Hagen, John  

oh my GOD!!! hagen is such a dick. i dont care what anyone else says...he doesn't give a SHIT about the individual student. i went up to him after class like he said to do because i didnt understand something that he had explained so shitty earlier and hes like "okay what is it" and i started showing him my problem and he out of NOWHERE interupts me and is like "wait can you hold on one second i need to check something" so i let him check his palm pilot and he snaps at me "YES i need to be somewhere at 11 i need to go NOW theres nothing i can do for you..." like what the FUCK. hey hagen whose paying your fucking salary. get back here and show this student how to fucking solve your lame ass problem. he is very quick to explain things and as i said before unless the whole class says they dont understand, he will chew you up for not knowing on your own. he expects a HELL of a lot right off the bat. overall, i would say AVOID this guy unless you know every aspect of chemistry perfectly up until the beginning of 124. fuck you hagen take some sedatives and act like a teacher

he can be an asshole. he doesnt care about you. so far his shits pretty easy, and if you have another outside resource like a friend that knows their shit or whatnot then youll be fine. but this guy needs to CHILL the FUCK OUT.

The previous two evaluations are even more reason that everyone here hates engineers at Poly. Only two weeks into the quarter and you're already bitching. What a bunch of fuckin pussies you be!! Boo hoo, an instructor hurt my feelings cause he wasn't attentive enough to my demands and my inability to understand what an atom is. Waaahhhhhhh! I'll show him and slam his ass on polyratings, that's what I'll do. Grow some balls quick or life is gonna chew you up something awful.

Ok, Dr Hagen actually seems like a kinda cool guy. He didnt show it til the end of the quarter when he was totally ripping on one of his arrogant TA's who we were all irritated with (HILARIOUS). Anyway, hes pretty laid back and he totally knows chemistry. But in the teaching world, its not what you know, its how you TELL people what you know. I just think hes not really experienced enough as a teacher. If you are the type of student who learns things after hearing/seeing/doing it one time, then you will be fine with Hagen, but if you need things explained a lot, you might have trouble. He has a hard time of rewording or re-explaining a concept so that students understand. It also sucks that we have to do things so quickly because of quarter system, but oh well. His tests werent too hard; multiple choice and free response. he does give partial credit on the free response but no more than half credit if you get the answer wrong (if you were a engineer who built a bridge wrong, the bridge would fall and people would DIE!) He gives a lot of quizes which are straight foward and help a lot, also question of the day's, very simple. The worksheets and labs were very often not explained. I felt like he just gave us stuff and said ok, go do it now, when he hadnt lectured on it. And he didnt make very clear connections to what we were learning an the labs we were doing...it was never very clear what EXACTLY he wanted us to get out of it. You do have to teach yourself a little bit. Anyway, 124 is just a hard class. and he does curve at the end, though he tries to keep it a secret so that people dont slack off. Hagen is really eager to help you learn, i just dont think hes quite mastered the technique yet.

THank god I got through this class with a C. There is absolutely no way I would have been able to pass it if I did not have previously worked out labs and worksheets from kids who had already taken the class. He is an arrogant fuck and wines if you don't call him docotor. The test averages were around 52-62, and he blamed us for doing bad. I am sure he curved them, but not without lecturing us. Hagen is extremely bad about conveying the information, so you gotta be ready to work yourself in this class. Take it with someone you know and want to spend a lot of time with, or get the stuff from people who have already taken the class. DOCTOR my ASS!!!!

wow, this class was really hard. I locked myself in the library for weeks and still got an F. The course seems ok most of the time, and hagen does a decent job most of the time but at times it doesn't make sense and you get severly down-graded for a simple mistake.

Plain and simple: Hagen is not as bad as some people on polyratings have been describing. I read his reviews before taking the class so did not have high expectations. I found Hagen to be pretty down to earth, and he does clarify answers very well if there is any confusion: just ask. As for his tests, you want to know how to get an A? Don't just go off the lecture notes, they're rather thin. If you go over the main parts of the text in each chapter (bold areas, examples, etc), you'll do fine. For each test I took his online quizzes and studied the text, not his lecture, and I got 30% above the class average on all four tests (3 midterms + final). That's what you have to do, it's not that bad. His tests are fair, I was never really surprised by any questions. Anyways, Hagen deserves a higher rating than he has here, so don't fear taking this guy if he's the only one that fits in your schedule.

Dr. Hagen is a PIMP. He knew my name before i even came to talk to him. He is very friendly and helpfull in his office hours, and even during class. His lectures are a little confusing, but all chem 124 lectures are confusing. ALl of these Harsh words are not fair. Not many people talk about the Midterm review sessions that he did, that no other 124 class did. Hagen is a GOOD TEACHER. take him if you can.

