Roger Eastman

This professor has taught: CMSC131, CMSC250, CMSC330, CMSC388E, CMSC388M, CMSC388Y, CMSC389E, CMSC420, CMSC425, CMSC427, CMSC498N, IMDM101, IMDM127, IMDM290, IMDM327, IMDM498B

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Roger Eastman CMSC427 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/23/2024	I like Reastman as a person, he's knowledgable about the subject and has clear experience in the area, and he's pretty nice and likes to joke around in class too, but man is he a hassle to take as a professor. There have been a lot of issues with the administrative aspects and assignments of the class, all small things by themselves but add up to be pretty significant. Here's some of the things that happened: - The syllabus had outdated information - Most if not all of the homeworks and labs had their due date postponed because we were behind on class content. - Instructions and questions on the hws and labs had typos and straight missing information and unfinished sentences that made doing the assignments more difficult than it needed to be. - About 6 weeks before the end of the semester, Reastman said we had a project without a due date to be submitted before the end of the semester. He showed us the assignment page in class but never made the assignment public, and the pdf was nowhere to be found on ELMS. We never heard anything else about that project. - Continuing off that last point, he would forget to post important resources in the modules and a lot of the piazza posts were asking him to post them. Sometimes he would post the solutions to assignments/practice exams, but the assignment pdf and solution pdf would have different questions on them. - Grades took a while to get back, and the TAs would release homework grades before they were done being graded, so often times you would get a notification saying you got a 10/50 on your homework when only 20% of the questions were actually graded. In the end they always had the right grade but the first time it happened there was a bit of panic. All of these things were easy to manage though, it was just more frustrating than anything else. The class itself was very interesting and if you look past the errors in the labs and homeworks, they aligned pretty closely to what we were learning in class. The exams were a bit tough but he provides past and practice exams that are very very similar to what he has for the exams, and he makes it clear what content can and won't be on the exam. If you want to learn more about computer graphics and you don't mind having a bit of a chaotic class, I would recommend Reastman.
Roger Eastman CMSC427 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/11/2024	I agree with the people that say he can be a bit scatterbrained. I had some grading issues with some of my homework and it took him a long while to regrade, and he would also say that we'd review something in the next lecture but didn't. But I haven't really found that this impacted the class itself. It was a relatively easy class overall, and I would also say that it was a fun class in some regard because you learn some applications of the mathematics behind computer graphics. If you like video games, this class might be for you. Professor Eastman himself is super nice and clearly passionate about the subject. It's a class in which you can learn a lot without much head-banging.
Roger Eastman IMDM127 Expecting an A+ chadvader29 05/10/2024	Roger Eastman was my favorite professor this semester by far. His class was entirely casual and laid back, he was always approachable and honest about his mistakes. He will literally be going over an exam review and say something along the lines of "ah shit, this question sucks... this definitely won't be on the exam." Yes, he does curse somewhat often, if that bothers you, but I just felt like the class was more casual because of it. Overall, only bad thing I can say about him is that is a little awkward and makes some mistakes with due dates and such, or trips over his speech during lectures, but if you just point it out to him, he will go out of his way to correct it. He is passionate about code and art and is always willing to sit down with you and help you out when you need it most. Overall, he's just a cooky old dude and a fun professor, always a joy to talk to before class starts.
Roger Eastman IMDM127 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/03/2024	Very mid, average professor. His lectures are boring but he is very nice and caring. I just don't think he could teach. I had to get help from Google for most of my assignments even if I visit office hours.
Roger Eastman CMSC427 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/24/2022	Dr. Eastman is a great guy and a good professor. He will take the time to make sure you understand concepts if you ask about them. For 427 in particular, if you do whats asked of you in the projects, its very possible to get a 100% on all of them. Because projects are 45% of your grade, doing so gives you a solid foundation for getting an A in the course. However, the course was a little bit ungrounded, and sometimes his lectures meandered. He pulled most of the lab starter code from online instead of making it himself, and sometimes the project descriptions and homeworks were unclear and contained typos. Overall its a manageable course if you manage your time well and brush up on your linear algebra. Eastman in general is very reasonable and cares about his students, but he's a little scatterbrained sometimes.
Roger Eastman CMSC330 Expecting a W nightingale 12/17/2022	Terrible, terrible professor for this course! Came to class every lecture unprepared (as if computer science at UMD isn’t hard enough without an awful teacher). He acted lost in front of the class. Also very unaccommodating and elitist.
