ENAE324 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Benjamin Silbaugh ENAE324 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 06/02/2025	Based on the reviews I saw before taking ENAE324, I thought this class would be a disaster. In reality, he's a really well-spoken lecturer who talks us through all the content in a way that makes sense (mostly). I thought the derivations were helpful for gaining a deeper understanding of the material and understanding how to do the homework. You are expected to do more than just memorize formulas and answer based on patterns, which makes it feel like you're actually learning something relevant to your career rather than just plugging and chugging to get a degree. That said, it felt like there was not enough resources provided for most people to succeed. While he was helpful in office hours, I stopped being able to go to office hours due to other obligations, so I was left going through the lecture notes (if he had posted them, which he often didn't in a reasonable amount of time) or trying my best to google my problems to see if I could find an external reference source as my only ways of getting homework/conceptual help. Since the class is a weird mishmash of different topics, it was really hard to find reliable reference sources that addressed my questions. He appeared to be in the process of making more in-depth, typed-up lecture notes, but he stopped posting those after he got through the fourth week's content, which meant there was no good reference material for the class. That was especially problematic when it came time to study for the exams (which are each worth 35% of your final grade) since the only easily-available practices problems are the homework problems. He could be a worse teacher, but he could also be a better one in some easily-achievable ways, so 3 stars it is. An additional warning: you are expected to have a good understanding of multivariable calculus and linear algebra. Do not take ENAE324 unless you have already taken those classes.
Sung Lee ENAE324 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/25/2025	Posts his very complete lecture notes in advance. Very flexible with office hours (almost any time on any weekday), and helpful in them. Grading breakup was very lenient, 50% hw, 40% quiz, 10% final. Homeworks were straightforward and short. Would be perfect, but unfortunately he grades with zero partial credit, answers must be numerically perfect: if you get part A of a question wrong, the rest will likely be marked wrong.
Benjamin Silbaugh ENAE324 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/19/2025	This class could be good if there was a proper textbook or somewhere to get the essential course content from. Every single document (digital whiteboard lecture notes, homework solutions, etc) published by him has at least one typo in a critical step of the solution, derivation, or equation. It's not uncommon for him to write down a slightly incorrect equation and explain why this incorrect equation makes sense, and then if someone points out it's wrong, then he'll scramble to fix it and move on. This makes learning 10x more difficult since you are already confused about the difficult content, but you can't even trust the instructor's notes which are supposed to be correct and referenced like the gospel for a challenging course. He always says he will post solutions, typed lecture notes, or other actions, and describes it as "his only project for the day", but will end up not doing it for the next 2 weeks or never. It's like he has a 1 hour time limit on how much time he devotes to this class outside of lecture. He will also never ever fix mistakes in any published documents. The internet is useless for this class. The homeworks feel like banging my head against a wall for hours, and contradict what I've learned in ENES102 and ENES220. His homeworks depress me so much because the lack of learning material is truly egregious. It's like training a baby to ride a bike. The beginning of this course is a brutal introduction to tensors and tensor algebra which demoralizes everyone before we even get to the main content of the course. He also cancels office hours randomly at will. He canceled them the week of the midterm since there was no homework, maybe he forgot there was a midterm that week? He is basically unreachable outside of class because he doesn't respond to emails. He is rarely, if ever, in his office. Any email over 1-2 sentences that asks too much of him will never get a response. Take this with him at your own risk, your mental health and passion for engineering will suffer. This class tarnishes the reputation of the aero major. 0 stars if possible. He also fails people.
Benjamin Silbaugh ENAE324 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/18/2025	Doesn't go over anything useful in lecture, just derives everything. The homework is way too hard for this class and it's not completion. Had to search up most of how to even do the questions. Useful in office hours. Would not recommend at all taking with Silbaugh.
Sung Lee ENAE324 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/20/2024	The guy is nice, and has a pretty wonderful grading structure for this class. 70% homework, 20% quizzes, and 10% final. The homeworks are basically free as he always gives you a redo for full credit, which means that the class is a guaranteed pass as long as you do the bare minimum. The quizzes were hit or miss with some of them being impossible to completely in the given time, but Lee ended up dropping the particularly egregious ones from the grade so it didn’t matter. Not a bad professor or class all things considered, but I would recommend you take this in your sophmore year if possible do that you don’t have to do this alongside 432
Benjamin Silbaugh ENAE324 Expecting a D+ Anonymous 05/15/2024	Poor lecturer, harsh exam policies, creates homeworks that even the TA actively struggles to understand, and is overall very disorganized. He is clearly knowledgeable about the subject material, but his methods of assessing that material and the grade distribution make it difficult to come back from the smallest misstep. Furthermore, homework solutions even include mistakes, which calls into question how harshly he should be grading homeworks.
