Reviews for ENEE313

Information Review
Agisilaos Iliadis
ENEE313

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
05/09/2023
Trash professor; illegible chicken-scratch handwriting; lazy slob (shows up late to every other lecture); also likes to make fun of students by deriving some messy equation then saying "come on guys, this is easy"; also after every other sentence he goes like "yEaH?" as an annoying effort to access the understanding of a concept; he doesn't provide equations for exams and makes us memorize them all. Avoid at all costs.
Agisilaos Iliadis
ENEE313

Expecting a C
Anonymous
04/04/2023
Honestly, not sure why he gets so much hate. He was funny and really not that bad. I mean "come on guys". If you attempt the class, you're basically guaranteed to pass with him, but getting an A is extremely difficult.
Agisilaos Iliadis
ENEE313

Expecting a B
Anonymous
01/24/2023
313 with Iliadis is the definition of a mid course. Iliadis as a professor is neither amazing nor horrible, but his teaching style leans more towards the negative end of the spectrum. His lectures mostly consisted of him info dumping information in long lines of text or writing out long derivations, many of which were never touched again. He barely does practice problems in his lectures, so if you want to work through problems, you need to go to your discussion section and work with your TA. Iliadis also has a tendency of sometimes making rude and/or irrational comments towards students. His normal routine is to show up right on-time to 10 mins late, so class never starts on time. It was so bad that he showed up 10 minutes to the final exam. He asks for questions on the current content at the beginning of class, but most of his responses consist of either "you should be reading the textbook" or "you learned that in middle school." Regardless of his attitude during class, the workload for 313 is rather light. We had around 6 HWs throughout the semester and only 1 quiz (for some reason). The HWs were not very time-consuming, though some of the content didn't relate to the content covered in class. Exams consisted of memorizing every equation from the recommended chapters and hoping that you memorized the right ones. He gives no other study preparation, so you have to find other means of studying outside of his class. Exams consisted of 20% multiple choice questions and 3 free response questions that made up the other 80% of the exam. Grading was pretty lenient, but getting any points back after getting your exam graded is very difficult. As a comedic last note, we never received our grade for our final exam. He uploaded our final grades to Testudo without releasing them. However, it appeared that he curved the class quite modestly. This would definitely be a 1-star review if it weren't for the fact that he makes it easy to pass the class. I cannot recommend that you take him, but it is not the end of the world if you have to take him. You probably won't learn much, but you will at least check another class off of your list. There's an added bonus that you'll be able to laugh about your experience with your friends once you finish his course.
Agisilaos Iliadis
ENEE313

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
01/09/2023
I honestly thought Iliadis was alright compared to the other reviews. To be fair, he can definitely be rude, such as during exams he would randomly be like "this exam is easy guys, why is it taking so long??" and when I was the last person to turn the exam in, he would go "why are you last?" In addition, he would begin every lecture asking if we had any questions, and either get annoyed if we didn't have any, or would get annoyed if the questions were "too simple." His exams were also all derivation, and we were given no equation sheet, so you just had to hope that you memorized the right derivations and formulas or you were immediately down at least 30%. However, I always thought his lectures were very good and easy to follow, and he would upload his notes after every class. If you approached him individually, I always found that he was much more respectful and willing to answer questions, which he knew the course content very well. He also curved the class very heavily, which was a nice bonus after the not great exam averages. The homework was also very easy, with the textbook containing all the examples needed to complete it. If you are able to put in the effort in the course and study on your own time, you will be fine, otherwise you still might be okay with the curve. Definitely look at the review from 12/25/2019, as their outline is accurate and will help you do well in this class.
Danilo Romero
ENEE313

Expecting a C
Anonymous
10/01/2022
hard exam and homework problem. Late homework grade and solution. lecture is okay
Kevin Daniels
ENEE313

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/25/2021
He really cares about his student's understanding and is always super helpful answering questions. He is willing to work with students if they can't make a deadline and makes sure you aren't stressed out in his class. Personally, however, I sometimes had trouble following his lectures which he does from slides. He tends to cram his slides with a lot of information without the best explanations of concepts at times. However I would still say overall his lectures are good and he more than makes up for it with his enthusiasm for the subject and willingness to work with students. The class had many opportunities for extra credit, with a purely extra credit quiz every week, and an optional extra credit term paper. Homework's were very difficult but graded on completion. Tests are fair and based on the weekly quizzes (not the difficult homework) with a formula sheet provided. Overall a great professor who cares more about practical knowledge for careers in the field than extremely difficult content just to bog you down. Highly recommend.
Danilo Romero
ENEE313

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/06/2021
Learned a lot about 313 topics. His lectures and exams are very dense, however. Very generous grading scale!
Agisilaos Iliadis
ENEE313

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/17/2021
Terrible professor and does not want to teach. Also a rude person.
Neil Goldsman
ENEE313

