ENEE382 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Howard Milchberg ENEE382 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/23/2025	Dr. Milchberg is probably the best EE professor I’ve had. He’s an extremely engaging and humorous lecturer. His lectures are thorough and he works plenty of examples in class that are very similar to the homeworks. The class is naturally very derivation heavy, but Milchberg also emphasizes the concepts that really help to truly understand the material. The assignments are not too difficult and are bearable if you start on them early since he gives about 1.5 to 2 weeks per assignment. The exams are challenging and will force you to truly learn the material. He is very approachable and truly cares about the success of his students. Definitely take Milchberg!
Cheng Gong ENEE382 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/19/2025	If you can teach yourself complex subjects on your own without any help from professors, then you can survive this class. To put things into perspective, I would say I am a self learner, in fact self learning engineering topics and applying them to real engineering projects is what I do in my free time (real engineering is much more enjoyable than what you learn on chalkboards, but unfortunately it is so unengaging and confusing when taught in most classrooms, especially Gongs, which I will talk about). Despite that, I had trouble figuring out what needed to be learnt due to Gong's disorganized lectures, and course structure, which undermines the entire idea of self learning. So what could I do? I could go into lectures, but it would not be of any use, and perhaps a detriment to your understanding of the content. Spending time reading the textbook and practicing the concepts with actually legible writing and pictures (unlike what Gong has on his slides) would be a better use of your time rather than going into lectures. With electromagnetics, you almost need to be able to visualize the calc 3 concepts which would then be applied to physics concepts, but you won't get much of that in lecture. The textbook is far better at visualizing and teaching those concepts. I would actually say that the one good thing Gong has done was give us a list of 4 different textbooks that he draws his lectures from, and so after doing some research, I found that Nathan Ida's Engineering Electromagnetics Third Edition textbook was the best based on online reviews (link below). It covers everything from vector calculus (Calc 3) and introduces concepts in a simple manner, and of course, it has practice problems with answers. For poor souls taking ENEE382 with Gong: https://weblibrary.mila.edu.my/upload/ebook/engineering/2015_Book_EngineeringElectromagnetics.pdf So in terms of Gong's teaching, it seems like he does research and just has to teach so that he can stay employed at UMD. Overall, his teaching is confusing which greatly reduces students' abilities to learn this topic, unengaging and disorganized so that even if you can learn on your own, you won't know what to learn. It's a shame because really do enjoy engineering, but this class has taken some of the color out of it, until I get back to doing real engineering. Now, onto his exams. One big thing is that you will not know what to expect on his exams. You will also not be given useful study materials (which in this case comprise of basic home works that do not reinforce the concepts and some practice problems by the TA which are most likely AI generated. More on the TA later). So you are left with relying on the textbook. His exams aren't necessarily hard in terms of content related to electromagnetics, but he makes it much harder than it should be, as with most things in his class. However, there could be a problem or two on the midterms that come out of left field, such as deriving the electric potential approximation for an electric dipole at a point in space. This is an engineering class, where we should be taking physics concepts and applying them engineering related scenarios. However, this class somehow became more of a pure physics course than an actual pure physics course like PHYS260. We did not need to derive equations in my PHYS260 class on exams, we just applied them (like an engineer would and should, after all, that's why physicists and engineers are separate professions). In terms of the TA, she was nice and tried to help as best she could, but personally, I only went to one of the discussion sessions as I found self learning to be more effective. I've heard that she was overworked by Gong so understandably, she would not be able to create and provide answers to many practice problems for exam review for example. It also seems like she is the one that writes and grades the midterms (but not the final). As I've said before, the assignments do not help to reinforce concepts. Specifically, they give you busy work like writing a paragraph about Maxwell's equations, drawing graphs that you can just copy from the slides/textbook. I believe there were around 2 assignments (out of 7 for the entire semester) that were physics related, but that's it. In PHYS260, we'd have weekly homeworks on ExpertTA (hope I didn't cause any negative flashbacks) that would actually reinforce the concept simply by the volume of practice you'd get. Overall, I came out of this class being surprised at how one can learn an advanced topic like engineering electromagnetics without a university professor (it's almost like we are paying thousands to end up teaching ourselves using textbooks and online resources). I would not recommend this professor if you actually want to be taught by someone other than yourself and learn something from this class. If you want to see what kind of "real engineering" I do in my free time as a reference to the above, you can check out my youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTinkeringTechie (I know, shameless plug).