Benjamin Silbaugh ENAE324 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/01/2024	Dr. Silbaugh's structures course has to be one of the worst I have ever taken at this school. His lectures are nonsensical and rely heavily on theory and "indicial notation," making the lectures unreadable. Throughout the early parts of the course, he kept encouraging us, saying that things will all come into focus; nothing ever came into focus for this class. I've taken hard classes but usually the work you put in helps you learn the course material. In this course, no matter how hard you work, you will not understand anything other than a Rank II tensor.
Benjamin Silbaugh ENAE324 Expecting a B Anonymous 04/22/2024	He sucks…. That should be more than enough to explain. All his lectures are nonsensical handwaving, doesn’t help with the homework and all he talks about is indicial notation and how it is “relevant” in the industry. Always late to class, as there is traffic in I270. Just leave early man!
Sung Lee ENAE324 Expecting an A Anonymous 06/04/2023	In general, he is a nice caring guy that is always willing to help you and answer your questions at any time of the day. But I feel his teaching of this class was extremely subpar. In lectures he literally writes word of word his lecture notes which he gives you at the start of the class on the board. Due to this after the first few weeks only about 20 of the 85 students in the class actually showed up to lecture. The material in this class is pretty complex and there will end up being a couple of hundred slides that he could pull material from. The class is more of a just do the math instead of understanding why and when you would actually use each concept. The exams are pretty brutal despite being open note and online. There was two exams, the first one had an average of 49% and the final had an average of 36%. He doesn't do partial credit so if you mess up the first part and that impacts other parts of the question you get no points even if you did the right process. The exams only make of 20% of the class which is the only saving grace. The rest of the 80% is just from homework. With only 9 homeworks each one is about 7.3% which makes each one crucial to your grade. You get a redo on ones that involve calculations which is nice and makes the initial submission less stressful. You should be able to get 90%+ on most of them if you understand the material well. I got 98% on the homeworks and averaged 56% on the exams which sneaked me a 90% due to the weird grade model. This class is very easy to get a B in since if you do well on the homeworks you can bomb both exams and be fine no problem. I would not recommend taking this class with him if you actually want to understand the ideas around the material.
Olivier Bauchau ENAE324 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/24/2022	This class was relatively straightforward and a continuation of ENES220. The most significant difference between the two was the application of differential equations and the more advanced theories discussed in this class. Dr. Bauchau presented the information for this class in a confusing way, and his book, which he used as a resource, was the same way. Going to class and completing the homework and practice problems will give a sufficient understanding. The class also had a significant curve at the end, with the ELMS grade of C+ turning into an A- for the final grade.
Olivier Bauchau ENAE324 Anonymous 05/19/2022	Dr. Bauchau's lectures, homework, and exams are all presented a bit oddly. The course jumps around from lecture to lecture, and Bauchau will often repeat himself, go off on tangents, and answer questions with more theory than practical answers, leaving students to muddle through solving the problems he writes. His book is almost as confusing, with the solution process often missing important steps for students who haven't studied the topic before. Most of the exam questions are written in a confusing description of a simple scenario, and will at times address topics that aren't well discussed in the books or in class. This isn't bad in itself, except the lack of and concrete procedure for solving any problems results in an inferior comprehension of the class. Once you figure out how to learn this content yourself, it isn't a bad class and Bauchau isn't a bad teacher, but he certainly wouldn't be my first choice of professor for this class with an option.
Mary Bowden ENAE324 Anonymous 05/02/2022	Dr. Bowden is one of the most caring professors in all of aero. She always makes fun of 432 and understands the struggles we are going through in relation to the course load of other classes. While she tends to be a little slow with uploading files or grading exams/homework, she will always try and be prompt with emails and answer any questions. If you go to her office hours, she genuinely helps you out a lot with the homework or practice exams and guides you to the right direction every time.
Mary Bowden ENAE324 Anonymous 04/28/2020	Honestly one of the best professors in the Aerospace Department at UMD. She genuinely cares for all her students and will make a sincere effort to ensure that all of her students can succeed in the course. Although lectures often have very few notes associated with it, you still end up understanding most of it due to her teaching style. Whether the class is ENES102 or ENAE324 she is a wonderful professor and would recommend taking her.
Mary Bowden ENAE324 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/15/2013	She's an excellent professor and an excellent person, I honestly don't have the patience to say enough good things about her. She's very understanding, very knowledgeable, personable, and explains things in a way that is easy to digest. I'm personally going aero track, but this professor makes me rethink "If all professors in space track are this awesome maybe I should reconsider...." Anyway, she's awesome and the only thing you'll regret is NOT taking her for you class (be it for statics, mechanics, whatever). Also, its fun to count the number of times she says "standby" during class haha
Mary Bowden ENAE324 Expecting an A fiddlerkrt 06/03/2011	Excellent professor. Her teaching style is a little bizarre and it takes a while to get used to. She writes very little on the board, but everything she writes is normally very important so try to pay attention. Exams/quizzes were always very fair and straightforward.
Sangbok Lee ENAE324 Expecting an A a778999 05/18/2010	Dr. Lee taught the second half of the class. The material in this half was really straightforward and lecture notes are posted on Blackboard. He literally prints out the pdfs and copies it on the board verbatim in lecture so showing up is a waste of your time. I skipped/slept through the last two weeks of class (8 hours of lecture) and just taught myself the stuff I missed the day before the final and still did fine.

