Maksym Morawski

This professor has taught: BIOI602, CMSC106, CMSC250, CMSC320, CMSC351, DATA320, DATA602, MSML602

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Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/02/2025	He's a pretty good lecturer if you can stay with him through a few mistakes and quirks here and there. Material is really not that hard and exam questions are tough but usually pretty straightforward. Also gives out extra credit for taking notes and asking good questions. Biggest gripe everyone has is that he and the class are very disorganized which I get but personally haven't experienced so I can't really speak on it. Also homeworks are graded for accuracy and make up 40% of your grade which can get annoying. Overall, you'll learn the material well and have a memorable professor who's relatively young and has experience in big tech.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Anonymous 04/25/2025	whyyyyyy just whyyyy??? this guy can't teach material, he makes mistakes in his slides and lectures, he is super lazy and disorganized and he gaslights his students into thinking that their regrade requests don't make any sense. DO NOT TAKE THIS PROFESSOR TAKE IT WITH ANYONE ELSE!!!!! His slides, bad, his exams bad, class overall is bad.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/22/2025	Extremely lazy, incompetent, and puts no effort into teaching or learning material.
Maksym Morawski Expecting an A Anonymous 04/17/2025	Laziest professor at the school, he can't be bothered to write an answer key for the practice exams, hes afk on piazza, and his TAs might be trolling on purpose.
Maksym Morawski DATA320 Anonymous 04/13/2025	He said this would be nothing like his CMSC250 class, but honestly, it's just as bad. He's cool but he actually does not care about his job as much as I'd like him to. He would be a great friend and an amazing person to talk to but holy moly do not take a class with him. This is my FIRST EVER REVIEW. I'm studying for his second exam right now, and he just throws a bunch of topics at you, explains them halfway and tells you to have a deep understanding of them for the exam. If I didn't have ChatGPT to explain all of his concepts to me idk what I would do. His classes just feel silly, they feel like I'm wasting time and I'm not learning anything. Max can you please take your job a little more serious and stop ghosting students emails and actually prepare substantial slide shows please. I can't believe I'm even wasting my time writing a review right now instead of studying for this poop show of an exam to come on thursday, but that's just how his class got me feeling right now. (of course i'm still gonna get a b- or above)
Maksym Morawski DATA602 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/05/2025	Got to be one of the top 5 professors of all time. His lectures were very insightful not just academically, but also helped me understand how a lot of things work in big tech companies. The quiz was quite difficult because they were based on actual interview questions, which from a learning point of view is a huge plus. If you understand the concept and do your own exploration of the topics a bit beyond the slides, it becomes much more manageable. The lectures and the material are very organic and provide a fresh perspective. When I see that the MSDS program is industry focused, this is the sort of teaching style I expect. He is also really funny and relatable.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 03/11/2025	Dude didn't grade any projects until the very last second, which counts for 46% of grade. Exam answers could be almost exactly the same, but with a 30% variance in grading because everything is free response. You can get a lot of points back through regrades though.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/25/2025	TL;DR - If you want to go into Data Science as a career, then you should take Max. Otherwise, stay far FAR away. Pros: - Everything he teaches is from a practical perspective. He frames the class and his lectures in a way that would actually help someone in the future if they wanted to go into data science. This is something that a lot of CS classes fail to do in high school and college, so finding a course that directly prepares you for a career in the subject area is rare. So as someone who wants to go into Data Sci / AI / ML, this class was incredibly helpful. - He's a fun guy - We got an A on pretty much all of the homework assignments Cons: - The exams were really tough. He makes exams so that all of the questions are open ended and require critical thinking. Because of this, it's hard to figure out what to expect on an exam. He only gave us one practice exam for each of our exams, so there just wasn't that much material to prepare with. It felt like you either knew it or you didn't. - The class and lectures are incredibly disorganized. We had at least 3 lectures where he showed up with an unfinished slideshow. He knows all of the material that he's gonna teach, he just sometimes shows up unprepared to lectures. The class is also disorganized as well. Many assignments were posted days or weeks after they should've been. - None of the assignments had a clear rubric. We were given very little instruction on what we should actually be doing for some of assignments. This led to a lot of late night frustration as we just didn't know what the right answer for a given problem was supposed to be. This was because of how little specification was given for the assignments.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/18/2024	I had this guy for 351 and somehow he got a lower rating from me for 320 than that class AND LET ME TELL YOU WHY. At least in 351, I walked out feeling like I knew how to apply the algorithms. It was disorganized, but it was fine. 320 however....I got a higher grade but I got majorly screwed by the final because it was essentially a midterm 3 on topics he just likes to skate over instead of actually covering in a structured method. Maybe I would have done fine if the rubric wasn't also all or nothing style with 4 points for some questions. Exams are so weird and the grades keep fluctuating because it turns out he made mistakes in the answer key/rubric. He's just a disorganized professor and honestly, do yourself a favor and don't take him. Only reason he is 2 stars is because he can be funny in class.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/18/2024	Pretty polarizing. This review is coming from the perspective of someone who also had Max for 351, so there will be many comparisons. But overall honestly, I think Max has the potential to get somewhat better over time, though this semester was kinda scuffed. Max always said in class that he was more interested in data science than algorithms, but I was somewhat doubtful about whether taking 320 with Max would actually be better. Turns out it is... kind of. This class in general is much easier than CMSC351, so that's one thing for starters. There's a large buffer for your grade in 46% of assignments in the final grade. As the review below mentions, there were many more planned assignments, and they never happened: which wasn't that surprising, given that two (or really one tbh) of the assignments were extremely long. Tests are hit or miss. Coming from 351, there are basically no "Justin" questions (it's almost all Max-y, but there are some questions that are much more direct and less abstract). The first test was highly curved due to poor writing, and honestly, this is something I disliked more than anything besides the abstractness (I honestly found their abstract nature fun at points). Questions are purposely vague, and likely to make you think, but it makes it really easy to misread or gauge a question's intent incorrectly. Now, onto what I think could get better. The 1st assignment was writing... which was fairly useless, and Max realized this for next semester. The second assignment was fairly standard pandas/SQL stuff, but the 3rd assignment is where it got interesting. The 3rd assignment is honestly the best assignment in CS I've gotten ever, which I'm surprised I'm saying. It is VERY messy and very unclear, but that's partially the point, it is honestly the best way to learn stuff, and honestly reminded me of my past work/personal project experience. Probably the best assignment to actually learn, even if it was unforgiving and took forever. I really wish the next 2 assignments had this caliber, but they were quite mundane. I know some people might think I'm crazy for suggesting that he add more assignments like HW3, but I honestly think assignments like those are probably the best way to genuinely learn about data science. Another problem with the homework was that ending concepts didn't really have that much focus in the last assignments, but I also realized that it would have been hard to create interesting homework based on those concepts. Extra credit was quite scuffed this semester. Max initially made it 0.01% of the final grade, and just to put into reference how small this was: 3 notes was supposed to be 0.01%, and he changed it to be 0.05% PER NOTE. That's a 15x change, and frankly, it goes to show how little it was worth (and people thus didn't care much). Again, I do think this will hopefully get better with time. Max's teaching style is sort of like how he was in 351, though he definitely was generally more knowledgeable about the concepts he was teaching (definitely not perfect though). It seems he didn't really care enough to make coherent slides, which led to really vague and hard-to-understand slideshows if you didn't attend the lecture. I think this is probably the most iffy point I have on Max that prevents me from giving him a higher rating because while I do think he will probably change the extra credit system/assignments, I am not sure if he will improve his teaching. Overall though, I'd say Max is a slight upgrade from how he was in 351. As I said, comparatively to 351, this class is nowhere near as hard, though still somewhat poorly managed. Yet, there are some slight shimmers of something great, that makes the class somewhat valuable: maybe not for everyone, but definitely to some.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/16/2024	He is pretty knowledgeable but explains almost every concept very poorly (almost like he's forcing himself to use bigger words than he should). The class was very disorganized: we were told there would be about 8 projects and 2 in-class assignments (basically quizzes), but it ended up only being 5 homeworks and 1 in-class assignment—take this as you will. Not only are his lectures hard to understand, but he also prides himself on making EXTREMELY DIFFICULT EXAMS that are often very vague or open-ended, in all the wrong ways. He masquerades this by claiming that it's better to truly know the content deeply while making questions somehow subjective (which does the opposite btw) and by claiming that it'll be helpful in the workforce. The only reedamble parts of this class and the professor overall are that the homeworks were generally pretty easy and that he is a nice guy at heart. Overall, since he doesn't teach you how to use Python, pandas, or SQL but basically all homeworks regard these, I wouldn't recommend unless (1) you really want to take this class, (2) think you can success in spite of everything I've said, or (3) LOVE DATA SCIENCE.
Maksym Morawski DATA602 Expecting an A Anonymous 10/23/2024	Super easy class. You can use your phone and cheat on all quizzes. Nobody cares. Easiest A and no studying required.
Maksym Morawski DATA602 Expecting an A Anonymous 10/16/2024	Very knowledgable and has genuine curiosity for data science. His lectures are a little scattered brained and he could take a little more time to review the technical parts more in depth, but overall he keeps the material entertaining and relevant. His quizzes test critical thinking, not a multiple choice memorization style. Gives a lot of opportunities to make up points, but is maybe too lenient on standards. He needs to use the ELMS platform more effectively, he just throws everything into files instead of building the modules and assignment pages.
Maksym Morawski DATA320 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 10/11/2024	Chill guy, has a passion for his subject.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A Anonymous 08/27/2024	Not very good at teaching. Copying most lectures from Justin is one thing but not explaining them well is worse. Added a version of bucket sort to our portions which essentially worked as counting sort to have some differentiation from Justin's course. Midterms were not hard, final was challenging but fair. Would not recommend because it's a coin flip on whether exams will be easy or hard and whether you'll understand anything very well. The guy often pauses during his lectures and says "I'm kind of butchering this explanation" or something along those lines. Being self aware does not help us.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 08/07/2024	Not a bad professor. He is disorganized and tends to ramble sometimes. He does care about his students although it wouldn't hurt him to be more responsive to students who need help in time to apply it to tests. He genuinely knows the content well and uses references to real-life examples to make the class engaging. However, his exams are somewhat hard and worth almost all of the grade. However, he does boost grades significantly and is generous when it comes to rounding off grades. I would take him again, just be prepared to use another source of notes because he isn't the best with releasing timely practice.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 08/07/2024	Max knows his topics well besides some small mistakes here and there. The class would have been better if Max was more organized, he runs very disorganized day to day, and that trickles down to how he runs his courses. I also would have appreciated in-person office hours with the TAs, and I am sure some others would have appreciated this. I recommend going to practice sessions if you want a better grade in the course. His tests are decently tricky, but he curves the tests and allows those who know the topic well to get ahead. I would take him again, just plan to use either Justin's notes or another source of practice to excel in his class, and plan for somewhat long tangent discussions in class.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an F Anonymous 07/20/2024	Would rather cross a road blindfolded than take a class with him.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an F Anonymous 07/09/2024	He was co-teaching with Justin. We used Justin hws and lectures. Only difference Max wrote the exams. The only problem was Max was trying to be different and made the exams something you cant really study for and not have a strong connection with the homeworks. For 351 exams make 85% of the class weight in total, with that in mind, I did really well on the Hws and Justin practice exams, but failed the class because of Maxs stupid ass.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B- Anonymous 07/01/2024	Max does have a bit of an ego and he clearly doesn't care too much for 351, but he's always willing to hear you out and talk through any concerns you may have. I also appreciate his office hours when he's there - he explains things over and over again if you don't listen (ex. I asked him to explain 3-SAT since he hinted it might be on the final and I did not understand it, and he took over 20 minutes to explain it again and again to me and the students who stopped by to listen). His exams are pretty tough and a bit of a shock at first (I bombed the first midterm and spent the rest of the semester dragging my grade back up lol), but looking back, I find that I liked how they were written. It's less repeating what you memorized and more applying what you learned, which I think is very useful.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a C Anonymous 07/01/2024	Props on this dude for having a very distinct teaching philosophy lol!! I unfortunately do not vibe with him, which is probably a teller of what kind of brain I have as well (abstract theory maybe isn't my best suite). He's a cool guy that occasionally cusses during lectures, but his teaching style is ultimately sort of disheveled and unclear. Though, I do have to give him credit for telling us what kinds of questions will be on the midterms/finals prior (which was most likely a product of the first exam -- an utter catastrophe went on in the Piazza).
