Armand Makowski

This professor has taught: ENEE222, ENEE324, ENEE324H, ENEE420, ENEE425, ENEE620, ENEE621, ENEE625, ENEE634

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Armand Makowski ENEE290 Expecting an F Anonymous 05/09/2025	I told him I was worried about passing and he said straight to my face I'm 20 and can no longer hide behind my mother... he wishes to make students go through a humiliation ritual only for a glimpse of passing this already difficult curriculum. If you plan on taking him only because he is the only professor for a class you need to take for you to graduate on time, I will tell you with a straight face it is more worth to just wait until next semester. Please listen to the other reviews and NEVER take his class under ANY circumstance, ANY.
Armand Makowski ENEE290 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/08/2025	I wish I could give this professor 0 stars. In my entire life, I have never had a professor or teacher that is this horrendously bad at teaching a subject. There are no examples done in the class at all. The textbook problems he assigns for homework are nothing like any of the questions that are given on his exams and quizzes. The quizzes he gives are the hardest I have ever seen in any class. I always pre-read the textbook sections we cover before lecture, but they are not helpful for this class at all. Makowski only gives theoretical questions and makes you write proofs instead of doing any actual math. That's great if you're a math major and/or already know the topics, but for students who are given a few days to figure out the topics before the weekly quiz, good luck. And when I say they have to figure it out, I mean it. His lectures are almost completely useless. I started doing better in the class after NOT going to the lectures and spending the time learning stuff on my own. Apart from his teaching, he is also simply just a bad person. I haven't experienced this myself, but I have seen and heard of many occasions of Makowski being blatantly disrespectful to students going to him for help. He has also openly shamed people during lecture for minor mistakes or simply for doing something he doesn't like. Armand Makowski has single-handedly ruined my respect for this institution. If the university actually cared about their students, he would not be allowed to teach here. Even the TA's also know that this man is not a good professor. They do try their best to explain things better during discussion, but it really isn't enough due to the difficulty of the quizzes that are given right at the end of class. There is probably a very specific type of person that would learn well in his class, but from my own experiences and the experiences of other students, I can not recommend taking this guys class. It would truly be better to take linear algebra and differential equations as separate classes with different professors just to avoid this guy. If you take him and do really well, you have my full respect. Avoid Armand Makowski AT ALL COSTS.
Armand Makowski ENEE290 Expecting a C- Anonymous 05/07/2025	First, I put C- as a hopeful. Currently not there. I, along with other students, have 100% used chatgpt before. This is what chatgpt thinks of this class: Professor Makowski is clearly knowledgeable in the subject matter, but his teaching style made this course extremely difficult to succeed in. His lectures were heavily theoretical with very few examples, which made it hard to understand how to apply the concepts. This was especially challenging for students who didn’t already have a strong background in differential equations and linear algebra. Quizzes often tested on material that wasn’t fully covered in class, and many students consistently struggled despite preparing using the homework and textbook. Grading for MATLAB projects was unclear, and students lost points for things that weren’t specified in the instructions. Additionally, major grades like exams were returned very late, and Canvas was not updated in a timely manner, leaving students unsure of where they stood in the course (including a curve that is not determined) Overall, the class felt more discouraging than educational. I believe the course would improve with more practical examples, clearer expectations, and better alignment between lectures and assessments. And here is what I think of the class: I personally STRONGLY dislike Makowski. He, while being very smart, just expects us to be at a level of math that graduate students should be at. Even the TAs knew we were in for a ride at the beginning of the semester. Every quiz is unfair, with irrelevant topics based on what we are covering. The homework solutions are hard to follow, and the questions are heavily theoretical. I don't think I have seen a single example in class, and it makes it very difficult to apply what we are learning to the rest of the content that we are expected to complete. Matlab is challenging, but these projects make it significantly worse as you could be doing everything right and still lose points. The exams are split so that half of the points are true false, and the other half comes from two questions. We have an exam less than a week before the final, and we are only covering differential equations for two weeks, with most being assigned as bookwork. God forbid he makes lectures helpful, let alone audible, as he is so quiet even if I sit right in front of him. If anyone else has to take this class, good luck, because you will need it. If you take Makowski by choice, you better preorder some counseling, because you will need some serious intervention for such a detrimental choice for your future.
