Brian Danielak

This professor has taught: BMGT438A, EDSP652, ENES100, ENES100A, ENES197, ENES221, ENES489A

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Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/09/2024	Not a helpful professor. Did not communicate well, from deadlines to assignment details. Most of this class was self-taught as a result, and the TAs ended up running most of the class. I understand there were circumstances that caused Danielak to miss several weeks of class, but this was also not communicated to the students, nor were any attempts made to find a replacement professor. Ideally, ENES100 is a (somewhat) fun competition between student groups to build the best robot. However, Danielak's constant pressure and absences made this course a nightmare. In short, this course made me want to drop out of engineering and go live on a farm somewhere.
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/24/2024	The class is a guaranteed A or A- as long as you put in a decent amount of work. Danielak is a pretty chill and nice guy but doesn't help out too much. He simply assigns you the work and you do it with your group and answer questions to the best of his abilities. Overall a chill guy, but any professor will be fine if you're taking ENES100.
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/20/2024	Nice person, but not very helpful in terms of the actual class. This can be forgiven because he is a lenient grader, but based on the way the class is structured, your team can be struggling for a long time without learning anything.
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/22/2023	Dr. Danielak did not help very much over the course of the semester. Throughout the course we would continuously be given assignments with little help and parts that we faulty. In the end, my group was unable to do well because he provided little to no help. He penalized everyone in the group because individual group members did their part poorly and offered no way to improve grades at the end of the semester. In addition, he didn't even show up for the final presentation that was deemed mandatory. Pray that you get a good group if you take Danielak. Even if you take over majority of the workload he will not be empathetic.
Brian Danielak Expecting a B- Anonymous 12/19/2023	He's cool. But this man will not help you lol. I asked him a question he responded with "That is out of my expertise. " Not serious at all. He stays out of your hair though and is a nice professor. Doesn't nag but isn't much help. Try your best Michael.
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/11/2023	He is a nice guy, but I honestly don't think he has any idea of what is going on in his own class. The TA was mainly the one helping out during the OTV project while danielak basically just sat there. He likes to assign work without mentioning or explaining it in class and expects you to finish it. There's also this website he uses called catme and I would often get emails saying that I had to finish this survey, but it was never announced in class and I bet that less than 5% of his students did them. He is extremely lenient in grading, however, and always says that he completely understands if something doesn't work. (probably because he doesn't get it himself). If you actually want to learn a solid base for engineering cus this is an intro to engineering class, I would recommend a different professor.
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/10/2023	The professor for this class doesn't really matter, but he's pretty good. Very nice and he is helpful, but I was kind of confused and weirded out at the beginning of the class when he told us a lot of deep stuff about his personal life. Overall, I wouldn't mind having him again and the class is pretty easy, but you get out of the class what you put in.
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/07/2023	Didn't help very much in designing and fixing our robot, the TA definitely carried all the work my group accomplished in the class. Grades pretty kindly, and the grade in ENES100 is not based on performance, rather effort and completion. I would suggest taking the other professor though.
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/20/2023	The class was not great and I didn't learn very much. If anything, it made me hate engineering even more, but it was fun to work with my group on the project. Even though he doesn't teach a lot, Danielak is a nice person who will push back deadlines for the milestone assignments.
Brian Danielak ENES221 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 03/04/2023	I would not recommend taking Danielak for ENES 221. The semester I had him as a professor for ENES 221 was his first time teaching the course. The first day of class he mentioned that he has a PHD in chemistry and engineering education. He had lectured using McAvoys slides, and had often times told us that he had read the slides 30 minutes before teaching the class. He was often unable to answer most questions students had about the course material, and would claim "to get back to students" when he found out the answer which rarely happened. The ONLY reason why I was able to get an A+ in the class was because McAvoy taught 221 at the same time on the same days, and I stopped going to his lectures and sat in on McAvoys lectures instead because the keystone courses have the same exams regardless of the professors. With that being said Danielak is a nice person and genuinely cares, but I cannot in good faith recommend Danielak for a class with such as ENES 221.
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/17/2023	Really nice guy. Really cares about the students. Definitely an easy course to get a good grade.
Brian Danielak ENES100A Expecting an A Anonymous 12/17/2022	Dr. Danielak is an amazing professor who shows dedication in helping his student exceed ENES100. It is a pretty demanding course but he makes it bearable such as extending some deadlines espeically milestone six and not taking too many points off for not getting the signatures for completing objectives. Regarding propulsion mechanics and math related to electronics, it is mainly self learning but Dr. Danielak is somewhat lenient in the grading of the physics.
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A+ HannahRasmussen 12/15/2022	I highly recommend taking any class with this professor. He is so understanding and accommodating that made ENES100 extremely fun. There are no exams and the assignments are simple enough if you put in some time and care. Dr. D can be a little slow answering emails but I feel like he puts in a lot of effort to do well and takes the time to get to know his students unlike MANY teachers at UMD. He punched us with the OTV and we were ultimately graded on our process and not the result ( which was good cause my otv failed). I thought of this class more as a fun club and not work. I did not learn the most in this class but still had a fun time.
