Aris Cleanthous

This professor has taught: ENES100, ENES100A, ENES102, ENME472

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Aris Cleanthous ENES102 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/19/2024	Aris is so funny, patient, and cares for both his students and their learning. He always shares stories and jokes, and builds models for most of the frames and mechanisms we are analyzing. I would strongly recommend him!
Aris Cleanthous ENES100 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/21/2023	Probably his first time teaching this class but minimal guidance and no real experience with the course objective meant that a lot of people struggled. Just take someone else.
Aris Cleanthous ENES100 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/15/2023	Oh my god I do not know where to even start. First off, I am so puzzled by his high review. This was his first ever time teaching this course, and It absolutely shows. This class isn't like most, it's a really big group project lab-based course, and Aris had absolutely 0 idea what he was doing. Firstly, he provided 0 help on anything that wasn't related to mechanics, which sucks because the hardest part of this class is using Arduino, wiring and coding. Anytime I would ask him for help he would reply with "I'm not sure ask a UTF" which meant our professor was non existent and simply was in class getting paid to ruin the lives of prospective engineers. The worst thing: the grading. Oh. My God. The. Grading. It is absolutely horrendous. The group project in this class is essentially meant to be a failure due to it being an intro course, and it being weighed only 15 points. The instructors expect you to have 0 idea on what you're doing, but they compensate for this by having a lot of other easy assignments that are free points and worth a lot more. Not with Aris, absolutely not with Aris. He will dock off points for the most obscure things, even on the easy assignments, just to take off points. There were numerous milestones that were worth 80 points each, and I had lots of friends who received 75+ on them, but in our class, the average was a 64. This was a common trend among every singly assignment we had. He would contradict his own directions. For instance, he told us to have tons of ideas in place for our robot to show that we were brainstorming, but when we presented all of our ideas, he tells us that we need to finalize a design. like WTF. He also goes out of his way to change the rules. for one the milestones, we literally proved that our robot could do one of the tasks but he would not give us credit for it because the way we did it was too "simple". Is the point of engineering not to work smart, not hard? He also never explains what he takes off points for. on the rubric, he will simply right "good" or "ok" and then give us a 8/10 or something. This class is meant to be an easy A, but my group and I, we have never devoted so much time on a class and put in so much effort just to get absolutely pummeled by an old man from Cyprus. He is a nice guy at heart, and I am guessing that in a lecture-based class he is a great professor, but he is absolutely atrocious in this class and I have never disliked a class so much. I never recommend him and if you are in his class for ENES100, I pray you have a good team. Our TF, Maguire Ballard, was an absolute goat. He would always be on our side and it was so obvious him and Aris were not on the same page. Our TF has been a ta for this class for 3 semesters, so he actually knew what he was doing. It's a shame he did not have as much leverage as Aris because man if Maguire could have been our professor, I would have loved this class.
Aris Cleanthous ENME472 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/31/2023	Cleanthous was great for 472. He led the zoom lectures for all sections this semester and I thought it was fine, but realistically you can skip almost all of these and not miss anything. He was the instructor for my section too. Gave some useful feedback during our studio sessions and kept it fun. Way easier and less stressful than 371 with Dr. Vince and the DeWalt reps. His report feedback could be really funny too. He'd tell us in class to check what he wrote for our recaps, then we'd look and it would say something like "good" or "could be better." Would take again for sure.
Aris Cleanthous ENES102 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/27/2023	I highly recommend taking this professor. As a teacher, Aris does a fantastic job at making sure everyone is able to visualize the concepts, he even goes as far to bringing in home-made models to look at and "feel" reaction forces. Lectures are very useful since he always goes over the entire problem, step by step and makes sure everyone understands before proceeding. He always posts his lecture notes with his work in case you miss lectures (which is hard to do). Aris always makes his lectures cozy by asking all his students their weekend plans and sharing his own experiences and life lessons. As long as you follow his instructions and complete the homework assignments, you will be more than prepared for the exams. Even though he doesn't curve, you wont need it as long as you do the homeworks and take a look at the archive of exam practice questions.
