MATH136 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Todd Rowland MATH136 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/03/2024	Extremely nice professor, very kind and caring... Except, he cannot teach lower-level math. DO NOT take him for 135/136 calc because his ability to explain concepts is terrible. He also skips "easy" steps when doing problems during lectures but makes the class very confused. Math136 was a scattered schedule of random math that we learned throughout the course, with no real structure. His lecture notes are very unorganized and messy which makes them extremely difficult to follow. Again, maybe he is much better at teaching a higher level of math, but avoid taking him for 135/136. I relied on the TA's to teach me the content during discussion. But Rowland is a very nice guy.
Todd Rowland MATH136 Anonymous 03/16/2024	While it's true that he's very nice, Dr. Rowland is not good at teaching. Lecture is unhelpful as he does practice problems the whole time without explaining what he's doing and rarely looks up for questions. His rants can be entertaining, but I would strongly not recommend taking this class with him if you have little calc experience like me. If you have a good amount of calc experience you should be fine. (PS go to GSS!!!!) hw and classwork is easy, but his exams suck. Take the class with someone else if you can!!!!!!!
Todd Rowland MATH136 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 03/15/2024	To keep it simple, don't take it. He does not teach, takes away notes before you can get them down. Nice man and tries to learn names but, he lacks greatly in the teaching department. You have to put extra work in teaching yourself which would be unnecessary if you had a professor who actually taught you during the lecture time. Practice exams are similar to the exam but, there is usually a question or more that you have maybe seen once or not at all (weighing 8-12 points). Save yourself the stress and don't take him.
Jose Rigoberto Enrique Zelada Cifuentes MATH136 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/15/2023	Nice professor but overcomplicates things and makes it hard to stay focused during class. I learned the most from going to discussion. The TA's were great, and the exams were fair and very similar to the practice exams he would post. Homework load is light.
Jose Rigoberto Enrique Zelada Cifuentes MATH136 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/07/2023	Easy class, horrible professor. Can be very rude (called someone uncultured for not knowing a specific formula) and hard to understand. He enjoys over complicating some topics while undercomplicating others effectively confusing the entire class. Very quickly attendance at his lectures declined heavily. However, his exams are almost the same as his practice exam which is the one redeeming quality of this class.
Todd Rowland MATH136 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/18/2023	He's a kind person but can be a little clueless as a professor. Often gets distracted during lecture and explains things in a really confusing manner. He's clearly very smart, but explains topics in a way that only people who are already good at math will understand. Regardless, if you actually try you'll probably get a decent grade because homework, in class assignments, and worksheets are easy enough.
Hussain Ibdah MATH136 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 05/18/2023	Please, whatever you do, DO NOT take him for MATH136. He made this class 10 times harder than it had to be. Even students in the class that had some background knowledge in calculus would struggle to keep up with what was going on in the class at times. His teaching style is awful. He teaches more so in a review manner instead of actually teaching the content, which makes it harder to grasp the concepts. He also spends a lot of time doing proofs for equations, which wastes time considering we do not need to know them for the tests. Speaking of tests, one plus for him would be that they were similar to the practice ones. The problem was, he would amplify the difficulty of the values given to a degree beyond what we did in class. Asking him questions was not helpful either, considering that he would just make the topic more confusing. People started to ask fewer and fewer questions because of this. In some cases, it seemed that he would attack or blame students for not knowing the content. In reality, a majority of the people in the class would be lost. He always would ask people to speak up but no one would considering that his response would be unhelpful. He also has a tendency to mess up problems MULTIPLE times, which did not help with his teaching style. The majority of the time, the discussion quizzes and worksheets that we would get were unhelpful and stressful. If getting a different professor means waiting for a semester, I would recommend doing so.
Todd Rowland MATH136 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/30/2023	He is a very nice person and the only professor that I've had that tries to learn every student's name. However, he is a little all over the place during lecture so there was a lot of wasted time. He does happily answer everyone's questions, but sometimes gets a little sidetracked. The material isn't that difficult but sometimes there would be random problems from the textbook that we didn't use on the exams. He does give out study guides for every exam, but the first one was almost exactly like the exam, the second one was NOTHING like the exam to purposely bring the class average down, and the third was kinda like the exam. There's also weekly online homeworks, worksheets due during discussion, and classworks. He's definitely not the worst professor, but definitely not the best.
Todd Rowland MATH136 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 02/28/2023	Dr. Rowland is a very kind man who is always willing to help his students. Utilize your resources—go to office hours and if you can't do that, discussion and ask the TA. Ask a neighbor if you're confused, or go up to him and ask a question. In all honesty I think he's the best professor at UMD because he cares about each student. He has improved so much from when I had him last year and I know so long as you try you'll be able to do so well in this course.