Hagen is a real piece of work. First off, the man wears sleeves that are 3x the size of his arm. Second, he's a real piece of work. Third, he assigns essays like he thinks he's some english dude. Since when do you have to write essays for chem. Apparently "writing helps you think" - biggest lie I've heard in my life. Lastly, he's a real piece of work. Taking him WILL BE THE END OF YOUR LIFE.

He has weekly accumulative quizzes that suck in the beginning because you don't know his style or what he's looking for. He also assigns A TON of homework problems but that aren't graded. While many students choose not to do these problems because they don't count as a grade, I HIGHLY recommend that you do them and get practice in. I also definitely recommend looking at the quizzes from his past quarters that he posts (a lot of his questions are recycled). His class is hard but if you put in the work early, it will save you time and effort in the end because you are reviewing all the material every week and you'll have the material down by the end of the quarter.

Hagen is a good professor. By that I mean he really knows and cares about his stuff, and he really cares about making sure his students understand it well. He didn't lecture much-- most of our time in class was spent doing labs. Lots of learn by doing I guess. He is very nice and extremely helpful in office hours. He's also big on the idea of using proper studying and memorization techniques to make sure you really understand the material, not just memorizing all of it the day before an exam. Because of this he has a bit of a different class set up: weekly quizzes on Mondays that increase in weight each week. No midterms or "final". The final was basically two 14% quizzes, one on the last day of class and one during the final period. This format might seem like it sucks, but it's actually awesome. All of the quizzes are cumulative, meaning you can predict exactly what types of questions you will see over and over again. This also means you don't ever need to do a ton of studying at once as long as you are on top of it. I definitely didn't study as much for the quizzes as I should have, but I felt as though I was able to logic my way through and come out okay with minimal work put in. He posts weekly checkpoints to help prepare you for the quizzes and has past quizzes for practice. An A in this class is definitely achievable if you work for it. That being said, the class was A LOT of work. Some days there were 7 or 8 different things all due on PolyLearn. The workload did seem to decrease throughout the quarter, but at the beginning it was a lot and hard to find the time for. That was the only downside to this class. I came out of it feeling really, really solid about my understanding of chem 125-- and I don't feel like I had to work that hard for it. I guess his methods for coming back to the same material over and over and really learning it do actually work. Anyways, I would recommend Hagen overall and would take him again. A good choice, especially if you really care about chem and want to learn the material solid.

Great teacher who teaches very well. He has weekly quizzes INSTEAD of midterms and finals, which is thought were much easier to study for. He posts quizzes from previous years so it's really easy to study for his class if you're motivated to do it.

Hagen is a good professor. One interesting thing is that he does 10 cumulative quizzes (12 days of christmas style) and doesn't have a midterm or final. This allows you to review topics that you got wrong to get them right on the next quiz. He does a good job of distinguishing things that might confuse someone. Otherwise, I think he does a more light-touch style than, say, Dr. Sapper (from what I've heard about him). You'll definitely have to study on your own, but if you have some serious trouble, Dr. Hagen knows well how to help you out. He's taught here from before when you were born. Also I'm pretty sure he drinks tea, so kudos to that.

I don't know what everyone else is complaining about, though this was an easy class in general. He explains the material pretty clearly, and he even gave us his lecture notes online before each class. He usually seemed to know when someone had a question even if they didn't voice it, and he spent lots of time clarifying subjects before moving on. He starts the class with the "Question of the Day" which is basically a mini quiz (you get half credit just for showing up), and he stops lecture ocassionally to poll the class with a sample problem to see if everyone's still with him. The only homework is online (we had seven assignments), and you get to retake them as many times as you like. Not only that but they aren't even due until the end of the quarter. This class is pretty straightforward (i never cracked the book), and if you want a teacher who's easy going and fair, take Hagen.

Pretty shit teacher. Thought material was explained poorly, was made unnecessarily boring. Not real helpful in office hours. SI is a good bet. Ended up with a higher grade than I thought I would. Lab was more interesting than lecture, maybe just because my lab teacher didn't suck. In a world of bad chemistry teachers, take shoonover.

Hagen expects a lot from you. There are 7 online homeworks which are more like quizes, 20 questions each worth .5 points, expect to spend at least an hour on each one...but not to fear, you have all quarter to do them. Go to lecture, he gives a questino of the day at the beginning of just about every lecture. Correct answer rewards 2 points while incorrect still grants you a point, 0 for not being there (and don't be late, it's right at the beginning of lecture.) He speeds through the material and sometimes it tends to be a little difficult to grasp, but if you just ask him he'll stop the lecture to explain something again. We also got him to postpone a midterm because he hadn'y amply covered the material. Don't have any other chem profs to compare him too but probably not the worst bet. Also understanding about illness.

