Reviews for ENME480

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Yancy Diaz-Mercado ENME480 Expecting an A Anonymous 02/16/2024	The class had interesting material, and I would say take it if you're very interested in robotics, but please know that it is very poorly taught. The one midterm had only two questions, of which one was basically removed cause many did not understand, and maybe involved at most 10% of the material we had covered in the month leading up to that point. The homeworks are an extreme pain to do, and most of the time the examples that we do in class are often not nearly enough to understand how to do the homework problems. Lectures go incredibly fast; pretty much all the material is taken directly from the provided textbook, but if you don't read the corresponding textbook material ahead of time it will be near impossible to keep up with the professor's pace of information. The labs were completely disconnected from lectures and honestly if they were their own class I would give them a 1 star as well. The provided code for several of the labs was incorrect, and I didn't learn much from doing the labs since a lot of the work was done for us already. The only good part of this class was the TAs doing their best to explain the topics that the professor failed to in lecture. Of the prereqs, differential equations was useless. On the other hand, linear algebra, which was NOT a prereq but instead a coreq (for the robotics minor), is the main math used throughout this course. I was fortunate enough to have taken linear algebra before this course, as I could barely keep up even having that prior knowledge. Anyways, this is the first time the professor is teaching so I cut some slack.
Yancy Diaz-Mercado ENME480 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/26/2023	He’s a very intelligent guy who is clearly passionate about the field. The issue is that it’s clear that he is more used to teaching grad students than undergrads. Despite the high average GPA, this course is very challenging and the homeworks that are assigned can often take 8-16 hours to complete. Despite this I found this to be the most rewarding class I’ve ever taken as I found the content to be genuinely interesting. If you’re taking him in the future, DO NOT expect this class to just be a free A. It will ask a lot more from you than you’ll expect. Start the homeworks early and take advantage of office hours.
Yancy Diaz-Mercado ENME480 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/11/2023	ENME480 was very linear algebra and theory focused this semester which made it very abstract and hard to digest, but Diaz presented it well but only slowed down when people asked questions, so the lectures were a bit fast-paced. He generously curved the midterm, and guided his TAs to grade relatively leniently.
Alexander Beyer ENME480 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/07/2023	He ran the labs and explained concepts relating to the lab work with much detail and ensured we had an intuition for each problem. He was helpful when answering questions, and gave timely updates on the course Piazza.
Suraj Raval ENME480 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/07/2023	He is very helpful to explain the difficult concepts in the course, and will still have you critically think about what to do for the problems. He is a very moderate grader and will give partial credit for homework problems.
Nikhil Chopra ENME480 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/27/2021	Dr. Chopra is a nice guy, but it's pretty clear that he rarely teaches undergrads. The lectures were all over the place and I never felt that I had a concrete understanding core concepts until relatively late in the class. The class started offering tutoring about halfway through the semester, and the grad students who taught those tutoring sessions (along with some concept explanation videos I found on YouTube) were what got me through this course. Overall, I think a lot of the issues from this class stem from the fact that it has never been run before and I think many of the issues with the course (disorganized lectures, unmotivated labs, very long/confusing homeworks) will get ironed out in the future, and I appreciate that Dr. Chopra took the last class to have a discussion about how the course could be improved.
Nikhil Chopra ENME480 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/17/2021	Interesting class. Lectures were kind of jumbled but considering this was the first time this class was taught I thought he did a very good job. Very nice guy. He seems to care about his students. We spent the last class just talking about how he could improve the course because he wants what is best for his students.