our second midterm came back right before the final, so we really had no idea what we were going into the final with in terms of grade. I would take Dr. Walker over someone really shitty, but you could probably do better.

Dr. Walker definitely knows his chemistry but he's not very good at presenting it in a way that is organized or understandable. Our class average at the end of the quarter was a 65% but he curved the average to a C so the phat curve definitely helped. Ochem requires a lot of memorization etc. but having Dr. Walker as a professor made it more stressful because he also kept you in the dark the whole quarter by not returning grades or midterms. Advice if you have Dr. Walker: do well on the first midterm because the class only gets harder; find a study guide to start memorizing the reactions or at least organize them so you aren't scrambling to learn them before the second midterm and final; harass him until he returns your midterms; don't worry too much about your grade bc he'll probably curve it; go to office hours and talk to him because its a little helpful. Good luck!