Eliza Kempton

This professor has taught: ASTR101, ASTR320, ASTR380, ASTR399, ASTR435, ASTR601, ASTR688E, ASTR695

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Eliza Kempton ASTR320 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/10/2024	Pros: 1) good lectures, provides useful notes on elms. gives interesting historical context sometimes. Great textbook for the course. 2) She is very lenient with grading. 3) Homeworks are hard but they teach you a lot about physics and astronomy. She somehow broke down seemingly complicated topics like hawking radiation, predicting spectral lines of the Sun, etc. into difficult but solvable problems and put them onto the homeworks. Cons: 1) I felt that she was a bit condescending. She would often speak veryy slowly l... i.. k ..e t.h..at. It was very annoying at times. 2) Pretty good at explaining things but sometimes she makes things sounds overly simplistic to the point that you would think it was just trivial. 3) makes the homeworks extremely difficult and the only way we did most of them was with the TA's help. 4) Some class activities are boring because it's just calculations. But I appreciate the activity because some are interesting. My suggestion to the reader: find good/engaging classmates to work with during these activities. Better yet, try to sit with someone new every day when you work on these to fresh it up and expand your network.
Eliza Kempton ASTR380 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/21/2023	I am an aerospace engineering major taking this course as part of my minor so my view might be a bit biased but people thought this class was hard but I thought it was very easy. Homeworks were very short written responses or just simple calculations. Exams were very easy as long as you reviewed her slides and lecture notes. About an hour of studying before each exam got me high A's every time since you get to write note sheets. The readings supplement the lectures very well and she does a great job of explaining all the material you need to know for the class. Extremely interesting topics and great professor.
Eliza Kempton ASTR380 Expecting a B Justacoder 12/01/2023	She is a very passionate and knowledgeable professor. She does want her students to learn and wants engagement during lecture, however it can be a bit too much. This particular class serves as a general credit and many of the students are not in the Major. I feel like she expects too much commitment, homeworks are quite math intensive and not always intitative. She decided on having 3 midterms and a final project. This can lead to quite an overload towards the end of the semester. In my case we have our thrid midterm Monday and Final presenation on Wendsay the same week. Not ideal when studying for other course. Her homeworks can be tricky, there is weekly reading from the textbook, and exams are moderately difficult. Not a bad professor by any means just a bit much. TLDR: Decent professor, course is a little to packed.
Eliza Kempton ASTR320 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/08/2023	Dr. Kempton is a great professor that helped me learn topics I had previously thought to be impossible. His lectures are very easy to follow and interactive when applicable. The book chosen for this course was good, and it served as a good supplemental for topics that were not fully explored in class. Her exams were manageable and corrections were allowed for partial credit. The only fault I will give her is on her homework. Routinely, there was at least one question that would not have been answerable without visiting her office hours. While pushing student limits can be a good idea, it was a little taxing to have some homeworks feel impossible to complete. Small adjustments to her homework schedule and intensity would make her a 5-star professor.
Eliza Kempton ASTR101 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/24/2021	don’t recommend unless you really like physics and hard exams and homeworks.
Eliza Kempton ASTR101 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/16/2021	Professor Kempton runs a very solid ASTR101 course. The class was reasonably challenging, but overall if one reads closely, attends lectures, and is confident in using formulas then this class will be a walk in the park. As others have noted, this class is quite math based and you can expect the homework to use many equations. I will say that content wise the information and style of the class is very repetitive and monotone, but that seems to be ingrained in the class's curriculum itself, not in Kempton's teaching. Exams and labs are interesting as they ask how well you understand the material and each concept and how it connects to the big picture (although some questions are janky and somewhat disconnected, so again make sure to pay attention to definitions and review material). Also, TAs have been generally helpful especially in discussions, so this class should be easy as long as you are putting some effort to understand the material.
Eliza Kempton ASTR101 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/26/2020	The course was pretty well managed. She made sure there was a variety of material in an interesting manner. HWs were challenging but I felt like I learned a lot from them, though some weren't happy that the questions were not in the same format as the exams.
Eliza Kempton ASTR101 Expecting a B Anonymous 01/25/2020	Took ASTR101 with her, not an easy A if math isn't your thing. She writes all her own homework questions that are nowhere online and you have to use the equations she explains during lecture, so if you skip you'll likely be clueless.
Eliza Kempton ASTR101 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/10/2019	Good professor in lectures. Homeworks are very challenging though. Mostly graded on a combination of labs, exams, discussions, homework, and readings so it's a lot of work but not too difficult. All in all, solid professor.