Cheng Gong ENEE382 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/19/2025	The way this class is set up makes it hard to succeed. Lectures: He almost always he goes off topic, never completing the slides he has prepared, or he finishes a 75 minute lecture in 50 minutes- no in between. Although he posts lecture slides, they are all just screenshots of a low quality textbook, making them obsolete. Most people end up skipping lecture by week 3, but if you do go sometimes there are helpful bits of information (such as vague suggestions on exam content or the possibility of a curve). He does do some work on the board, but the marker was so incredibly dry that I could barely see it sitting in the front row, and his derivations were unclear and unhelpful to learn content. Homeworks: We only had 7 homeworks this semester, leaving all students feeling unprepared for midterms and now the final exam, since there has only been 1 homework between midterm #2 and the final, which was redrawing graphs all posted on the slides, so no learning was done or content reinforcement. Also, the first homework wasn't even math related, it was explaining "Maxwells contributions to the studies of electromagnetics", and many students did poorly because it was such a subjective assignment. Exams: Downright dumb. 100% of midterm 1 was just Calc 3 vector review, which is fine, but really didn't feel like I was learning anything new in the class. The worst part of midterm 1 was that they had said no physics knowledge would be needed, and they affirmed that multiple times in discussion in the review lecture, but 16/100 points was just writing Maxwells equations in integral and differential forms. When asked about this, both Gong and the TA argued that it was not "physics knowledge" since we weren't using the equations, but I would argue knowing those equations counts as physics knowledge, and little to know partial credit of course because there is only 1 correct way for each of those equations. Midterm 2 was just as bad. Once again, it felt like we learned little new content, and the practice content done in discussion/sample exam did not match the level of difficulty of the actual exam. The biggest qualm for everyone was a question regarding image charges, but in all of lecture and discussion we only did one boundary, thus when given a 2 boundary problem on the exam, 95% of people were guessing on how to correctly do the problem. Again, the partial credit wasn't generous, with a 60 average. It was not like the exam problems were awfully difficult- rather we had no effective way to prepare for them thus most did badly. Also, midterm 1 took an entire month to grade, in a class of 26 students, and midterm 2 also 3 weeks, which was frustrating because the exam was happening just before the end of the withdrawal period. I have yet to take the final, but all instructions have been vague for preparation: NO previous exams as practice and the only information we were given in 5 T/F questions and 5 short answer questions on ANY of the content in the syllabus, despite not actually learning everything in the syllabus. He also didn't inform the TA of content on the exam, so she could not even prepare effective discussion material for the review, just general review of previous lectures. Office hours/Emails: I had only attempted to go to office hours a couple times, but both times he was not in his office. I knocked multiple times, and waited outside for 20 minutes, but no dice. No information or explanation either. As for emails, he specifically stated in class that he saw them and just "forgot to respond", and will either address it in class vaguely or you will never get an answer for your questions. The most effective means of communication was talking to the TA and having her relay information back to you. TA: Overall, the TA was the best part of this course. She seemed nice, and her work in discussion was very clear, by far where I did the most learning, but her work simply did not prepare us for exams. Often times the discussion content would lag behind our already lagging lecture, leading to a dissonance in what we were learning, review, and the homeworks. Also, every one of the practice problems she did were generated by ChatGPT. Every. One. This includes the 18 pages of review problems she gave us, many of which had contradictions and were entirely unhelpful besides giving a weak guide of what may be exam content. I have