I could not stand going to lab for this class! Talk about an uptight teacher who does not listen to his students. He was very condescending and made you feel two feet tall for not understanding his poorly explained pre-lab. He also had an ego so when I would ask a question he would just interrupt with some highly irrelevant statement, as if to make himself feel smarter than you. And the guy is smart, there is no doubt about that, but seriously, he lacks social skills and is sooooo annoying. Twice the quarter I got to do a makeup lab with Immoos and I can just say those two were my favorites by far because I felt like they were explained well and Immoos has a great sense of humor. Hagen has pretty straight forward grading and my B in lab didn't affect me that much but still I would never take him again if I had the chance.

Going into chemistry i thought i would be able to get by, but having hagen as my lab instructor made nothing clear to me, i really did learn nothing in his class, he expects us to know everything, he can be helpful but usually goes off on some other tangent. oh yea he is the most anal person i have ever met, if u forget ur goggles u r screwed, g/l with this guy if u get him

Dr. Hagen is tough for lab. If you ask him a question, he will answer it with another question. He does not explain how to do the labs, he just wants you to figure them out, which is fine if youre taking an upper division course, but this was the first course of the 127 series. He could have provided a little more help. Also, every one of his labs goes the full 3 hours. He also has graders grade your labs, and i got some low scores that i do not understand. Other than that hes a nice guy. If you like to be challenged, take this class.

Dr. Hagen is an OK proffessor. I really liked the structure of his class. He has a question of the day everyday to make sure you know the material. Also, in the middle of the class he'd as us a question to make sure we were listening and get what he is teaching. He uses powerpoint, so if you're not the person that learns well that way, I wouldn't take him. He prints out all his powerpoint slides, supplys scantrons, and makes weekly schedules of the book work you should be doing (not collected, but HIGHLY reccommended!) His midterms are really fair. One thing though, revise every midterm because sometimes there are grading errors. I went to his office hours to clear that up, and he went over each and every question, which was really helpful.

I thought Dr. Hagen was a great professor. His lectures are very direct and clear and he provides printouts of all the lecture notes which is nice. He is very willing to answer questions in class and does so very well. The "questions of the day" before every class are a nice gauge of how well you know the material before a quiz or exam. Quizes and exams in the class are very straightforward and if you know the matterial you will do fine. Overall, if Hagen is avaliable, take him.

Hagen is the best teacher around. He will always be there to explain soemthing confusing and he is a great guy to hang out with in office hours. He will make you feel like a person not just a number.

Dr. Hagen ROCKS!!!!! Take him, he is a great teacher and will help you fully grasp the material! Brilliant man and an excellent teacher!

Hagen id pretty clear about what you need to know. Sometimes he makes the material seem more difficult than it should be, but overall, he's pretty chill. His labs are awesome -- get him for lab. He's a fanatic for movie trivia and will often throw quotes at you and have you guess what movie it's coming from. The problem is that some people actually have questions with the lab. He's kind of clueless and sometimes just answers questions with questions. Doesn't warm up to students, but is a pretty decent prof. Above average I'd say. I wouldn't be super enthusiastic to recommend him, but I'd also take him again for sure.

Dr. Hagen is great. You should take him if you want to learn. Go to his office a lot because chem is a lot easier to learn there than in the back row of a giant room.

Dr. Hagen is a nice guy. It's funny, some material he's awesome at explaining. Other things, *cough*Kinetics in 128*cough* he can't explain for shit. Overall, I love the guy. You just have to get used to his strange sense of humor. It's a hard class, but if you do the homework and keep up with the work, it should be a fairly easy B. I slacked off a little and got a C. Plus I'm kind of retarded.

dr hagen is nice and knows alot about chem but he makes the tests and quizzes really hard and tricky. its a hard class and he doesnt really do much to help you understand

This class was very hard to learn in. with 100 people it can be hard to teach but at least Hagen could have taught the material better. I have to retake this class again and i will definitely not be taking him again... DO NOT TAKE

I hadn't taken a chemistry class in years before I took this class, and struggled alot during the first half, finally went in to talk to prof. hagen in office hours and he was very helpful. You do need to read the text in order to succeed in this class, but if you do, and you work through the sample problems he gives you, you'll do well. he can be a little hard to follow at times, and his exams are pretty tough, but chemistry is a tough subject, and there's alot to cover in gen chem. Don't be scared away by all the reviews below, it might be hard to earn the grade you want, but if you keep up with the reading and take advantage of the sample problems and office hours, he'll help you out.

