ENST405 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Peter May ENST405 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 04/07/2025	Ok, to preface this: Dr. May discovered he was supposed to be teaching this class approximately 4 days before the semester started, so some aspects may have been affected. The premise of this course sounds interesting, and the assignments I could see in the elms page (as Dr. Tilley just handed over his elms page) seem very interesting, but we didn’t actually do any of the interesting ones. Instead, we have been assigned an emergy analysis assignment, split between the class for LEAFhouse and React (two UMD built sustainable housing designs) which some students are going to present at a conference in May. Theoretically interesting, but poorly executed. He has given us very little instruction on how to do such a thing and is very student run. We are also going to have a final somehow but I don’t even know what we’ve really learned enough to have a final on given we do have hw assignments from a provided textbook, but Dr. May doesn’t know any of the answers. We are given 2 attempts and can see which questions are wrong, and students collaborate to get right answers (with permission of May), so grades tend to be good on them but we don’t really know the information or why the answers are what they are. May does seem pretty passionate on the topics and has given some interesting lectures on his experience working as an environmental engineer, but it’s not super relevant to the course. So, again, I don’t know what aspects of this are May himself vs not being prepared to teach this course. I’ve heard he’s better in lower levels (including 360) where theres a mostly defined curriculum, but given other reviews I definitely would not recommend for any upper levels
David Tilley ENST405 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/14/2024	A great professor who cared for their students and helped them whenever needed. The course was extremely hands-on and I feel like I've gained a lot of life skills from it.
David Tilley ENST405 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/28/2021	He's super chill and nice, but I feel wholly unprepared for the content. He does calculations on the board, but it's very messy and hard to follow. A lot of the students and I are very lost on the actual math most of the time. The textbook he assigned was super hard to read and a lot of the main content at the start of the course was dependent on that.

Peter May
ENST405

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
04/07/2025

Ok, to preface this: Dr. May discovered he was supposed to be teaching this class approximately 4 days before the semester started, so some aspects may have been affected. The premise of this course sounds interesting, and the assignments I could see in the elms page (as Dr. Tilley just handed over his elms page) seem very interesting, but we didn’t actually do any of the interesting ones. Instead, we have been assigned an emergy analysis assignment, split between the class for LEAFhouse and React (two UMD built sustainable housing designs) which some students are going to present at a conference in May. Theoretically interesting, but poorly executed. He has given us very little instruction on how to do such a thing and is very student run. We are also going to have a final somehow but I don’t even know what we’ve really learned enough to have a final on given we do have hw assignments from a provided textbook, but Dr. May doesn’t know any of the answers. We are given 2 attempts and can see which questions are wrong, and students collaborate to get right answers (with permission of May), so grades tend to be good on them but we don’t really know the information or why the answers are what they are. May does seem pretty passionate on the topics and has given some interesting lectures on his experience working as an environmental engineer, but it’s not super relevant to the course. So, again, I don’t know what aspects of this are May himself vs not being prepared to teach this course. I’ve heard he’s better in lower levels (including 360) where theres a mostly defined curriculum, but given other reviews I definitely would not recommend for any upper levels

David Tilley
ENST405

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/14/2024

A great professor who cared for their students and helped them whenever needed. The course was extremely hands-on and I feel like I've gained a lot of life skills from it.

David Tilley
ENST405

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/28/2021

He's super chill and nice, but I feel wholly unprepared for the content. He does calculations on the board, but it's very messy and hard to follow. A lot of the students and I are very lost on the actual math most of the time. The textbook he assigned was super hard to read and a lot of the main content at the start of the course was dependent on that.

Reviews for ENST405