heard she is incredibly overworked by Gong, and she deserves grace, but it was frustrating that we never were truly prepared for exams despite going to discussion twice a week. Also, her grading rubric did not appear to make sense, simply writing question marks rather than explaining what we did wrong. Overall, if you can take this class with literally anyone else, I would say you gotta do it. I feel like I have learned very little AND my gpa is suffering for it, and this is frustrating since this is part of a field I am interested in. You neither learn nor score well, so there is no benefit in taking the course with him. You can succeed in Gong's class, but only by an immense amount of self teaching most students do not have the time for. I was in 6+ classes this semester, only someone in maybe 4 with no other commitments could have the time for it. Gong is a prime example of how there are professors who are smart in their work, but awful at teaching. If you can't get the class with anyone else, I would try to take it in the summer, or push it off a semester if you can.
Cheng Gong ENEE382 Anonymous 05/17/2025	If there was an option to give 1.5/5 stars, I would give that. Where do I even begin? The only reason I'm giving 1.5 stars and not 1 star is because Professor Gong and the TA were pretty nice people, as you've probably seen in the other reviews. This is basically the only good thing I can say. This class by itself probably wouldn't have been extremely difficult, because it is just a specialization of PHYS260/PHYS270 (more 260 in my opinion), but Gong is a terrible lecturer. As other reviews have said, he goes on a 1hr 15min yapping session about loads of different topics "related" to his lecture slides, and you basically have 0 clue how to connect the dots or what point he is trying to get across. Lectures are disorganized, and basically every slide is a screenshot of theoretical formulas from some sort of textbook. You will leave lecture being more confused. And it's not just me: a lot of people I know (including me) started skipping lectures starting from the 2nd week of the semester because of how bad and useless they were (trust me, it makes no difference whether you go to lecture or not, as grades on exams and homework do not correlate with going to lecture). Whenever he writes something on the whiteboard, it is just theoretical nonsense or incomprehensible characters put together. One time, he literally was using a marker with no ink left, and, despite knowing this clearly because he could see nothing was coming out of the marker, HE STILL WAS USING IT. As far as exams go, good luck. In my opinion (not sure if this is 100% factual or if it changes from semester to semester), it seems like the TA writes the midterms (of which there are 2), while Professor Gong writes the final. The midterms were just pathetic, for the most part: we were told specifically there would be "no physics" on the first midterm, and the first question on midterm #1 is literally writing down all of Maxwell's Equations in Integral and Differential Form (we never even went over Differential Form, by the way). However, while the average was pretty decent for the first midterm (~75–80 ish, which doesn't really portray how annoying the first exam was - we were just lucky because it was just Calc III review), the second exam was on another level. The homework and review problems that the TA went over were nowhere near the level of difficulty of the second exam, which had concepts and specific knowledge you need to know that they never went over (like how the sum of image charges must equal 0???). There was also what was essentially a derivation question, even though we'd never done derivations in class. The average was a 61 for the second exam, unsurprisingly. Speaking of the TA, while she is nice as said before, she literally uses ChatGPT/AI to make review problems (it's really obvious) that don't even relate/have the same difficulty as exam problems (like I can't believe we're paying tuition just for the TA to use AI for review problems). Some of the discussion problems are useful, but very rarely. Also, the homework is completely useless (they're really easy) and does nothing in helping you prepare for exams. As I'm writing this, we're heading into the final, which - and this got me extremely pissed off - we had 0 review for: they literally told us we're not getting any practice for the final (which is cumulative) and to expect the ENTIRE SYLLABUS (like that is really helpful, lmao). The only things we have to help us for the final are the 2 midterms (which don't cover the new content), homeworks (which are completely useless), and review problems (which are also useless and written not even by the TA but AI). We have no choice really other than to use textbooks for practice. Also, there is some sort of curve which we have no clue about. As per Professor Gong's own words: "The grades will be curved. The curve is applied to the total points and not to individual tests." We also have 0 clue what the grading scale is to begin with. Overall, you will learn nothing out of this class and will leave even more confused than you were before. Please do not