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/28/2024	Max is great, nothing more to say. The class is not difficult, and Max is one of the most personable professors I've had here. Homeworks and exams are simple and straightforward, and the material isn't hard. Max is an interesting experience, and you will learn the material from his class.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/24/2024	I lowkey didn't mind him. He gave really good hints about what was going to be on the exams and exams were more about knowing the algorithms in a high level than just knowing how to execute them. First exam was bad for me because I didn't go to lectures but after that I started going and he used to tell you everything you might need for an exam. That being said he is a bit disorganized and does go off topic at times. The grade overall was curved by 2%. My fav part of the class: Piazza going crazy after each exam lol
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/23/2024	Trying to accurately reflect on CMSC351 with Max is a challenging endeavor. It'd be far too easy to say something like "Max not Justin despite coteaching, therefore bad." I don't think it's that simple, especially since I already don't have the highest opinion of Justin for CMSC351. First things first, lectures. Currently, Max just doesn't pull off taking notes live during lecture like Justin does. He often spends a lot of time during lecture just on taking notes, presumably from his own reference. This takes away time he could be using to properly work through examples, since he is fairly unclear and/or makes mistakes on some of the examples in lecture. I don't think Max is experienced enough with the material to pull off live note-taking without sacrificing something else about the lecture. I think lectures would be much better if he mainly used slides for introducing material, and worked out examples live to emphasize the major takeaways. Max certainly has the energy to be a good lecturer, but the lectures this semester weren't great. It doesn't help Max's case that he was out for many lectures where one of the head TAs, Lana, took over, and honestly I thought she was a much better lecturer. Next, the inconsistency with Justin. I could whine about exams here, but I'll save that for a bit. My main issue with inconsistency actually comes with the different notions Justin and Max used for a few of the algorithms. Two notably come to mind: Dijkstra's and Floyd's. In a cotaught class, even if the exams are different, I believe that the content taught across the two sections should be the same at the very least. With Dijkstra's, Justin's notes, lectures, and psuedocode were very clear about how the algorithm should be interpreted in the context of the class, which is done to get everyone on the same page when doing Dijkstra's algorithm problems on homework and exams. Max's students needed to know Justin's interpretation because we had Justin's homework throughout the course. It was very clear that Justin's interpretation of the algorithm records the shortest path between the start node and every other node reachable in the graph, whereas Max's interpretation has the algorithm stop upon reaching a destination node. I actually brought this up, which Max agreed with me, and both interpretations were made acceptable for that problem on exam 3. Something in the same vein happened with Floyd's algorithm, where Justin's interpretation had a "Pass By" for each node in the graph, where Max's was something completely different. This wasn't the worst thing in the world, because the Floyd's algorithm problem on Max's final was explicit in exactly what it wanted (shortest paths of every node to every node where the maximum number of edges on each path is 2). However, the sentiment is the same. Something related to this point is that Max's section did not cover shortest path algorithm, but covered bucket sort where Justin didn't... for some reason... Alright, now it's time for exams. Simply put, these exams were very experimental, and they did not work with Justin's grade weights of 1/6 homework, 1/6 per semester exam, and 1/3 final. The first exam was structured very similarly to a Justin exam, except with a Leetcode easy at the end. Oddly enough, this was the only exam I got an A on, despite the fact that I'm typically horrendous at Leetcode. Regardless, people were vocal about despising it, so Max changed the exam structure entirely for the following exams. Each of the following exams had a few Justin-style "run through the algorithm" questions, but were majorly based on more theoretical questions which I turned out to be terrible at. Exam 2 had 30% of its score determined by 6 multiple choice questions, and some of the questions were poorly written and/or relied on knowing niche facts before you could even come close to a valid response. Exam 3 was mostly fine, but two questions in particular emphasized memory, which isn't something we really practiced in class in any capacity. The final was mostly fine, but a few of the questions were weighted a crazy amount, and there were a fair amount of gotchas with small, but significant point reductions throughout the exam. I did not clutch up on the final, and I screwed up so much compared to how I wanted to do that I only qualified for an A- with a small unknown curve. I'll take it, but at the same time I wanted to do better in this course, but I didn't know how to prepare for the exams. I'll accept that this is a pretty big skill issue, since the exam distributions throughout the semester were honestly pretty high for both professors (Justin's were typically a few points higher on the mean, with exam 3 having an 8 percent mean disparity, but Max's averages weren't bad). However, I also don't think this class structure was setting most people up for success, and it didn't seem that we were given much leeway while Max was figuring out what he wanted his exams to be like. It's honestly a shame, because I can see what Max was going for with the exams. But they simply don't work with the grade weights we were given, and after exam 1, they were mostly independent from Justin's homework which we had to do throughout the semester. I'm conflicted. I want to give Max a higher rating, because I genuinely believe that this class wasn't designed to hurt the students. Max may have some amount of arrogance or whatever, but he is genuinely willing to hear you out on issues you may have, especially if you have valid points when it comes to regrades (personal experience). However, what keeps my rating low is that this run of CMSC351 was just rough. I feel like a lot of decisions were made just to be made, rather than for the benefit of the students. In a sense, it was almost like taking two different algorithms classes in the same semester. For homeworks, we had to be good at Justin-style questions, which tended to be very specific in what they were asking and the answers they wanted. For exams, we had to be good at Max-style questions, which tended to be far more vague and/or theoretical, but the answers they expected were still very specific. It was very tiring.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an F Anonymous 05/23/2024	Funny guy. Was "co teaching" with Justin. We had the same homework as Justin. However, instead of making the exams have a connection to the homework, like Justin's exams, Max wanted to be different the entire semester, resulting in lower exam averages, especially comparing to Justin students.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/22/2024	his exams are so unrelated to lecture materials
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/22/2024	Max is a really nice guy but he's a terrible professor and tries to make up for it by trying to seem like our friend. He seems really smart but can't articulate ideas properly. Multiple times, he would try to lecture on a topic, forget/not know how to explain, and then just say forget about it it's not on the exam or to refer to Justin's notes. After the first exam, I stopped going to class altogether because it was completely useless. Furthermore, his handwriting and lecture notes are terrible and therefore impossible to follow. Ultimately, you end up reading Justin's notes to teach yourself all the material. This class was supposed to be cotaught so this shouldn't be an issue. However, despite Max's inability to teach, he wants to be quirky and ask us questions that are not reflective of the material we learn all semester. Though the class is cotaught, the only similarities between Justin and Max are the homeworks, which are common between the two. The problem here is that Max makes his own exams despite using Justin's homework but doesn't give us proper practice so you can't really prepare for Max exams when you are studying. All these issues led to a massive grade discrepancy on each of the midterms between Justin and Max(totaled to about -7-8% of ur final grade if you took Max). He did not release his final averages so I can't really say too much about that but throughout the semester, it was blatant how unfair the class was and how unreceptive Max was overall. This would all be ok if Max decided to account for this discrepancy when setting grade cutoffs at the end of the semester to "equalize" a class that is cotaught and should be equalized regardless. However, Max being max dropped grade cutoffs by about 2% meaning that you were at about a 5-6% disadvantage if you took Max vs Justin. Max is a nice guy but do not take him for any class if you care for your GPA at all
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/22/2024	Max is a fine professor, might not be the best lecturer but his exams are definitely not as hard as people are making it seem. If you studied the course content throughly you would likely come up across some of the stuff we were tested on. most of the people complaining didnt show up to lecture (where he literally gives out exam answers if your paying attention) or try to talk to him personally which is not hard to do because hes a cool guy. he actively goes out of his way to help students that are struggling including me at the beginning of the semester, 351 is a hard class, but the amount of people complaining this semester wouldn't peak at 25% in kruskal let alone pass
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/22/2024	Max is a good professor, yes his exams are hard to study for but if you throughly study the course content you will be fine on the exams and they likely become questions you think about. 351 is difficult class, I would not say he is the best lecturer but he goes out of his way to aid students that are struggling and guides you in the right direction if you are struggling. Half the people complaining did not go to lecture regularly (where he literally gives out some of the exam answers if you pay attention) or speak to him personally which is not hard to do because he is a cool dude. If these kids had kruskal they might not even hit 30% let alone pass
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/22/2024	He's not the most organized lecturer but he cares more about your understanding of the material than your memorization of trivial items. I really liked his exams because in order to do well on them, you had to actually fully understand the material, and not just regurgitate a formula memorized in class. The leetcode question that other people are referring to is a question Max gave us very fair warning about (he basically told us it would be a DP leetcode easy) of which there are only a few. So if you practiced those beforehand (or even tried to figure it out on the exam), you likely would have gotten it. Overall his exams really made you think hard about the content that you learned, which is arguably more valuable of a skill than, say, memorizing time complexities without understanding WHY they are what they are. This guy gets too much hate.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a C Anonymous 05/22/2024	Beautifully chaotic class. Lectures aren't too great for learning and is honestly more worth to study off of Justin's op notes, but I will say Max's lectures have a very inclusive feel with his quirky and funny personality. Records lectures but you need to email him for it to promote more people coming to class. This semester, despite co-teaching Justin's class, Max decided to do his own thing. This includes straight up teaching a few different material than Justin, even teaching one concept his own way that is required for the exam, and creating completely different exams which were noticably more difficult to study for. His first exam had a leetcode problem that was told in advance to only those attending his lectures, his second one had a large proportion of your grade in a few mc questions, and his third one was half straightforward do the algorithm types of questions while the other half were difficult conceptual questions. The third exams format was the same style as the final, which was really well written in a way that actually makes you think. Tldr: Take this class if you are low-key a masochist and like more challenging exams that are less on regurgitating info and more conceptual thinking.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/21/2024	A class of all time. As the below reviews have already said, his teaching is basically him reading off of Justin's notes (not it). His tests are well ... interesting? They're definitely the most unique tests I've ever seen and are way more conceptual. People did get very annoyed at his first test due to a certain question, and he changed his future tests to account for that. Still, I found the class, in general, to just be so stressful due to the fact that the tests are 5/6 of your grade. He is sometimes funny during lectures, but also half the time it comes off as sorta egoish (as the below reviews also say).