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/15/2021
Goldsman is in general a solid teacher and a very nice guy. His homework and CAD assignments (while lengthy) helped with learning the material well. His exams were decently straightforward, without any confusing or gotcha questions. One gripe I had about the exams was that they were quite long, so I ended up taking up almost all of the allotted time. I appreciated that he got rid of the final exam this semester and made the final assignment a short MOSFET CAD assignment instead. His handwriting is mostly readable, but gets worse over the course of the lecture as he begins to up the pace of his writing. And as others have noted, he sometimes says the correct thing while writing something else on the board. But he would generally fix it promptly if someone brought it up. The pacing of the lectures was mostly followable, but he would sometimes think that he was explaining things too slowly and try to speed things up. Not many people agreed that he was going too slowly, so we were able to keep his pacing manageable.
Agisilaos Iliadis
ENEE313

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/25/2019
First thing you should know about Illiadis is that he has no desire to teach. He opens each lecture by asking if any students have questions from the current chapter (as if anyone has even looked at the textbook) and structures his lectures off of random tangents that are not cohesive whatsoever. Despite this approach to teaching, you can get an A in this class. 1. You need to go lecture. Although lecture seems useless, he drops a lot of key information that will come up on exams/quizzes. He hints to potential topics for free responses, multiple choice questions, and will state specific page numbers that are important. 2. You need to memorize equations and their derivations. Leading up to a midterm he will emphasize a lot of topics that you should know VERY well. He is explicit about which derivations you should know so there are no surprises, but make sure can explain every step. 3. Read the textbook. The textbook for this class is painful, but it is critical for the multiple choice. You'll be surprised by the random information you'll retain just by skimming over the textbook once. However, the multiple choice is not the end all be all. It's usually about 15-20% of each midterm and the class is curved heavily. He's also emphasized topics in class that I've seen come up in the multiple choice. 4. The numerical problems are very straight forward. Make sure you redo your homeworks and look over the example problems for each chapter. The numerical problem (singular) will be very similar to something you've seen before. Overall, this class is not terrible if you play your cards right. The homework is super manageable, typically 4-5 problems per homework. I think we had 6 assignments over the course of the whole semester.
Agisilaos Iliadis
ENEE313

Anonymous
12/21/2019
Very, very few assignments to be graded off of. Lecture was very hard to follow and almost useless, learned almost nothing from it. Does not return your exams and takes quite a long time to grade them. Speaking of exams, good luck, as he does not release practice exams and they are nothing like the homework. No idea what my grade will be in the course, as he has not provided any criteria for curving whatsoever. Exam averages were 58% and 72% respectively. Final exam still has not been graded, over a week later. 2 stars instead of 1 because the workload was very light.
Danilo Romero
ENEE313

Anonymous
06/10/2019
Romero is a fair professor. You will definitely learn a lot out from his class, as his HW assignments are quite tricky. Lectures are not that useful as they focus on long derivations more than problem solving. For our class, exam questions were similar to past midterm he posted, except that a few questions had twists that you had to figure out. These twists were essentially included to test your understanding of the material. Good thing is the exams are open notebook.
Agisilaos Iliadis
ENEE313

Anonymous
05/31/2019
Awful professor. I don't think anyone learned a single thing during lecture. Need to learn everything from the textbook, but still go to lecture because it helps for the exams. He was quite arrogant, and unresponsive to student needs.
Agisilaos Iliadis
ENEE313

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/20/2018
Not a fan. Maybe it was the content, but I couldn't stay engaged in the lectures. He couldn't keep straight when homework was due and the exams (extremely formula heavy) did not allow formula sheets. I spent more time making sure I knew the equations than understanding the premise of the class. I can't recommend Iliadis for 313, take Daniels if he is available.
Danilo Romero
ENEE313

nbadami
05/20/2016
*****THIS REVIEW IS FOR ROMERO'S 313 CLASS***** I'd give Romero a 3.5 if I could, but that unfortunately is not an option. I've heard for many other classes, Romero can be a pretty bad professor, but for 313 he honestly wasn't that bad. In my class, he switched between giving us lecture slides and actually using the board to give notes, and he was pretty good at both. The examples he gave in class were very similar to exam problems, and his lecture slides were actually very detailed. His exams are also pretty fair and there was a pretty generous curve (85 for an A-). He also decided to drop two of our lowest homework grades at the end of the semester, something that was not originally on the syllabus, to help boost grades, so its actually pretty easy to do well in his class. His homeworks can be quite difficult to solve, and the textbooks he recommends are practically useless in most cases. I would try and find a different textbook than the ones he recommends since if you can't figure out a homework based on his notes/lecture slides, you're basically screwed. He is also pretty nice about exams. Before our first midterm, he personally led each discussion section to take questions from students about the exam. He also pushed our second exam back 2 weeks because students said it would help them prepare. Overall, I would recommend Romero for 313.
Timothy Horiuchi
ENEE313