take Cheng Gong for any class. If you have no other choice, then take it in a different semester. P.S. He literally spent a lecture talking about his research and academic issues relating to the current administration, which, while I completely get, is frustrating because we didn’t come to lecture and pay tuition for him to talk about his own issues. TL;DR: Professor Gong is a nice person, but a terrible lecturer. His lectures are disorganized, confusing, and often unrelated to the course material, leading many students to skip class entirely. Exams are poorly aligned with homework and review problems, with unexpected content and difficulty spikes. The TA is kind but uses AI to generate review material that doesn’t match the exams. There's no final exam review, the curve is vague, and the grading scale is unclear. Overall, the class is frustrating, unhelpful, and not worth taking if you have other options.
Howard Milchberg ENEE382 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/31/2025	This professor was so good. Like wow, his assignments were so easy, and his exams were one-to-one to the homework. If you want a free A, go ahead and take this professor!
Patrick O'Shea ENEE382 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/17/2024	Absolutely great Professor, the way this class was structured that we didn't have any midterms instead we had 10 quizzes in which they were conducted almost every week which is wonderful because all you need to know for a quiz is what you learned that week/previous. Besides quizzes which was like 50% of our grade, he also had 10 homework assignments assigned which were due before the corresponding quiz and usually the homework assignments were harder than the quizzes which prepared you really well for the quiz. It was very common to have the same questions from the homework which made things more easier. Homework assignments were about 25% of our grade and were the ones I really had to put much time on. TAs were kinda harsh graders on the homework and quite the opposite on the quizzes which was great. The other 25% of our grade was the Final which was open note and the easiest final I took to date, questions mostly came from the homework assignments and 2 practice exams he gave us, there were 9 questions and he asked us to do 6 of them. Overall a fantastic professor don't look anywhere else if you are taking this class if you consider you are concerned about your grade. Also Im not sure he curved the final or the class but this is because almost everyone did well in the class. This class is a great class with not much workload if you want to take it with other harder classes like ENEE 324, 350, 322 ...
Patrick O'Shea ENEE382 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/18/2024	Great prof. Teaches concepts well and doesn't focus on the mathematics behind it. Only Quizzes with no exams besides the final. Do the HW and Quizzes and you will do well.
Wesley Lawson ENEE382 Expecting an A Anonymous 06/14/2024	Goated professor. This is the third time I have had Lawson (205 Spring 23, 200 Winter 24 and 382 Summer 24) and I can honestly say that if you actually go to class he is one of the best professors you can have for any of these 3 classes. I never went to 205, which resulted in a poor final grade, however he will tell you almost exactly what to expect on each and every quiz. There are no midterms in any of his classes, replaced by quizzes throughout the semester. If class attendance is bad, as it was in my 205 section, he will straight up give extra credit just for coming to class or answering basic questions. Final was very fair and he basically went over all the content on the final in lecture. He appreciates participation which I can respect and he is a fantastic professor to learn from. I don't find electromagnetics (382) very interesting as it is extremely physics based, however he makes it enjoyable and tries to relate real world examples from his many years in the field to course material. 10/10 would recommend.
Wesley Lawson ENEE382 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/23/2024	One of the few goated professors at UMD and kept it real with us. I will admit, ENEE382 is very challenging as I am not interested in electromagnetics, however, Lawson made it bearable for us. As this was only the 2nd semester of ENEE382's existence, I feel as if my review may be a bit biased in a positive way. Nonetheless, this was my experience with the course: Lawson followed his typical style of grading, 25% for HW, 25% for final, and 50% for weekly quizzes. The homework was typically 4 problems and very doable, as they were similar to the lecture slides. Weekly quizzes were not bad either, as they were based off of one problem from the previous homework assignment. Lastly, the final exam followed a similar format to previous exams he provided for us. The only con I would say is that Lawson is very soft spoken, which made it challenging to pay attention in class. Nonetheless, most of the material was abstract to me, so I feel that could have been the case for any professor. Overall, I enjoyed my experience in 382 due to Lawson teaching it and how he helped the class tremendously.