Roger Eastman CMSC498N Expecting an XF Anonymous 10/24/2022	He's a god, nuff said
Roger Eastman CMSC420 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 04/28/2022	I took 330 with Eastman as well, and I got a B+ in that class too. He's a super chill guy, always willing to take the time and answer questions. My main complaint is that he's not the most organized. He was going off Mount's notes for most of the semester, but he was also trying to mix in a lot of runtime analysis and derivations for the data structures we were covering, and sometimes that leads to the lectures being slightly confusing. Exams are also long and pretty difficult. But overall the class is manageable and interesting. If you have Eastman for a class you'll be fine.
Roger Eastman CMSC420 Anonymous 04/11/2022	Don't take him if you can. He sometimes gets lost when he teaches. He tried to make class engaging by asking questions, but his teaching style is not that great. He is not a professor that would say stay away from but try another professor first. Almost forgot; his midterm was very hard, and it was long compared to the time given, so many students didn't do well. if the other professors you can enroll with are either Hanan Samet or Michelle Hugue, stay away from them at any cost. I repeat, stay away at any cost. If you don't do that you might as well not read reviews.
Roger Eastman CMSC330 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/01/2022	Not sure why he gets so much hype. Would not recommend taking him if you can take the other prof for 330 (assuming he's co teaching with a good prof....I think I heard Anwar is leaving so I can't tell you to take it with Anwar lol). He's tried to improve his lecture skills (he mentioned that he's heard he "only reads off the slides") but as the semester went on, he seemed to just drift back to his old ways. Often did not seem prepared for lecture. Fell behind Anwar as other reviews say. The projects and exams were good, but the projects are old so idk how much Eastman contributed to them. Exams were fine and were online except the final. No clicker quizzes which was really nice. They planned to replace clicker quizzes with weekly ELMS quizzes but only ended up doing two. Anyway, if he's co-teaching, I would recommend going with the prof that seems to actually take care of the course materials (by this I mean Anwar made the "textbook" slides and Eastman modified them, so for Eastman vs. Anwar I would go with Anwar).
Roger Eastman CMSC330 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/27/2021	Eastman is a very nice and approachable professor. However, his lectures were pretty boring, disorganized, and not very engaging. We also frequently fell behind Mamat's section of this class due to Eastman's slow pace during lecture. Exams were generally OK (except for the final, in my opinion) and the projects were straightforward. Office hours were a big help for solving project issues and clearing up questions from lecture. The TAs vary a lot in quality - I benefited from having a good TA for my discussion section, but this isn't universally the case.
Roger Eastman CMSC330 jl1 12/26/2021	Eastman is a nice guy who wants to see you succeed. He is willing to spend significant time trying to help you in office hours. However, he is, in my opinion, a very boring and slow lecturer. It seemed to me like he had never seen the slides before trying to present them in class, and we frequently found ourselves far behind Mamat's classes because he did not cover content or answer student questions efficiently. He would reexplain half the lecture even if a student's question could be answered in a sentence. Assignments were generally not too hard. There is a lot of variation in the TA quality, but office hours can be a big help. Some of the exams were a bit challenging in terms of time but the content isn't too bad.
Roger Eastman CMSC330 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/24/2021	Very good professor. Extremely approachable and nice to talk to. His class isnt challenging tbh. All the projects were pretty straightforward, with most of the later ones being all public and semi public. The exams were pretty fair too, if i paid more attention in lecture and had a better TA in discussion I probably would have gotten an A in the class.
Roger Eastman CMSC330 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/22/2021	Eastman is a really nice professor who is extremely approachable. However, I did feel like the class was kind of disorganized. Sometimes while lecturing it would seem like he was reading the slides for the first time, which made things hard to follow. However, I think that the class was pretty easy to follow and the content was taught in an understandable manner. I took the class in Spring 2020, so the unplanned transition to online definitely contributed to the lack of organization.
Roger Eastman CMSC330 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/18/2021	Dr. Eastman was pretty good. His lectures were kinda dry but he explained things decently well. He made extra videos out of lecture on topics that confused students, so that was really nice to see. If you're taking 330 with Eastman, you'll be fine.
Roger Eastman CMSC330 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/17/2020	Dr. Eastman is the best CS professor!! I would love to take more classes with him, but he doesn't teach that many courses. I took 330 with him, and he was great!!