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/21/2024	Made 351 so easy. Love this guy
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/20/2024	Don't listen to the reviews down below, people are over exaggerating how bad Max is. In actual honesty, max on the outside may be seen as tough due to the nature of the problems he gives on the exam, but on the inside, he's someone who deeply cares about making sure you truly understand the material taught in class by asking you questions which requires you to think deeply about the properties of the algos we learned in class. In terms of my performance, I skipped a lot of classes and procrastinated at the last minute for the majority of the class so that didn't help in terms of my grade but I currently don't know there is a curve so my grade could be higher. However, in terms of teaching he's decent for the most part except for the fact that he basically banks on Justin's lectures/HWs. In terms of exams, the content was split into 40 - 50 percent "Justin'' style problems which are just performing the algo such as run one iteration of quick sort, run prims, etc which are basically free points and the rest were conceptual problems which test how well you actually understand the algos. Overall, Max is fine and definitely not as bad as people make him out to be and if I wasn't a major dumbass, I could've done better overall.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/20/2024	Don't listen to the reviews down below, people are over exaggerating how bad Max is. In actual honesty, max on the outside may be seen as tough due to the nature of the problems he gives on the exam, but on the inside, he's someone who deeply cares about making sure you truly understand the material taught in class by asking you questions which requires you to think deeply about the properties of the algos we learned in class. In terms of my performance, I skipped a lot of classes and procrastinated last minute for majority of the class so that didn't help in terms of my grade but I currently dont know there is a curve so my grade could be higher. However, in terms of teaching he's decent for the most part except for the fact that he basically banks of Justin's lectures/HWs. In terms of exams, the content was split into 40 - 50 percent "Justin" style problems which is just performing the algo such as run one iteration of quick sort, run prims, etc which are basically free points and the rest were conceptual problems which test how well you actually understand the algos. Overall, Max is fine and definitely not as bad as people make him out to be and if I wasn't a major dumbass, I could've done better overall.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/20/2024	His exams are fairish (they are a lot more conceptual than other exams so you cannot just memorize the algorithm and do well, need to think), but only take the class with him if you know you can learn the material on your own. Bad lecturer and he seems like a friendly person, but you will eventually realize its a facade. Things to take note of that happened with him this semester: impossible question on the makeup for exam 1s (seemed like something went wrong in their exam making process, so prob won't happen again, but still good to know), often told students to go to the other professor's lecture if they didn't enjoy his, would mostly learn most of the stuff he was teaching during class (this wasn't as bad as it was in 250), not very passionate for the material. He did make some improvements since when he taught CMSC250, but still not good. I learned more from Justin's notes than his lectures. Honestly if he wasn't a bad lecturer and very arrogant/egotistical then I would've probably given him a high rating. I liked his exams.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a C Anonymous 05/20/2024	He is a pretty unexperienced funny lecturer. Max took all the material from the main lecturer (Justin) and then proceeded to explain it in the way that he wanted, which was kind of sloppy at times. For instance, he would end class early because he considered there was nothing else to talk about (even though Justin's notes contained more material), he would have one of the worst handwriting I've ever seen, which did not make things easier (no offense), and he would run out of battery on his iPad in multiple occasions, interrupting the flow of the class. He would also talk about hypothetical scenarios in algorithms that he would just love to put on his exams, which ended up being more ambiguous than Justin's, leading to a lower average in every single one of his exams. The Piazza went crazy multiple times just because of his methods and the kind of questions that he would put on his exams. Now, from a personal perspective, this was one of the hardest CS classes that I've taken. I just felt that no matter how much I studied for each exam, there would just be this set of questions that you would just not be prepared for, which was really frustrating. You would have the same homeworks as Justin's section, which saved my grade because I did really well on those, but they barely correlate with what you need to be prepared for in the exams (Which is 83% of your grade!!!). I ended up just barely passing the class despite having solid A's and B's in all my other classes and allocating significantly more time to this class. This professor was just not for me, and I really tried to be as objective as possible here, as I see a lot of the reviews are just so emotionally charged.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/20/2024	He doesn't show up to lectures lots of times for unknown reasons and even if he does, he has screwed up many times to the point of confusion. Also doesn't teach content thoroughly enough for his unreasonably difficult exams. I have put a lot of effort into this class and still felt like I fell entirely behind in his exams. For the final, he taught a different algorithm method from Justin, whom he was supposed to CO-TEACH with, as well as added multiple different algorithms from Justin. At that point, bro didn't even co-teach, and he made this decision in the middle of the semester which was very stressful. I am very grateful for the TAs in this class: I don't think I could've passed without them, but I can't help but think that the TAs in this class would be less stressed if Max was more organized. He's also lowkey annoying and arrogant. If there was one good thing, it's nice that he put an emphasis on the conceptual aspect of this class, but this barely trumps all his downsides.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/20/2024	steer SO fucking far away from this professor. like i mean run the other way if he even walks by you. this man is geniunely the laziest, sleaziest, worst lecturer ever. In my history of being in this university, this is the worst worst worst lecturer by far I have seen and it does not even come close. Cant even make his own homework and you have to do justins homeworks although justin has a completely different question style so his homeworks do not prepare you for the exams whatsoever(the first time you are exposed to his question style is in the exams, how lovely). LITERALLY IF YOU CANT GET ANY OTHER PROFESSOR BUT YOU HAVE TO TAKE HIM THEN DONT TAKE THE CLASS, JUST CALL IT AN L AND TAKE THE CLASS NEXT SEMESTER WITH A DIFFERENT PROFESSOR. i dont know how this man is allowed to work in any institution, hes not a professor hes a JOKE. he deserves -5 stars but unfortunately this isnt an option on planetterp.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/19/2024	Ignore all these 1 star reviews, they’re probably the students that were complaining and causing drama in the course Piazza. Max is a great guy that is more personable than almost all the rest of the CS professors combined, with great knowledge about the course topics to boot. Sure, his class wasn’t even 40% as organized as Justin’s class, but what the people in this review section fail to realize is that Max and Justin’s exam averages were pretty similar, Justin’s averages being only 2% higher at most. The only discrepancy in this is exam 3, where which there was an 8% difference in averages, but I feel that Max recognized this and made the final exam a bit easier and more fair to compensate. Most of these reviews are complaining about a singular Leetcode problem on the first exam, which, in all regards, was unfair, but after that point, he swore to not include any more of those types of questions, or even pseudocode questions for that matter. Max’s exams are different, in the sense that they test a lot on how well you can dissect a concept and see if you really understand it, which I think is a much better way of getting students to learn the content, as opposed to mindlessly doing problems as quickly and efficiently as possible. The people that leave reviews complaining about this are missing the point of his exams as a whole.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/17/2024	Max is really disorganized and inexperienced as a lecturer. He frequently makes mistakes during lectures and seemingly doesn’t care about/understand 351 material as well as you’d expect. This makes the class significantly harder than it has to be, so I’d recommend relying on outside sources (such as Justin’s notes for 351) to learn the material. On the plus side, he is one of the more entertaining CS lecturers, his exams actually rely on applying the theory you have learned rather than memorization (some people don’t like this), and he is willing to take feedback. I’d recommend taking a different professor for most classes, but given that he has consistently improved over the two classes I’ve taken with him, he could be much better in the future.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Anonymous 05/17/2024	Steer clear from him if possible. He doesn't teach very well (he ended multiple lectures with "I don't think I taught that right", told us he tried to do the homework and couldn't, and frequently skips problems mid way through because he can't complete them.) His exams are to "show mastery of a topic" but he himself barely scratches the surface while teaching. He doesn't give adequate practice material. He also has a terrible ego.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/17/2024	I don't get all the complaining. Sure he ain't the best professor in the world and some of tests were a little odd, but not expecting to actually do an algorithm is wild. All these kids complaining are mad they couldn't figure out a question on exam 1 where the answer was just the Fibonacci sequence! It's an algorithms class!
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/17/2024	People will complain about the leetcode question, but his issue was missing lectures in key parts of the semester. Specifically, the last week of school. In a time where student seek last minute help or exam logistics, he went ghost. Lectures were watered down Justin lectures that lacked clarity.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/17/2024	Warning: If you're looking at Spring 2024 semester reviews, you're gonna get a lot of bootlickers and people giving dramatic one-star reviews. Unfortunately they became very very vocal during the semester on Piazza and took over the entire class. So be aware when people are going overboard criticizing or praising Max. Some people may not like his personality (not sure how to describe it, it can come off a little cocky), but he's a nice person. The issue is that his class is run like a disaster. Class notes don't get posted for months and they're fairly nonsensical to follow. He clearly makes no effort to prepare for lectures ahead of time; he made a ton of mistakes that caused lectures to contradict each other and cause a bunch of confusion unnecessarily. To add insult to injury, his UNDERGRADUATE teaching assistant taught better than him when he was absent. There were also some serious incidents involving TAs that got swept under the rug. Two TAs were straight up shit-talking students vocally and there were no repercussions except a "hey, don't talk about that in office hours" from him. The exams asked very vague questions that contradicted lecture material sometimes and oftentimes had multiple possible answers, but only one deemed correct. He also asked some questions about developing algorithms to solve problems. If we're going to get questions like that on exams, homework assignments or lectures should build those skills, as this is an analysis of algorithms course and it's not the main focus. Max has his fans—I think it's great that he tries to build a community with interested students in such a large school. But I think he's emblematic of this UMD CS' institutional failures to provide consistent, quality instruction to undergraduates. That any instructor can exhibit such seemingly acute indifference to the material and helping students succeed is a total embarrassment to this university's claims of supposed high rankings and talented, accessible faculty.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/16/2024	Max's lectures and notes often feel messy and incomplete in comparison to Justin's. I started off going to his lectures, and for simple topics, his lectures suffice. But for exams and most of the course material, you have to rely on Justin. My biggest grievance was like most students: from what I've gathered Max's exams were disproportionately harder than Justin's. I understand that most classes have professors who do things completely differently, but when you establish that you're co-teaching with him, I expect similarities whether it comes to exam difficulty, the method of the algorithms, notes, etc. He really wants you to understand the content on a deep level which I appreciate, but the exams punish you if you can't, and since this class is co-taught, it is kind of frustrating to hear when the neighboring professor's students are getting easier A's. Regardless though, a B and above is possible if you really grind so don't be discouraged if you're stuck with him.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/15/2024	His lectures are mid but the complaining is overblown. It just looks bad when he's being compared to Justin, but I would highly advise attending Justin's lectures instead if he's coteaching, because his teaching is hard to follow and the notes he releases are really confusing.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 05/15/2024	Took him S24, when he co-taught with Justin. So here’s the deal: Max is nice, and he’s a decent lecturer. TAs being rough graders probably happens every semester, and it sucked However: - His exams have been wildly inconsistent in question style and point distribution, but overall the questions were weirdly phrased and not the kind we dealt with on the HW. The rubrics for the questions were not student-friendly. Be prepared to argue on gradescope. - He almost got every ADS student’s final cancelled because he forgot to confirm it on time, which led to all of us scrambling over the weekend. He also once submitted an exam so late that ADS printed the previous exam and had to delay our testing by half an hour to get the right one. - The material didn’t line up with what his co-prof taught, he didn’t record, and his notes were worthless. TLDR: funny and a good person, decent lecturer, but not good at the other aspects of being a professor.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Anonymous 05/15/2024	Class is so disorganized and he makes his exams harder for zero reason. Avoid taking him
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/15/2024	you don't have to actually go to class. read the justin notes and then go to his class for the review sessions. he actually hands out the questions at the review sessions. learn the material well - not just surface well, actually know how everything works. AND PLEASE GO TO THE REVIEW SESSIONS. you will most likely get at least a B by just paying attention and understanding everything that he talks about in the review session.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/15/2024	I honestly think he's quite a decent professor. He makes sure that you 'understand' and not memorize. Obviously the gears didn't perfectly align as he co-taught this course with Justin and some misalignment was bound to happen. But other than that, fair exams, fair homework, and fair lectures.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Anonymous 05/15/2024	Do not take Max if you can. This semester was co-taught with Justin. Sounds good, right? Well Max uses Justin's lecture notes which is fine - even if he always (and I mean always) made some mistakes in lecture. We also used Justin's homeworks, so everything seems to be great, right? Well in this class where the exams make up pretty much your entire grade, for some reason Max has decided that this is the one part of the course he wants to be original with. We get next to no preparation on the exams because all our homeworks are Justin's homeworks and while Justin generously gives his students previous semester exams to go back on and study with solutions attached, Max gave out nothing for the first exam, one practice with no solutions for exam 2 and 3, and only a review sheet for the final. It's not that I think Justin should scale back or that I'm not grateful that Max gave out at least something. It's the fact that Max's teaching does not prepare you for his exams. We learned additional topics and a different algorithm for Floyd's than Justin's class, yet the homeworks did not cover this because we were taking Justin's homeworks, and Max only uploads like half of his lecture notes for some reason. Not that his lecture notes help that much in the first place, when I look at his lecture notes I have to go and cross-reference Justin's notes if I can because Max teaches from Justin's notes most the time, yet his notes do not have in mind the fact that 90% of the things he writes is lost when reviewing them outside of lecture. I do not understand why Max insists on co-teaching with Justin just to give unique exams. Max could've improved by realizing that it was probably detrimental to his students in create a separate exam from Justin for this semester at least. At the very least he could've put more effort into mirroring the amount of review material Justin gives, but I guess Max can do whatever he wants since at the end of the day, it is still his class. Even on the final exam Justin was very organized and gave his class the exact topics and weightings of said final exam questions, while Max on piazza said that the exam questions were "chosen from a grab bag of the topics we've covered." and that's pretty much all that we were given. I highly suggest you avoid this class with Max at all costs, or at least until Max shows improvement in understanding how to build good exams and prepare his students to excel on the exams instead of creating obscure exam questions which he thinks are interesting and expects us to do during a timed test. If you end up taking this class with Max, you will only be having a harder time. For people who do end up taking this class, whether by choice or by force, please be nice on Piazza, especially to the TA's. The TA's were here to help us do well and tried their best (remember that they are also students), yet they ended up taking most of the criticism this semester. The TA's already relayed the criticisms to the Professors, so reiterating the same critiques to the TA's did nothing and just caused more frustrations on their end. This also ended up cross contaminating with the 330 piazza which is just ultimately not ok. Max seemed to be very stubborn with how he taught the course so just save the TA's (and your time since complaining on piazza resulted in 0 change) some time and email the professor or talk to them on OH if you can.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/15/2024	The "coteaching" was nonexistent, but I don't think that was bad. Max teaches you a much more intuition-based course than Justin, and consequently, it's much harder to study for, which people complain about. The only thing they shared was homework, and because Max teaches differently than Justin, this certainly led to issues and reading Justin's notes to understand a question. Other than that, I enjoyed his class. The exams were fair but difficult, and it felt like they tested my knowledge rather than inane details of the algorithms. Overall, I think Max's class is more useful in the long term because you will remember most of what he taught you, as they are vibes rather than precise answers. Also, the Piazza was great (shoutout to Elizabeth and her quick answers).