Dr. Hagen is a genuinely nice guy, in my opinion, and he knows his stuff for sure. I found CHEM 127 to be pretty much a review of high school chem with a couple new things and a couple more complicated versions of old things, so it came pretty easily to me. That said, I still think Dr. Hagen was a very good lecturer and will answer pretty much any question asked. His tests are pretty well split between lecture and book material, so reading is a must, and doing the homework questions will probably help most people; I did almost all of the reading, but little of the homework and got an A-. If I had done more of the practice problems and gone to a couple office hours I could have gotten an A. Don't be afraid to take Hagen, he's fair, helpful, amiable, and likes to get to know his students. No chem class will be easy. If you suck at chem, you suck at chem; get ready to ACTUALLY study. Yes, he's a bit clumsy, tells lame jokes, makes a lot of little errors on the board, and sometimes misunderstands questions so people ask them twice after an explanation of something irrelevant, but it's endearing more than it is annoying, overall. He can be a little awkward, but so am I so it's fine. As far as his tests and quizes, yeah, they aren't super easy, and he likes to throw a curve ball at you sometimes, but my best advice would be to study the stuff you are having a little trouble with that he covered in class. Don't worry about his study guides telling you to study every little detail in the chapter. If he didn't cover it in lecture and it's a complicated thing, chances are it won't be on the test, or it won't be more than one Multiple Choice.

Nice guy. Pretty good teacher. He's really helpful in his office hours if you dont understand the material, I def recommend him

Professor Hagen seems like a nice guy, just not the best professor. It seemed to me that he spent a lot of time going over easy stuff that most of the class understood and little to no time going over very difficult stuff (and guess which one was on the tests?). Sometimes during class or office hours, he'd be asked a question and he'd go off on a barely relevant tangent that isn't even close to the question being asked. During lab, it was usually difficult to flag him down for a question and even more difficult to get a straight answer. That being said, he made a point to get to know everyone's names so it was nice having him greet me by name during class or office hours. He also updated the Polylearn with every concept that was going to be on the test, which was helpful.

John Hagen without a doubt definitely knows his chemistry. However, he is usually very preoccupied with other things outside of the classroom when it comes to grading, answering questions, or getting help. Going to office hours is the most valuable time that you can find with him. When in class, he is likely to run off and help another student or answer a question that isn't being asked. If you are not familiar with chemistry, his class will be hard to follow, and he will be frustrating even if you know the subject to a T. He often lectured for three hours straight, and gets very confused as well as confusing when regarding what is due, and doesn't follow through on requests that will help his students.

Dr. Hagen is a very nice guy but a terrible professor. He didn't teach me one thing while being in his class. I had to teach myself from online videos. If you can take someone else I would.

Dr. Hagen is a nice person but a mediocre general chemistry professor. He's not as bad as most of these reviews make him out to be, but I wouldn't have picked him if I'd had a choice. He often misunderstood simple questions as something more complicated and once he gave an answer it would be confusing and usually didn't answer what was asked. The second part of the class was much easier for me, partly due to my vigilance in reading the textbook and doing all book problems assigned. While these are not required, I highly recommend doing them as they are a good challenge to prep for tests. He was really terrible at communicating with students, especially about the lab portion of the class. There were a lot of challenging preparation activities in lab, but they were basically a joke because a lot of students didn't try and ended up copying off of each other. There are two midterms, three quizzes, and a final with multiple choice written by the department and free response written by Dr. Hagen.

Like everybody else has said, Dr. Hagen is a great, funny guy. However, he loses students so quickly in lecture and when they ask a simple, understandable question he hikes it up to the level of a graduate student. If you have the chance, take another professor. He never explains anything. If you want a good guy, then I guess you can take him. You'll learn more from online videos, then from Hagen's class.

Professor Hagen is a brilliantly smart guy but, like the other reviews say, has a lot of difficulty dumbing things down for a general chemistry class. Almost every day after lecture until the first midterm, I was confused about what we had learned, as both the material and the way it was presented was confusing. Before each test though, I went to his office hours which helped exponentially and was able to get good grades on both the tests and the quizzes. He is very good about putting only information you covered in class on the tests and quizzes too so if you pay attention and try to understand what you did in class, you'll do fairly well on them. Chem 127 is a hard class no matter which teacher you have, but if you really put in the time and effort to understand the material, you'll do well in the class.

He is really excited about chemistry and sometimes talks pretty quickly but is really fair and really knowledgable. His tests are hard but chem is hard so there is no getting around that. He prepares you really well for chems to come.