Benjamin Silbaugh
ENAE324

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
06/02/2025

Based on the reviews I saw before taking ENAE324, I thought this class would be a disaster. In reality, he's a really well-spoken lecturer who talks us through all the content in a way that makes sense (mostly). I thought the derivations were helpful for gaining a deeper understanding of the material and understanding how to do the homework. You are expected to do more than just memorize formulas and answer based on patterns, which makes it feel like you're actually learning something relevant to your career rather than just plugging and chugging to get a degree. That said, it felt like there was not enough resources provided for most people to succeed. While he was helpful in office hours, I stopped being able to go to office hours due to other obligations, so I was left going through the lecture notes (if he had posted them, which he often didn't in a reasonable amount of time) or trying my best to google my problems to see if I could find an external reference source as my only ways of getting homework/conceptual help. Since the class is a weird mishmash of different topics, it was really hard to find reliable reference sources that addressed my questions. He appeared to be in the process of making more in-depth, typed-up lecture notes, but he stopped posting those after he got through the fourth week's content, which meant there was no good reference material for the class. That was especially problematic when it came time to study for the exams (which are each worth 35% of your final grade) since the only easily-available practices problems are the homework problems. He could be a worse teacher, but he could also be a better one in some easily-achievable ways, so 3 stars it is. An additional warning: you are expected to have a good understanding of multivariable calculus and linear algebra. Do not take ENAE324 unless you have already taken those classes.

Sung Lee
ENAE324

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/25/2025

Posts his very complete lecture notes in advance. Very flexible with office hours (almost any time on any weekday), and helpful in them. Grading breakup was very lenient, 50% hw, 40% quiz, 10% final. Homeworks were straightforward and short. Would be perfect, but unfortunately he grades with zero partial credit, answers must be numerically perfect: if you get part A of a question wrong, the rest will likely be marked wrong.