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/14/2024	Took this class in Fall 2023 and it's one of my favorite CS classes I've taken. Prior to this class I had no experience in Data Science, Machine Learning, or even Python. I think a lot of the negative reviews are because Max isn't a conventional teacher, which is understandable if that's what you're looking for. However, if you believe this is a subject that you might be interested in, then I think Max is the perfect teacher for it. Compared to Fardina's class, Max was much less concerned with the math and specific details behind many of the topics we learned. What he cared about what your conceptual understanding of the topics and how you would apply them to real applications like a true data scientists would. It's certainly hard to break out of the traditional test taking mindset, however I found that the projects were a great way to learn how to apply the topics. TLDR: Unconventional teaching style in a good way, but if you have no desire to learn data science, do not take him.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/13/2024	Did not clarify an entire approach to an algorithm the day before the final exam. Take the other professor!
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/13/2024	Greatest of all time.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 05/12/2024	He's definitely pretty bad as far as this class goes but I do feel most people are extra whiny when it comes to his class. Yes, he is a subpar lecturer in terms of his depth of knowledge on the topics and he usually goes to Justin's lecture and would attempt to replicate everything Justin did in his class but unsuccessfully. Yes, his exams are wildly inconsistent and generally more difficult than Justins (who's aren't, let's be real) who he co-taught with. However, part of the difficulty of the exams are because the HW's are all Justin's style and they don't prepare you for Max style exams. Now idk if this is his fault and if he even has the ability to interject and make sweeping changes to something like the HW but if the HW's were a little more theoretical than his exams would be easier. I had him for 250 and that class was a lot easier and smooth because you could usually redo the homework's for good exam practice. And of course, most people will cry about the infamous leetcode question that appeared on exam 1. There was enough outrage that the question ended up getting curved off and any points you got from it would be bonus points. His exams in general are very theoretical and don't allow you to rely on memorizing patterns of algorithms, unlike Justin who like any math teacher will simply change the numbers and give you the exact same problem again for an exam. I feel as though part of the issues are just the class structure because Max was fine for 250 when he could do everything his way. Frankly most professors will seem terrible when they have to stand next to Justin and teach the same class so it's not all his fault but still, he has his issues and I'd recommend to avoid
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 05/12/2024	Max is a very engaging professor who loves to crack jokes and is more of a casual professor than a professional professor, he's just a guy. This could be a hit or miss for some but for me personally, I liked it as it made me take the class more as a sport than a super stressful life-changing course if that makes sense. I know some people are giving him loads of backlash about difficulty or disorganization but I feel that when he was co-teaching with Kruskal it shifted his perspectives a bit, so you have to wiggle around that. Pros, Cons, Subjectives !! I put a * next to the important parts which heavily impacted my experience. !! Pros: - Very down to earth. * - The TAs are very good! They care (shoutout to Elizabeth Qiu) and are on our side for success. She even made a Spotify playlist for studying. * - Tells you what will be on the exam quite literally. - As much as it doesn't seem so, he does listen to student feedback. There was a type of question most students disliked and Max has vowed never to give a question like that again. As of today before the final, he has not given us a question like that. - In addition to student feedback, he also interacts with his students. One of the students made a drawing of Max, and that is now his piazza profile picture. * - If you are into his more casual style, he likes to crack jokes or give some experience - Responsive via piazza, and also pretty interactive there. - If he did a really bad job explaining a topic in lecture and you were unfortunate enough to be in there, Max will acknowledge this and put out a recording of the following class which he hopes is much more clear. THIS ADDS A POINT: IF YOU TAKE MAX AND THERE IS ANOTHER SECTION WHICH TAKES PLACE AT A LATER TIME, TAKE IT! THE FIRST LECTURE MAX TEACHES IS PRONE TO MORE MISTAKES! Cons: * - As others said, he is very disorganized, he is still new at teaching the course. * - If you are not into his more casual style, then you may not like him very much (or at all, he can talk a lot) - Sometimes do not post notes, and no recordings unless you are sick. If you were to miss a topic, you will self-teach yourself (Abdul Bari is goated) - Sometimes a review sheet is put out, but there won't be solutions, and students are forced to make an unofficial solutions page. - Sometimes misses his lectures and a TA teaches the lecture. Luckily, the TAs are very good! (Shoutout to Elizabeth and Lana). * - I will say this again: IF YOU TAKE MAX AND THERE IS ANOTHER SECTION WHICH TAKES PLACE AT A LATER TIME, TAKE IT! THE FIRST LECTURE MAX TEACHES IS PRONE TO MORE MISTAKES! Subjective: * - While Max is very disorganized if you were to attend the lectures then everything seems to make sense. You are punished for not going to his lecture, especially since with the point that he tells you what is in the exam in terms of the layout, and the questions it will ask, you are missing quite a lot. I encourage you to go to lecture. It is very beneficial. * - Exams can be very hard. I was able to get good marks on exams 2 and 3 (95%>) but failed the first exam, like bombed, destroyed, so it averages out to a C+. The first exam was on the unfair side I feel (and so did everyone else, peep the reviews from 2024) and additionally the TAs had to convince Max to not put a couple more insanely hard questions. However, for the rest of the exams, Max tries to change it up to favor us. On exam 2, there were multiple choice which tank your grade if you got just a couple wrong so in exam 3, he avoided this by giving us more small questions that gave partial even if you were not fully right. This goes towards the pro I mentioned where he listens to feedback. * - In addition, I felt the exams were fair. THE WAY MAX MAKES HIS EXAM IS MORE THAN MEMORIZATION (Apart from master theorem)! Max loves conceptual questions so you must understand how and why something works instead of memorizing how to do something. I eventually learned how to think this way, but others won't be as fortunate. * - Homework can be a pain because sometimes the stuff on the homework has not been taught because for us the homework was made by Justin. I don't know how this will go when Max starts teaching it fully by himself. Find a homework group! It makes homework very doable. - No discussion personally was a plus, but I know others prefer having discussion to discuss topics more. - Max is a swiftie. I don't know if this is important but probably worth putting. - The students will complain a lot (mainly exams), and for good reasons too. However, sometimes I see people justifying their bad grades from it when really the exams are pretty alright. Max and is way of exams just may be different than what we're used to. * - Yes, Max likes to tell us to look at Justin's notes but only because due to his disorganization, he wants us to look at more material. Additionally, he is relearning everything also which is why he encourages it as well, just so we get correct information. This could be bad for some as it may seem like a waste of time to go to a lecture. I was going to give 3 stars but I am giving 4 stars because I don't think we gave him a fair chance. He is trying his best and he adjusts the exams more in our favor, but designs his exams so that cramming is not beneficial. He also gives reviews, and good reviews too personally. He and his TAs take the time to give videos and exam logistics. I appreciate Max and his TAs for doing their best. The winning aspect for me is Max feels more human. He is not professional by all means but for me that made my experience much more enjoyable (but I know most may not like this). You have to get used to his exams and his teaching style (and accept that he will be messy and disorganized).
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/08/2024	Not the best when it comes to fair exams (compared to Justin, for example) but I did enjoy some of his lectures. Super fun to listen to about topics that he's interested in and his exams are, while grade-destroying, very interesting to look at in hindsight. It really forces you to understand the algorithms beyond memory, at least. He's a generally understanding guy though - if you talk to him about your concerns, he'll hear you out and give good advice on what to do and how to change what your current study methods are. TLDR: Take Max if you really want to be pushed beyond just understanding algorithms, but don't expect fair exams or clear/concise lectures.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/07/2024	I started the semester liking Max as he seemed down-to-earth and funny. However, he quickly became arrogant and rude towards his students in a matter of weeks. He has made many jokes about how his exams are hard and he thinks it's funny that we are stressed as a result. I also went into his office hours to talk about my grade and he was super unwelcoming, basically rushing me to leave his office. Max puts little to no effort into this class as Justin prepares all lecture material and homeworks for him. He would often forget how to do something or explain a topic so badly that he had to pause class to reference Justin's notes. A few times, he even had to re-explain the topics during the next lecture. The one thing Max did do was write his own exams, which contained extremely hard questions and were pretty unfair based on the fact that Max students only had Justin type questions to practice with. (Justin would also give out 3-5 practice exams per midterm, while Max students would be lucky to receive a sloppy, last-minute thrown-together practice) He has set up this class so it is extremely hard to get higher than a B-. It feels like every assignment has been graded subjectively, where graders are looking for any reason to take points from students. Max has also made it so that many of the homework and exam questions are graded all-or-nothing style with zero hope for regrades. Based on the fact that 83.3% of your grade in this course is based off of exams, exams are made based on what Max is feeling at the moment with little practice provided, and homeworks are graded as harshly as exams, Max does not have his students best interests at heart. DO NOT TAKE HIM!!!!!
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/07/2024	Asks vague open ended questions on exams and expects you to think exactly like him. Consistently have to regrade request +10% points on every exam, you better pray your grader is having a good day.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/07/2024	In theory Max's class should create a better learning environment because he prioritizes actually understanding the concepts at a deeper level rather then just being able to 're-run' the algorithm on a new set of numbers. However in practice the class is terrible. He is a bad lecturer that gets off topic very often and copies straight from Justins notes. He teaches the same content as Justin and has the same HW, but creates his own exams. This makes it impossible to expect what type of difficult questions we can expect on the exam.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/06/2024	idk why ppl hate on him so much! GOAT. he is someone u can talk to about anything and i get it his exams are hard but he tells u everything thats gonna be on the exam! u just need to attend his lectures thats something u wouldve done even if u had justin so not a big deal. i could be biased but this man is freakin amazing man. take him if u actually wanna learn how to solve problems cuz his exams focus more on how the algorithm performs so one never forgets what they've learned.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/05/2024	Overall, Maks is a really nice person who kept lecture fun and engaging. However he was never prepared to teach the material we had to go over, often deviated from his schedule, homeworks took a long time to grade, and discussion was close to useless since the problems were so much harder than exams and TAs often did not know how to do the problems themselves. The final exam was also super tricky and ended up having to be curved. I really wish he was a better teacher because his personality and enthusiasm about the subject is great, but he does not know how to write fair exams or run a class where students understand what is being taught.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/02/2024	- Disorganized - Exams are not hard, but are confusing - questions on exams test for irrelevant and unrelated material - rubric/point system for his exams express that you only need to get the exact answer down. Displaying a 90% understanding in the material results in 0 points. All he does is regurgitate Justin's notes but he can't even do that well as he's always skipping over things. This honestly just show's how he's terrible at his job especially when his peers are significantly better professors.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a C- Anonymous 04/30/2024	If you were not able to take Justin, drop the class! Max doesn't even do the bare minimum when teaching, yet he goes out of his way to make exams extremely difficult. He wants to "challenge" you, but the execution is terrible. You go through the entire course reading Justin's notes, doing his homework, and practicing his practice exams, yet somehow you're supposed to understand the nonsense that Max puts on his exams. His exams are nothing like what you've practiced in the homework or practice exams. They're really long and theoretical based, which is basically impossible to do within 90 minutes. If you end up taking him, just know that you are not stupid. 351 is genuinely a hard course and Max just does anything he can to give you a hard time.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/30/2024	I would say Max is a very lenient and chill person, as he is very understanding of any problems you have and is very receptive to feedback. Since it was his first time teaching, I would say his lecturing style was pretty disorganized and mistakes were made, but I was able to understand the main concepts in the course. I would say it is fine if you get him for 250, just be ready for some lectures to be all over the place sometimes.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Anonymous 04/30/2024	This guy bro. He "coteaches" with Justin, this means Justin does all the teaching and provides the textbook as well as practice exams. Max provided a single practice exam for exam3 and that too without an answer key to study off of. Then when we finally take the exam they give us barely any partial credit (also don't specify to simplify a function then take off points regardless of equivalence) and the questions were completely unrelated to the content we consumed from Justin's notes, which as some of the other reviews also mention Max told us to use and go to Justin's lectures. I honestly have no clue how he's being paid at this point he's farming free money from the university without putting in any effort into teaching or even making the tests. Taking this class with him makes me feel bad about paying my tuition knowing any of it is going to this guy.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A- Anonymous 04/25/2024	I seriously don't understand why Max gets so much hate and rudeness. He's a funny and engaging lecturer who has a lot of experience and down-to-earth advice about the software industry and where 351 fits in. For context, I took 351 with Max in the Spring 24 when he was co-teaching with Justin. Half the piazza posts were Max students complaining that they couldn't be in Justin's class, or just complaining about the TA's, exams, or class in general which really rubbed me the wrong way and I assume most of these reviews were written by the same people. Trying to be as unbiased as possible, here are my pros and cons for Max: Pros - Funny lecturer who will often regain your attention with a well-timed f bomb - Adapts throughout the semester based on students needs (got rid of pseudocode questions on exams) - Him and his TAs are very responsive on piazza (shoutout Elizabeth) - Is very understanding with questions in class - Lots of real world/tech job searching experience (former google employee) - Can be manipulated to give you leniency (his words not mine) Cons - I'd argue that exams are unpredictable, not "hard" like everyone says. I whiffed on his first midterm with a 70 after studying throughout the week then got a 100 on the next with only a couple hours of studying. - Had a little trouble explaining some concepts, seemed a little unprepared to lecture on the day's topic at times P.S. the "leetcode question" people are alluding to in other reviews was to code the fibonacci sequence using dynamic programming, just worded a little differently. Climbing Stairs #70 on leetcode if you want to see how "bad" it was.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Anonymous 04/23/2024	Co-taught with Justin = copying off him and getting things wrong. Takes odd pride in hard exams, acts as if TAs have to hold him back. Take Justin at all costs
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Anonymous 04/23/2024	Now if you have to take him, you'll live, but if you have any other options avoid like the plague. He's extremely disorganized, so much so that he doesn't even have a plan of what he's going to teach. Instead he goes to Justin's lectures, takes notes, and regurgitates them to us. He makes it very clear he doesn't know what he's doing. He has even admitted a few times that he didn't know how to solve some of our HW problems. His ego is extremely off-putting, he knows his exams are challenging and that we're not well prepared (both because of the lack of teaching and the lack of any type of practice materials in the format he's looking towards) but he laughs that we're frustrated with him. To put in perspective just how unpredictable his exams can be, he was going to DEDUCT points if we got a true or false question wrong because they're just "free points". I understand his teaching philosophy, rather than memorizing he wants us to understand things conceptually, but he doesn't have the skills to teach like that. I really wanted to like him, he can be funny at times, but most of the time he's just downright distracting and way too arrogant for his teaching style.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a C Anonymous 04/21/2024	Constantly changes the exam structures and is very disorganized. Thank god Justin was co-teaching so he posted his notes and stuff which we could use. The 3 midterms we had so far have has 3 totally different structures. Only good thing is for the midterms he gave good hints about what was gonna be asked. For the second and third midterm he made his own study material which helped. Maybe he's getting better as the semester progresses, but my grades are already bad due to having a hard time on what to expect. Hopefully he can improve the course in the future.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Anonymous 04/17/2024	Doesn't show up for lectures multiple times, relies on 1 TA to do everything. Lectures are horrible and puts leetcode coding interview question on the very first exam. WTF dude.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B Anonymous 04/17/2024	Puts a leetcode question on the end of an exam and expects us to know how to do a coding interview for a job instead of mastering the material learned in lecture and in homeworks. TERRIBLE LECTURER!
