Mary Bowden

This professor has taught: EDSP652, ENAE283, ENAE288A, ENAE324, ENAE484, ENES102, ENES102H, ENES195, ENES215, ENES216, ENES220, GEMS296, GEMS297, GEMS396, GEMS397, GEMS496, GEMS497, VIPS208E, VIPS308E, VIPS408E

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Mary Bowden ENAE283 Expecting a B Anonymous 11/27/2023	Bowden's teaching style is great/easy to understand, and the PowerPoint slides are typically posted on ELMS which is super helpful to me. The exams/homework assignments are identical regardless of who you take the class with.
Mary Bowden ENAE283 Expecting an A Anonymous 10/24/2023	Dr. Bowden is hands down one of the best professors in the Aerospace department. She explains complicated concepts with ease and is a great communicator and lecturer. Beyond that, she is a wonderfully kind and caring person; she is understanding if you need an extension on an assignment or even an exam, and genuinely wants you to succeed. Her office hours are super helpful, and she does put on social events from time to time, like movie nights, that are also fun. She offers a ton of extra credit opportunities so take advantage of as many of them as you can. Exams do take a minute to be graded, but in all, you will wish you could have Dr. Bowden teach all of your Aerospace classes.
Mary Bowden ENAE283 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/28/2023	Amazing lecturer, very kind and helpful, understanding and wants her students to succeed.
Mary Bowden ENAE324 Anonymous 05/02/2022	Dr. Bowden is one of the most caring professors in all of aero. She always makes fun of 432 and understands the struggles we are going through in relation to the course load of other classes. While she tends to be a little slow with uploading files or grading exams/homework, she will always try and be prompt with emails and answer any questions. If you go to her office hours, she genuinely helps you out a lot with the homework or practice exams and guides you to the right direction every time.
Mary Bowden ENES102H Expecting an A- Anonymous 01/07/2022	I love Dr. Bowden with all my heart. Go to her office hours (even if you aren't in her class) she is so sweet, helpful, and really wants you to do well. I really enjoyed her class though sometimes she would go off topic and she would take a whole class just to go over one example. She offered a lot of extra credit and doubled sided cheat sheets so definitely use those to your advantage. Do the practice problems they give out before exams because the midterms tended to have tricky problems.
Mary Bowden ENAE283 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/23/2021	Dr. Bowden was a very effective lecturer and made extremely fair exams that were much like the homework and practice exams. The exams definitely require a bit more preparation due to the vast number of concepts on them, but while additional preparation is necessary it isn't a ridiculous amount like you find studying for MATH 241 or 246. Overall, Dr. Bowden's class is fun and easy, and my only gripe is that exams took an inordinate period to finish grading, being about a month in both cases.
Mary Bowden ENES102H Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/21/2021	Dr. Bowden is a wonderful person as well as a competent professor. 10/10 would recommend to anyone taking ENES102! About Bowden: - She is one of the sweetest and most caring people I have ever met. She is very approachable and encourages you to talk to her if need more guidance, always reminding us about her office hours. - Dr. Bowden is also very understanding and will try her best to help you in whatever way possible so that you never feel intimidated by a test or assignment. - She is very very knowledgeable about the material she is teaching and is very passionate about the class. Did you know she helped design spacecraft for the international space station at NASA! - She is my favorite professor so far! Teaching style: - She goes over concepts at a very good pace. I never felt rushed learning the material (considering this was my first time seeing anything related to mechanics) and she makes sure to stop and ask for clarifying questions along the way. - I also adored the examples she gives during class to solidify the abstract concepts she previously taught, not to mention she goes over homework problems she thinks are difficult to make sure we don't spend too long trying to solve them on our own. ENES102H itself: - There are three midterms and one final (no quizzes). The midterms and the final are not easy, so be prepared. They post about 18 or so review practice problems a week before the test which are a good way to study for the test and I highly recommend you do all or most of them. These practice problems go over all the concepts you will need to know for the exam (bottom line: if you can do the review practice problems, you are more or less guaranteed a B or an A on the exam so long as you avoid silly mistakes). We also get a "cheat sheet" were we can write down anything we need and use it while taking our exam. - We also have a truss project. I personally didn't like it because spanned over the two weeks before finals and we didn't really receive much guidance. If you don't have a good group in which everyone is willing to pull their weight (which unfortunately didn't happen for me), you are more or less screwed. - This class, for all I know, is not curved. BUT there is extra credit. If you compile all the practice problems you have done in preparation for the exams, you con get up to 3 or 4 percent boost in your grade. Good luck and try to have some fun with this class :)
Mary Bowden ENAE283 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 01/17/2021	I had Dr. Bowden for ENES220 and ENAE283 for Fall 2020. She is easily one of the nicest and caring professors I have ever had. She truly cares about her students and wants them to do well. HW's are reasonable and Exams are not do bad but you definitely need to prepare for them. She gives ample opportunities for extra credit. Only thing I have a slight issue with is how long she takes to grade exams but she does teach quite a few other classes I believe. One other thing I had an issue with is she can sort of fall behind in lecture and rush with the material before an exam. Anyway, I would highly recommend taking her for any class she teaches!
Mary Bowden Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/13/2021	I had Dr. Bowden for both ENAE283 and ENES220 this semester. She really is one of the nicest lecturers around! Very personable and really cares about her students. Gives plenty of opportunities for extra credit. My only gripe is that she is notoriously slow at grading—exams take weeks to get back and final grades took even longer!