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/26/2012
The class as a whole wasn't bad, even though device physics isn't really my area of interest. Homework assignments were usually pretty tough, but could be figured out by closely reviewing the textbook or lectures notes. The exams were also tough, but he lets you bring a double-sided sheet of notes, which is more useful as a study tool than for actually relying on during the test. In fact, he tends to give you most, if not all, of the equations that you will need, you just need to figure out how to apply them. His grading scale is laid out in the syllabus, but he will curve individual exams if the class average is really low. Overall, I'd recommend Dr. Horiuchi.
Martin Peckerar
ENEE313

Anonymous
09/03/2012
Anyone calling him a douchebag because his lecture is too hard to follow, may got to look in the mirror and realize that the problem isn't with the professor. Peckerar comes to class without notes because he is smart, intelligent, and knows the course plan by heart. If he is lazy, he would have reused a powerpoint presentation and gave you the same exam from previous years. Peckerar is absolutely the most passionate professor in the ECE who actually cares about his students. Two short anecdotes about Peckerar. I once asked him my grade in the hall way when he was ready to go back home. He plopped down on the hall way floor to open up his labtop in order to look up my grade for me. He once had a medical issue in front of the class while teaching. He asked us to give him 5 min break while he knelt on the floor. He then proceeded to finish the lecture sitting on a chair. Weather his handwritting is legible or not, or at what level he teaches his class, his is not a bad professor and definitely not a douchebag. It should be us, students, to step up our game when professors have a higher expectation of us.
Martin Peckerar
ENEE313

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/26/2011
Prof Peckerar is not a bad professor. His handwriting isn't that messy..he just goes through the material very quickly. In general if you want to well in the class you need to relatively proactive. The textbook for the most part is useless, you need to actually go in for office hours and you need to use the internet to learn the materials. If you're someone who doesn't like to go to class and you don't like keeping up with the class as it goes along...then don't take him.
Martin Peckerar
ENEE313

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/17/2011
This guy's definitely not as bad as people make him out to be. His class is very difficult, no doubt about it but he's most certainly not a bad professor. It just depends what you're looking for. Cons: Studying the book, doing homework and practicing for 30 hours may still not be enough to (without the curve) get you an A. Let's face it, the man ideally wants you to know everything. Also, I can guarantee you that he NEVER repeats exam questions. Every exam is brand new, with at least one new twist/situation or never-before-seen scenario that can seriously mess with your head. Pros: Hard test = Low average = HUGE CURVE, a famous EE equation. It's no different here. Got an A without ever actually getting an A on an exam. His curve is pretty sweet: a B- if you're at the average (which is quite often a 45-50%). Moreover, he puts you at a graduate school level. Yes, that seems like it should be a con but again, you need to figure out what you want. Bottom line is you must give yourself A LOT OF TIME otherwise you'll just find a C on testudo and come rage on ourumd. To put it bluntly: 15-18 cr. workload = No time = Iliadis 12-14 cr. workload = some time = Peckerar
Agisilaos Iliadis
ENEE313

Anonymous
04/11/2011
I stand by most of the comments the other reviewers wrote, but I'll add one thing that may or may not discourage people from taking a class with this professor. I recently received a test back in this class, and doubted some of the point penalties I got on a few of the problems. When I asked him what I should have done to get full credit on one problem, he looked at my answer and said, (his words, not mine), "This is bull-s***." I was a little surprised, since I understand what "B.S.-ing" an answer means, and this was not a B.S. answer. I proceeded to try and figure out why he didn't agree with my answer, but I'm just as clueless as I was before. I consider myself a good student, and I get that I'm not going to have the grades I want all the time, but I still don't appreciate my hard work on a test being referred to as "bull-s***". I will try very hard to avoid taking any more classes from this professor, and I will personally recommend that other students avoid this professor as well.
Neil Goldsman
ENEE313

Expecting an A
mcraton
04/08/2010
I had goldsman for 307 and 313. He is pretty reasonable about moving things around and stuff if there are conflicting tests in other classes or anything like that. Sometimes it is hard to keep up in lecture because he makes a lot of little mistakes when writing things down (even while he explains them correctly) He does not speak in a cryptic way like out of a textbook and is not bad at explaining concepts. he makes an effort to learn peoples names that participate or whatever which is nice. Tests are not that bad, they are for the most part very straightforward and he doesnt try to trick you or anything. for 307 his lectures didnt keep up with the labs so i stopped going because he was lecturing on the stuff we had learned the week before, but hey. its a lab. its mostly on you to figure it all out anyways. it did help that i had an excellent TA for both 307 and 313.
Timothy Horiuchi
ENEE313

Expecting an A
timmycake
02/01/2010
they dont call him tiny tim for nothin!