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an XF Anonymous 04/15/2024	Amazing professor! The problem was me.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/10/2024	I didn't think 351 with Max was very difficult. I got an 84% on the second midterm despite doing ZERO studying ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (median was 79%). Still, I didn't enjoy this class because of Max's poor lecturing. Max evidently cares little about 351, and this is reflected in his shallow lectures. This class was co-taught with Justin, and while I never attended Justin's lectures, I got the feeling that Max's lectures were simply a watered down, superficial version of Justin's lectures. As a result, I mainly relied on self-studying from Justin's notes. Max still earns 3 stars because he is far from being a terrible professor, although I'm unsure exactly how much of my success is due to the class being co-taught by Justin. Overall, I do recommend Max as a professor. Spring 2024
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/08/2024	All these poor reviews are from people who don't put in the effort this class requires. Max is a chill guy and his exams are more than fair. My only negatives would be that he messes up his notes pretty often and that he has a bit of an ego.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Anonymous 03/29/2024	I'd give this guy 0 stars if I could. His exams are insanely hard for no reason. He expects you to memorize every little minute thing that would never be useful in real life and his lectures suck. At least for cmsc351, he is teaching exactly the same content as another professor (Justin)... just worse and his exams are considerably more difficult. In the past for other classes he's tried to raise the grade requirement for the letter grades (as in an A- would be a 91 instead of a 90 and a 90 would be a B, a B- would be an 88 minimum instead of 87, etc.) and the only reason he didn't was because his TAs all organized against him doing it. He made an exam that had like 20 potential questions and his questions were so bad that the TAs ruled out 15 of them for being overly confusing and impossible to understand. He literally advises all of his students to go to the other professor's lectures and "jokes" about how bad of a lecturer he is. He's god awful, I genuinely cannot understate it. This man has singlehandedly caused me an insane amount of stress this semester. DO NOT TAKE HIM.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Anonymous 03/14/2024	Max has many issues which keep him from being worth taking at all. His first issue is that he is basically a glorified substitute teacher for the better professor who is Justin Wyss-Gallifent. All Max does is rehash his notes in a worse and confusing manor. He also takes the homeworks directly from Justin, so you begin to wonder what he actually does. Then when the exams come around you find out this is the only reason he wants to teach. He likes to make his exams as difficult and unorthodox as possible. He will put questions that were not remotely covered in class as he teaches the material from Justin's notes word for word and then tests us on questions he personally likes. The other problem is he puts very little effort into it as he just generates the questions using LeetCode then lets his TA's attempt to convince him out of giving some of the terrible questions that are generated. My main issue is that there is no textbook or notes provided from Max to learn how to do these weirder questions that he asks on the exam. Maybe for example if he made his own homework instead of just giving us Justin's, then we would be better prepared for his exams. Due to this 'co-teaching', which is basically copy and paste from Justin, we are prepared for Justin's exams and not Max's exams in the slightest. I would strongly advise against taking him for any class.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 03/13/2024	He isn't the worst professor in the CS department, but he's close. He has told us multiple times in lectures to review other professors notes, slides, or practice problems because he isn't able to explain or define the topics clearly himself. His exams are made to be tricky and he puts leetcode style questions throughout, making the exam obnoxiously difficult for no good reason. He is a funny and good guy personally, but is very disorganized and hard to follow during lectures. I would advise taking another professor for 351 if possible.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A Anonymous 02/26/2024	Horrible teacher never take him. Bro tells us to attend different professors lectures, read their notes, and then study their practice materials but has the audacity to make his own exams when he's not capable of teaching the course. He should let the big boys like Justin handle the real work next time like making the exams.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 02/26/2024	Max is goated, super down to Earth, very fun guy. He's a lot more human than most professors, and is much more likely to add curves and change class circumstances based off of feedback. He is also much more of a normal person than most professors, so while he might make some mistakes in lectures, he also teaches in a way that makes the content much easier to understand.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Anonymous 02/23/2024	literally a younger version of kruskal. funny and chill, but as the review below says, arrogant and annoying. also very messy and unreliable. bro yaps way too much and tbh i've been going to the TA's to learn the stuff.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A- Anonymous 02/21/2024	I second what the person below me said
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Anonymous 02/19/2024	Maksym is funny, but he is a mess of a professor. He's disorganized, chaotic, and EXTREMELY egotistical. Even if he messes up, don't expect an apology from him! I feel bad that everyone is comparing him to Justin but Justin's on a whole different league. Justin kids hit the lottery frfr.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Anonymous 02/16/2024	This is the first Professor and class where I felt exams weren't just based on memorizing information. The first exam taught me more in an hour than all of the other professor's notes all semester. I really like these exams since they set us up to develop problem solving skills in the context of coding/jobs and it's definitely worth it if it costs us a couple points. The only issue I have with this is if the curve is based on both professor's classes, since one class had easier exams. Apart from that Professor Morawski is very good at designing a course meant to actually teach you the concepts and the thought process rather than just regurgitating information that is hand-fed to you.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a B Anonymous 02/06/2024	no way bro grades subjectively
Maksym Morawski CMSC106 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/23/2024	not a bad professor, very cool and chill but his teaching style was a mess. lectures were just slide shows and sometimes hard to follow all the information given to beginners without practice. listened to student feedback throughout the semester and was flexible with exam dates. exams weren't hard but definitely need to study for them if you don't feel mastered at the topics. not the worst class, but it was very messy and unorganized, the TAs definitely made the class better to follow.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/20/2024	He is a quirky guy who has his funny moments but at the end of the day, is a terrible instructor and comes off as incredibly arrogant and annoying. Yes, his lectures are engaging, but for all the wrong reasons. He rambles on about his work and personal experiences but ends up teaching very little substance as a result. He takes pride in his slides for being minimal, which isn't a problem by itself. But when you combine minimal slides containing useless information and formatting and an instructor who rambles on about pointless topics the whole lecture, then it becomes a problem. Exams are not fair. He tells us that to do well on exams we need to have a deep level of understanding of the material and to think outside of the box, which again, isn't a problem by itself. But he never gives us practice material to achieve that, as the homeworks are super straightforward and generally unrelated in concepts to exams, and doesn't teach properly enough to expect that from us. This is evident from our exam 2 average, which was 69 percent. Comparing that to Fardina's class (the instructor he was co-teaching with), which was 86 percent, it becomes comically unfair. He also never curved because of that exam even though he said he would. He said he instead "compensated" by making the final a bit easier, which is funny because our final exam average was still low at 82 percent compared to Fardina's 96 percent. At least CMSC320 isn't too difficult conceptually, with much higher weightage on homework, and less on exams, allowing many students, including me, to barely manage to get a good grade. I just feel really bad for people who were stuck with him for CMSC250 and/or will be for CMSC351, because those are objectively two of the most conceptually difficult CS classes students will take, with high weightage on exams, and Max will do everything to make it even harder for you.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 01/19/2024	Max was an overall good professor. The start of the semester was incredibly rough as it was his first sem teaching the course and there was a lot of ambiguity as far as assignments went and what was expected of us in terms of proof structure and the detail to which we had to explain arguments. However, as the semester went on Max was very adamant about listening to feedback and implemented many of the suggestions we asked for, including extra credit and more detailed instructions for assignments. Overall he's a good professor who genuinely cares about his students and will listen to their suggestions.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/04/2024	Nice and supportive professor. Often asks for feedback and does listen to his students. This semester wasn't his best since this is his first time teaching and he had some health problems. But I believe he does have a lot of potential and will improve. Also, I would say he needs to do better at working with his TAs instead of letting them make the homeworks and discussion worksheets.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/31/2023	The class with Max is generally straightforward, especially the programming assignments; the homework on SQL and Pandas borders on trivial, and the later assignments simply require using some Python libraries and can be completed with the help of a wealth of online tutorials. A couple assignments involve writing a report, and while they can be graded rather subjectively, it's simple enough to manage a decent grade on them with a few hours work. Our final project was released quite late, and thus was reasonably easy and minimal in time required. The exams are designed to be open ended and make you display true conceptual understanding, as opposed to simply regurgitating material from the slides; it's not clear how effective this model was, as the averages on the first midterm were very high but were below a C for the second. Regardless, all the exams are doable if you really think about what Max is asking you to answer (rather than assuming what he is asking based on how a normal CS exam might go). Max is prone to going on tangents while lecturing, keeping track of his idiosyncrasies can be annoying when trying to submit work that meets his standards, and his slides are wholly unhelpful; in spite of all of that, if you follow along in class and spend a few hours studying for the exams you'll be fine. I ended up enjoying Max's teaching style as a whole, even if it could sometimes be strange or frustrating. Recommend.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/28/2023	Don't get me wrong - he's a really nice and chill professor and takes his feedback into consideration. But, he is SO DISORGANIZED and that makes his lectures difficult to follow. He also seems unprepared coming during lecture and makes a handful of mistakes throughout. He came in once claiming how he had "looked at these problems beforehand" and "knows how to solve them" but as soon as he got stuck on one, he just skipped it with an "ah whatever" mentality. Also, his TAs (this semester) had a lot of attitude..... Overall, it's not the end of the world if you get him as a professor, but just know that you'll have to put in a lot of effort.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/28/2023	My opinion: He is not that bad as some of the 1-star reviews state, and also not as good as some of the 5-star reviews. He taught the class in a way that was different from what one would expect. The subjects taught in class are very simplified, so students are encouraged to do outside research on what you learn in class. The projects were really fun for me as for some of them we were free do implement them how we wanted to. On the other hand, the exams were quite difficult and required us to expand on what we have learned in class to a large extent.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a C Anonymous 12/26/2023	He is trying his best to reach Kruskal level. Do NOT take him as your professor. Anyone else would be better. He just gets worse and worse each semester (based on what I’ve read). Not a very understanding professor.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/26/2023	I felt extremely disappointed at the end of this course! It seems like Max always has fans who think he is cool, and obviously, his lectures were nice. But the exams were EXTREMELY difficult! The average of Mid 02 was extremely low, and he was absent for some classes ( he is was sick though). He promised to curve that exam and ended up curving NOTHING! Before that, he openly admitted to us that it was unfair, and it felt like everyone was depending on it. Extremely disappointed, as the overall average for Fardina's section was so much higher than ours, and as heard from that section, she was very considerate to the students' needs. Everyone talked about how cool he is, but no one says the reality - how disorganized and less affectionate he could be.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/24/2023	I had Max for 320 this semester (Fall 2023) and 351 last semester (Spring 2023), and all I can say is that he is a great lecturer that genuinely cares about his students and wants them to succeed when they go to the industry. Many students complain that his slides are not comprehensive and that we need to google most concepts to better prepare for exams. However, I would argue that this reflects exactly what data scientists (and most CS related jobs) are doing in the industry. You are just required to have a basic understanding of class concepts, so googling stuff and learning the basics isn't really that bad. Max's style of teaching prepares the students to better navigate real-world challenges and to not be always "spoon-fed" with information. Regarding the coursework, Max's exams are essentially about two things: Demonstrating basic understanding and extending the class ideas to real-world situations. I didn't study a lot for exam 1 and the final, and I got an A in both of them. If you hope that you will get an A by memorizing concepts and not actually understanding how the algorithms work and the math behind them (in a general/basic level), do not take the class with Max. However, I must mention that Max sometimes messes up exams, where the average would be 70% or less. Though, you can always get partial credit and extra credit in all of his exams and assignments. Also, you can always email Max about anything, including bumping up your grade to the next cutoff if you think you deserve it! In general, Max's classes are easy, and you will do just fine if you attend lectures and demonstrate basic understanding in exams.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a C Anonymous 12/24/2023	Possibly on the same level as Kruskal, and that tells you something.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/24/2023	I would not recommend him for this class at all. I had quite a bit of experience going into this class and as other reviews mention, it TRULY is disastrously organised. His slides were too minimal, and he would/could not explain concepts clearly (which he acknowledged) and then we'd be tested on minute details about those very concepts! His "review guides" would tell us we'd be tested on some topic, and that topic would never show up on the exam! He actually prides himself on his "quirks" but it's super annoying because it's too specific and not relevant. His office hours are also always filled with the same people chatting away so it's hard to ask him questions. I had him for 351 and I thought this course would be better but it's about the same. I don't think I learnt anything from him in either course. He'll tell you cool stories about his time in the industry and that will usually be enough to distract you from the real problem that he doesn't know the content well enough to teach it. NEVER TAKE ANY CLASS WITH HIM!
