| Information | Review |
|---|---|
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Andrew Harris
ASTR288I Expecting an A Ovrthegrdnwll 01/18/2023 |
Although this course was taught with both Dr. Harris and Dr. Hayes-Gehrke, I decided to list Dr. Harris as the professor because he was there more of the time and I feel like he contributed to class more (Dr. Hayes-Gehrke had circumstances that prevented her from teaching a couple of times), although the two would switch off each class. With that being said, I don't know that I gained much from this class. Pretty much every week, whoever was teaching would go through a Slides presentation and we would have a few moments to talk in groups before sharing our ideas with the class. We had a couple of classes where there was a guest speaker and that was interesting, but other than that, the class was pretty boring. You learn about career options for people with an Astronomy degree and that it's okay to not go to grad school, but that's pretty much it. |
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Andrew Harris
ASTR410 Expecting a ? grumble 05/05/2016 |
Perhaps he's fine in lower leveled courses, but my god, is he an absolutely awful professor to have for ASTR410. Currently, the class average hovers around 50%. While low grades (which will be curved) are typical in upper level physics and astronomy courses, but those averages are somewhere around 70% or so. Not 50%. The homework assignments should be fairly simple and the solutions are typically solved with basic algebra or maybe some calculus in the form of derivatives or integrals. Should be easy to solve, right? Of course not. He's so incompetent at teaching us what he sees to be the basic tenants of radio astronomy that we cannot even use the formulas he haphazardly puts on the board, despite that many of the solutions should be plug+chug substitution level algebra. Why is this the case? Perhaps we, as senior level astronomy students who have backgrounds in advanced physics and mathematics, are just totally incapable of using algebra. Or maybe it's because he fails as a lecturer. The first midterm was a disaster. Average was around 50%. The day that we discussed the midterm in class, he basically told us that it was our fault that we failed, despite the fact that the class was fairly unanimous in failing and the students who got the highest grades (around 65%) basically said "I guessed and apparently the guesses were good." Sometimes whole classes do fail exams. It's a thing that's not uncommon to upper level physics/astronomy courses. What's uncommon is the professor not accepting a single ounce of the blame and telling the students that the poor results are on us. Then we have the term project. This, I'm forced to assume, was supposed to be a semester-long project with a lot of thought and detail put in. How much have we talked about it? In a numerical sense, the answer has to be somewhere between 0 and 1. The only times we've ever talked about the project was to extend the due date a week after he had failed to ever bring it up in class. What's it supposed to be about? What level of detail? Are we supposed to come to some numerical conclusions? Your guess is as good as mine, because the due date for that project is in about 5 days and he's yet to talk about it. If you haven't been persuaded on why you shouldn't take the class, consider this. He's TERRIBLE with partial credit. Didn't get the exact result that he did while following the same exact generalizations and same exact assumptions? That sucks, you get 1/15 credit for that problem. Don't take Harris. For 400 level classes, there are far better options like J. Sunshine and D. Hamilton who effectively teach the class while also making exams and problems fair (and don't fucking blame the student when almost all of us fail a major exam). |
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Andrew Harris
ASTR340 Expecting an A blackshellbowser 10/21/2009 |
He tries to make the lectures interesting and it worked 99% of the time. I was never tempted to skip class. He is pretty generous with grades (85% and higher is an A) and for our class, he gave us extra credit for turning in homework on time. You get a handful of homeworks, a midterm and a final. IIRC he gave us a helpful sample exam for the midterm. It was close to the actual midterm. Overall I enjoyed the class and glad I took it! |
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Andrew Harris
ASTR340 Expecting a B anthonyhopkins 04/22/2009 |
Professor Harris is an excellent teacher. He really makes class interesting and is a great lecturer. He is hilarious in his own nerdy way. Homework counts for a big percent of your grade and he has been giving extra credit for handing it in on time. There is only one midterm, so it is pretty comprehensive. The Final exam is cumulative and I expect it to cover a lot of material and be pretty difficult. This is a pretty hard class and reading the text beforehand is definitely recommended. Even though this class is hard, I enjoyed it a lot, mostly because Andy Harris was a fantastic professor. |