Jose Cifuentes MATH136 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/22/2022	So I took Professor Rigo because he was the only professor for this class and he did a wonderful job. He basically teaches all the lessons from the book so skipping class is possible (not advised as he thoroughly walks through the problems in class). There is no mandatory homework, but I would highly suggest doing it because it was good practice. This semester we had 2 midterms and a final. For each exam, he gave us a past exam to practice on which was extremely similar to the one he administered to class (so there is literally 0 reason to do poorly in this class). Discussion is mandatory as there is a worksheet and a quiz a week. Overall goated professor, just make sure you're on top of things, and its a guaranteed A.
Rigo Zelada MATH136 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/08/2022	To be honest, at first, I really did not like him, especially given all the bad reviews on him. It was mostly just that I wasn't used to his teaching style, but he is actually one of the sweetest, funniest, and most caring professors I've ever had. One way to describe his teaching style is he's very exact and specific. He gives exact definitions and goes through the whole process to explain a concept, which I was not used to compared to other professors who just tell you straight to the point. You can tell english isn't his first language so sometimes he has trouble expressing things correctly but he is still able to explain things well. He writes in cursive so sometimes it's hard to read his writing but he is really nice about it if you ask what something says and he even started writing not in cursive so that we could all read it better. He usually does examples during every class so it is helpful to see and practice how things are done and how to apply them. He always makes sure to ask people if they have questions and goes really into depth to make sure everyone gets it. There are 2 exams and one final, so you can't drop an exam. The quizzes and worksheets arent bad at all and you don't even need to study before them; if you listen to the explanations in the discussion before they give you the quizzes or worksheets you will be fine. They drop the lowest ones anyways. His practice exams are exactly like his exams and sometimes his exams are even easier than the practice exams. When the average on one of the exams was a 70, he gave everyone an additional 6.5 points to increase the average to an 80. He also added a curve which no one really expected, which was amazing. I definitely recommend taking him. He will turn out to be one of your favorite professors.
Rigo Zelada MATH136 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/06/2022	He is an amazing and caring professor who cares about his students and their grades. His tests are very similar and easier than the practice tests he gives in class. He is very approachable during class and will try his best to answer any questions during class. I would say definitely take him because I really enjoyed his class and his teaching style.
Changguang Dong MATH136 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 06/22/2022	If you can avoid him, please please do. He sucks. To give a good example, on the second day of lecture he taught us a very simple concept incorrectly(closed vs open circle on a graph). When someone tried to correct him, he gave no proper explanation and said "oh no it's like this" in reference to the wrong way.
Hussain Ibdah MATH136 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/25/2022	He's an okay lecturer. His handwritings are pretty bad. He posts his notes. His tests are unnecessary long and hard. His tests cover almost everything he taught.
Hussain Ibdah MATH136 Anonymous 05/10/2022	Terrible professor. Really sloppy notes and tough grader. TAKE ANYBODY ELSE PLEASE.
Hussain Ibdah MATH136 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 05/09/2022	I only give Ibdag a 2/5 and not a 1/5 because Dr. Dong is so much worse. That being said, Ibdah has bad bad handwriting (worse than Dr. MS @ my orgo 2 ppl) and is a crappy lecturer. It's hard to understand him but at least he pauses somewhat often to ask if we are understanding. Unfortunately, the teaching is usually so bad we don't know where to start with our questions and just stay silent. Only 2 mid-terms and a final (comprehensive). I will say he's a nice guy and genuine but that doesn't make up for the shitty teaching. The biggest knock to the guy is he will mess up his own practice problems A LOT. He even tried to fix it by just straight-up changing the problem because he did it wrong. TA's Neha and Shuhan are pretty good, you can understand them pretty well and explain stuff well. Why tf is this class required for my bio major?
Hussain Ibdah MATH136 Anonymous 05/08/2022	Ibdah is just not a good lecturer to say the least. He constantly makes mistakes when doing problems, and just makes everything more confusing in general. The only saving grace were the TAs, who made some of these concepts simpler. I STRONGLY recommend avoiding him if you can.
Changguang Dong MATH136 Expecting a W Anonymous 11/10/2021	Terrible Terrible. Cons: thick accent, skips over steps because he thinks you know it already, not very good at answering questions, usually wouldn’t even understand my questions. TA’s aren’t much better, the man, Duc, is worse than Neha but same thing, thick accents and Duc rushes though material and assumes you know everything. This is a real quote from him “if you do the steps right you will get the right answer” like bruh. Use textbook but even then some times the practice problems are wrong. Take anyone else. I had to drop and I’m retaking next semester with someone else. First test avg was a 63/100 and there’s no curve. Don’t have any pros.
Changguang Dong MATH136 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/12/2020	Hands down one of the most accommodating professor under an online environment. He gave enough time for all exams and prepared us well in advance. The TAs were also amazing and very helpful. Highly recommend taking him for 136!