Howard Milchberg
ENEE382

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/23/2025

Dr. Milchberg is probably the best EE professor I’ve had. He’s an extremely engaging and humorous lecturer. His lectures are thorough and he works plenty of examples in class that are very similar to the homeworks. The class is naturally very derivation heavy, but Milchberg also emphasizes the concepts that really help to truly understand the material. The assignments are not too difficult and are bearable if you start on them early since he gives about 1.5 to 2 weeks per assignment. The exams are challenging and will force you to truly learn the material. He is very approachable and truly cares about the success of his students. Definitely take Milchberg!

Cheng Gong
ENEE382

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/19/2025

If you can teach yourself complex subjects on your own without any help from professors, then you can survive this class. To put things into perspective, I would say I am a self learner, in fact self learning engineering topics and applying them to real engineering projects is what I do in my free time (real engineering is much more enjoyable than what you learn on chalkboards, but unfortunately it is so unengaging and confusing when taught in most classrooms, especially Gongs, which I will talk about). Despite that, I had trouble figuring out what needed to be learnt due to Gong's disorganized lectures, and course structure, which undermines the entire idea of self learning. So what could I do? I could go into lectures, but it would not be of any use, and perhaps a detriment to your understanding of the content. Spending time reading the textbook and practicing the concepts with actually legible writing and pictures (unlike what Gong has on his slides) would be a better use of your time rather than going into lectures. With electromagnetics, you almost need to be able to visualize the calc 3 concepts which would then be applied to physics concepts, but you won't get much of that in lecture. The textbook is far better at visualizing and teaching those concepts. I would actually say that the one good thing Gong has done was give us a list of 4 different textbooks that he draws his lectures from, and so after doing some research, I found that Nathan Ida's Engineering Electromagnetics Third Edition textbook was the best based on online reviews (link below). It covers everything from vector calculus (Calc 3) and introduces concepts in a simple manner, and of course, it has practice problems with answers. For poor souls taking ENEE382 with Gong: https://weblibrary.mila.edu.my/upload/ebook/engineering/2015_Book_EngineeringElectromagnetics.pdf So in terms of Gong's teaching, it seems like he does research and just has to teach so that he can stay employed at UMD. Overall, his teaching is confusing which greatly reduces students' abilities to learn this topic, unengaging and disorganized so that even if you can learn on your own, you won't know what to learn. It's a shame because really do enjoy engineering, but this class has taken some of the color out of it, until I get back to doing real engineering. Now, onto his exams. One big thing is that you will not know what to expect on his exams. You will also not be given useful study materials (which in this case comprise of basic home works that do not reinforce the concepts and some practice problems by the TA which are most likely AI generated. More on the TA later). So you are left with relying on the textbook. His exams aren't necessarily hard in terms of content related to electromagnetics, but he makes it much harder than it should be, as with most things in his class. However, there could be a problem or two on the midterms that come out of left field, such as deriving the electric potential approximation for an electric dipole at a point in space. This is an engineering class, where we should be taking physics concepts and applying them engineering related scenarios. However, this class somehow became more of a pure physics course than an actual pure physics course like PHYS260. We did not need to derive equations in my PHYS260 class on exams, we just applied them (like an engineer would and should, after all, that's why physicists and engineers are separate professions). In terms of the TA, she was nice and tried to help as best she could, but personally, I only went to one of the discussion sessions as I found self learning to be more effective. I've heard that she was overworked by Gong so understandably, she would not be able to create and provide answers to many practice problems for exam review for example. It also seems like she is the one that writes and grades the midterms (but not the final). As I've said before, the assignments do not help to reinforce concepts. Specifically, they give you busy work like writing a paragraph about Maxwell's equations, drawing graphs that you can just copy from the slides/textbook. I believe there were around 2 assignments (out of 7 for the entire semester) that were physics related, but that's it. In PHYS260, we'd have weekly homeworks on ExpertTA (hope I didn't cause any negative flashbacks) that would actually reinforce the concept simply by the volume of practice you'd get. Overall, I came out of this class being surprised at how one can learn an advanced topic like engineering electromagnetics without a university professor (it's almost like we are paying thousands to end up teaching ourselves using textbooks and online resources). I would not recommend this professor if you actually want to be taught by someone other than yourself and learn something from this class. If you want to see what kind of "real engineering" I do in my free time as a reference to the above, you can check out my youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTinkeringTechie (I know, shameless plug).