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/08/2022	Dr. D was great for ENES100. Helpful, taught the few bits of necessary material well, and a fun guy.
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A SquareDynasty 12/27/2021	This class is very relaxed. He was a chill and kind professor. Dr. D did his best online and made the class time enjoyable.
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/27/2021	This class is very relaxed, and I personally didn't learn anything from it. That said, Dr. D is the most caring professor I have had at UMD, and wants his students to succeed. He pushed deadlines and worked one-on-one with students to help them if they needed it. He was also a bit disorganized, and it was hard to know what needed to be done and when, but Dr. D and the TA's were very understanding about this and ultimately it didn't affect much. Reviewing the class, it was a bit unexciting and and the 4 hours a week that the class met wasn't fully necessary. Dr. D was a nice professor though, which made the class more manageable.
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/22/2021	This class would’ve been better in person, but like many have said there was nothing Dr.D could do about it. I really enjoyed this course and he was a great professor who genuinely cares about his students. If you can get him, I recommend taking this course with him.
Brian Danielak ENES100A Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/21/2021	ENES100 simply does not work online, but that's not Dr. D's fault. He's a really nice guy and he tried his best with what he had, which was practically nothing. He was somewhat disorganized and the class felt like difficult busywork the whole semester, but I really don't blame him. He's such a sweet and caring guy, it's pretty hard not to like him.
Brian Danielak ENES100A Expecting an A Anonymous 05/17/2021	I would say he’s fine for getting past this course, but there are a few problems. He was a chill and kind professor who tried his best with the online environment. However, I felt he was somewhat disorganized during lectures. Sometimes, we did assignment that were on the course schedule and were told the next day that they weren’t being submitted for a grade and that he meant to tell the class before that we did not have to do it. He tried his best to assist with Arduino coding during the second half the the semester, but most of the time the students were left to do it on their own with the assistance of google. This class was not enjoyable near the end as he put us in breakout rooms in Zoom for the majority of classes.
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/10/2021	He's great. Very accommodating, patient. Arduino coding was a challenge for the less experienced and the projects were annoying but he always tried to help. We had a hard time with our code for an assignment, and him and the TAs were very patient and walked us through it until we got it to work. He does put some focus on being able to troubleshoot issues and do your own research to solve problems, but he's also available if you are really stuck.
Brian Danielak ENES100A Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/10/2021	Dr. D is very disorganized and the class as a whole was on and off. We always seemed to run into issues with deadlines and communication. I visited him during office hours and he helped some, but he really doesn't have a lot of energy. I feel like I was never heard in the class. We were left to teach ourselves most of the knowledge, specifically with Arduino, which isn't ideal since I have little to no experience with it. This was an online class for me and I can firmly say they did not transition the projects well to the virtual environment. We had group projects that almost demanded us to need to be physically together. The class was just very messy.
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 04/25/2021	Very nice professor and very accomodating. This class will be easy for most engineering students and points are largely given for completion rather than quality. There are a few assignments for which students unfamiliar with Arduino or material failure may need to look up some coding/wiring help or some formula, but this is allowed in this class and is very easy to do
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/02/2021	He is very disorganized. He is calm and has good intentions, but when it came to Arduino, he barely explained it and blamed our not being able to learn coding on the "virtual environment." I went into his office hours for questions, and explained how I was struggling with coding (I have ZERO experience and this class kinda uses it second half) and he tried to write it off as I "wasn't putting in the work" and that "as an ENGINEER i need to do things myself." He also said comments like this directed to me in class. I felt pretty disrespected. Once I brought my concerns to him again in office hours two days in a row, I PROVED to him that we couldn't do a temp sensor because we didn't even have that piece in our electronic kit. In yo face. Don't be so rude, dude! Another problem was the ASSIGNMENTS. EVERY SINGLE TIME something was posted there was ALWAYS an issue with it. Literally. I had to email TAs and Dr. D continuously. Statements were unclear. Deadlines got switches. New rules announced days beforehand. It was annoying. I did a whole assignment and they decided it wasn't going to be graded and forgot to tell us. Overall, he is very chill... maybe too much. Class was very boring with little work. I feel like I got nothing out of it. The students in there were kinda uptight too. Dr. D is ok at lectures and keeping student interest. I wish we had more EXCITEMENT and FUN and learning to actually code!
Brian Danielak ENES100A Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/20/2020	great teacher and fun course
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/13/2020	A calm teacher who truly does care about you and your wellbeing. He teaches the material in an engaging manner and is pretty easy on grading.
Brian Danielak ENES100 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/10/2020	A passionate teacher who cares dearly about his students. He is easygoing and tries to encourage student participation as often as possible.