| Information | Review |
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John Cumings
ENES100 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 06/07/2023 |
He's a friendly guy and seems to like talking to the students. Early in the semester, he relied a lot on the TA to explain the course and his lectures were a little boring (probably the fault of ENES100 itself, not the professor). Only thing I didn't like was how he'd take off points for things that he never specified or asked for. For example, my team had a few points off for pictures being too small or the background of CAD drawings not being pure white. Grading on the final design slideshow was also a bit harsh but other than that, it wasn't too bad. There's a lot of small annoying assignements, like watching a video of machine learning and answering questions, watching 20 videos of Mike, worksheet for participation grades with new skill learned (Arduino, circuitry), end of semester reflection paper. |
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John Cumings
ENES100 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/24/2023 |
Cumings strikes me as the kind of guy who probably didn’t want to teach ENES100 but tried his best to seem enthusiastic about it anyway. He hadn’t taught the class in a while so he didn’t really know course procedures and relied on the TA a lot. Also, he WILL put you to sleep during his lectures. He definitely seemed to care about student concerns but didn’t really do a whole lot to resolve them. It seems like overall ENES100 is just a bad class and it doesn’t make a big difference which professor you have. |
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John Cumings
ENES100 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/17/2023 |
Very accommodating professor and a nice guy. Always gave partial credit when your OTV failed to meet some milestone which was nice, and I felt like he really wanted us to do well. But he did feel a bit disorganized sometimes, and would ask the TF what was going on which was more funny than annoying, given the class that 100 is. |
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John Cumings
ENMA441 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/30/2022 |
Overall the course is pretty easy, just a survey of a bunch of characterization methods. The lectures, especially the theory, behind some of the methods were very complicated to understand, but the assignments and exam didn’t need a heavy understanding of the theory and werent that difficult, just a little time consuming. Overall, i would say the content is interesting and the final (the only exam) was very easy and practical as well |
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John Cumings
ENES100 Expecting an A- Anonymous 01/07/2014 |
As a person, I genuinely liked Dr. Cumings, he's really a kind-hearted person and wants you to do well even if his teaching abilities aren't the best or the most organized. Yes, he'd spend at least a good half hour of our 1 hr 50 min lecture fiddling around trying to get his powerpoint up or figuring out what to teach us that day, so yes, his lectures were a bit useless. However, when we began working in the lab, he seemed like he genuinely cared about the success of the teams and gave our team some really good advice. My team was wildly unsuccessful, like we essentially couldn't get s**t to work. But he's extremely fair with grading and curves generously, so if you have this professor and a good hovercraft group (unlike me), you're totally set for this class. |
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John Cumings
ENES100 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/06/2010 |
He's a pretty good professor, and compared to other sections of ENES100 he grades favorably. Lectures during the first half of the course were pretty boring, but they are going to be boring no matter who your professor is. For the hovercraft milestones, Cumings was fair in his expectations for our hovercraft, and extended the deadline for a few milestones. Overall I'd recommend him. |
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John Cumings
ENES100 Expecting an A bigbabby 12/02/2010 |
Definitely not as bad as other comments make him out to be. The lectures in the first half of the course can get a little dull, but they contain some helpful information for the midterm. We had a good TA who was able to come in after-hours to work on the hovercraft. As for grading, I would say Cumings is definitely fair, especially for presentations and reports, and he does curve. |
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John Cumings
ENES100 Expecting a B brunoinpa 12/13/2009 |
The comment below pretty much sums up Professor Cumings. He does not make himself available at all to help his students succeed in the class. ENES 100 is a pretty straight forward class but his lectures are not helpful at all. He has his doctorate and makes his presentations like he is still in high school. He extends the due dates of assignments because the class cannot meet them but in the end, they become too close together and teams do not qualify for the competition. Hope for a good TA if you have class with him. Actually, just sign up for Evandro Calente instead because his groups are always the most prepared. |
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John Cumings
ENES100 Expecting a B- Anonymous 07/24/2009 |
I'm not sure if he knows what he is talking about half the time. He stutters all through lecture and tries to explain concepts, but doesn't really succeed. He randomly deducted points on our papers and didn't expplain why they were deducted. If you were lucky, you would get and underlined sentence or two with the word "UGH" in the corner. I still haven't figured out what that was supposed to mean. |