Do not take this class under any circumstances unless you want to see any of your love for environmental science die. Lerdau is a terrible lecturer and speaks in a way that is overly complicated and doesn't make sense. He is incredibly smart and knows his stuff but cannot pass his knowledge on in an understandable way. Half of the notes you take in the class are unfinished sentences because he will trail off in the middle of a key concept or switch ideas or go onto another concept and you will never get to the main point. Lectures are also very boring. All of the tests are based off of lecture so while it is nice that you never have homework or have to do the readings, if you do not write down every word he says in lecture you have no hope for the tests. He did not give us our midterms back until a week before the final (a month and a half after we'd taken them) and they were graded by grad students who made mistakes so we had to grade all of our own tests in class and then come to him if we had complaints. There was a line stretching into the hallway waiting to talk to him about grading mistakes and he barely gave back any points to anyone. Our final was a 36 question multiple choice test with questions on it that weren't even related to conservation and ecology such as "Which Fungi gives people hallucinations?" Overall the worst class I have taken at UVA, not because of difficulty but because it was so painstakingly boring and unrelated to ecology. I learned negative information

Professor Lerdau is hands down the laziest teacher I've encountered at the University.

Although this is supposed to be a simple ecology class, he complicates things with connections out of the scope of the class. There is no textbook, and his powerpoint slides really have no content. So all my notes consisted of hanging onto his every word in class - pretty pointless in the long run. Going to office hours is a waste of time. He is painfully condescending, most likely to chase away students, and isn't even attentive.

It took over a month to return our midterms back - about a week before finals, and his grading was subjective and unreasonable. I mean, the guy graded my test with a freaking crayon. He likes to mark everyone down/up to maintain a test average to work out better for his curve. (I still don't know how helpful this is to students.)

I had high hopes for this class, because the reviews were so positive. But I guess the professor really does make or break this class - and Lerdau made it awful. Don't take EVSC 2220 with him!

Do not take this class with Prof Lerdau. He is not an engaging lecturer. He explains simple concepts in the most confusing way possible. His powerpoint slides are very minimal and do not aid studying whatsoever. The class jumped around topics like economics, physics, chemistry, history, politics, however Lerdau was not very good at explaining the connections. Things hardly ever made sense. Going to his office hours are not helpful either. He is snarky and very disrespectful of student's time. On more than one occassion I waited for 30mins -1 hr while he was on the phone/in a meeting (during his scheduled office hours). His disorganized lectures reflect his personality. It took over month to get our midterms back. I found out my midterm grade a week and half before the final.
The only good thing about this class is that Prof Lerdau says there will be no exam questions on the readings, so after the first couple weeks I stopped doing them and still did fine on the tests. This class wasn't too difficult, but I dreaded going to it and would not recommend. (I've heard it's a fun class with other professors though!)

I haven't finished the semester yet with Lerdau, but so far I'm really unimpressed. Only two exams so you don't know what you know and what you don't. Lecture style is boring and pedantic. Changes simplistic slides once every 30 mins or so. Will update towards the end of the semester, but so far I'm pretty unimpressed.