To sum up this class, if you dont know a decent amount of chemistry before taking this class, its is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT. He speaks to you as if you also have a pH.D in Biophysical chemistry out of Stanford. He CANNOT dumb things down, no matter how hard you try to get him to simplify things. I got a C+ and a B+ on the midterms, and bombed the final and received a B in the class which was surprising. This class took ALOT of hours of studying and time in his office hours in order to get a slim understanding of the topics.

Hagen is so far the worst professor I have had while at Cal Poly. He should not be a professor, especially for a general Chemistry class. He expects you to know everything a person with a PhD in Chemistry knows and will not explain things to you when you ask. He is a professor that makes you teach yourself the material and sends out so many Khan Academy videos instead of actually teaching the material. There are two labs almost every single week and the report forms for them get longer and more tedious as the quarter goes on. The labs themselves are pretty straight forward, however on the report forms there are extra questions and problems with calculations that you will not be taught how to do. When you ask him how to do it, he simply tells you to reread the background (which does not have the answer to it) and walks away. There are also two quizzes every week, one for general material and one for lab, which are pretty easy if you study well for them. 2 midterms throughout the class which are also pretty easy if you study, but the final is nothing like the midterms and he asks questions you never went over in class yet are expected to know how to do. A group of people stood and cried outside the classroom after the final was over. Half of the time he treats you like you are his peer with a PhD, and the other half he treats you like you are 5 years old and talks down to you. If there is any way to take this class with a different professor, I would highly recommend doing so.

Now that I am taking 128, I realize how awful Hagen is. Stay away.

Hagen is a nice professor that tries to really get to know his students, but he can't teach or clarify any questions. His lectures were short (if he ACTUALLY decided to lecture every once in a blue moon) and unorganized. He would teach us essentially by sending us khan academy videos to watch and offer no guidance when it came to the lab reports and pre-labs we would have to do. I remember other students and I would go to office hours and not once did he help us or if he did, it would confuse us even more because he cannot simplify information down so that students could understand so we basically just had to figure something out to put on the report form. That was what happened pretty much all quarter. I feel like in order to succeed in this class, you just have to do the practice quizzes/ problems from the textbook and kind of anticipate what type of questions he might ask on the quizzes.

A well above average chem professor. He is explicit in what he expects from you and is not unreasonable. His weekly cumulative quizzes, albeit being annoying, are very helpful in making you sure actually remember what you learn. He also is pretty good at explaining concepts and posts lecture slides + other helpful materials on polylearn.

Hagen did not teach well at all. He had us read and watch videos for homework to learn rather than actually teaching the material in class. All we ever did was labs rather than actually learning the material. Quizzes were all right but then the final was so much harder than what we had learned over the quarter. Don't take his class if you have the option too.

Overall, Dr. Hagen did a fairly good job of teaching this class. Sometimes he made mistakes on the board while writing out a problem or notes, and students had to point it out to him. He gives you the printed out lecture notes, which are helpful. He has "2 minute questions", which is basically for him to see if the class understood the main concept of what he just lectured on. It isn't graded - you just hold up a piece of paper with the correct letter of the answer. He also has "question of the day" which is a one problem quiz that tests you on the previous lecture's material. If you review your notes 15 minutes before class and understand them, then you'll do ok...the questions of the day aren't worth that much and you can drop the lowest 4 (each are worth 2, and even if you get the question wrong you still get 1 point for being there) I think he is a decent teacher.

Dr. Hagen is definitly a nice guy. However, I think he lacks the ability to deliver information clearly to students. Granted, Chem 128 is a difficult class with many difficult concepts, I feel another teacher may have been able to deliver the information better. He is a better teacher in office hours than in a 60 person lecture hall. Make sure you do the homework he suggests--it helps more than you'll ever know and is usually the basis for test questions.

The tests in this class were extremely difficult. He put things on them that we had never looked at. The tests in particular that were hard were the lab and lecture finals. The midterms weren't too bad, but it seemed like he went crazy with the last tests. A lot of people struggled in this class, but I think he ended up rounding so everyone didn't fail. I would recommend going to office hours and doing ALL of the homework he assigns. He doesn't collect it, but it is worth taking a look at. Maybe the homework is where he got his crazy questions for the final. Also, he'll probably offer an extra credit assignment, which he will say is extremely hard, but really takes five minutes. Good luck!