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/23/2023	Overall, I think Max made data science my favorite course that I've taken here at UMD. There are still truths to some complaints here, but the positives are still far greater than the negatives and the way it's taught is so unique so I think people should still take this class with Max (or at least go to his 320 lectures when they happen, since they're quite interesting, humorous, and thought provoking). First, the cons: Yes, the class was quite disorganized, we had an assignment due in October that wasn't graded until the last day of finals. Some problems were unclear or needed us to search up information on our own (but this research was very simple and not really an issue). He is unprepared sometimes; he mentioned some lectures went way faster than expected, or will forget to put something very important on slides, and also stopped posting recordings for lectures which made it a bit hard to study for exams. Additionally, he isn't the best at math, so he'll sometimes make mistakes on some slides or formulas, but in practice we hardly used formulas so this hardly disrupted the flow of the class. In terms of grades, the other section for Fall 2023 (with Fardina) was basically a guaranteed A (the average on Max's exams was about 77%, Fardina's average on exams was about 92%) so honestly, if grade is the [only] thing you care about, maybe you should take it with Fardina based on the stats. But Max's section and thoughts have many positives: The overall grade for the regular assignments and final project (which were worth 55% of the class) was at 95% so no one really risked failing the class, and most of these took just around 2-4 hours to complete since there are lots of guides to do what was asked. Where Max really shines is in his lectures: they were the most consistently engaging ones that I've been through at the university, always getting people to ask questions, cracking jokes and being relatable on what being in CS is like. The way he teaches the course isn't just learning data science in how to design & execute an experiment, because he also notes where it's relevant and useful (he mentions how Goodhart's law is seen in practice through grade inflation, I wonder where this could be present...), what the industry currently uses in practice (how does Netflix or Amazon actually recommend things), and bringing his own industry experience to elaborate on what we would do working in data science. Additionally, he also goes on some important side tangents about other important topics, like critically thinking about what grades are, career advice and thinking about interviews, how to ingest ethics in practice, and other considerations in life that many other professors don't touch (he informally holds a group of people that learn more on these general life skills). In the end, the class is such a unique, refreshing, and positive experience that I'd advise everyone that can take 320 to take Max's section when he teaches it.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/23/2023	Nice guy but going to his class is useless because you can just get all the information needed from Fardinas slides and online. He writes nothing on his slides and doesn't post his recorded lectures unless you ask. The coding assignments weren't bad but to get full points you have to do more than what the directions are asking. He grades kinda easy and there are multiple opportunities to get extra credit. HIs exams are not formula or math-heavy.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/22/2023	Max is pretty mediocre, but an entertaining guy and his class isn't difficult. His lectures are somewhat poorly structured and he frequently makes mistakes while lecturing. Occasionally he'll admit he's not well-versed in what he's teaching at the moment. He often changes course policies at the whims of the TAs, which can be frustrating as students never know exactly what to expect. Overall the class isn't run very well. Moving on to his positives, he gives out weekly homework which is great practice material but not too difficult. There are lots of helpful third-party resources given to students so it's hard to get lost or fall behind. The midterm exams were both fair and easy, and the first one was curved up significantly. The final was long and difficult but had a heavy curve, I personally got above a 100 after the curve. Max is fine. Take him if there aren't better options available. 250 isn't a hard class, but with Max you'll have to put in most of the effort yourself to succeed. I think he has room to improve into a good prof if he puts more effort into class organization and consistency.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/22/2023	Runs an incredibly practical and applied data science class, which is super useful and unlike most other courses at umd (especially if you want to be an actual data scientist, you'll learn tons of things to put on your resume). This is my second course with Max, and the disorganization has definitely improved, but is still pretty bad. Regardless, it's clear that he LOVES this class, and he's incredibly knowledgeable on the subject (has industry experience at Google and some startups). Would definitely recommend if you can put up with the long wait time for grades to come in, and the generally disorganized course structure.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Anonymous 12/22/2023	I guess it was his first time teaching but he's horrible during lectures, made so many mistakes, and is very unprepared. Towards the end of the semester good luck reaching out to him as well, he disappears on you and responds to like one piazza post every blue moon. Understandable because it gets busy but we students have questions and concerns. TA times were also posted but they come as they please. I guess if you're willing to self-teach yourself the grade distribution is pretty good.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/21/2023	Nice guy, but can't teach and bad final. There was legit a problem on the final that was not doable.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/20/2023	he's VERY funny, but his slides are minimal and the tests were HARD.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Anonymous 12/19/2023	TLDR: low-medium workload. Avoid him if you just want to get through 250 as painlessly as possible, take him if you don't mind dealing with a bit of BS for a fun and memorable professor. One common thread you'll see throughout Max's reviews is that the class is pretty disorganized, that held pretty true this semester too. He frequently made simple mistakes during lectures, had practice problems that were wrong or incomplete, and on occasion something on a homework or exam pops out way harder than it was supposed to. Grading speed was also a big issue, although the homeworks were much harder than the rest of the class/exams. I can see if you just want a straightforward professor who posts all their notes nice and neat, is consistent with teaching, and is generally predictable why you would not like Max. If, however, you commit to going to class and can deal with a little BS, you'll find him a very memorable professor who had the class bursting in applause for anything from getting basic arithmetic right to designating an entire exam problem extra credit. I genuinely enjoyed my time in the lecture, even through all the hiccups. If that's something you can see yourself doing, give him a try.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/19/2023	I thought this was the first time he was teaching this course (F23) so I was willing to excuse disorganization. Seeing as he's already done this before, this semester was inexcusable. If there is another professor available, take 320 with them. The class final project was somewhat of an afterthought and was just a 15% of your grade homework tacked on the end of the semester. It was Doctor Fardina's first time teaching the course, yet she put together a much better experience over the semester (specifically the last two exams: much higher average score on midterm 2 and allowed a formula sheet on the final/was very clear about what topics to review).
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/19/2023	Max's lectures are fairly unorganized, and he oftentimes goes off-topic. He is more engaging than the average CMSC professor.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/18/2023	Guys a G. Hilarious. He ACTUALLY WANTS US TO LEARN THE MATERIAL. He doesn't want the education to continue the way it is, where students can just cram for an exam and then forget about it. This leads to harder exams. Get over it. If you wanna take the easy way out take another major. If you go to class and PAY ATTENTION he shares useful information and knowledgeable insight to his experiences in the industry. My only complaint is his slides are pretty bad, but luckily he's coteaching with Fardina who has pretty excellent slides so as I study for the final I will be going off her slides. They are just more detailed. He should improve his slides because with just his slides it hard to know whats going on. If you care about learning and are interested in Data Science take Max. Its really entertaining due to Max being the way he is and pretty interesting content compared to some of the boring an useless CS classes I've taken here.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/18/2023	While Max himself is a great person, very funny professor, and super engaging, I'm not sure many people in the class enjoyed his teaching style and I'd recommend not taking him for CMSC250. Most of his lectures were incredibly unorganized, and his notes were never uploaded on time. He posted Justin's notes which helped a lot more than his own notes, so I guess that helped. There was very unclear communication between students and TAs about grades on homework and discussions, and most grades were entered after the exams that covered them. Fortunately I figured out most of the content on my own, but Max's lectures didn't really help much at all. I would try to take another professor if you could.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/16/2023	Class is just a mess. Grading takes forever (Homework due late October still is not back yet) and Prof. Morawski doesn't seem to really care about that. Our final project was released extremely late and last homework was also released really late. Barely any communication about this. The last homework was released so late that we were basically expected to work on it over Thanksgiving break, when it was originally supposed to be due 2 weeks before break. None of the homework is that hard (IMO at least) but it's just annoying that you continuously have to check up to see if the professor has even released the homeworks when he's already behind schedule. Prof. Morawski also is just bad at teaching, plain and simple. Lectures seemed more like a stand up routine to him. As other reviewers said, the slides have minimal info, and equations are often wrong. There's no clear definitions for anything, you'll have to look elsewhere. Everything is taught in an example/high level way but you are expected to understand and replicate at a low detailed level. For example, with hypothesis tests, you will not find detailed definitions in the slides that include everything he wants you to know. You have to google these things or use the other prof's slides. This is kind of insane to me as Prof. Morawski has taught this class MULTIPLE times before. And, you can tell that he thinks his teaching style is superior to other professors, which is frankly hilarious as he also goes on about how he thinks he didn't explain things well or how the exams he wrote/gave us are bad exams. Homeworks and projects always needed numerous corrections-- again, kind of ridiculous for a professor who has taught this class before. Good luck starting the homework early, because he will probably change multiple things in the first few days of homework release. Exams had questions where you were supposed to use your "real world brain" and think outside the box. What does this actually mean? Trick questions and ones that are long/confusingly worded for no reason. We had some tricky questions on things that he explicitly did not teach us previously due to cancelling class multiple times or having the other prof teach us for a class. I understand that he had to cancel class for personal issues, but I didn't think it was fair to have tough questions on concepts that he himself did not teach us. Anyway, all of the below reviews are very accurate as to how you will feel about Prof. Morawksi. You will either be mildly irritated at his lack of organization and general lecture style, or you will become part of his fan club. No in between. You will not feel neutral about him.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/16/2023	Max is understanding and approachable, but I don't know if I would suggest taking one of his classes (or at least this class) based on his teaching style. Throughout the semester lectures were disorganized (got a little bit better towards the end, but still weren't great), and he would sometimes leave gaps in the steps of a problem/not do some problems since they were "too annoying" (but we would have to know how to do them). This semester, the class weights were 40% homework, 10% lab worksheets, 30% midterms (2 midterms), and 20% final. The homework problems were difficult, but you were able to get most done on your own (you have at least a week to do each of them) and if you had any questions about any of the problems you could go to office hours and the TAs would help you understand them better. The worksheets were every Wednesday and they were done in discussion (some TAs would go over how to do the problems, but mine didn't) and they were graded on completion. The midterms were fine for the most part, but on both midterms, there was a problem where very few people got them completely right (e.g only 5-10% of people got full credit for them) so your exam grade basically dropped a letter grade just from that one problem (on the first midterm that problem ended up getting dropped, but it was a special circumstance). Max also taught using Justin's notes (so you could have chosen to not attend lectures). I feel like the class would have been a lot better if Max learned the material ahead of time and planned the course in a way that would work for him (instead of using Justin's notes, there are pros and cons to not using Justin's notes though). I felt like he was learning the material/what he was teaching the day of or the night before the lecture because he often made mistakes when explaining/doing the problems in the lecture. I also felt like the class was being run by the TAs and Max (and this isn't necessarily a bad thing), but it felt like the TAs would tell him often what to do and what not to do. I was going to give Max a higher rating, but the following reasons are why I didn't. The final was more challenging than the midterms and I would almost go as far as saying that some of the problems on the final were as hard as the homework problems. I also felt like there was a problem on the final that was just straight-up, not possible (maybe it's a skill issue, but it didn't seem possible to do based on what the question was asking). This leads me to another issue that I have with the class. Almost all homework assignments/review sheets that we had in the class had typos which is frustrating (since some problems are either impossible/completely different even with a slight change in wording). I will say that most typos were noticed and fixed quickly, but I don't think it should happen that often (this is a red flag for me because if typos happen that often are they reading/doing the problems beforehand?). Max is a 10/10 person, but a 3/10 teacher in my opinion.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/14/2023	Honestly, Max is not too bad as a professor. I have to admit that he wasn't my first choice for 250 because Kline was rated better, but I had to take him because of course conflicts. Take him. It's a easy course. Most of it is common sense. Sure, you'll be introduced to new stuff, but with Max it was pretty easy as a course. I saw my friends struggle with Telli and Kline, but I studied for about 7 hrs before each of Max's exams(including the final) and I did pretty well on all of them. Homeworks are graded extensively and we have discussion worksheets that are graded which I didn't love but overall he's fine. Rocky start, but he's been learning to teach better and get more organized (in the first few classes he didn't even get the name of the course right) but now he makes powerpoints and goes over everything; it's good enough honestly. Make sure to read Justin's notes which are online because his whole structure was based on it. Good luck!