Todd Rowland
MATH136

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/03/2024

Extremely nice professor, very kind and caring... Except, he cannot teach lower-level math. DO NOT take him for 135/136 calc because his ability to explain concepts is terrible. He also skips "easy" steps when doing problems during lectures but makes the class very confused. Math136 was a scattered schedule of random math that we learned throughout the course, with no real structure. His lecture notes are very unorganized and messy which makes them extremely difficult to follow. Again, maybe he is much better at teaching a higher level of math, but avoid taking him for 135/136. I relied on the TA's to teach me the content during discussion. But Rowland is a very nice guy.

Todd Rowland
MATH136

Anonymous
03/16/2024

While it's true that he's very nice, Dr. Rowland is not good at teaching. Lecture is unhelpful as he does practice problems the whole time without explaining what he's doing and rarely looks up for questions. His rants can be entertaining, but I would strongly not recommend taking this class with him if you have little calc experience like me. If you have a good amount of calc experience you should be fine. (PS go to GSS!!!!) hw and classwork is easy, but his exams suck. Take the class with someone else if you can!!!!!!!

Todd Rowland
MATH136

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
03/15/2024

To keep it simple, don't take it. He does not teach, takes away notes before you can get them down. Nice man and tries to learn names but, he lacks greatly in the teaching department. You have to put extra work in teaching yourself which would be unnecessary if you had a professor who actually taught you during the lecture time. Practice exams are similar to the exam but, there is usually a question or more that you have maybe seen once or not at all (weighing 8-12 points). Save yourself the stress and don't take him.

Jose Rigoberto Enrique Zelada Cifuentes
MATH136

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/15/2023

Nice professor but overcomplicates things and makes it hard to stay focused during class. I learned the most from going to discussion. The TA's were great, and the exams were fair and very similar to the practice exams he would post. Homework load is light.