Aris Cleanthous ENES102 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/25/2023	Literally one of the best professors I've had thus far at UMD. I retook this class over the winter because I was struggling to keep up with the class during the fall semester. The last professor I had was definitely a "textbook teacher" and would just regurgitate the material from the textbook word for word. I found that to be extremely unhelpful and of course I ultimately withdrew. I was nervous to take this course again but to my surprise, Cleanthous made sure to emphasize the fact that he was far from a textbook teacher and would have a different approach to teaching the material. He definitely delivered and I was amazed at how fast he was able to clear up a lot of my confusion. Not gonna lie, after the first lecture I already felt like I had learned waaay more than when I took the class the first time. He's funny, super approachable, and made sure to get to know each one of us individually. Exams and quizzes were definitely fair and he adjusts grading where he sees fit. 10/10 would love to have him again!
Aris Cleanthous ENES102 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/23/2023	Aris is a down to earth, fair and simple guy who wants to help his students learn. He is quick to respond with emails and prioritizes demonstrations and visual learning to help give you a tangible understanding of statics. As long as you finish the homework and attend lectures, you will be more than prepared for the exams. I feel like I actually learned alot in this class, and I would absolutely recommend Aris.
Aris Cleanthous ENES102 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/30/2022	Solid teacher and incredibly nice guy. His notes and explanations were very simple and to the point and he posted every single powerpoint to Canvas so they could be reviewed at any time. These powerpoints included several examples for each topic and he would write out most of work save some simple algebra. On top of this, he would bring in physical examples for many of these problems to show you how they actually work. On top of this, he would always ask the class about how things were and share some of the interesting things he was doing. He was kind and helpful when I asked questions in class, but I never went to office hours so I cannot comment on how he was there. There was a curve at the end of the class; I'm not sure how substantial it was but my A- in Canvas went to an A on Testudo.
Aris Cleanthous ENES102 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/19/2022	Aris was a good professor in explaining concepts and was very helpful. He was able to make me come to his class 99% of the semester.
Aris Cleanthous ENES102 Anonymous 05/15/2022	Great guy. Liked his way of demonstrating the material we're learning by bringing in physical models of what we were learning.
Aris Cleanthous ENES102 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 02/02/2022	pretty engaging professor, class moved slow for me but was still interesting. he knows his stuff and seems to genuinely enjoy teaching.
Aris Cleanthous ENES102 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 01/28/2022	Aris was great for ENES102. Taking the class during a short winter semester was a lot but he made the class inviting and comfortable. He offers tons of time for questions and is more than happy to help. If you're paying attention and practicing nothing he tests is unfairly difficult. Would definitely recommend.
Aris Cleanthous ENES102 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/17/2022	Aris was a great professor for ENES102. He encouraged class participation and asking questions and clearly just wanted his students to learn and succeed. He would talk about his weekends and life experiences and encourage students to talk about theirs as well, which makes his class have a very welcoming environment. His tests were not necessarily the easiest but they were always fair. Studying for the tests will guarantee at least a fine grade on them. Overall for a student that wants to learn the concepts central to this class and being an engineer in general, Aris will be an amazing professor at teaching that and making the student successful in his class.
Aris Cleanthous ENES102 Expecting a B Anonymous 01/03/2022	Boring, slow, unhelpful, good guy, garbage professor, difficult exams and doesn't prepare you for them at all. Only ends up preparing you for groupworks but exams are always much harder. Do not recommend him at all.
Aris Cleanthous ENES102 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/18/2021	Aris was pretty good for ENES102, he was always prepared and took his time going through examples and his lectures were very easy to follow. Most of the professors for this class seem pretty decent, but I would recommend Aris.
Aris Cleanthous Anonymous 06/05/2021	Great teacher and understanding about students grades
Aris Cleanthous ENES102 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 03/24/2020	Really good teacher, he gives steps for how to solve each problem and the does multiple examples. The exams are similar to hw. Also just a really nice and fun guy, he asks how everyone's weekends were or what plans we have for the weekend.
Aris Cleanthous ENES102 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 01/20/2019	Very good teacher, he likes to bring in props for students to mess with during lecture. No curve for the class, although you really shouldn't need one it's statics. He has like 5 hours of office hours per week and is extremely generous with his time to help students.
Aris Cleanthous ENES102 Expecting a B Anonymous 01/01/2019	Aris is a very good teacher. His lectures are well structured and he does a good job conveying all of the information you need to know. His exams aren’t too hard because they’re really similar to the problems on homework’s and in class. He’s also a generous professor and tries to help everyone get the best grade they can.