Cheng Gong
ENEE382

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
05/19/2025

The way this class is set up makes it hard to succeed. Lectures: He almost always he goes off topic, never completing the slides he has prepared, or he finishes a 75 minute lecture in 50 minutes- no in between. Although he posts lecture slides, they are all just screenshots of a low quality textbook, making them obsolete. Most people end up skipping lecture by week 3, but if you do go sometimes there are helpful bits of information (such as vague suggestions on exam content or the possibility of a curve). He does do some work on the board, but the marker was so incredibly dry that I could barely see it sitting in the front row, and his derivations were unclear and unhelpful to learn content. Homeworks: We only had 7 homeworks this semester, leaving all students feeling unprepared for midterms and now the final exam, since there has only been 1 homework between midterm #2 and the final, which was redrawing graphs all posted on the slides, so no learning was done or content reinforcement. Also, the first homework wasn't even math related, it was explaining "Maxwells contributions to the studies of electromagnetics", and many students did poorly because it was such a subjective assignment. Exams: Downright dumb. 100% of midterm 1 was just Calc 3 vector review, which is fine, but really didn't feel like I was learning anything new in the class. The worst part of midterm 1 was that they had said *no* physics knowledge would be needed, and they affirmed that multiple times in discussion in the review lecture, but 16/100 points was just writing Maxwells equations in integral and differential forms. When asked about this, both Gong and the TA argued that it was not "physics knowledge" since we weren't using the equations, but I would argue knowing those equations counts as physics knowledge, and little to know partial credit of course because there is only 1 correct way for each of those equations. Midterm 2 was just as bad. Once again, it felt like we learned little new content, and the practice content done in discussion/sample exam did not match the level of difficulty of the actual exam. The biggest qualm for everyone was a question regarding image charges, but in all of lecture and discussion we only did one boundary, thus when given a 2 boundary problem on the exam, 95% of people were guessing on how to correctly do the problem. Again, the partial credit wasn't generous, with a 60 average. It was not like the exam problems were awfully difficult- rather we had no effective way to prepare for them thus most did badly. Also, midterm 1 took an entire month to grade, in a class of 26 students, and midterm 2 also 3 weeks, which was frustrating because the exam was happening just before the end of the withdrawal period. I have yet to take the final, but all instructions have been vague for preparation: NO previous exams as practice and the only information we were given in 5 T/F questions and 5 short answer questions on ANY of the content in the syllabus, despite not actually learning everything in the syllabus. He also didn't inform the TA of content on the exam, so she could not even prepare effective discussion material for the review, just general review of previous lectures. Office hours/Emails: I had only attempted to go to office hours a couple times, but both times he was not in his office. I knocked multiple times, and waited outside for 20 minutes, but no dice. No information or explanation either. As for emails, he specifically stated in class that he saw them and just "forgot to respond", and will either address it in class vaguely or you will never get an answer for your questions. The most effective means of communication was talking to the TA and having her relay information back to you. TA: Overall, the TA was the best part of this course. She seemed nice, and her work in discussion was very clear, by far where I did the most learning, but her work simply did not prepare us for exams. Often times the discussion content would lag behind our already lagging lecture, leading to a dissonance in what we were learning, review, and the homeworks. Also, every one of the practice problems she did were generated by ChatGPT. Every. One. This includes the 18 pages of review problems she gave us, many of which had contradictions and were entirely unhelpful besides giving a weak guide of what may be exam content. I have heard she is incredibly overworked by Gong, and she deserves grace, but it was frustrating that we never were truly prepared for exams despite going to discussion twice a week. Also, her grading rubric did not appear to make sense, simply writing question marks rather than explaining what we did wrong. Overall, if you can take this class with literally anyone else, I would say you gotta do it. I feel like I have learned very little AND my gpa is suffering for it, and this is frustrating since this is part of a field I am interested in. You neither learn nor score well, so there is no benefit in taking the course with him. You can succeed in Gong's class, but only by an immense amount of self teaching most students do not have the time for. I was in 6+ classes this semester, only someone in maybe 4 with no other commitments could have the time for it. Gong is a prime example of how there are professors who are smart in their work, but awful at teaching. If you can't get the class with anyone else, I would try to take it in the summer, or push it off a semester if you can.