Benjamin Silbaugh
ENAE324

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/19/2025

This class could be good if there was a proper textbook or somewhere to get the essential course content from. Every single document (digital whiteboard lecture notes, homework solutions, etc) published by him has at least one typo in a critical step of the solution, derivation, or equation. It's not uncommon for him to write down a slightly incorrect equation and explain why this incorrect equation makes sense, and then if someone points out it's wrong, then he'll scramble to fix it and move on. This makes learning 10x more difficult since you are already confused about the difficult content, but you can't even trust the instructor's notes which are supposed to be correct and referenced like the gospel for a challenging course. He always says he will post solutions, typed lecture notes, or other actions, and describes it as "his only project for the day", but will end up not doing it for the next 2 weeks or never. It's like he has a 1 hour time limit on how much time he devotes to this class outside of lecture. He will also never ever fix mistakes in any published documents. The internet is useless for this class. The homeworks feel like banging my head against a wall for hours, and contradict what I've learned in ENES102 and ENES220. His homeworks depress me so much because the lack of learning material is truly egregious. It's like training a baby to ride a bike. The beginning of this course is a brutal introduction to tensors and tensor algebra which demoralizes everyone before we even get to the main content of the course. He also cancels office hours randomly at will. He canceled them the week of the midterm since there was no homework, maybe he forgot there was a midterm that week? He is basically unreachable outside of class because he doesn't respond to emails. He is rarely, if ever, in his office. Any email over 1-2 sentences that asks too much of him will never get a response. Take this with him at your own risk, your mental health and passion for engineering will suffer. This class tarnishes the reputation of the aero major. 0 stars if possible. He also fails people.

Benjamin Silbaugh
ENAE324

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/18/2025

Doesn't go over anything useful in lecture, just derives everything. The homework is way too hard for this class and it's not completion. Had to search up most of how to even do the questions. Useful in office hours. Would not recommend at all taking with Silbaugh.

Sung Lee
ENAE324

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/20/2024

The guy is nice, and has a pretty wonderful grading structure for this class. 70% homework, 20% quizzes, and 10% final. The homeworks are basically free as he always gives you a redo for full credit, which means that the class is a guaranteed pass as long as you do the bare minimum. The quizzes were hit or miss with some of them being impossible to completely in the given time, but Lee ended up dropping the particularly egregious ones from the grade so it didn’t matter. Not a bad professor or class all things considered, but I would recommend you take this in your sophmore year if possible do that you don’t have to do this alongside 432

Benjamin Silbaugh
ENAE324

Expecting a D+
Anonymous
05/15/2024

Poor lecturer, harsh exam policies, creates homeworks that even the TA actively struggles to understand, and is overall very disorganized. He is clearly knowledgeable about the subject material, but his methods of assessing that material and the grade distribution make it difficult to come back from the smallest misstep. Furthermore, homework solutions even include mistakes, which calls into question how harshly he should be grading homeworks.

Benjamin Silbaugh
ENAE324

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/01/2024

Dr. Silbaugh's structures course has to be one of the worst I have ever taken at this school. His lectures are nonsensical and rely heavily on theory and "indicial notation," making the lectures unreadable. Throughout the early parts of the course, he kept encouraging us, saying that things will all come into focus; nothing ever came into focus for this class. I've taken hard classes but usually the work you put in helps you learn the course material. In this course, no matter how hard you work, you will not understand anything other than a Rank II tensor.

Benjamin Silbaugh
ENAE324

Expecting a B
Anonymous
04/22/2024

He sucks…. That should be more than enough to explain. All his lectures are nonsensical handwaving, doesn’t help with the homework and all he talks about is indicial notation and how it is “relevant” in the industry. Always late to class, as there is traffic in I270. Just leave early man!