Roger Eastman CMSC330 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/25/2020	Dr. Eastman is a good lecturer who is knowledgeable about the topics that he teaches. While this class is tough, Dr. Eastman helps you understand the theory of everything you need to know. In addition, he is friendly and approachable, so if you have any questions about the course content, you can go to his office hours for further understanding. He is a good CMSC 330 instructor.
Roger Eastman CMSC330 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/25/2020	Dr. Eastman’s a really nice guy, but I don’t think he’s a really good professor. He’s a little bit disorganized, and sometimes when he lectures it seems like he’s seeing the slides for the first time (usually it’s Prof. Mamat’s slides but just tweaked a little bit). Sometimes, albeit rarely, if you ask him a question in class about Ruby or OCaml, he’d respond vaguely and say that he doesn’t code much in those languages, which is understandable but makes me uneasy. Also sometimes on projects you have to use things he skimmed over in lecture/haven’t learned (but Mamat’s class did go over). Thankfully, Mamat puts up a whole bunch of practice quizzes/exams on the class webpage, and they rarely deviate from the real thing. Also start projects super early. If you get stuck just look at discussion code from github, they’re pretty similar to most of the projects. If you wanna learn something, I’d suggest taking Mamat, but if you want a laid back environment, I’d choose Eastman. But since they co-teach, I feel like you’re sorta at a disadvantage with Eastman.
Roger Eastman CMSC330 Anonymous 03/11/2020	He's your average professor that goes off the slides and tries to go into detail into explaining the concepts. His pace is slow but is ineffective at teaching the material. He co-teaches with Anwar so the material would be the same, luckily his lectures were recorded. Still needed to go for clicker questions though. His project descriptions were horrible, that the piazza is flooded with questions on clarity all the time.
Roger Eastman CMSC330 Expecting a B Anonymous 01/10/2020	Good stuff, informative slides. Nice guy, good professor. Super easy exams when he helps to make it. Sometimes lectures can get long and slow to cover. Good thing he records his lectures so I can watch it at 2x speed after!
Roger Eastman CMSC330 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/21/2019	He makes the exams and the class as easy as possible. he is a fun lecturer in comparison to others.
Roger Eastman CMSC330 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/10/2019	He's a very good professor. He also has a good sense of humor and usually conveys topics well. I thought the projects were difficult and they caused me a lot of stress. Having a good TA helped for many of the projects. If it is relevant, he definitely has big gamer energy (for one, he teaches the game programming class, and for two, he's talked about playing 2000 Quake, so you know he's an OG Gamer).
Roger Eastman CMSC330 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/14/2019	okay, he's chill and nice and all, but my god i cannot pay attention during any of his lectures. 330 is a fast paced class in general and if you don't pay attention for one second you'll get swept away and won't understand the rest of the lecture. on top of that he sometimes doesnt explain concepts properly and just explains them in a very broad sense. i mean he's not the worst professor but i really did not like his teaching style, but who knows maybe that's just the way 330 is
Roger Eastman CMSC330 Anonymous 12/11/2018	Hes' really nice and doesn't go too fast. Somehow made going to his 8am lecture worth it (lol rip). He hates clickers just as much as us and tried to make it as painless as possible (sometimes just straight up gave us the answers). Really sympathetic to students and the undergrad struggles. Love the dude. Would take a course with him again.
Roger Eastman CMSC131 lactaid 09/20/2018	A really nice guy and great professor. He really cares about students. Definitely recommend going to his office hours to talk to him about anything.
Roger Eastman CMSC131 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/22/2018	He's a solid professor. He does everything he can to help his students. Great sense of humor. Does tend to lose his place sometimes during lecture but he's great overall. His practice exams look very much like the actual exams given.
Roger Eastman CMSC131 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/08/2018	An alright professor, he jumps into 132 concepts a bit sometimes and expects you to know them for the tests. Also, one annoying part was we went over this basic programming language (basically elementary java) called Processing for over HALF of the semester which was really annoying, made me want to transition into Eclipse ASAP, as much as I hate to say it. Otherwise, Eastman's a nice person and good to talk to if you need help.
Roger Eastman CMSC131 lactaid 05/06/2018	Really nice guy. Dr. Eastman is always looking for ways to help students learn the material well. Would definitely recommend.
Roger Eastman CMSC250 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 04/11/2018	Nice guy. Gets a little frazzled during class and always read off the slides. Helpful in office hours but overall very average, not the worst