Jose Rigoberto Enrique Zelada Cifuentes
MATH136

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/07/2023

Easy class, horrible professor. Can be very rude (called someone uncultured for not knowing a specific formula) and hard to understand. He enjoys over complicating some topics while undercomplicating others effectively confusing the entire class. Very quickly attendance at his lectures declined heavily. However, his exams are almost the same as his practice exam which is the one redeeming quality of this class.

Todd Rowland
MATH136

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/18/2023

He's a kind person but can be a little clueless as a professor. Often gets distracted during lecture and explains things in a really confusing manner. He's clearly very smart, but explains topics in a way that only people who are already good at math will understand. Regardless, if you actually try you'll probably get a decent grade because homework, in class assignments, and worksheets are easy enough.

Hussain Ibdah
MATH136

Expecting a C+
Anonymous
05/18/2023

Please, whatever you do, DO NOT take him for MATH136. He made this class 10 times harder than it had to be. Even students in the class that had some background knowledge in calculus would struggle to keep up with what was going on in the class at times. His teaching style is awful. He teaches more so in a review manner instead of actually teaching the content, which makes it harder to grasp the concepts. He also spends a lot of time doing proofs for equations, which wastes time considering we do not need to know them for the tests. Speaking of tests, one plus for him would be that they were similar to the practice ones. The problem was, he would amplify the difficulty of the values given to a degree beyond what we did in class. Asking him questions was not helpful either, considering that he would just make the topic more confusing. People started to ask fewer and fewer questions because of this. In some cases, it seemed that he would attack or blame students for not knowing the content. In reality, a majority of the people in the class would be lost. He always would ask people to speak up but no one would considering that his response would be unhelpful. He also has a tendency to mess up problems MULTIPLE times, which did not help with his teaching style. The majority of the time, the discussion quizzes and worksheets that we would get were unhelpful and stressful. If getting a different professor means waiting for a semester, I would recommend doing so.

Todd Rowland
MATH136

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/30/2023

He is a very nice person and the only professor that I've had that tries to learn every student's name. However, he is a little all over the place during lecture so there was a lot of wasted time. He does happily answer everyone's questions, but sometimes gets a little sidetracked. The material isn't that difficult but sometimes there would be random problems from the textbook that we didn't use on the exams. He does give out study guides for every exam, but the first one was almost exactly like the exam, the second one was NOTHING like the exam to purposely bring the class average down, and the third was kinda like the exam. There's also weekly online homeworks, worksheets due during discussion, and classworks. He's definitely not the worst professor, but definitely not the best.

Todd Rowland
MATH136

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
02/28/2023

Dr. Rowland is a very kind man who is always willing to help his students. Utilize your resources—go to office hours and if you can't do that, discussion and ask the TA. Ask a neighbor if you're confused, or go up to him and ask a question. In all honesty I think he's the best professor at UMD because he cares about each student. He has improved so much from when I had him last year and I know so long as you try you'll be able to do so well in this course.

Jose Cifuentes
MATH136

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/22/2022

So I took Professor Rigo because he was the only professor for this class and he did a wonderful job. He basically teaches all the lessons from the book so skipping class is possible (not advised as he thoroughly walks through the problems in class). There is no mandatory homework, but I would highly suggest doing it because it was good practice. This semester we had 2 midterms and a final. For each exam, he gave us a past exam to practice on which was extremely similar to the one he administered to class (so there is literally 0 reason to do poorly in this class). Discussion is mandatory as there is a worksheet and a quiz a week. Overall goated professor, just make sure you're on top of things, and its a guaranteed A.

