Jia is one of the better Chemistry teachers out of the bunch. Sometimes it can be hard to follow along, but it is easier to understand in discussion sections. She's always open to questions and tries her hardest to teach a rough subject.

Dr. Zhou is a great professor, she makes the lectures more entertaining and obvious that she has a serious passion for chemistry!

Dr. Zhou has great lectures that make them easy to understand and engaging. She has plenty of in-class Top Hat questions, and she explains the material fairly well. Chem 103 is a challenging class and requires a lot of practice outside of the homework and labs you need to do.

Her lectures are definitely a treat and her presentations are well set up. Provides lots of practice problems and times/plans all her lectures really well. Great lecture experiments. Her reactions are so much fun and she's such a sweet person. I love how passionately she loves chemistry.

A huge part of Chem 103 is how much time you put in outside of class, but Dr. Zhou does a great job covering the content you need during lecture. She explains the information clearly working out example problems. Her office hours are super helpful and she is willing to rexplain anything from lecture.

Jia zhou is alright, chem 103 is basically self taught, you have to do the pre class before the lecture it self and thats where most of your learning will come from. People are rating the professor based on the difficulty of the course, but they cant really do anything cause this is the nature of chemistry classes in Madison.

Chem 103 is hard, but it feels like Dr. Zhou didn't really care about teaching. Averages were low and overall, not a fan.

chem 103 is hard. doesn't help that Dr. Zhou has boring lectures that regurgitates information already required in readings/homework. because of this, your chem103 grade is largely dependent on the amount of work you put in outside of class. lectures are somewhat mandatory for the tophat grade. recommend taking the class with a different prof.

I think Chem 103 is a hard class to really get right. Professor Zhou was very kind and her lectures were pretty good. For chem you really need to go to lecture and discussion because some things she says aren't in pre-class or in discussion. Overall she's very nice and seems to love chemistry. If you put in effort to the class you will be fine.

Dr. Zhou is an amazing professor for Chem 103. She makes topics clear on concise, but you still have to do a lot of work in order to succeed in this course. Her lectures were interesting and engaging. She was very organized and she made it easy to follow along during class.

I can't say enough about Dr. Zhou! She was a great chem 103 professor for the class being difficult the way it is. She explains the material well and includes questions through TopHat for engagement and practice. She is quite funny in my opinion and I enjoy her lectures. I would 100% recommend her if you need to take chem 103.

Difficult class, unhelpful required readings, uninteresting lectures which simply read back the same information that was already assigned.

Please don't require readings and quizzes to be done before lecture and then read the exact same material back to us

Chem 103 is a very hard class, you have to go to class to understand whats going on. Dr. Zhou's lecture are fun and she makes jokes. Labs take a while to complete and so does homework. I would recommend going to discussion section and doing the pre-class work however they are not graded. If you put in a lot of work you should be fine.

Chem 103 is a very easy class if you put in the work. It's a reverse classroom setup, so expect to do some work before class. Mrs. Zhou is a very funny lecturer and makes going to class enjoyable. She teaches to the pre-class readings, so if you don't read them it can make lectures a bit confusing. The labs are a bit tedious but easy enough.

A very sweet, kind, and entertaining lecturer. A lot of people complain about how hard the class is, but those same people don't go to discussion. If you pay attention in lecture and go to discussion where the TAs go over worksheets, you will have a pretty solid understanding of the concepts.

Hard class made somewhat enjoyable by Dr. Zhou. She enjoys teaching and makes class enjoyable. It's a hard course that kicked my butt, but her lectures were fun and mostly easy to understand. She doesn't take extra time to explain things everyone gets wrong on tophat so be prepared to do a lot outside class.

Dr. Zhou is great at teaching a really, really hard class. 103 is by no means easy but her lectures are good and engaging and she makes funny jokes. She let us have 4 notecards on our final and gave good global feedback after exams. Good communication. Get yourself a good TA for this course and you'll be set.

Funny, makes a lot of jokes, hard class but she is a good teacher and taught us well. If you take chem 103 would recommend having her as teacher.

Jia Zhou is a great teacher of introductory chemistry. With a very large class, she still answered anyone's questions and gaged class understanding through online polls (aka Tophat; which were used for graded participation). She also went through many practice problems similar to the ones on the exams and explained the intuition behind concepts.

Prof Zhou is a difficult professor for a first year chem student. Her lectures, though unnecessary to attend, were rushed through and didn't explain anything new. Exams were always completely different from practice exams. I did meet with her one on one once and even though she seemed caring, she made me feel worse and stupid. Would not recommend.

Prof. Zhou was a pretty enthusiastic and funny professor as far as Chem Professors go. Obviously, her class is difficult, but that's really not her fault. She explains concepts pretty well and I understood most things in that class. My only complaints are that sometimes there are complex questions on exams that we don't really go over.

