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Jeffrey Foster
CMSC330 Expecting a B- thunderd568 12/23/2017 |
Super friendly guy. Lectures can be super fucking confusing (at least if he is teaching 330). He's a reasonable option for any class. With the curve, I got a B- and finished the class with a 77%. So that alone is worth having him for. |
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Jeffrey Foster
CMSC430 Expecting an A OtG 06/04/2012 |
Professor Foster is extremely responsive to his students. At the beginning of the course, he made it clear that it was his first time teaching the course and that it was being redesigned from the ground up. He was very amenable to giving extensions when the situation warranted, and whenever a problem or difficulty with the project specs was brought up, he would ask the class what fix they thought was appropriate. The lectures in this class cover a lot of very interesting, oh-that's-how-that-works topics. They were mostly his slides, with a few taken from others' talks, and a few design discussions. The projects are a lot of fun, but a LOT of work. Do not put them off. They help a huge amount in understanding the material. The tests were tough, since they required serious knowledge of the topics covered, but we were only expected to have an in-depth understanding of topics that were the focus of lectures. |
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Jeffrey Foster
CMSC430 Expecting an A tedks 05/11/2012 |
Jeff is a great professor, and his classes are well-designed and great. For 430 (compilers), Jeff totally redesigned the course, and made it incredibly challenging, relevant, and fun. I look back on the work I did in his class and can feel as if I accomplished something meaningful that made me more powerful as a computer scientist. Even if you aren't interested in programming language design (Jeff obviously is, and his enthusiasm for the material is palpable in the class), you should still take 430, because it will enable you to know intimately a tool that every computer scientist uses on a daily basis. |
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Jeffrey Foster
CMSC330 Expecting a C Anonymous 05/23/2011 |
He is one of the best professor I have ever had and he is totally fair. He knows the materials very well and there is always a decent curve on his grades around ten points. He loves his students and never let them go down and if you need him please go to his office hours. His both midterms are long but easy. %50 of the grade is for projects. If you do your project and get around average for your test you can pass the class easily with b/c . He is talking very very fast but you will get used to it. He tests you on what you know not what you memorize. His hardest project was 4th project and the 5th one..... so do your best on the first 3 ... they are not easy but interesting and doable without any TA's help. He is always on time and on his schedule. he provides solution for all of his tests and quizzes.. he is awesome. I will take a class with him if i can |
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Jeffrey Foster
CMSC330 Expecting an A+ xenonscreams 05/16/2011 |
He isn't perfect, but there's one reason I'm giving him five stars: I can tell he actually tries to adjust his teaching style as opposed to holding onto how he teaches the course every time. This means that over time, he is going to become an even better professor as he drops things that didn't work and holds on to things that did. For example, in 2008 someone commented that it was "purely a slides class." A friend who took the course a couple years back also said it was very slide-heavy at the time. This semester, he used the slides sometimes, but didn't teach purely off of the slides. They played more of a supportive role, and oftentimes he didn't even use the slides at all and gave several real-time examples and the like. Projects were kind of a mix. I thought they were mostly fun, but toward the end the public tests dealt with nothing more than basic functionality, which isn't a bad thing, but you have to be aware of it and actually test your code. Practice exams, practice problems, and slides were sufficient for studying for exams, but I had to study pretty hard to get As (according to my browser, I visited the class website 226 times this semester). I know a lot of people care about this, so yes, there was a curve even though the raw mean was a 74. Potential drawbacks: I never asked for an extension in his class, but I did hear he was relatively unaccommodating about them. If you are taking this class at the same time as, say, a class with Meesh, and your life is hard, you should try to finish your assignments for this class on time and ask Meesh for the extension. If you know ahead of time you're going to have a really tough semester for whatever reason, I'd consider holding back on this course until your life clears up a little, if you can afford to. tl;dr not perfect, but good and improving, definitely worth taking |
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Jeffrey Foster
CMSC330 Expecting an A tobiasfunke 05/16/2011 |
I highly recommend Professor Foster for cmsc330. His lectures are very clear. He enjoys class participation and answers questions very clearly and patiently. The projects are all do-able as long as you don't procrastinate. He's also a genuinely nice guy. There is a reasonable curve at the end of the course so if you're borderline on a grade a bump up is not out of the question. |
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Jeffrey Foster
CMSC330 Expecting a B Anonymous 04/28/2011 |
Great guy, hard course. This course will work you to death, and then some. Ocaml and Ruby projects are hard, and are nothing (conceptually) like the projects you are used to C, Java, and Assembly. Good luck managing the lengthy projects with the difficult concepts of the class, which also lend themselves to harder exams than in previous CS courses. I wish I wasn't taking 19 credits this semester and could put in more work to get the A in this class, but I am quite satisfied with Foster, he's a genius, and quite possibly the smartest professor I know. Since CMSC330 is required for CS majors and minors, as well as CE majors, there's no way around taking this course, but take it with Foster, you'll learn a lot and feel better about your 400 level's after this course. |
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Jeffrey Foster
CMSC330 Expecting an A+ random 06/08/2010 |
He is a very good professor. This class is a bit dry, given it is very theoretical. But despite that, Foster made it quite interesting. He is a very nice guy, answers questions patiently and is an easy grader (decent curve). All material can just be learned from slides. This class is all about projects, where starting early is the key. Strongly recommended with Foster. |
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Jeffrey Foster
CMSC330 blackshellbowser 12/23/2008 |
Great guy. He did try to make the lectures interesting (considering it's purely a slides class). Projects were for the most part reasonable (and pretty interesting imo). Only exception was the last project he gave. It was difficult and since it was a week before the final it wasn't pretty. Exams can be a little tricky and sometimes be a little too long, but nothing terrible. He is a lenient grader. What I like is he reserves about 3-4% of your final grade as "class participation" to bump you up if you did terrible on one project but good on the others. He also doesn't just use cutoffs as a guide, he looks at everyones standings and sees if he can bump them up. |