Cheng Gong
ENEE382

Anonymous
05/17/2025

If there was an option to give 1.5/5 stars, I would give that. Where do I even begin? The only reason I'm giving 1.5 stars and not 1 star is because Professor Gong and the TA were pretty nice people, as you've probably seen in the other reviews. This is basically the only good thing I can say. This class by itself probably wouldn't have been extremely difficult, because it is just a specialization of PHYS260/PHYS270 (more 260 in my opinion), but Gong is a terrible lecturer. As other reviews have said, he goes on a 1hr 15min yapping session about loads of different topics "related" to his lecture slides, and you basically have 0 clue how to connect the dots or what point he is trying to get across. Lectures are disorganized, and basically every slide is a screenshot of theoretical formulas from some sort of textbook. You will leave lecture being more confused. And it's not just me: a lot of people I know (including me) started skipping lectures starting from the 2nd week of the semester because of how bad and useless they were (trust me, it makes no difference whether you go to lecture or not, as grades on exams and homework do not correlate with going to lecture). Whenever he writes something on the whiteboard, it is just theoretical nonsense or incomprehensible characters put together. One time, he literally was using a marker with no ink left, and, despite knowing this clearly because he could see nothing was coming out of the marker, HE STILL WAS USING IT. As far as exams go, good luck. In my opinion (not sure if this is 100% factual or if it changes from semester to semester), it seems like the TA writes the midterms (of which there are 2), while Professor Gong writes the final. The midterms were just pathetic, for the most part: we were told specifically there would be "no physics" on the first midterm, and the first question on midterm #1 is literally writing down all of Maxwell's Equations in Integral and Differential Form (we never even went over Differential Form, by the way). However, while the average was pretty decent for the first midterm (~75–80 ish, which doesn't really portray how annoying the first exam was - we were just lucky because it was just Calc III review), the second exam was on another level. The homework and review problems that the TA went over were nowhere near the level of difficulty of the second exam, which had concepts and specific knowledge you need to know that they never went over (like how the sum of image charges must equal 0???). There was also what was essentially a derivation question, even though we'd never done derivations in class. The average was a 61 for the second exam, unsurprisingly. Speaking of the TA, while she is nice as said before, she literally uses ChatGPT/AI to make review problems (it's really obvious) that don't even relate/have the same difficulty as exam problems (like I can't believe we're paying tuition just for the TA to use AI for review problems). Some of the discussion problems are useful, but very rarely. Also, the homework is completely useless (they're really easy) and does nothing in helping you prepare for exams. As I'm writing this, we're heading into the final, which - and this got me extremely pissed off - we had 0 review for: they literally told us we're not getting any practice for the final (which is cumulative) and to expect the ENTIRE SYLLABUS (like that is really helpful, lmao). The only things we have to help us for the final are the 2 midterms (which don't cover the new content), homeworks (which are completely useless), and review problems (which are also useless and written not even by the TA but AI). We have no choice really other than to use textbooks for practice. Also, there is some sort of curve which we have no clue about. As per Professor Gong's own words: "The grades will be curved. The curve is applied to the total points and not to individual tests." We also have 0 clue what the grading scale is to begin with. Overall, you will learn nothing out of this class and will leave even more confused than you were before. Please do not take Cheng Gong for any class. If you have no other choice, then take it in a different semester. P.S. He literally spent a lecture talking about his research and academic issues relating to the current administration, which, while I completely get, is frustrating because we didn’t come to lecture and pay tuition for him to talk about his own issues. TL;DR: Professor Gong is a nice person, but a terrible lecturer. His lectures are disorganized, confusing, and often unrelated to the course material, leading many students to skip class entirely. Exams are poorly aligned with homework and review problems, with unexpected content and difficulty spikes. The TA is kind but uses AI to generate review material that doesn’t match the exams. There's no final exam review, the curve is vague, and the grading scale is unclear. Overall, the class is frustrating, unhelpful, and not worth taking if you have other options.