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/14/2023	Max is a nice guy with decent career advice and industry knowledge and that's about it when it comes to his teaching. While his projects were insanely easy, they in no way prepared you for his exams. He expects people to have a deep understanding of the content but doesn't realize that to get to that point of deep understanding you need quality practice material and assignments that build up your knowledge. The lectures are incredibly surface level and showing up to class is a big waste of time, I found it hard to separate the word vomit/tangents from the important content. I didn't feel like I learned much in this class besides how to Google. Overall, I would recommend taking a different professor.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A respectmyopinions 12/12/2023	Lowkey I love Max. I understand the criticisms, but if you go to class, pay attention, and just try your best on exams its really really easy to get an A. Just take a look at his grade distribution. He really prioritizes students learning, which sometimes comes across as not caring about grades. Just have faith and wait for the curve.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/11/2023	Easily my favorite professor I've had at umd, and made me want to go into data science. The class is a bit disorganized, but exams and homework are pretty fair. Max has the only lecture that I actually looked forward to attending, he has so much knowledge to share about the actual industry (he's worked at google, ebay, etc), he's super chill and understanding of students, and a super entertaining dude. Can't speak for any of his other classes but 100% recommend taking 320 with him, class has been pretty easy. Definitely goat potential
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/09/2023	Although this was Max's first semester teaching CMSC250, I can't recommend him in good conscience. Lectures are highly disorganized. He frequently shows up with mistakes in his prepared materials and makes several errors in most proofs that he attempts in class. The first midterm was ridiculously long and ended up with a 70-average and he only provided a curve after many students wrote several paragraph long requests via Piazza. Grading is a nightmare. We have a weekly problem set (which I believe are written by the TAs) which are often filled with unclear questions and/or typos. These problem sets take the instructors weeks, and sometimes months, to grade. On both midterms, we were tested on concepts that we had never actually been graded on yet since we were still waiting to get our submissions back. I fear this may be the case on our upcoming final exam too. He's also bad at replying to emails in a timely manner. Also, I don't think he gives good instructions to TAs since their responses on Piazza are very short, abrupt, and sometimes teeter on rude.
Maksym Morawski Expecting a B+ MentalAnguish 12/05/2023	Only lecture I never missed. Expect to get smoked on the exams, as they are unique in that they are very open ended. Often times there will be several different valid answers to a question, so do your best to deeply understand the topics. Slides are often bare. Provides recordings if you ask him. Most approachable professor I have had.
Maksym Morawski CMSC106 Expecting a B dfn6 12/02/2023	Maks is really nice and it's obvious that he is on our side, and knows how difficult the course is. His lectures are good and he posts the material afterwards which is helpful, however since the class is naturally difficult and hard to keep up with you should make sure you practice a lot on your own time to ensure you do good. The projects get progressively harder, so make sure you dont underestimate how long they take.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/28/2023	Max is nice but can be a bit arrogant and often makes mistakes in class. His slides are minimal, and he's proud of it, refusing to change them. Although he suggested Dr. Fardina's slides as those are really detailed. I wouldn't recommend taking his course.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/08/2023	The communication in this class is extremely sporadic and homeworks were not nearly graded in time to review for exams; he frequently made mistakes during lectures and overall seemed unprepared for class.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Anonymous 09/07/2023	So I had Max for 320 last semester. I wrote a Piazza post 3/4 of the way through the semester, discussing the lack of organization, lack of resources, and how the exams were just bad. Majority of the class agreed to that post and he said he would address the feedback. He mentioned he would have dropped the final exam, but he didn't want to change the syllabus. He also did mention he would also drop the final for the following semester, especially since it would be redundant along with a final project. From what I hear, he did not do so. I would avoid Max and wait for a professor who can support students through the learning process rather than throwing the kitchen sink at them and seeing what sticks.
Maksym Morawski CMSC250 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/05/2023	Bro is so cool. Only lecture I attend.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/31/2023	My only complaint is that the class is a bit disorganized. Other than that, I think he did an amazing job teaching the class. If you have a genuine interest in the content covered, you will do great.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Anonymous 05/30/2023	Absolutely would not recommend class with him. His projects were fair and doable, but lectures and exams were horrible. The class was so unorganized, exams were horribly made and had very low averages. The second midterm was also right before classes ended making the final seem pointless. He seemed to acknowledge what was wrong or that the results were bad but then just kind of moved on. His lectures are bad but instead of improving them, he tells you to watch videos and read articles. His review sheets that he makes during class are scarily organized and a majority of the stuff he said was gonna be on the exam was not there, making it hard to trust the review sheets at all. Overall, would not recommend this class with him.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/29/2023	Maksym's 351 was co-taught with Kruskal, and this whole class was basically run as Kruskal's class with Kruskal's homeworks and exams. Max was forced to co-teach with Kruskal, in which Max was not very happy with as far as I know, because Max had little to no control over the material. Kruskal and Max were both discontent at each other, because Max didn't want to follow what Kruskal does. I think Kruskal's material is fine. His homeworks are definitely hard, but if you go to the TA's or especially Kruskal's office hours, they will explain what the problems mean. And that's really it, Kruskal's problems are all about understanding of the material. What this problem wants us to do, what this algorithm does, why this algorithm behaves such a way, what this problem accomplishes, and why this problem is relevant, etc. If you really understand that, then Kruskal's 351 homeworks and exams will come off pretty easy. As for the notorious last "coding interview" problem on the exams, if you can do Leetcode medium without difficulty, you will do well :). But jokes aside, these "interview" questions get a lot of hate because there's really no way to prepare or study for these questions, but like I said, if you understand what this problem is trying to accomplish, then they should come off pretty easy. It's all about critical thinking, testing you whether you can come up with an efficient solution, and you will get partial credit even when you write a brute force solution. Kruskal doesn't want you to write 50-100 line of code that does complex stuff, the solutions to his coding problems are always simple pseudocode. Kruskal may be very disorganized and just not good at administering class, but he is seriously one of the most knowledgeable people in the faculty, and you will learn a lot when you go to Kruskal's office hours. He's been teaching and researching algorithm and theory for decades, and it shows. Now, onto Max. Like I said, Max wanted to go with Justin's material to teach his class, so him being forced to follow Kruskal's material was probably stressful for him. I'll give him credit for trying his best. He's definitely someone who wants his students to pass the class, although that is not evident in his teaching, but in the curve. He gave a lot more substantial curve than Kruskal's even when Kruskal's curve was pretty large, which was about one letter grade difference, although the pass/fail cutoff was comparable for both of them. Does Max teach well? Well, that's another matter. I think the problem with Max is that he severely lacks knowledge on the material. It's not that Kruskal's material is different from Justin's or whatever, he just doesn't know the subject well enough to lecture it. I'm sure Max is very competent when it comes to an actual practice as an engineer given his career, but I think his teaching is very shallow, although he has potential to improve. I definitely think Max wants to become the next Justin, someone who is approachable to his students, explains the concepts well, and have the majority of his students get an A. The thing is, I barely learned anything from Max's lectures. Pretty much the entire knowledge I learned came from Kruskal's recorded lectures and his office hours. The difference in the level of quality in answers you get from Kruskal's office hours and Max's office hours is pretty significant. I definitely think that Max will improve a lot, but I can't say that I learned a lot from him. Despite the co-teaching, there is a pretty huge difference in the philosophy of teaching 351 between Kruskal and Max. Kruskal emphasizes in thinking about the problems and how to solve them creatively. The problems may be challenging, but you gain so much once you solve them. The way Max seemingly wanted to run this class is like a standard class, where you just take notes and you can do well on the exam just from the rote memorization. The difference in the philosophy of the subject is probably why Max and Kruskal were so unhappy with each other. I personally think that critical thinking and understanding is much more crucial rather than simple regurgitation when it comes to algorithm and theory. This is probably why I learned a lot more from Kruskal and give him more credit than Max. But I think Max has a lot of potential and I definitely do see Max as a good lecturer in a few years. One thing I will note about 351 is that it is very poorly structured and Max did his best for his first semester teaching it. It's not about exams taking 80%+ of the course but really more about the content of 351. 351 is too much math and analysis heavy, and I do wish the class teach more interesting stuff like dynamic programming instead of spending too much time on sorting algorithms, constructive induction, and NP etc. The way Kruskal structured 351 is pretty unique and arguably odd compared to algorithm classes at other CS schools, so I can definitely feel Max's frustration in having to be forced to teach that way only. But then again, the whole CS curriculum at UMD needs some fixing.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/29/2023	Max is a great person, but maybe not the best professor when it comes to co-teaching with Kruskal. This is after-all because Kruskal is Kruskal. This was not worth the hours of stress that this class put me through (especially the final) because the exam structure itself was impossible (Kruskal said the average should be around 65%) and the major delay in grades. This saying this course is mainly a rant against the way Kruskal structured it, Max didn't have much say over the structure or content. He gave us a large curve, but this also was probably the worst class I've taken with the CS department (but its because of Kruskal not Max). In conclusion, Kruskal is the villain and Max was forced to join the dark side.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A- atp236 05/28/2023	351 with Max was a beautiful disaster. First, the review of the class: Max co-taught with Kruskal since this was his first semester teaching 351. As a result, we got all of Kruskal’s exams and homework assignments which are notoriously difficult. Max did not have control over what was being taught and the difficulty of assessments since Kruskal was in charge, and as a result, he sometimes stumbled over content (it’s hard to keep up with a mad scientist). It honestly seems like Kruskal and Max hate each other (understandably so) since there was a lot of miscommunication throughout the semester. To pass this class, this is what I did: I showed up to Max’s lecture with the expectation of getting a simplified overview. I did have to supplement the content to keep up: Kruskal has pre-recorded videos that go into the content in depth, and I binge watched those videos and reviewed the homework’s a few days before the exams. The exams feel similar to the homework assignments, but at the same time they are different, so it felt like a big wildcard, and I found it better to just YOLO the exams than to stress about them. My mantra: take inspiration from the homework assignments and express your creativity on the exams. I had no idea what I was doing on any of the exams, but try to grab the “easy” points and think on your feet. Max as a lecturer: he’s naturally charismatic and has a geeky sense of humor. I feel like he genuinely wants the class to pass. Even though at times Max was confused, at least he was enthusiastic while being confused? He would drop hints about the exam topics during the review which was helpful to dial in on, and his encouragement to keep us going while we were all flopping was helpful. At the end of the semester, his cutoffs were a lot more generous than Kruskal’s. For example, Kruskal’s version of an A- was an 80.5% while Max’s version of an A- was 69%. TLDR: if Max ever teaches 351 with Kruskal again, take it with Max and hang on for dear life.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Anonymous 05/27/2023	The class was messy because of the co-teaching and he even acknowledged how disorganized and difficult the class was but he really cares for how his students performed and was open to change like recording lectures and posting notes online
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/26/2023	Definitely not deserving of a 5-star because of his lack of organization and preparedness for lectures, but he definitely does try his best to make the class less painful with Kruskal. Honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that he co-taught with Kruskal, I'm pretty sure things would've been much smoother than they were this semester, but co-teaching with Kruskal obviously wasn't his own choice
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Anonymous 05/26/2023	Absolutely would not recommend class with him. His projects were fine and fair, but lectures and exams were horrible. The class was so unorganized, exams were horribly made and had very low averages. There were a lot of people who got 50s and also people who got 100s on the second exam which clearly shows it was a horribly made exam. The second midterm was also right before classes ended making the final seem pointless. His lectures are bad but instead of improving them, he tells you to watch videos and read articles if you want to learn the material. His review sheets that he makes during class are scarily organized and a majority of the stuff he said was gonna be on the exam was not there, making it hard to trust the review sheets at all. Overall, would not recommend this class with him.