I had Dr. Hagen for 128, and he has to be by far one of the most difficult to understand teachers here at poly. He did make lots of mistakes with important equations or calculations on the board, and students had to point it out and correct him. I have never been very strong in Chemistry, but I found Dr. Hagen very unapproachable. I would try to ask questions in Lab or after lecture, and he would only refute my question with another question, or point out some completely unrelated flaw in my other work. His questions of the day you can study for right before class, and his 'two min problems' are like free points. He had to curve this class at the end (which he said he didn't) otherwise I know I would have failed. I got C's and D's on my tests. They were extremely difficult I thought, and I did the homework problems. I don't feel that a 100 level class should involve as much outside learning as I needed in order to scrape by. After lectures I would have to go home and basically re-learn everything he said. His notes were often inconsistent with what the book said, so that was extra confusing. His extra credit assignment was sort of stupid, but the points really help, and its really easy to do the EC. He was an awful lab teacher as well. He offered almost no background on the lab before we started, and was very hesitant to answer questions during lab (unless you were of course teachers pet) He totally has favorites, and I was not one of them, but hey, the feeling went both ways. If you struggle at ALL in chem, do your self a favor and don't take Hagen. I still don't feel prepared to go on to 129, but off I go!

If you have this guy GO INTO OFFICE HOURS! He really tries to help if you ask for it. His lectures are glib and hard to follow, tests are impossible and he doesnt curve. Its not that bad though, just show you are trying and he will help you. I thought i was going to get a D in the class because I only got Ds on the test but somehow he gave me a solid C. He's a really nice guy but his tests are just too difficult for the level of material the class is required to learn.

Hagen has the hardest time "dumbing" things down so that a student in General Chemistry can understand anything. The majority of the time he talks for 2 hours straight. If you have him T/R plan on staying the entire 3 hours, I think we got out early once all quarter. Midterms are incredibly difficult, as are quizzes. Labs are worth a ton of points, so spend time really working though them. Overall, passing the class with a decent grade is possible, but he isn't a prof that is "easy". You have to work for your grade.

Hagen is honestly so great. He will literally become your Chem dad. He kind of treats the class like kids, but it really sweet. If you break glass, be prepared to spend 20 minutes understanding the importance of checking every nook and cranny for stray pieces. He is terrified of students getting hurt. He knows everyone's name and he wears crew socks and birks on his off days (he pretty much lives in Baker). He genuinely cares about each student and wants everyone to succeed. He doesn't always do a great job of dumbing the material down, but if you stop him and ask he is great. He is not an easy A, but Chem is a hard subject for most people and requires effort. Do all the assigned problems, and study all the old material on Poly Learn. There aren't many great Chem profs at Poly, but Hagen is definitely one of them.

John Hagen is one of the best chemistry proffessors I know, he's fun and lively in class. his lectures can get a little long sometimes, but he goes through a lot of examples in class that would be similiar to the questions on his test and quzzes. grading is through 2 midterms and pretty much one or two quizzes a week. the "daily quizes" aren't that hard, and only count for 10% of your grade and he drops the lowest 5, they really help keep you on your toes for studying. he's a very fair and generous grader, he once curved a test up 17%. he's also a great help in office hours and is easy as well as fun to talk to. Take him!

This class was incredibly boring. He was a nice guy, but he went over everything so slowly. I had chem 124 and 125 before this class and I knew EVERYTHING already, so the tests were a breeze. Even if I hadn't had it all already though, it would have been easy because he explains everything really clearly and will go over anything people don't understand. The only reason I got a B was because the lab portion was a little difficult and I didn't put any time into it. Lecture is really easy though. Hagen is a good guy, I would recommend him.

I took Hagen for the last gen chem class of the series and he gave me a D+. I went to talk to him because I really worked in that class and i thought i deserved a high C or atleast a middle C. But, he didn't change it for me. So, I retook the class over in the summer and passed. The thing that ticks me off even more besides his bad teaching style and how he isn't helpful outside of class, is that he graded my final wrong! I did pass with a C so I basically retook the class for nothing! It just stopped me from getting ahead in my major courses like i planned on doing. He didn't email me till the next fall quarter! Boo!

As Watson and Crick lead the front in the discovery of the DNA double helix, Dr. Hagen lead me through the perilous world Chemistry. This inspiring intelligent professor was simply superb. A five diamond five star delight.

Professor Hagen is a pimp. He owns knowledge and knows how to spread it. He can convert you mind faster than an electron whizes around an atom. Truely a mind blowing experience. Take Hagen for chemistry hands down.

Dr. Hagen is super disorganized and he makes alot of mistakes while writing problems or doing example problems. Try taking him for 1 hour lectures since it will be easier to follow during that shorter time period. He gives 3 quizzes, 2 midterms, and 1 final (which is the ACS exam and his final test). Quizzes were fairly easy and strain forward but the midterms were alot harder. You definitely have to study for everything in his class. Dr. Hagen is really patient with student and questions and he doesn't mind taking class time to clarify issues.