Armand Makowski ENEE290 Expecting a C Anonymous 05/02/2025	Hell is warm for people like Makowski. I never feel the need to review professors, even with 'bad' professors i'm able to make out the content on my own by self studying and manage to still get a pretty good grade. But this is a special occasion. His lectures make no sense, quizes are ungodly hard, doesnt put any grades on canvas, and is just all around a horrible professor that I would Avoid at all costs!
Armand Makowski ENEE290 Expecting a C Anonymous 04/23/2025	Not a good professor. Works through barely any examples, weekly quizzes don't usually cover the material, and the projects on MATLAB are impossible if you have never taken this class before. Try to avoid him if you can.
Armand Makowski ENEE290 Expecting an F Anonymous 04/21/2025	DO NOT TAKE HIS CLASS! Lectures are useless. He assumes you know all the info he's going to teach. He doesn't use any real examples, only concepts that he completely and overly confuses. He mumbles and is hard to hear (I literally sit front row). Weekly quizzes have nothing to do with the HW or Lectures and most if not all of my classmates have been failing EVERY quiz (many 0/10s, 1/10s, and only a few 3/10s if I'm lucky). Projects get misgraded and our first exam that we took over a month ago has yet to be put into CANVAS. He claims NO CURVE and there's a reason his grade distribution is so low. PLEASE SAVE URSELF FROM HAVING TO TAKE HIM. And the final exam is only one week from the 2nd exam.
Armand Makowski ENEE290 Expecting an F Anonymous 04/21/2025	honestly I have no words. Just save yourself and DO NOT TAKE HIM. His exams, quizzes, and matlab projects are almost impossible since he takes points off for every little mistakes. His lectures are really boring and he just reads off the slides and explain everything in very theoretical way, so if you have no prior experience with Linear algebra and Differential Equation, literally run for your life. Even the TA agrees with me and think he's bad. It is so bad I wanna give him a zero, but that's not possible so I give him a one.
Armand Makowski ENEE290 Expecting an F Anonymous 04/09/2025	this professor is going to make me cry. I have a 30% in the class and I am on my knees and begging to pass. His lectures are made for people who already understand the material, he does not explain anything. I refuse to attend any more lectures as I am better off learning the material myself, he doubles down on these snooze fests by making fun of people during the lectures for unnecessary reasons. I have heard from other people that he has made other students cry and question finishing their major. If you have no prior information to differential equations or linear algebra before this class (actually change my mind, a mastery in these subjects) DO NOT TAKE HIM. His grading curve is insane as well, marking off points for things he did not explain. There are also MATLAB projects in the class, where he will take away points for things he did not say. I received a near zero on my project, even though the code was right, for using a built-in function (inverse of a matrix function). NOWHERE in the rubric did it mention that I could not do this. Quizzes are also based off the material that he just so begins to cover starting the week, therefore you must rely on an external source to learn all of the material prior. AND THE QUIZZES DON'T EVEN MATCH THE MATERIAL!!! I average a 1/10 on my quizzes. I study every week days prior for my quizzes. WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO. I always study up on the homework and the textbook material and I am completely thrown off by every quiz. However the tests were rather reasonable and less luck based. Additionally, he is making the last test and the final exam 1 WEEK APART. Only can I pray that I can just barely pass this class to never take it or this professor again, and I hope nobody falls under the same fate as me.
Armand Makowski ENEE222 Expecting an A Anonymous 03/21/2025	This is my favorite teacher. He gives me the best grades! I am proud to announce that I have received an A in this class!!!
Armand Makowski ENEE620 Anonymous 08/24/2023	How he is allowed to teach at UMD I will never understand.