Mary Bowden ENAE283 Expecting a B Anonymous 01/05/2021	Bowden is an amazing lecturer and did a fantastic job teaching this introductory ENAE course. Her lectures contain all of the formulas and concepts necessary to do the homework. Also don't be afraid to read the book its amazing and can clear up any concepts or formulas you don't understand. Exams are straightforward and similar to the practice exams she posts. Also there is a lot of extra credit which can earn you a 3-4% boost to your grade. Overall this course isn't too difficult and if I had studied a bit more before exams I could of gotten an A.
Mary Bowden ENAE324 Anonymous 04/28/2020	Honestly one of the best professors in the Aerospace Department at UMD. She genuinely cares for all her students and will make a sincere effort to ensure that all of her students can succeed in the course. Although lectures often have very few notes associated with it, you still end up understanding most of it due to her teaching style. Whether the class is ENES102 or ENAE324 she is a wonderful professor and would recommend taking her.
Mary Bowden ENES220 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/05/2019	Bowden is a very kind professor and she wants you to learn all the material. The class may get difficult, but she is always helpful in office hours.
Mary Bowden ENES220 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/07/2016	Bowden is hands down the best professor you can have for 220. She is super nice, teaches at a pace so that everyone understands the material, and wants everyone in her class to succeed. She is very smart, but also super approachable. If you do the homework and put a little effort into the class, you should get an A. 220 builds on the topics taught in 102, but she goes over the concepts learned in that class before adding to them. She understands that you will not remember everything, and if you struggled in that class, she will help you learn what you need to know for 220.
Mary Bowden ENES102 Anonymous 05/26/2013	Picture the perfect professor, and that's Bowden. She is hands down one of the best professors in this University as well as one of the nicest. She is an excellent lecturer who is very clear and easy to understand. She is one of few teachers who care about their student's grades and wants them to succeed. She is also probably the only statics professor who gives EC and also curves. The first 2 midterms are pretty easy, the final is pretty hard, so don't get cocky after the first 2 midterms. Honestly THERE IS NO OTHER TEACHER U SHOULD TAKE FOR STATICS OTHER THAN BOWDEN!!! In fact, if you don't have Bowden, Statics will be a hard class. Again, TAKE BOWDEN, or regret it!!!!!!
Mary Bowden ENAE324 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/15/2013	She's an excellent professor and an excellent person, I honestly don't have the patience to say enough good things about her. She's very understanding, very knowledgeable, personable, and explains things in a way that is easy to digest. I'm personally going aero track, but this professor makes me rethink "If all professors in space track are this awesome maybe I should reconsider...." Anyway, she's awesome and the only thing you'll regret is NOT taking her for you class (be it for statics, mechanics, whatever). Also, its fun to count the number of times she says "standby" during class haha
Mary Bowden ENES102 Expecting a B+ Anony 07/09/2012	Honestly this women is angel sent from God to teach us all about engineering. If I didn't have her as a teacher I probably would have cried myself to sleep every night because I believed that I did not have the brainpower and the aptitude to be cut out for an Engineer, however she proved me wrong. Dr. Bowden does an amazing job teaching the material both in her class and at office hours (I recommend going to). She hands out plenty of extra credit opportunities that are great sample/mock problems for upcoming tests, though a little difficult to say the least. The homework for this class is not fun, and I would never have gotten through it without having a friend help/work with me. The tests dare I say were pretty straightforward, and matched the problem solving techniques for the homework. So basically understand the homework, and work on all of the practice exam problems you should do decently at least an 80% on both the tests. Bridge building with Bowden was fun because she allowed our class to use different materials than the other ENES102 classes, which produced interesting bridges with metal plates or made out of bamboo. The only problem about this class is the final, so a word to the wise DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE FINAL. That is all, and enjoy engineering :D
Mary Bowden ENAE324 Expecting an A fiddlerkrt 06/03/2011	Excellent professor. Her teaching style is a little bizarre and it takes a while to get used to. She writes very little on the board, but everything she writes is normally very important so try to pay attention. Exams/quizzes were always very fair and straightforward.
Mary Bowden Expecting an A a778999 01/23/2011	Dr. Bowden teaches the first half of ENAE324. At the beginning of the semester I wasn't used to her teaching style but I got used to it as time went on. She's actually not a bad teacher at all like I first thought. The material that she teaches can be a little convoluted but that's not her fault.
Mary Bowden ENES102H Expecting a B+ MooseNinja 12/13/2010	ENES102H -- I really enjoyed the class and thought Bowden was a good professor. Sadly, I got a little overconfident and did not study enough for the final. ENAE283 -- The structure of this class pretty much means you don't need to go to class. She allows a formula sheet which makes tests and quizzes simple.
Mary Bowden ENES102 Expecting an A clementi 12/02/2010	Very nice woman, makes material easy to understand. She's very approachable and good at answering emails if you have questions. Lots of extra credit opportunities so even if you mess up on the easy exams you can still get a good grade as long as you put the effort in.
Mary Bowden ENES102H Expecting an A blife 01/17/2010	P. Bowden is a great teacher. She explains the material very clearly, is always willing to answer questions, and is genuinely interested in her students understanding the material. She offers tons of extra credit. She is extremely nice and patient, especially in office hours. top choice for ENES102.
Mary Bowden ENES220 Anonymous 12/13/2008	Bowden is great. She's very relaxed with deadlines and dates to turn in things, and she's very understanding. She also tries her best to make sure her students get good grades (theres extra credit!!).
Mary Bowden ENES102 avigana 11/16/2007	Professor Bowden is a competent teacher, who tries her best to ensure that her students understand the subject matter.She is also very approachable and gives extra-credit problems.