Howard Milchberg
ENEE382

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
01/31/2025

This professor was so good. Like wow, his assignments were so easy, and his exams were one-to-one to the homework. If you want a free A, go ahead and take this professor!

Patrick O'Shea
ENEE382

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/17/2024

Absolutely great Professor, the way this class was structured that we didn't have any midterms instead we had 10 quizzes in which they were conducted almost every week which is wonderful because all you need to know for a quiz is what you learned that week/previous. Besides quizzes which was like 50% of our grade, he also had 10 homework assignments assigned which were due before the corresponding quiz and usually the homework assignments were harder than the quizzes which prepared you really well for the quiz. It was very common to have the same questions from the homework which made things more easier. Homework assignments were about 25% of our grade and were the ones I really had to put much time on. TAs were kinda harsh graders on the homework and quite the opposite on the quizzes which was great. The other 25% of our grade was the Final which was open note and the easiest final I took to date, questions mostly came from the homework assignments and 2 practice exams he gave us, there were 9 questions and he asked us to do 6 of them. Overall a fantastic professor don't look anywhere else if you are taking this class if you consider you are concerned about your grade. Also Im not sure he curved the final or the class but this is because almost everyone did well in the class. This class is a great class with not much workload if you want to take it with other harder classes like ENEE 324, 350, 322 ...

Patrick O'Shea
ENEE382

Expecting an A
Anonymous
11/18/2024

Great prof. Teaches concepts well and doesn't focus on the mathematics behind it. Only Quizzes with no exams besides the final. Do the HW and Quizzes and you will do well.

Wesley Lawson
ENEE382

Expecting an A
Anonymous
06/14/2024

Goated professor. This is the third time I have had Lawson (205 Spring 23, 200 Winter 24 and 382 Summer 24) and I can honestly say that if you actually go to class he is one of the best professors you can have for any of these 3 classes. I never went to 205, which resulted in a poor final grade, however he will tell you almost exactly what to expect on each and every quiz. There are no midterms in any of his classes, replaced by quizzes throughout the semester. If class attendance is bad, as it was in my 205 section, he will straight up give extra credit just for coming to class or answering basic questions. Final was very fair and he basically went over all the content on the final in lecture. He appreciates participation which I can respect and he is a fantastic professor to learn from. I don't find electromagnetics (382) very interesting as it is extremely physics based, however he makes it enjoyable and tries to relate real world examples from his many years in the field to course material. 10/10 would recommend.

Wesley Lawson
ENEE382

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/23/2024

One of the few goated professors at UMD and kept it real with us. I will admit, ENEE382 is very challenging as I am not interested in electromagnetics, however, Lawson made it bearable for us. As this was only the 2nd semester of ENEE382's existence, I feel as if my review may be a bit biased in a positive way. Nonetheless, this was my experience with the course: Lawson followed his typical style of grading, 25% for HW, 25% for final, and 50% for weekly quizzes. The homework was typically 4 problems and very doable, as they were similar to the lecture slides. Weekly quizzes were not bad either, as they were based off of one problem from the previous homework assignment. Lastly, the final exam followed a similar format to previous exams he provided for us. The only con I would say is that Lawson is very soft spoken, which made it challenging to pay attention in class. Nonetheless, most of the material was abstract to me, so I feel that could have been the case for any professor. Overall, I enjoyed my experience in 382 due to Lawson teaching it and how he helped the class tremendously.

Reviews for ENEE382