| Information | Review |
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Andres Rubiano Acosta
ENES232 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/10/2025 |
He just doesn't really teach. As others have said, he assigns videos before every lecture to watch, but these aren't proper lectures - they're Organic Chem Tutor-style reviews of the material that are 10 minutes long. (Even if they were full lectures, I hate the flipped learning model). Rubiano says we should be taking ~30 mins to watch them and write notes, but that's absurdly frustrating and hard to learn from. Then, in lectures, he'll do a problem or two, but I rarely felt like it elevated my understanding. Most of my actual 'learning' happened during Friday studios and homeworks when I actually had to solve problems myself. Also says he won't curve our class, except if he thinks you individually deserve a higher grade. But I always go to Anderson for office hours (he's great) so how would he know how much effort I've put in? He's an okay guy I guess, makes the classroom feel a bit stifled but he's not, like, actively harmful to the learning environment. Just a very frustrating professor to learn from. |
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Andres Rubiano Acosta
ENES232 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/10/2025 |
Hes a good professor when he actually decides to teach but that's about half the time, he expects that everyone has watched the youtube videos that he made several years ago, admitadly they are good but not good enough that I want to be introduced to topics, also never believe a promise this guy makes I don't think a single one has been true the entire semester |
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Andres Rubiano Acosta
ENES232 Anonymous 05/08/2025 |
Teaching from YouTube videos the whole year should not be allowed at UMD. I would understand if it was supplemental like some other teachers do, but this is ridiculous. |
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Andres Rubiano Acosta
ENES232 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/07/2025 |
Wow we have hit a new low. I can't say I've had a professor like him. His other thermo reviews are extremely accurate, in that he definitely does not teach well, if at all. His class time is him spending the time plugging his youtube channel. Mid-semester, he switched from calling it youtube videos to "online lectures". The channel's name "Less Boring Lectures" is definitely false info. He also started giving out more quizzes because he was depressed no one showed up to his class. I learned from reverse teaching myself from the homeworks. I can't wait to be done with this class. I almost feel sorry. |
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Andres Rubiano Acosta
ENES232 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/06/2025 |
Professor Rubiano does not teach. Instead of giving real lectures, he assigns YouTube videos and reads through confusing or incorrect examples in class, rarely finishing them or explaining clearly. His lectures are disorganized, often inaccurate, and not aligned with assignments. Students are left to rely on textbooks, online videos, and their own efforts to learn the material. Despite seeming nice, he’s petty and disingenuous. His approach makes learning harder, not easier. He shouldn’t be teaching at UMD if all he does is shove his online materials down the throat. |
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Andres Rubiano Acosta
ENES232 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/05/2025 |
Horrible Professor. He does not teach during lectures, and instead has assigned YouTube videos to watch to learn content. His lectures instead consist of working partially through example problems which he does not fully answer or explain. He also decides to randomly have in-class quizzes, which are against the course-wide syllabus. Watching the video lectures for content is not enough to do well in the class, as reading the textbook is a necessity for this professor. Do not take this professor if you can. |
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Andres Rubiano Acosta
Anonymous 03/04/2025 |
Read the textbook, but he will help you out with individual curves. Good guy! |
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Andres Rubiano Acosta
ENES220 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/15/2025 |
He seemed like he really cared about the content he was teaching. However, there were multiple times in which he went out of his way to teach content differently than the other professors, which could make parts of the homework confusing. He also wasn't a very interesting lecturer: he would make us watch the videos with the actual content before class (some mechanics videos he had made for some youtube channel) which I thought was annoying, or he would just play one of those videos in class. He was kind of a harsh grader, but he also curved the class 4% in the end so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. He was fine. Not good or bad. There's no point in avoiding a class he's teaching, but no reason to prefer him. |
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Andres Rubiano Acosta
ENES220 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/17/2024 |
Great professor. Definitely go to his office hours for extra help and if you don’t understand something speak up. His group works are good review for the midterms and exams and he and the TA will answer questions during group works so make sure to ask them if you don’t understand. He is not a harsh grader either |
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Andres Rubiano Acosta
ENES221 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/12/2024 |
Pros: Prof. Rubiano is a pretty nice guy. He started the semester very theory heavy but it balanced out into a good mix of theory and helpful examples after the first exam. He tried to teach understanding rather than pattern recognition for the content which I enjoyed. He's also a pretty nice/forgiving grader. Cons: There were often errors in the lecture examples and he did not ever post lecture notes. Lecture notes didn't matter to me but the errors in the examples were quite annoying. Personally, I did not use the textbook and solely relied on his lectures and office hours for understanding the material, but for some of my friends the textbook was helpful. Overall a pretty solid professor. |
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Andres Rubiano Acosta
ENES221 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/10/2024 |
Pros: Goes over a lot of examples in class. That's pretty much where the pros end. Cons: The main issue is that very often, his solutions to the examples in class are incorrect. Either he writes key formulas down incorrectly, or he makes mistakes in his solution process that he doesn't bother checking. He also almost never fully solves the problems (partially due to his tendency to ramble), which made his lectures even less useful to me. A vast majority of my learning in this class has been from the textbook as well as watching videos on YouTube. Another gripe I had is that we were supposed to be given formula sheets during every exam and weekly quiz, but he never handed them out (he ironically said we "didn't really need them", despite writing the incorrect formulas half the time during lectures). If you're good at self-studying and like the feeling of having no idea what's going on during lecture, this professor is for you! Otherwise, I'd suggest you try to avoid him. |
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Andres Rubiano Acosta
ENES221 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/09/2024 |
Professor Rubiano is honestly a really nice guy, really wants students to succeed in this class. He understand situations students are going through and is very flexible with things like homework, quizzes, whatnot and even gives extra credit when he deems necessary. He also provides a lot of explanation to confusing material and goes very in depth with concepts. But his lectures don't help much when it comes to material since he doesn't have too much of a structure to these lectures. Sometimes he'll go over examples but he doesn't believe in giving students examples. If anything, he mostly goes over deriving equations which gets confusing and doesn't really help too much since it doesn't pertain to our assignments. He also doesn't post most in class material on ELMS so it makes content a little more confusing. All in all, his teaching style is confusing but overall a great guy when you seek help |
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Andres Rubiano Acosta
ENES221 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/04/2024 |
Pros: Rubiano is a really nice guy, generous with exam grading compared to other dynamics profs, sometimes will do helpful examples before a quiz. He tries to teach less memorization and more critical thinking. He is also understanding with makeup quiz opportunities, allowing you to double count a quiz if you have a valid reason for missing one. Cons: Spends most of lecture time doing proofs that you don't care about and don't need to know. He often times will give the class the wrong equations which just leads to more confusion. More often than not, he does examples wrong in lecture which just makes students more confused on the process. Towards the end of this semester he stopped with the proofs and began doing a lot of our HW problems in lecture, which seems helpful but like I said he usually does them wrong, so when you later go to do your HW you are already moving in the wrong direction. Conclusion: Not the best professor for dynamics, but certainly not the worst option. Don't bend over backwards to take his class but don't bend over backwards to avoid it either. Most of my learning in this class was from youtube, other profs office hours, and brute forcing through the homework. Overall dynamics is just PHYS 161 beefed up a little bit. Not a very hard class |
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Andres Rubiano Acosta
ENES221 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/20/2024 |
Really chill guy and engages the class a lot, but his notes aren't structured like other ENES courses are and he'll often just go in random directions that are hard to follow but overall he's pretty good. |