Alicia Kollar

This professor has taught: HLTH710, PHYS273, PHYS273H, PHYS371, PHYS375, PHYS467, PHYS721

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Alicia Kollar PHYS273 Expecting an A hughma 06/04/2025	This professor is underrated. Maybe she was problematic in the past, but I had a great experience taking PHYS273 with her in the Spring 2025 semester. She even teaches through discovery-based learning, as much as such a thing is possible in a proof/derivation-based theoretical math-heavy class. Oh yeah, PHYS273 is essentially a math class. In case you weren't aware. Kollar places a large focus on intuition in her lectures, and her homeworks are always interesting. Almost every homework we've done has had at least one genuinely interesting problem (at least, interesting for someone who enjoys physics and math; but to be fair, if that isn't you, you should consider switching your major) and/or problem which is directly related to Kollar's field (quantum computing). For example, we had a homework problem where we analyzed a complex waveform commonly used to manipulate qubits, ultimately discovering that its frequency breakdown is actually quite simple and elegant; additionally, the honor's section problem for our first homework involved a Christmas tree orbiting the Earth, oscillating due to a Coriolis force. Common complaints from past reviews are that Kollar makes mistakes in her lectures and notes, and that the textbook used for the class is an unfinished textbook with no practice problems. Regarding the first two points, Kollar is quick to fix her mistakes when students correct her in class, and her notes are clear enough that almost a third of the class studied off of nothing but the textbook and her notes, skipping her lectures entirely (I'd still recommend attending her lectures though, as she usually goes more in-depth into the intuition behind everything). As for the unfinished textbook, everyone complaining about the unfinished nature of the textbook completely ignores the fact that it is written interestingly, humorously, and intuitively (much like Kollar's teaching). For some of the key derivations in the textbook, the author offers multiple different derivations, each with its own line of intuition. For practice and in order to make sure one fully understands the material, it suffices to redo the derivations yourself, trying to rely on the textbook as little as possible, and injecting your own intuition into the derivation. This is because the problems on Kollar's tests are either plug-and-play or derivation-based, relying on nothing more than a solid understanding of the fundamentals. Additionally, you are allowed an entire printer paper-sized formula sheet (front and back), and Kollar reserves the lecture before every exam as a Q&A review session, where you can ask her any question about the material and she will go over it again with you. I never felt like I was lacking any resources I needed to succeed in this class. Physics is hard. Every physics class (aside from the labs) that I've taken here at UMD has set a new record for the hardest class I've ever taken, ever. And this is coming from a CS and Physics double-major who took 11 APs in high school. Hard classes are an instant debuff on the reviews of any professor who dares to teach such a class; no matter how good the professor is, you will have to spend significant time self-studying regardless. But in Physics, I've never had any trouble on exams after reading the textbook and redoing the derivations myself, with an emphasis on the intuition. The role of a Physics professor at UMD, then, is to provide a gentle and clear introduction to new topics, focus on intuition and understanding, and offer lots of support for the students, should they need help. And, in my experience, Kollar fulfills all of these requirements. Kollar is not a perfect professor, by any means. And no physics class (aside from the labs) is a free A; not even her class. But for such a difficult, math-heavy, derivation-based class, I'm not sure I could've asked for a better professor to teach it to me.
Alicia Kollar PHYS273 Expecting a B- Anonymous 06/24/2024	Kollar is better than those who, one needs to avoid, but still not one of the good ones. Besides the unstructured lecture, there are neither readable notes. HW have content directly related to notes and not to textbook. Reads through the notes as lectures and barely cared how students working. Try decoding the notes is more helpful than lectures. But then, for example, in class, Kollar can do half way through some math and say, I had something wrong in the notes and I will fix then reupload. Also had a equation wrong in notes until someone pointed out. Additionally, office hour time is poor and hardly any between hw assign date(thusday) and due date(monday). The right way is to email question early enough, then you can get a fair response.
Alicia Kollar PHYS273 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/17/2024	Notes and lectures were convoluted and often had mistakes.
Alicia Kollar PHYS273 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/13/2024	I think this was her first time teaching the course, but there were a lot of mistakes she made especially earlier on. She would get variables mixed up during lecture, and the first few homeworks she made had problems that were unclear and didn't entirely match with what we actually worked on in class. This got better over time so if she teaches this class again or is teaching another class she has experience with it will hopefully be a bit of a better experience than what I had.
Alicia Kollar PHYS273 Anonymous 05/10/2024	Kollar is an interesting one. Her lectures are actually quite decent, however, the notes she posts afterward are not so much. She's a very pleasant person and does work out each problem to its fullest extent. However, her homework and tests, while not hard in the traditional sense, are just confusing. It's taken me significant periods of time to just understand what the questions are even asking me to do. Her office hours often leave you more confused than before, so avoid those. Overall, I wouldn't necessarily recommend taking her, but if you have to it isn't the end of the world. Don't sweat it.
Alicia Kollar PHYS273 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/02/2024	Pro: Easy to read lecture slides. Communicates the information in a way that's easy to understand. Moderately hard homework problems and exams. Con: The assigned readings were from an unfinished textbook. It felt difficult to study for this course.
Alicia Kollar PHYS273 Expecting a C- Anonymous 05/02/2024	She co-taught this class with Prof. Shawhan this semester. Her lectures tended to be confusing, especially because after taking 5 minutes of notes on a derivation she would realize she made a mistake, and we would have to restart the problem. This happened frequently (at least once every two lectures) and as someone who already struggled with the content, I felt that this made it even more difficult for me to understand what was going on. There were also quite a few instances where her office hours were cancelled right before an exam or having homework due. Even after getting feedback multiple times, she tended to write far too small on the board and with messy enough handwriting that students were constantly asking what the symbols she had written were. She's definitely an extremely smart physicist but I don't think teaching is her strong suit. At the beginning of the semester, I wanted to give more leeway as it was her first time teaching this course, but over time I feel that attending lecture made me more confused and only really learned the material by reading the textbook or when Prof. Shawhan was lecturing.
Alicia Kollar PHYS467 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/24/2022	Over half the class was CS majors with no background of quantum mechanics. The course listing on Testudo has a long list of topics which a student should be comfortable with before taking the course, when evidently they were not. Originally was not planning on making lecture notes public until many students were sick with COVID, then students stopped showing up to lectures. After the CS students kept emailing saying the class was too hard, it became very simple. Ended up downcurved (so a 90 is a B+) since everyone did well after the first month.
Alicia Kollar PHYS375 Anonymous 06/28/2022	This professor was very absent. She was rarely in class and did not hold true to her office hours. Many students have asked her for in person appointments, to which she said no. The grading criteria was also ambiguous, and she did not explicitly state where people would get points off for the lab reports. Furthermore, her general response to people's concern is just "this course is a more advanced course". Would avoid in the future.