A Guide to Ohlone College’s STEM Professors

STEM professors at Ohlone College offer diverse teaching styles, from interactive, hands-on approaches to independent, self-paced study. Each professor’s unique style offers students different pathways to engage and succeed in STEM subjects. Hopefully, this information will help you find which professors are the best fit as you pursue STEM classes at Ohlone!

By: Cally Li and Ishita Chopra

1. Lisa Wesoloski 

Professor Wesoloski teaches in the Chemistry Department. She teaches Preparation for General Chemistry (CHEM 102), General Chemistry 1 (CHEM 101A), and General Chemistry 2 (CHEM 101B). I have taken both her 101A and 101B classes and I would say that she is a very detailed professor. Her classes take time to get used to because she jumps into a lot of information just as class starts. For 101A, her lectures were in person and given through slideshow presentations which she posted after she finished the lecture. For 101B, however, she posts lecture video sets that we need to watch before coming into the lab and lecture. She has dedicated lecture time, but we use this time to review what we learned in the videos and do any practice exercises to synthesize the information. 

Both these classes take a lot of effort. Attending her office hours and asking her questions are important to succeed in the class. Her exams are fairly difficult and they test you on not only how well you know the information, but also how well you can apply it to different problems. For 101A, she provided a study guide before each exam, which should definitely be used when studying. For 101B, she doesn’t provide study guides, but under each lecture video, there are bullet points that you should know after watching the video, so reviewing each of those is helpful. Also, she does give cumulative finals in both classes. In 101B, she also gives weekly quizzes and to study for those, I mostly just review the homework. 

For lab, she does require pre-lab work. For 101A it was usually just drawing the tables in our notebook that are seen in our lab handout. But for 101B we have pre-lab quizzes and along with the notebook prep, we also have to write down the procedure for the lab. She will pick a handful of labs that will become “formal labs” where we have to write detailed lab reports, and a lot of labs will have post-lab questions. For other homework, she will usually have some other site such as Aktiv that will be used to give homework problems. Overall, she is good at teaching me, but because of the pace of information she goes through and the rigor it requires, it is difficult.

2. Kirti Kansal 

Professor Kansal also teaches in the Chemistry Department. She teaches the same classes as Professor Wesoloski. I took the CHEM 102 class. In this class, we would have lectures in person twice a week and lab once a week. When she gave the lecture, she would usually leave some time for us to go on Aktiv and do some in-class problems to see if we actually learned. I thought that this was super helpful and really helped me make sure that I was on track. Furthermore, she would let us work on quizzes in groups which was nice because we were able to learn from each other. Her exams were pretty straightforward for the most part. Going over the Aktiv homework was the main form of studying that I did and I do believe that that helped a lot. The only class I took with her was not a higher-level class so that could play into the way that she was teaching. I have heard that her higher-level classes such as 101A and 101B are much harder and her exams are extremely difficult. She also gave a cumulative final, but the majority of the test was the newest information that we learned. In lab, we had a paper manual and a website where we would input all the data we got from the lab. If you are willing to put in effort, Professor Kansal’s class is good.

3. Shyam Sundar 

Professor Sundar teaches in the Biology Department. He teaches Anatomy and Physiology (BIOL 103A & 103B), Introduction to Biology for Health Sciences (BIOL 102), a Cancer Biology class (BIOL 110), and a few other classes such as a genetics course and a course about sexual reproduction. I am currently taking his BIOL 120 class. This class has no in-person lectures and is just based on lecture videos. He also does not really go over a lot of what is talked about in lecture videos at any point during our lab, which is once a week. This makes it hard to understand a lot of the material and definitely requires a lot of self-studying. 

With this being said, he is very helpful and open to helping. He is accessible and always checks his emails and responds to questions very well. The entire grade is made up of lab exams, lecture exams, and essay discussion posts. Lab exams for the most part are pretty straightforward. If you understand the labs and the meaning behind why we do things it is not that bad. The lab exams are usually free response style. Lecture exams on the other hand are difficult. They require a very deep understanding of all the knowledge and also a lot of studying. He does give good extra credit on each exam which helps keep your grade afloat. There are no post-lab or pre-lab assignments in the class I am taking. Professor Sundar did this to make the workload easier and give you more time to study for the exams. 

For the essay discussion post, he will post a topic at the beginning of the week to write an essay on and it will be due that Friday at 11:59 P.M., and by Sunday you have to reply with substantive comments to two other people. While this may seem like overkill, these essays are really good for studying and actually understanding the information we learned during the week. He is a good teacher and an interesting person who always shares all the research that he has done. It may take effort, but I do believe if he was teaching in person it would be easier to understand the material.

4. Mark Barnby

Professor Barnby teaches Ohlone’s two-semester biology course with veteran professor James E. Baxter. These courses consist of BIOL 101A, which requires a CHEM 101A as a prerequisite and provides overall principles of cell and molecular biology, and BIOL101B, which dives into evolutionary biology, anatomy, and physiology of animals, plants, bacteria, and a variety of other organisms. Dr. Barnby’s classes and rubric are broken down into the following: lectures, labs, lab reports, pre-lab quizzes, and exams. There is no homework. 

