| Information | Review |
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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. |
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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. |
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Roger Eastman
CMSC498N Expecting an XF Anonymous 10/24/2022 |
He's a god, nuff said |
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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. |
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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. |
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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). |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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!! |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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! |
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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. |
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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). |
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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 |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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 |