I can't speak for everyone but I thought Hagen was a great professor for 129. Do yourself a favor and do the assigned homework problems from his website the night before class. That way you'll know what he talks about and how he got from point A to point B (because he skips over the algebraic steps assuming you can figure it out yourself). Homework will also help you get the question of the day correct which will boost your grade. His quizzes are really easy and his tests are a little more difficult. Just do the homework throughout the quarter and you're guaranteed a B if you can do the problems without looking up the answer. His midterms are about half multiple choice and half short answer (usually 3 or 4) and the final is the ACS exam and about a full midterm. Note his MC questions can be tricky, so make sure you can identify certain buffer problems and take careful note of the compounds hes using (complex ions, which act as acids/bases, which compounds take part in the reaction)

Hagen is a really good teacher, but his class is tough. First off, the math prerequisite for this class is 143, but it should really be 241. A big part of his tests were knowing calculus and how to do partial derivatives, and how to derive equations of state. At the beginning of the quarter he tried to do a new teaching style where we got into groups and tried to answer questions in a workbook without any instruction, just had to figure it out. That was terrible. No one understood what was going on. Toward the end of the quarter he lectured every day which was way better. He's a really good lecturer. He answers all the questions that get brought up and is more than willing to help in office hours. He also gives extra review sessions before each midterm. You can tell that he knows his stuff. He had three midterms which were hard, but workable (the last of which is during finals week, there is no cummulative final). He also had quizzes almost weekly. He always gives notice of them. Some were really easy and some were incredibly hard. He curves everything though. Overall he is a great teacher.

I had Dr. Hagan for PChem, and I totally thought I would get a much lower grade in the course, then I did (I got a B). The course consisted of weekly quizes, two tests, a final, and a research paper. The research paper and participation will bump your grade. As for the tests and quizes, they are pretty straight forward, (I recommend reading and understanding the book, as well as knowing the basic types of questions you could be asked). The class must be curved or Hagen must have made a mistake. As a person, he is really friendly (I felt comfortable asking dumb questions), and he is helpful during office hours and during optional review sessions. His lectures are somewhat dry, and most of the information is in the book (which is allowed for tests). I would recommend using a notebook and copying the stuff he says anyways, just so you can use it as a resource on the test.

Terrible Professor. All Dr Hagen does is derive equations and assumes that we understand what they do from the derivation. He runs through material never stopping and realizes that nobody understands. He unfairly curves by raising the scores for the people who did worst on the tests and then not changing those who did better on the tests. Also, he is just rude in office hours.

I had Dr. Hagen for Physical Chemistry. Grades consisted of one midterm worth 30%, two quizzes worth 30% and a final (two parts) worth 40%. Many of the lectures were dry with Dr. Hagen deriving equations on the board with few examples. However, if a question was asked in class, he was very helpful and tried his best to clarify the information. The tests and quizzes were open book and notes but they were difficult (The class was curved). The best way to succeed in this class would be being comfortable with using all of the equations and have a solid understanding of the material. I feel if Dr. Hagen worked through more problems and derived less equations, the class would have a better understanding of the material.

I had John Hagen for Physical Chemistry. He in one of the worst teachers I have ever had. His lectures are full of mistakes, which sometimes are key points to the entire problem he is trying to solve. When the students point out he has made a mistake he just breezes over the correction not explaining why it was incorrect or how that affected the problem. His notes he writes on the board are worse than mine with notation errors and just plane wrong diagrams. He refuses to go by the terrible book, but instead startes from the end of a chapter and moves to the front. He gives problems that are simple plug and chug, if he explained what was going on in them, then gives you real questions on the test. He even marked the whole class wrong on a question we all had right, he was the wrong one. If you go to his office hours good luck getting help. He's so overwhelmed with everything else going on around him that he dosent have any real time to help. He will BS with you till the office housr is over then say, "oh geeze I'm late to class, come by my office tommrorow, when I'm not busy(he's always busy)." But the biggest problem with this guy is his inability to actually take the human effect into account when giving out scores for final grades. He is ungiving on test questions where his own personal objectiveness comes into play, but is stright by the numbers to the point that he is afraid to help a student out with a point or two even when they have made considerable commitment and effort in doing better. He leaves the curve strictly up to the computer. Show a little compation Hagen, were not robots and your not a robot either. And his final is a multiple choice ACS cumlitive test(Bad for P-Chem). He likes to do experiments on the class, seeing how they reacts to new testing system ie: the students BOMBED that test, bad testing procedure and style, maybe next time they will do better on a different style.