Armand Makowski ENEE620 Expecting a C- Anonymous 12/27/2022	I have never had a professor so open about his disdain for engineers. This class is listed as an engineering class but assumes you have a prior BS in mathematics, and you will need that level of background information to do well. The class will be a mix of folks, some engineering and some math-focused. All the engineers struggled, whereas all the math folks did fairly well. If you are an undergraduate, don't even consider taking this course, he is very open about the fact that he tries to fail all of the undergrads. This professor pretty much singlehandedly killed all enthusiasm I had for graduate school, and honestly, I was just happy to pass by the time the end of the semester came around. Find another course if you value your sanity and aren't a hyper-theoretical mathematician.
Armand Makowski ENEE222 Anonymous 11/20/2018	Makowski has personified the act of poor teaching. He focuses on the "big picture", which essentially means no concrete examples and instead you get proofs/the theory behind the approach. He expects a lot of mathematical know-how in order to do the homework/exams, so if you don't already have a B.S. in Mathematics, good luck. The textbook used was written by Adrianos Papamarcou, (whom you should register for ENEE222 with instead), and reading the textbook rarely helps when it comes to Makowski. Lecture is the equivalent of putting your brain in a blender and leaving it on pulse for a good hour and fifteen minutes. On the bright side, it has reaffirmed my faith, for now I know that there is indeed a hell and chastisement exists in the form of these exams. Advice: - Stay away, if you value anything in your life. - If you need this course and this is your only option, invest in a high-quality bedspread so when you cry yourself to sleep at night your sheets aren't ruined.
Armand Makowski ENEE222 Anonymous 11/19/2018	I heard that this course was hard but taking it with this Professor only made it harder. He likes teaching with little to no examples. It came time for him to teach some topics in Linear Algebra (a course I am familiar with) and he made it harder for others to understand by making easy tasks like LU factorization complicated. There are no practice exams for him in this course. He likes to form his own questions for exams which is good because it keeps you on your toes. He likes to ask exam questions that prove something. He kinda loses a little patience when you ask questions. If you have no choice but to take him, read ahead and practice a lot. It takes a certain kind of mind to understand what he wants from you during an exam so knowing how to do problems in the textbook won't just cut it. Pros: will let you retake a quiz Cons: Poor Teaching, Hard Tests, will cut you no slack about your grades (No extra credit, no dropped test, If you're failing before the drop date, drop it quick)
Armand Makowski ENEE324 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/26/2018	Here are the median grades for our tests this semester: Midterm 1: ~50% Midterm 2: ~25% Final: ~40% For overall grades, there was 1 A, 7 B's, 12 C's, and 6 D's. Spare yourself the trouble and avoid Makowski at all costs. He will tank your GPA, teach you little, and underhandedly insult the class when it inevitably does poorly. Test questions are typically either fairly easy or completely reliant on mathematical tricks that few people will get. Unfortunately, as should be clear from the grades, most questions are of the latter type, and he will not change that.
Armand Makowski ENEE621 amercado 10/11/2014	His lectures are super clear; but you have to be in tune to what he's saying as you copy the notes from the board. If you listen, you can get a lot of intuition about the subject from what he says. The exams are not so much difficult as very, very wordy. You have to read about half a page of typed question, just to set things up. If I could have done his exams on a legal pad instead of those tiny exam booklets, it might have helped my organize my thoughts, but you end up flipping pages back and forth to make sure you're taking everything into account. And you do have to take everything into account, because usually you can solve the problem quickly if you realize that the assumptions allow you to simplify everything in a couple of steps. If you don't SEE that short-cut, then you'll really miss that legal pad.