I truly enjoyed Professor Zhou's course. She really cares about her students and wants them to do well. I would recommend going to discussions and taking the time to understand pre-class work.

Zhou is genuinely funny and the lectures were enjoyable. She also gave us 4 notecards on final!!

Professor Zhou is passionate about chem concepts and tries her best to thoroughly explain them. She generally doesn't move too fast during lecture. The 4 exams are horrible (~65% average) and weekly quizzes are tough but that's to be expected, especially if you didn't take AP chem in high school. The class is graded on a bell curve.

Don't get me wrong, this is a very hard class. But just as a person, Jia is kind and wants her students to succeed. Plan on doing an insane amount of work outside of class, but also know that there are a lot of people at UW whose whole job it is to help Chem 103 students.

She is tough but it is the material that is universal. She is amazing she makes class fun!

Honestly switch your prof right now if you are considering Jia for Ochem. Lectures are a race for her where she tries to add as much random info that is not on exams which gets utterly confusing. With her accent it is difficult to understand the difference between alkane/alkene/alkyne when she speaks along with other things. Take Bowman...

She's lecture is hard to understood sometimes but as long as you prepare for the class you will be fine. And if you go to her office hour, you will find that she is really nice and explain the problems very clearly and effective !!! The tips she gave me during office hours were super helpful!!

I would not suggest Jia for chem343. She just gives you the mechanisms and does a poor job explaining why everything happens, which makes it hard to apply to different examples (which is a huge portion of the quizes and exams). I found myself having to watch the other professor's lecture videos to teach myself the material.

Shows no willingness to help, does not care if you fail

O chem is super hard, but Jia really knew her stuff, and explained things very well. Lectures are posted, and it was very well coordinated with the other lectures of the same course. As it should be when we are all graded on one curve. No homework, but you still have to learn the material to do well. You really can't BS these tests

Jia definitely knows her stuff but isn't quite sure of the whole teaching bit yet. Saying that she is Esselmans puppet would not be far from the truth. While having Jia will definitely make your life more hectic, having her is no reason to panic. Just keep up with the discussion worksheets, practice sets, and do all the practice quizzes/exams.

If you're ever looking for a way to fail ochem, Jia is your number one choice. She talks so fast during her lecture and doesn't really explain. Her lecture notes seem somehow unorganized as I couldn't catch up with her speed. She expects me to know so much like I'm a professor

Jia is a really good lecturer and she explains things very well. The class is only graded on three exams, three quizzes, and the final. The class is curved based on the historical chem 343 GPA average. I found that reading the chapters really supplemented the lectures well and that doing ALL the problem sets and practice exams was incredibly useful

Jia's class uses all of Professor Brian Esselman's materials. Your class page will be linked to the course handouts, lecture videos, problem sets, and practice exams that Esselman has made. You also take the same exams. Therefore, you have the resources to do well, but you will learn more efficiently if you can take the class with Esselman himself.

Jia goes way too fast in her lectures that I found it impossible to listen and write down all of the molecules/mechanisms and listen at the same time. I would have to watch the online lecture from the different prof in order to understand what was going on which doubled my lecture time. Keep up with problem sets and discussion packets for practice.

I really liked O Chem with Jia. She's not the most exciting lecturer in the world, but she speaks English very well and is clear with her explanations. If you skim the text book before lecture, it should be easy to understand what's going on.

Jia is not a great lecturer, and her jokes are cringeworthy. I think she does an ok job of explaining things. One thing that I do appreciate is that the grading policies are laid out and the website is very well organized. There are more than enough resources and you will want to use all of them as this class is very difficult, though it is curved.

Jia thought everything from another professor word from word. She would write down mechanisms and concepts down and expected that you knew it. The quizzes were hard and the exams were even more difficult. Do not skip lecture of you will fall behind. I recommend getting a tutor for this course, and a good one.

Jia was a new professor, so her lectures were not the same quality as the older professors. During class, she simply copied down mechanisms every lecture without much explanation. I had to use external study resources to actually understand any of the material.

Jia is new but she did a good job. You need to go to lecture, ochem is a rather difficult subject so you need to put in the work. Tests are challenging, but not impossible. Quizzes in the class are good checkpoints as well. There were numerous resources available for you to use if you had any questions. All lectures are posted online too.

If you want a snarky professor that doesn't actually teach, Jia is your girl. Puts mechanisms on the board for you to copy down, with no why's or how's. Grade is based on 3-4 quizzes, 3 exams and a final worth twice the points of one exam. I recommend finding a tutor and giving up your social life. Good luck!

She's new, so at the beginning, she didn't give very clear explanations of the mechanisms, but she improved a lot throughout the semester. Listen closely, take side notes. In the end, a lot of understanding the material requires outside work, no matter who you get.