One striking characteristic of Dr. Barnby is his speed during his lectures. Get ready to get through at least one chapter’s worth of information in one lecture period. Lectures might seem intimidating at first due to Barnby’s outrageous pacing and speed of speaking in addition to the overwhelming hyper-specific content and facts he shares. I found that while his way of teaching does take some time to get used to, eventually, you’ll be able to easily differentiate between relevant information and fluff/side facts. There are typically three lecture exams, of which a majority of the questions are multiple-choice with a few free-response questions. Dr. Barnby doesn’t provide a study guide leading up to exams, but he will if requested by popular demand. 

Labs are the only time you can get easy points. During the first ten minutes of the lab, there will be an online pre-lab quiz about the activity you’ll be performing. All lab questions are based on the worksheet/lab instructions provided. Lab reports are the easiest way to receive points. Most labs in BIOL 101A require a lab report with occasional worksheets. However, Dr. Barnby is generally very lenient and his lab report expectations aren’t very strict. 

A majority of labs in BIOL 101B are dissections and prepared microscopic specimen slides so lab reports will consist of sketches and identifying structures rather than writing a comprehensive lab report. The two lab exams are based on concepts covered solely in the lab; I highly recommend going over previous pre-lab quizzes when reviewing. Besides the two-semester biology class, Dr. Barnby also teaches BIOL 102: Introduction to Biology for Health Sciences, hands-on research courses, and Biotechnology. In summary, Dr. Barnby’s curriculum and teaching style may be on the more difficult end, but lectures are always full of laughs and fun. He is a very understanding and sweet professor who is always there to help and occasionally cracks a few jokes that help cut through the difficulty of the topics covered.

5. Luba Voloshko 

Professor Voloshko teaches the two-semester chemistry course that consists of CHEM 101A and CHEM 101B. Her rubric and expectations are very clear and easy to understand. During lectures, she speaks at a comfortable pace that makes it easy to follow along. She also holds fun participation activities to reinforce the topics covered in class. There is homework, but it’s relatively straightforward and Professor Voloshko is always there to help. Labs are mostly quite straightforward. She also requires a lab report but her expectations aren’t very high. There are no pre-lab quizzes or lab exams so lab sessions are generally a good opportunity for easy points. Lecture exams aren’t too difficult either; as long as you review your lecture notes and homework well, exams shouldn’t be a huge burden. Professor Voloshko doesn’t provide many extra credit opportunities but there are generally a few extra credit questions on exams. Overall, Professor Voloshko is a very understanding and sweet professor who is always there to help. I don’t find her classes particularly hard. 

6. Jose Rico 

Professor Rico teaches a variety of math and statistics courses here at Ohlone. In his Introduction to Statistics (MATH-159), class sessions usually don’t consist of lectures. Professor Rico’s “lectures” and homework are all embedded in an online learning program called ISLE so class sessions are just an opportunity to work with classmates and ask questions. There are no midterms/exams and the final is considered as extra credit. However, a good portion of your grade is dependent on group work assignments and checkpoint quizzes (online quizzes taken in class about the previously finished chapter.) Overall, Professor Rico’s classes are very manageable and aren’t very difficult to pass.

7. Daniel Barringer

Professor Barringer is a new physics professor at Ohlone. As of Fall 2024, they are only teaching PHY-140 and PHY-141, a calculus-based physics mechanics course. Professor Barringer’s classes consist of lectures, in-class activities, occasional labs, homework, and exams. There aren’t many formal lectures in their class, rather Professor Barringer strongly believes in learning by doing. Therefore, even though all the class periods are around three hours, we spend the majority of our time just working on problems in small groups. Professor Barringer’s criteria for lab reports are quite specific and grades the reports with high attention to detail. However, it’s not impossible to get a 90 and above on a lab report. 

One great thing about Professor Barringer’s class is that exams are quite easy to study for. They will give you a list of questions a week before the example and randomly pick a few questions to be on the actual exam. Additionally, there are three midterm/exams, with each only worth 10% of your final grade. The final is 15% of your grade where the questions will be picked from the unused questions from the previous three exams. Furthermore, a final grade between 85%-100% is considered an A. Overall, I highly recommend Professor Barringer for any physics courses due to his considerate rubric and style of teaching. 

8. Henry Stalica

Professor Stalica teaches a variety of computer science courses asynchronously. Professor Stalica’s classes are broken down into the following: textbook questions, coding assignments, lecture videos, and two exams. You will need to buy the online textbook in order to take this class since a good portion of your grade depends on the assignments embedded in the textbook. Professor Stalica provides lecture videos that also have embedded questions that are very manageable. However, professor Stalica’s coding assignments are probably the most difficult because they require the application of concepts learned; and there isn’t one correct way to code. Besides that, his classes are very clear and not particularly difficult.

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