engineering 2nd year at u of c professors

[MonsieurFish]

just want to know if anyone can give me the inside edge on any professors whose classes i should try to get in or stay away from for 2nd year engineering courses at the u of c?

thanks

[Dan02]

nerd

[MonsieurFish]

[MelBridgeman]

you need to avoid profs? looking for the wasy ride...good luck

[Phanuthier]

I don't use this, but http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/

At UofA, they had their own site for UofA rating their profs.

Mel... I use it mostly to avoid non-english speaking profs or profs that simply teach you incorrect material. I love nasty tough profs myself, keep the average low and gives you a better chance to excel.

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by Phanuthier

I don't use this, but http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/

At UofA, they had their own site for UofA rating their profs.

Mel... I use it mostly to avoid non-english speaking profs or profs that simply teach you incorrect material. I love nasty tough profs myself, keep the average low and gives you a better chance to excel.

Well when you get a job, how are you going to handle a "non-english" speaking boss or a incompentent boss? Quit? Just my view, you do whats right for you, but i am of the belief that your success is in your hands in school, not your profs, which i am sure you can agree with.

[RougeUnderoos]

Yeah geez, asking for advice on which classes to take. What a slacker.

[Jude]

Just out of curiosity, but which program are you taking?

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

Well when you get a job, how are you going to handle a "non-english" speaking boss or a incompentent boss? Quit? Just my view, you do whats right for you, but i am of the belief that your success is in your hands in school, not your profs, which i am sure you can agree with.

Just wondering, what was your degree in?

I remember taking a class in photonics where some of my notes were incorrect, some constants mis-labled, and examples are incorrect. When learning and taking many classes, this can often be frustrating. I know working isn't always a nice and packaged problem with a solution to it, and likewise there are challenges socially, but that is more of an art of overcoming those barriers where as school in school, there is the perception (rightly or wrongly) that the information a teacher gives you is correct.

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by Phanuthier

Just wondering, what was your degree in?

I remember taking a class in photonics where some of my notes were incorrect, some constants mis-labled, and examples are incorrect. When learning and taking many classes, this can often be frustrating. I know working isn't always a nice and packaged problem with a solution to it, and likewise there are challenges socially, but that is more of an art of overcoming those barriers where as school in school, there is the perception (rightly or wrongly) that the information a teacher gives you is correct.

Computer Science

[jammies]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

Well when you get a job, how are you going to handle a "non-english" speaking boss or a incompentent boss? Quit?

Yes, that is exactly what I would do. After a while, companies would get rid of the idiots and the incomprehensible, as nobody would work for them. I'm not sure how that could possibly be a bad idea.

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by fotze

I know you are extreme but that is ridiculous. You should just accept terrible teaching 'cause thats the way the real world works'. Maybe if you work for a piece of shat company, and maybe you always have, but some companies actually promote the best people, I know its hard to believe but it happens.

Actually whats grounds for firing in the real world is not having the aptitude to figure things out yourself. The best people would be the opposite of that, not the ones that always need their lunch fed to them. IF you can't excel in anything you take, regardless of who your professor is, than that is your problem, if you prefer certain profs that is fine too. No need to get your panties in a knot over someone else's opinion and experience, that would be called extreme.

[RatherDashing]

Just finished second year engg, here's a run-down of who I had and what I thought:

AMAT 307-I had Dr. Liao, none of the profs last year were great, but he was absolutely terrible. Across the board everybody in this section hated him, do not take his class. Zvengrowski taught a different section, and most students either really liked his class or really hated it.

ENGG 319-I took this class with Drs Jamieson and Wang. I don't have much to say for this class, I learned everything from the textbook/powerpoint notes and did really well, they both give you good notes and the tests are open book.

ENGG 325-I had Dr. Nowicki. He was a fantastic prof, and is regularly nominated for the teaching excellence awards. He goes slowly through the material, which can be annoying as it starts out fairly basically, but by the end you will really know the course well. Norm Bartlett also taught this class, I took C++ with him and he was a great prof as well.

ENGG 349-I had Dr. Johnston for this class, you may remember him from 251/253. His teaching methods were a little unorthodox; he spent very little time on theory and spent much of the class time solving problems from the textbook. I found him to be a really good prof, but a lot of people hated him, so I suppose it depends on how best you learn. Of the other profs in this section, I believe Tan was highly rated by students, and Li was rated low.

PHYS 369-I believe my profs name was Wilson. I thought he was a fairly good prof, although the material was quite boring so that might be influencing my negatively. By the end of the semester our classroom was filling up with students from other sections. I will try to confirm his name and come back and edit this. Stay away from Dr. Biel, I took 259 with him and he was terrible.

ENGG 311-Dr. Mehta. He was not a good prof, he spent most of the class time going off on tangents unrelated to the course and more related to his theories about global warming. It was entertaining, but not terribly helpful.

ENGG 317-Dr. Boyd. Boyd is an excellent prof, he keeps the class interesting and you will learn a lot. He was by far the best prof for this class. Li was supposedly quite bad, I don't know about any of the others.

ENGG 407-When I took this class all four sections went on at the same time so it didn't really matter which section you registered in. As it stood, very few people went to any of the lectures, as this class can be easily learned from the textbook.

ENME 341-Dr. Valeo. Take this class with her if you can. Last year the different sections wrote different midterms and final exams, and hers were considerably easier than the other classes. She was also a very good prof on top of this fact.

That's about it. Hopefully all of that is helpful to you, and if you have any more questions about second year I'm glad to help out where I can.