Dr. Hagen is a very nice and friendly teacher. He is very helpful at his office hours and likes to interact with students. When we complained about the problems in the textbook(purple one), he started to give us homework problems that he made. They were simpler than the ones in the book, but helped me to understand basic concepts. I was worried about ACS exam, a part of fianl, but I only went over the homework and I did great on the exam.

I really love Dr Hagen but he is a complete failure in the classroom. If you have a choice and you take him, you have no one but yourself to blame.

Everyone who has anything negative to say about Dr. Hagen can suck it! Best chem teacher I have ever taken. Although the tests were difficult (open book) they were very fair, and I did well with very minimal studying. The only conclusion I can come to about the negative comments for Dr. Hagen is that Chem majors are lame.

Dr. Hagen is a fair professor. The class is going to be hard no matter who your professor is but Dr. Hagen is nice and helpful. He is easy to approach and always willing to work with a student. I would recommend taking him.

Dr. Hagen is nice. His teaching style is a little tricky to learn by. This class takes work to do well in. I didn't put the work in and it showed in my grade. He will tell you to make sure not to save your studying for before the test and I also agree with that.

At first I was ambivalent about his unorthodox teaching methods, but as the quarter progressed my opinion changed for the better. His online "screencasts" provided everything you would normally get in a lecture with the added benefit of being able to pause and rewind as you go along. His in-class exercises were a brilliant way to talk out problems with your classmates in a low-stress environment. I found these exercises very useful in nailing down concepts and made class more than tolerable. Plus, Hagen is a boss in office hours: he's super nice and explains things well.

I grew up in an academic family. My father was a professor of physics at Cal Tech and my mother was a mathematician at the same institution. I'm not nearly as smart as my parents, so I decided to go to Cal Poly, which is a decent enough school, because I was attracted to the social values and party culture. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of smart people here in San Luis Obispo, but they tend to be students, sometimes faculty, and almost no time the administration. Those who cannot be educators or researchers become deans and presidents. Hagen's teaching style is geared towards getting him tenure, not for the students. Nearly no student gets his teaching style and, honestly, we're not sure he is bright enough to be teaching at the university level.

He uses a group work based style of teaching that I found nearly impossible to learn by. If you don't like working in groups, don't take this professor because that's all you will do in every class. He provides screencasts on PolyLearn that are more traditional lecture style but they rarely cover everything you'll need to complete the in class activity he gives you. Also, if you ask questions, he will only answer one of the (likely) many questions you have and run off to another group, and the received answer will almost always be vague. Overall, I don't recommend this professor, though that is in part to my personal aversion to group work.

He could not care less about the success of the individual student. The reverse classroom technique that he insists on using has absolutely no place in an upper level chemistry course but he's too arrogant to consider an alternative. He puts no effort into teaching the class, he posts the same videos that he has presumably been using for the last 5 years. They are incredibly dry and most of the time not entirely applicable to the worksheets he gives us every class. Bottom line, Hagen was unsuccessful at teaching the course material and could not be bothered to make any adjustments to better help his students learn.

Dr. Hagen has his own way of teaching. It's called the "flipped classroom." This gives him an excuse to not have to lecture about the material. He does post videos via Polylearn, but they've been filmed several years ago and don't exactly apply to the material. When you go to his office hours, he does not directly answer questions or if he decides to, he explains them very quickly without going in depth. You will feel like an idiot every time you go to his office hours because each time is an utter waste of time. I guarantee, you'll leave his office hours more confused than when you showed up. His tests aren't super hard and he does give a lot of partial credit, however, he isn't clear of the subjects you'll be tested on. Don't take Hagen.

I\'m not completely sure that Hagen should be teaching p-chem. He is a nice and even fascinating man but I\'m not sure he understands the subject well enough to convey the complexitys. I love the guy but I really really really wish I didn\'t have to take p-chem with him.

Dr. Hagen wasn't my favorite teacher. He is a great person to know outside of class but I got the impression that he didn't know what he was teaching half the time. Pay attention to the fact that the homework is simple plug and chug that does not reflect the tests at all. Little homework every class meeting just so that you attend but it is not worth much overall. The ACS final is a joke and he knows it. There is no reason to give us a comprehensive multiple choice p-chem final. Yes, I'm bitter over my grade. I know I did better.

Dr Hagen is the simply the best professor I have ever had. Not only is he talented in the dissemination of knowledge but an inspiring leader and should be viewed as a mentor in science. Dr. Hagen acts as a candle leading you through the darkness of chemistry.

Dr Hagen is a great professor. Everyone who says otherwise is dumb or doesn't think they are here to learn. The guy is brilliant with chemistry and is extremely helpful. Interact and be a good student, then you won't feel the need to come on here and complain to make yourself feel better about your excuse for your bad grade

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!