Great professor, her lectures were helpful and honestly this class was not crazy difficult because of the way things are laid out for grading. I literally failed 2/3 of the individual portions of exams and still ended with an A-. All exams were open note/textbook/libretexts which made it very doable, just take your time and don't make dumb mistakes and you'll be fine. She was a really understanding person and if you had questions she was happy to help.

Textbook reading can take a while and the first one is very intimidating, but don't be fazed. Make sure to at least complete all reading questions/BITs/LBLAs because you get points just for answering, and be very on top of when everything is due because sometimes it is a little confusing.

Main thing I'd recommend is going over your exam after they come out because on literally every single one she had misgraded a question or two and she was always nice about fixing her mistakes or explaining why you got a question wrong (definitely go over the questions you missed)

Not too much to say about this class except that there’s a lot of weekly reading through Tophat. Dr. Stains is very nice and approachable when you need concepts explained. During my semester, someone was caught cheating, which led to the final exam being proctored online via Zoom with our cameras on. While the cheating incident, specifically someone uploading the test to Chegg was the real issue, this solution didn’t address the root problem. Additionally, while other classes were given the full three hours to complete the exam, Dr. Stains’s class wasn’t informed beforehand about the time limit. We only found out on the Zoom call moments before starting the final. Overall, the class isn’t too hard and is a very well-curated introduction to the subject.

I could rant on and on about how poorly structured this course is, but regarding the professor, Stains does a great job of explaining material and she clearly seems to care about her students. #tCFFF24

This class gets a lot of mixed reviews, but I don't think this class is as bad as some people make it out to be, especially if you take it with Dr. Stains. Her lectures are useful and easy to follow along, and she is very open to feedback. She started explaining commonly missed questions on the previous week's chapter readings in her lectures, which I found really helpful. Not to mention they're also recorded for students to look back on. The course material has challenging concepts, but as someone who only took honors chemistry in high school they weren't too hard to grasp with effort. One issue with the material was that the textbook would sometimes gloss over topics or not mention others that came up in the expos (they are more useful than you think). As long as you listen to lectures, take notes, and do the assigned questions each week, you can succeed in the class.
#tCFF23

Professor Stains is a great professor in my opinion, and Chem 1410 was well structured. The work was consistent every week as you had the same 4-5 assignments to do, Tophat readings were annoying and fairly difficult to get done but the other work was not bad. The lectures helped clarify a lot of the material for me, Stains was a pretty good lecturer and the slides contained all the important material and concepts. She is a very kind and sweet professor and will always help to give students the best understanding of the material. but means business at the end of the day. Exams are not too difficult if you keep up with the readings and homework problems and understand the problems in the lbla and bit. Expo was great as well, but that can depend on if you have a good group or not, the TAs and professor stains are helpful explaining the concepts so don't be afraid to ask questions.

Dr. Stains is a really good professor! She has notes on her slides which is usually helpful when studying for tests. The only thing I would note is Part 2 of the exams because it is usually pretty difficult but I wouldn't let it discourage you. Additionally, pay attention to expo concepts as they usually show up on exams.

TLDR; Stains good, class structure really bad.

Stains is very nice, but the class itself is really bad at teaching chemistry. The class is set up like this: before class, you have a weekly chapter reading with questions. Stains skims through the notes, teaching the information that students had the most trouble with. You'll have some individual assignments due by Friday and an in person expo with group work. On the surface, as a class, it is relatively light compared to other stem classes. However, there are quite a bit of departamental issues with the class that make it unreasonably tough and dense to learn from:

1. The textbook - although written by UVA professors, it is very bad. It is somehow extremely convoluted and simultaneously not enough information. While the questions you are asked for the readings due Sunday (based on the chapter) are relatively tame, trying to learn the content for the work in this class is way too tough.

2. The lecture - Stains is very good at using her time, but for the majority of students, learning solely from the textbook (which is expected in this class) isn't enough. More often than not, I'd find myself guessing on expo/out of class work just because I had no idea what I was talking about. Personally, I'd prefer to have more lecture time.

3. The exams - they are open note and online (except for one exam for us because of a cheating scandal lol), but don't let that fool you. They are tough. A lot of the content on the test, especially the parts done with your expo group are way, way too complicated. Many of the questions don't have concrete relationships with the notes (i.e., with the information that I was taught and from the notes, I felt uncomfortable with most of my answers I chose on tests). I understand why they did this (because it was open note), but I didn't feel like I was being tested on my knowledge of chemistry, if that makes sense.
#tCFF23

If you're going to take CHEM 1410, I suggest you take it with Professor Stains. I came into UVA having a terrible high school chemistry experience, and this class cleared up my misunderstandings. This is a difficult class, but if you have to take it, I would with Stains. The general consensus that I've got is a lot of people like Stains and how she teaches, but the subject and material is difficult so a lot of complaining happens. I feel like Stains is a very good lecturer and understands what concepts are difficult for students, and she specifically covers these in depth in the lectures and problems for the week.

Dr. Stains is a good professor. Her lectures are very informative, and it’s wonderful that she posts them view later. The course is taught very intuitively, and the assignments are all designed with learning and retention in mind. Dr. Stains can be hard to understand at times during lecture as she has a rather thick accent, but being able to watch lectures back later made this easy to get through. The expo portion of class was very well organized, and so long as you have a solid group, it will be a great learning opportunity. This semester Dr. Stains and the other CHEM 1410 professors found great issues with cheating, which led to the exams (which were online and done at home prior) to be done in person in the lecture hall. Another CHEM 1410 professor (Welch) allowed his students to continue the online exam while Dr. Stains had her students take it in person. I think this situation was handled poorly by the professors of the course as a whole, but Dr. Stains made efforts to ensure that grading of exams was fair and no student would be disadvantaged by the format of the exam. This was an annoyance, but I found that it made me study harder and retain more information.

Dr. Stains was not bad, probably the best option for chem 1410. Some aspects of the course itself are annoying though. Online readings are long and contain required questions. Oftentimes the content doesn't really correlate with expo or exam questions, so you find yourself lost and having to make assumptions. The course is structured for you to 'learn as you go', but this can make assignments hard to complete with asking for help. Exam questions were sometimes unnecessarily detailed, sometimes with each multiple choice option only being slightly different. It was difficult to study without knowing what concepts were most important. Only understanding the gist of concepts also isn't enough as questions were almost always application-based. Overall, the course is definitely passable but you will have to work hard to get a solid A. I ended up with an A- putting moderate effort in. I know a lot of people struggled to even get an A-.
Warning, future exams may be on paper instead of online. Midway through the semester Stains changed the exam format due to cheating (even though the exams are supposedly open note and internet).
#tCFF23