Sung Lee
ENAE324

Expecting an A
Anonymous
06/04/2023

In general, he is a nice caring guy that is always willing to help you and answer your questions at any time of the day. But I feel his teaching of this class was extremely subpar. In lectures he literally writes word of word his lecture notes which he gives you at the start of the class on the board. Due to this after the first few weeks only about 20 of the 85 students in the class actually showed up to lecture. The material in this class is pretty complex and there will end up being a couple of hundred slides that he could pull material from. The class is more of a just do the math instead of understanding why and when you would actually use each concept. The exams are pretty brutal despite being open note and online. There was two exams, the first one had an average of 49% and the final had an average of 36%. He doesn't do partial credit so if you mess up the first part and that impacts other parts of the question you get no points even if you did the right process. The exams only make of 20% of the class which is the only saving grace. The rest of the 80% is just from homework. With only 9 homeworks each one is about 7.3% which makes each one crucial to your grade. You get a redo on ones that involve calculations which is nice and makes the initial submission less stressful. You should be able to get 90%+ on most of them if you understand the material well. I got 98% on the homeworks and averaged 56% on the exams which sneaked me a 90% due to the weird grade model. This class is very easy to get a B in since if you do well on the homeworks you can bomb both exams and be fine no problem. I would not recommend taking this class with him if you actually want to understand the ideas around the material.

Olivier Bauchau
ENAE324

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/24/2022

This class was relatively straightforward and a continuation of ENES220. The most significant difference between the two was the application of differential equations and the more advanced theories discussed in this class. Dr. Bauchau presented the information for this class in a confusing way, and his book, which he used as a resource, was the same way. Going to class and completing the homework and practice problems will give a sufficient understanding. The class also had a significant curve at the end, with the ELMS grade of C+ turning into an A- for the final grade.

Olivier Bauchau
ENAE324

Anonymous
05/19/2022

Dr. Bauchau's lectures, homework, and exams are all presented a bit oddly. The course jumps around from lecture to lecture, and Bauchau will often repeat himself, go off on tangents, and answer questions with more theory than practical answers, leaving students to muddle through solving the problems he writes. His book is almost as confusing, with the solution process often missing important steps for students who haven't studied the topic before. Most of the exam questions are written in a confusing description of a simple scenario, and will at times address topics that aren't well discussed in the books or in class. This isn't bad in itself, except the lack of and concrete procedure for solving any problems results in an inferior comprehension of the class. Once you figure out how to learn this content yourself, it isn't a bad class and Bauchau isn't a bad teacher, but he certainly wouldn't be my first choice of professor for this class with an option.

Mary Bowden
ENAE324

Anonymous
05/02/2022

Dr. Bowden is one of the most caring professors in all of aero. She always makes fun of 432 and understands the struggles we are going through in relation to the course load of other classes. While she tends to be a little slow with uploading files or grading exams/homework, she will always try and be prompt with emails and answer any questions. If you go to her office hours, she genuinely helps you out a lot with the homework or practice exams and guides you to the right direction every time.

Mary Bowden
ENAE324

Anonymous
04/28/2020

Honestly one of the best professors in the Aerospace Department at UMD. She genuinely cares for all her students and will make a sincere effort to ensure that all of her students can succeed in the course. Although lectures often have very few notes associated with it, you still end up understanding most of it due to her teaching style. Whether the class is ENES102 or ENAE324 she is a wonderful professor and would recommend taking her.

Mary Bowden
ENAE324

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/15/2013

She's an excellent professor and an excellent person, I honestly don't have the patience to say enough good things about her. She's very understanding, very knowledgeable, personable, and explains things in a way that is easy to digest. I'm personally going aero track, but this professor makes me rethink "If all professors in space track are this awesome maybe I should reconsider...." Anyway, she's awesome and the only thing you'll regret is NOT taking her for you class (be it for statics, mechanics, whatever). Also, its fun to count the number of times she says "standby" during class haha

Mary Bowden
ENAE324

Expecting an A
fiddlerkrt
06/03/2011

Excellent professor. Her teaching style is a little bizarre and it takes a while to get used to. She writes very little on the board, but everything she writes is normally very important so try to pay attention. Exams/quizzes were always very fair and straightforward.

Sangbok Lee
ENAE324

Expecting an A
a778999
05/18/2010

Dr. Lee taught the second half of the class. The material in this half was really straightforward and lecture notes are posted on Blackboard. He literally prints out the pdfs and copies it on the board verbatim in lecture so showing up is a waste of your time. I skipped/slept through the last two weeks of class (8 hours of lecture) and just taught myself the stuff I missed the day before the final and still did fine.

Reviews for ENAE324