[MonsieurFish]

Originally Posted by RatherDashing

Just finished second year engg, here's a run-down of who I had and what I thought:

AMAT 307-I had Dr. Liao, none of the profs last year were great, but he was absolutely terrible. Across the board everybody in this section hated him, do not take his class. Zvengrowski taught a different section, and most students either really liked his class or really hated it.

ENGG 319-I took this class with Drs Jamieson and Wang. I don't have much to say for this class, I learned everything from the textbook/powerpoint notes and did really well, they both give you good notes and the tests are open book.

ENGG 325-I had Dr. Nowicki. He was a fantastic prof, and is regularly nominated for the teaching excellence awards. He goes slowly through the material, which can be annoying as it starts out fairly basically, but by the end you will really know the course well. Norm Bartlett also taught this class, I took C++ with him and he was a great prof as well.

ENGG 349-I had Dr. Johnston for this class, you may remember him from 251/253. His teaching methods were a little unorthodox; he spent very little time on theory and spent much of the class time solving problems from the textbook. I found him to be a really good prof, but a lot of people hated him, so I suppose it depends on how best you learn. Of the other profs in this section, I believe Tan was highly rated by students, and Li was rated low.

PHYS 369-I believe my profs name was Wilson. I thought he was a fairly good prof, although the material was quite boring so that might be influencing my negatively. By the end of the semester our classroom was filling up with students from other sections. I will try to confirm his name and come back and edit this. Stay away from Dr. Biel, I took 259 with him and he was terrible.

ENGG 311-Dr. Mehta. He was not a good prof, he spent most of the class time going off on tangents unrelated to the course and more related to his theories about global warming. It was entertaining, but not terribly helpful.

ENGG 317-Dr. Boyd. Boyd is an excellent prof, he keeps the class interesting and you will learn a lot. He was by far the best prof for this class. Li was supposedly quite bad, I don't know about any of the others.

ENGG 407-When I took this class all four sections went on at the same time so it didn't really matter which section you registered in. As it stood, very few people went to any of the lectures, as this class can be easily learned from the textbook.

ENME 341-Dr. Valeo. Take this class with her if you can. Last year the different sections wrote different midterms and final exams, and hers were considerably easier than the other classes. She was also a very good prof on top of this fact.

That's about it. Hopefully all of that is helpful to you, and if you have any more questions about second year I'm glad to help out where I can.

Thanks man that helps alot. How did you find second year compared to first year?

[if.away]

Originally Posted by MonsieurFish

Thanks man that helps alot. How did you find second year compared to first year?

I don't know about that guy but 2nd year was the hardest for me.

First was decent.

Second was quite poor. Hardest year for me, but looking back it is an absolute absolute joke. It wasn't necessarily hard material, it was just more work required and less performed by me.

Third was very good, mostly because I wanted a high GPA to score a good internship position and because I was finally taking courses that I liked. A lot of work went into this year but I considered it a great success.

Fourth year was stellar despite having an insane amount of work and much tougher courses. Internship really toughed me out and gave me a "I can own everything thrown at me" attitude.

The really ironic part is that my job out of Engineering dealt with a lot of statistics which was my worst course, in my 2nd year, because I never had any motivation or interest in learning stats. The world has a way of playing tricks on you..

[McMack]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

Actually whats grounds for firing in the real world is not having the aptitude to figure things out yourself. The best people would be the opposite of that, not the ones that always need their lunch fed to them. IF you can't excel in anything you take, regardless of who your professor is, than that is your problem, if you prefer certain profs that is fine too. No need to get your panties in a knot over someone else's opinion and experience, that would be called extreme.

In the "real world" incompetent bosses would be fired; in academia, they survive forever.

[The Ditch]

I don't usually respond to U of C engineering questions as I thought it was a joke. I graduated chem eng in 2006, maybe my experienced varyed as this was right before all of the Sculich money and absolutely everything was underrun and understaffed.

Considering how poor I thought everything was run the professors were all good past the second year (but most second year profs were great), instead of profs to avoid I will tell you a couple of profs that I really enjoyed. Dr. Jeje and Dr. Mehrotra (sp?) are both great profs whose material was hard and tests were hard but they cared quite a bit about the students, I would reccomend a class by either of them. Also, Dr. Kallos was also really good and a nice guy to boot.

Too bad the adjunct prof who was my fourth year year long project go to guy quit doing that because he was absolutely the greatest and my group got the highest grade in all of eng that year.

[RatherDashing]

Originally Posted by MonsieurFish

Thanks man that helps alot. How did you find second year compared to first year?

I found that it was considerably harder than first year, but I had taken several year of university before I switched to engg, so I didn't have the whole first year university class shock like a lot of people did. There were a lot fewer labs in second year though, in the winter semester 311, 317, and 341 all had labs, but for each class there were only 3 or 4 labs over the semester.

Which engineering department are you going into?

[Vedder]

For 317 and 349 I had Dr. Sun, she is really into the theoretical stuff and doesn't do too many examples. If you like that you'll love her but Dr. Tan for 349 and Dr. Boyd for 317 are probably better bets. She is really nice though and is willing to go the extra mile, you probably won't get that with Tan. Avoid Dr. Federiko for 317, he is all over the place.

If you have to take physics, I suggest Dr. Wilson.

I think all the Engg 311 profs are similar, the key to that course is doing practice problems.

For Engg 319, I recommend Jamieson. The statistics profs were pretty similar.

Good luck in second year!