Rigo Zelada
MATH136

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/08/2022

To be honest, at first, I really did not like him, especially given all the bad reviews on him. It was mostly just that I wasn't used to his teaching style, but he is actually one of the sweetest, funniest, and most caring professors I've ever had. One way to describe his teaching style is he's very exact and specific. He gives exact definitions and goes through the whole process to explain a concept, which I was not used to compared to other professors who just tell you straight to the point. You can tell english isn't his first language so sometimes he has trouble expressing things correctly but he is still able to explain things well. He writes in cursive so sometimes it's hard to read his writing but he is really nice about it if you ask what something says and he even started writing not in cursive so that we could all read it better. He usually does examples during every class so it is helpful to see and practice how things are done and how to apply them. He always makes sure to ask people if they have questions and goes really into depth to make sure everyone gets it. There are 2 exams and one final, so you can't drop an exam. The quizzes and worksheets arent bad at all and you don't even need to study before them; if you listen to the explanations in the discussion before they give you the quizzes or worksheets you will be fine. They drop the lowest ones anyways. His practice exams are exactly like his exams and sometimes his exams are even easier than the practice exams. When the average on one of the exams was a 70, he gave everyone an additional 6.5 points to increase the average to an 80. He also added a curve which no one really expected, which was amazing. I definitely recommend taking him. He will turn out to be one of your favorite professors.

Rigo Zelada
MATH136

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/06/2022

He is an amazing and caring professor who cares about his students and their grades. His tests are very similar and easier than the practice tests he gives in class. He is very approachable during class and will try his best to answer any questions during class. I would say definitely take him because I really enjoyed his class and his teaching style.

Changguang Dong
MATH136

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
06/22/2022

If you can avoid him, please please do. He sucks. To give a good example, on the second day of lecture he taught us a very simple concept incorrectly(closed vs open circle on a graph). When someone tried to correct him, he gave no proper explanation and said "oh no it's like this" in reference to the wrong way.

Hussain Ibdah
MATH136

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/25/2022

He's an okay lecturer. His handwritings are pretty bad. He posts his notes. His tests are unnecessary long and hard. His tests cover almost everything he taught.

Hussain Ibdah
MATH136

Anonymous
05/10/2022

Terrible professor. Really sloppy notes and tough grader. TAKE ANYBODY ELSE PLEASE.

Hussain Ibdah
MATH136

Expecting a C+
Anonymous
05/09/2022

I only give Ibdag a 2/5 and not a 1/5 because Dr. Dong is so much worse. That being said, Ibdah has bad bad handwriting (worse than Dr. MS @ my orgo 2 ppl) and is a crappy lecturer. It's hard to understand him but at least he pauses somewhat often to ask if we are understanding. Unfortunately, the teaching is usually so bad we don't know where to start with our questions and just stay silent. Only 2 mid-terms and a final (comprehensive). I will say he's a nice guy and genuine but that doesn't make up for the shitty teaching. The biggest knock to the guy is he will mess up his own practice problems A LOT. He even tried to fix it by just straight-up changing the problem because he did it wrong. TA's Neha and Shuhan are pretty good, you can understand them pretty well and explain stuff well. Why tf is this class required for my bio major?

Hussain Ibdah
MATH136

Anonymous
05/08/2022

Ibdah is just not a good lecturer to say the least. He constantly makes mistakes when doing problems, and just makes everything more confusing in general. The only saving grace were the TAs, who made some of these concepts simpler. I STRONGLY recommend avoiding him if you can.

Changguang Dong
MATH136

Expecting a W
Anonymous
11/10/2021

Terrible Terrible. Cons: thick accent, skips over steps because he thinks you know it already, not very good at answering questions, usually wouldn’t even understand my questions. TA’s aren’t much better, the man, Duc, is worse than Neha but same thing, thick accents and Duc rushes though material and assumes you know everything. This is a real quote from him “if you do the steps right you will get the right answer” like bruh. Use textbook but even then some times the practice problems are wrong. Take anyone else. I had to drop and I’m retaking next semester with someone else. First test avg was a 63/100 and there’s no curve. Don’t have any pros.

Changguang Dong
MATH136

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/12/2020

Hands down one of the most accommodating professor under an online environment. He gave enough time for all exams and prepared us well in advance. The TAs were also amazing and very helpful. Highly recommend taking him for 136!

Reviews for MATH136