Armand Makowski ENEE324 Anonymous 12/13/2013	Makowski is a snooze fest. Yet for some reason this dude does not allow a single phone out otherwise you will be personally confronted about it. If you whisper at the beginning of the semester, he will never let you forget about it. So let's recap: he makes us sit with our eyes glued on him for an entire hour and way too many minutes while he's up there being boring. Then, he explains the information in a really complicated manner and throws in new variables that no one has ever seen before and no one actually needs to ever see, so we are more confused than ever. This is the one class I can say that not attending lectures may have actually helped on the exam, and my friends' exam grades proved this point. I will give him kudos for understanding this material probably better than he knows his wife and children. He just thinks about what he wants to talk about and the material appears for him, it's pretty amazing. He unfortunately expects that out of his students. He also expects us to read the chapters before going to class. My recommendation: don't go to class. I am glad that by attending class I learned that my 13 years of Hebrew School taught me nothing because I had no idea how to say zero in Hebrew. My temple really failed me on that, just to add on to the failure I already feel every day thinking about this class. If you somehow find yourself with him as a Professor, he claims to not curve the class. You do get one formula sheet on the exams, but they won't help. Talking to him may help if you think you will fail, but do not expect an A unless you are one of those naturally gifted types.
Armand Makowski ENEE324 Expecting a C- Anonymous 12/11/2013	I have used ourumd.com for many years, as a lurker, mostly. I have never felt the need to review professors, because most of them at UMD are not noteworthy, in my opinion (not to say there aren't GOOD professors, just none that motivated me to write a review). Until I had Makowski. You see, even the shitty teachers are tolerable. Kruskal made algorithms the biggest pain-in-the-ass topic I'd ever taken before, but I got a B. Why? The class was still tolerable and DO-ABLE. But the same cannot be said of Makowski; he is on an entirely different level of shitty. A level of shitty that is politely cruel, convoluted, and irrelevant. The worst part about all of these things is that you don't realize this during the class. For most of the class, it just seems like you're not studying hard enough. It just seems like the hours of reading and rereading the book and meticulously going through every homework step-by-step, isn't enough. You've been studying for hours a day every day for seven days and you walk into that exam and it's as if you didn't study ONE MINUTE. IT'S AS IF YOU DIDN'T EVEN STUDY FOR THE RIGHT CLASS. The level of math required for Makowski's exams goes beyond the prerequisite calc 2 level of math necessary for ENEE324. This is saddening to me, because I went the entire semester thinking I didn't study enough or didn't try hard enough, when the truth was that I didn't have the prerequisite bachelor's degree in math necessary for probability with Makowski. Probability with Makowski was a time in my life where I questioned the following things: - my major - my intelligence - my happiness - my ability to do anything If you have a minor in math or are double majoring in math, then this class should be a fun exercise of your skills. Otherwise, stay clear of Makowski if you value your sanity, happiness, and GPA. On the bright-side, he's a very nice guy, and genuinely enthusiastic about probability. This is actually refreshing, but significantly overshadowed by all the negative shit. This class is the reason I started going to the counseling center on a weekly basis.
Armand Makowski ENEE324H Anonymous 06/14/2013	This class was definitely an experience. There were only six people in the class, so, uh, if you're reading this Dr. Makowski, hello. Anyways, he's a decent lecturer, though my main complaint is that he sort of expects us all to be some level of mathematics wizards. His explanations are solid enough but when he starts doing example proofs I begin to contemplate my life decisions which led me to enroll in the ece honors program. The bi-weekly quizzes are easy enough but the grading is all over the place. A bunch of the test questions involve some arbitrary math trick which makes the question become super easy, which is great, because I suck at figuring sh*t like that out and end up with a grade that causes me to spend a thursday afternoon drinking my troubles away. The rest of the questions are multi-step, but the kind where if you can't do step one, you might as well end your miserable existence of a life because that makes the other parts impossible. Also the final was extended to four hours, because the we all agreed that probability is so baller that we wanted to have a double dose before we were allowed to go home. I am proud to say that after passing this class the amount of information I know about probability is so little that if you were to give me a probability question I would solve it the same way I derive the first and second moments of the cauchy distribution. I worked really hard on that joke and it's bad but what are you a math major