Maksym Morawski Anonymous 05/26/2023	+ Great teaching style + Engaging + Great with communication to students - Wasn’t prepared for lectures at times: Literally started watching another professors lecture video during his lecture to try to understand material - Lied about the curve he would give this class for 2-3 months - Takes a while to respond to emails
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/26/2023	Nice guy that cares about his students and wants you to succeed. Seemed he was blind sighted by having to co-teach with Kruskal and wasn't prepared so lectures felt like that, very unprepared. He made up for it with a generous curve which was nice, a whole letter grade higher than Kruskals curve. 351 is a hard class, especially with Kruskal's material and exams but Max made that experience pleasant such that I don't think many people had to worry about failing. Unpopular opinion, Kruskal's content isn't bad nor are his lectures terrible but his exams are extremely difficult but that wasn't in Max's control really. Final average was a 52.5 percent.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/26/2023	Exams were very hard but this professor is awesome.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/26/2023	Honestly, this is the worst class I've ever taken. Max co-taught with Kruskal so it was a given that the content would be insanely hard and the class would be ridiculously disorganized. Max is a great guy though and he really cares about his students, and despite the mess that the class was, he really tried his best to help everybody succeed. Under this co-teaching situation, it was a disaster, but under different circumstances I'm sure he will be really good.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a C- Anonymous 05/26/2023	Honestly it's kinda hard for me to fairly review Max given the class was co-taught with Kruskal but I'm doing it regardless to help people who may consider taking him. Max is very genuine, caring and makes lectures engaging but his knowledge was shaky (for 351 at least). His curves are also very generous so if you're interested in getting a good grade, having a nice professor, and don't want lectures to be boring you may like him. If you want to learn at a very deep level and don't mind sacrificing a good grade, Kruskal is for you. The class in general was very unorganized but both Max and Kruskal have that sort of history but unlike Kruskal, Max is new and seeking to improve. Down the line I can definitely see Max being one of the more favored professors but I think he is just having a rough start since he is still new. Ideally I would want to give a 5 star but the class was just so poorly run I cannot despite it might being Kruskal's fault.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B akl2025 05/25/2023	An interesting, caring, and potentially great professor. This was his first semester teaching CMSC351, and he was co-teaching with Kruskal; so the semester was, as expected, brutal. However, he did genuinely try his best to accommodate the students. Pros: - Incredibly welcoming and lovely person: if you want advice, talk to someone openly, or review lecture contents, then come to his office. - Engaging and interactive: the lectures became more interesting (but it was a bit time-consuming, so he might not go over everything he needed to teach and told us to watch Kruskal's lectures) - Understanding: Max curves the final grade generously, especially if you show efforts, such as coming to office hours for help consistently or showing up to class and participating in lectures, then he will most likely bump up your missing 1%. Cons: - Disorganized. Most of the contents I learned from this class were from Kruskal's videos and online resources. I hope Max could become more familiar with the topics over the summer and incorporate a structured approach to teaching in the future. For example, Max, if you're reading this, it would be helpful to have slides containing important notes for the class. While it's great to work through examples during the lecture, including them in the slides would save time (color-coded and animated). It would be ideal if the slides could be shared before or after the lecture. - Exams. Just terrifying. Well, it's not Max's fault because Kruskal wrote them, but my midterms haunted me. - Grading. It was really slow this semester due to the complications with the TAs; but it will improve, hopefully. Advices: - If Kruskal is going to write the exams for Max's classes, then study the homework religiously. There were practice exams, but not really helpful. You should still do it for extra practices, but mostly focus on the homework of all the topics that would appear on the exam. - Go to office hours. The schedule needs improvement, but it's helpful. - Study group. Yep! Teach each other and review together.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/25/2023	He’s the goat. I love what he did with the class
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/22/2023	Max is definitely not your standard CS professor, but do yourself a favor and take him anyways. You’ll leave this class feeling like you have a better understanding of what data science actually is, rather than a random assortment of knowledge that you have to regurgitate on exams to get an A(which is what a lot of CS classes are). On top of that, I’m almost certain he’s the nicest person in this department. He’s very understanding of the fact that we’re all stressed out college students, so he’s chill with deadlines as long as you reach out to him. He’s also a huge nerd and is incredibly funny. I found myself laughing constantly throughout his lectures(go to lecture, they’re fun). Also, go to his office hours or set up a meeting with him. This man has a lot of experience in industry, he’s well connected, and he’s a very approachable guy who wants to help everyone be the best version of themselves. You’re missing out if you don’t talk to him. He’s not perfect. He sometimes makes promises he doesn’t keep, he doesn’t really have practice questions for exams, and it often seems like he put the lecture together the night before and hoped for the best. BUT he made up for everything and was willing to change his course policy any time we had an issue with something. TLDR: take him if you want a friendly professor who cares about you and wants you to be a competent person in industry. Don’t take him if you want a super structured, math-heavy course.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Anonymous 05/22/2023	You are better off learning on your own then learning from his class. This makes sense because Max really wants his class to be geared towards practical industry skills, but it just translates to a bad class experience. The exams are very open ended, sometimes weirdly or vaguely worded, and generally just harder then they should be. The class material only really prepares you for the exams if his exact way of teaching works for you, and for most people it doesn't. Everything else in the class is graded very generously though. That being said, I would recommend taking this class with someone else if possible.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Anonymous 05/19/2023	Trash, Trash, don't take it. He has some crazy cultists who sit at the front of the class every time, and the other students don't come to class all time. The exam is hard, don't take this course if you are not the crazy cultists.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Anonymous 05/18/2023	Honestly, I think people are a bit hard on him here. Yes, he's a new teacher and has a lot of fine-tuning to do, but he does listen to student feedback and tries to accommodate student needs as much as possible if you just talk to him. For this course especially, it's easy to tell that he did not have much control over the course since he was co-teaching with kruskal, so a lot of the course's clumsiness can be attributed to that. But he's a much-needed breath of sympathetic fresh air in the CS department, and it's clear he cares a lot about the well-being of his students. He has everything he needs to become a great professor, just give the lad some time. And while he's still figuring things out he's never blamed his students for any resulting grade discrepancies and reassesses accordingly. I really don't think there's much more you can ask for, especially for his first semester teaching the course and having to coteach w kruskal.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a P Anonymous 05/17/2023	I wanna cut Maks some slack. It was his first semester co-teaching 351 with Dr. Kruskal. Overall, it seemed that he didn't have much control over the course structure/material since it was his first time teaching. All decisions were ultimately up to Dr. Kruskal. I don't know the extent that Maks had over the HWs and Exams that were given to us. They all felt as though they were made by Dr. Kruskal. The HWs and exams were insanely challenging. Averages for both midterms seemed to be around ~60%. During lectures he taught us based on Dr. Kruskal's recorded lectures from previous semesters. Maks' lectures were very high-level though, so I still had to watch Dr.Kruskals lecture videos to know the full extent of the material and all the deeper math theory behind specific algorithms. Hopefully, I can make it through this course with a passing grade. As of right now, right after our final, nobody can tell what their grades will be. Maks has potential to be great though! He genuinely cares about his students and relates to us. So he understands the struggles and stress everybody went through this semester. I'm excited to see how he ends up structuring his course for semesters to come. He has the same teaching knowledge as Dr. Kruskal now, so he might be continuing the same curriculum but in his own revised way. Which I can say is definitely useful and important to know! I can definintely say I'm coming out of this course knowing the deeper math fundamentals behind algorithms. So take it with him if you want to learn a lot!
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/17/2023	Co-taught with kruskal, so I'll ignore many of the issues that come with his content Pros: - Super caring about students. He recognized that Kruskal runs a brutal class, and heavily curved and gave us hints for exams to make up for it - He cares heavily about his assignments and their grades accurately reflecting the knowledge of his students. Since Kruskal's content doesn't do that, he put a lot of effort into making sure nobody failed the class unless they were extremely under the average. He went as far as to curve the average for the entire class up to an A at the end. Cons: - Severe lack of knowledge of the subject. Everything I learned came from Kruskal's recorded lectures - Very disorganized. Didn't prepare for lectures, and basically tried to learn the content along with us Definitely has potential to be an excellent professor when he makes his own content and lectures about stuff he knows about. Unfortunately, this semester was neither. I'm giving him a 4/5 for his extreme willingness to de-Kruskal the class by any means necessary.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Anonymous 05/17/2023	I've spoken to several TAs and Max wanted to teach the course using Justin's notes but was forced by the university to teach it with Kruskal (which as we all know, did NOT go well). His lectures didn't prepare us for Kruskal's midterms or homeworks, but then again, Kruskal is really specific in what he wants (I still do not understand why we had to know how to calculate the exact number of comparisons for each algorithm) and I doubt anyone can really teach 351 at the level Dr Kruskal does. It also takes WAY too long to get a homework back (they've actually got 320 TAs grading 351). Overall though, I think Max tried really hard, and he's giving us a generous curve, and he's still new. Give him time. I believe in him.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/17/2023	The reviews are all correct. Nice guy but just may be the worst professor of all time. Cancels class essentially when he feels like, has no guidelines for things, and just made the course and overall unpleasant experience with Kruskal.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/15/2023	very generous with curves but unbelievably corny
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Anonymous 05/11/2023	i've never had a teacher more open to feedback and thoughts than him. honestly the class kinda sucked but he clearly cares about the students and what their opinions are on everything going on. he always seems to try and do his best to figure out how to make us feel better and have a good experience in class (even tho again, class sucked but like hes a nice fella). it's a good enough reason alone to take him just cuz of how nice he is. he also curves very generously because of how aware he is that this class kinda sucks. his lectures felt pretty all over the place. he's a very engaging speaker and tries to make the class interactive so you wont be bored and your brain will be moving during it but most people i know and i primarily learned from kruskal's videos rather than maks' class just because of how messy it'd be sometimes. he'd get terms/content wrong and correct himself a lecture later, change up variables, explain things incorrectly, etc. it's probably just cuz he just started teaching here tho, he'll probably have a much better grasp of the content and how to teach it by like a semester or two. it definitely felt like he didn't rehearse or think much abt how to convey new information, but again, he'll probably be good with time. honestly more of a 3.5/5 stars with my specific experience in this course but he'll def be like a 4 or 5 in a few semesters. i rounded up since he's jus a nice guy lol some people on here are too mean. pretty sure he reads these too
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Anonymous 05/11/2023	Incredibly nice and caring man. Like incredibly nice and caring! Class is terribly organized because he himself seems a little disorganized but mainly because he cotaught 351 with Kruskal, whose class is always a mess. His lectures are pretty disorganized but if you pay attention to what he says he gives very very very helpful advice, but you have to listen to what he is saying. There weren't any slides which sucks. Averages on the Kruskal written exams were like in the mid to low 60s, but gave strong curves obviously. Great man, improving professor with lots of potential. CMSC 351 is made unnecessarily difficult when its Kruskals course. Not his fault for the class being bad.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/10/2023	Max taught this course in his own way this semester and it worked out really well. Definitely didn't feel disorganized like people were saying about previous semesters and I feel like I learned a ton. Great professor with a lot of potential!
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/10/2023	Maksym did a fantastic job with this course and made it the least stressful it could've been, given he had to coteach it with Kruskal. He genuinely cares a lot about his students, which shows in his effort! His teaching style is also really entertaining. As Maksym gets more experience at UMD, I think he will easily become known as one of the best professors in the computer science department.
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/08/2023	Makysm is specialized in data science not algorithms and especially not coteaching with kruskal. He struggles in trying to teach Kruskal's Concepts. He rambles in lectures with his Ipad trying to figure out Kruskal's content. No hate amazing lecturer for data science just not 351
Maksym Morawski CMSC351 Expecting a P Anonymous 02/27/2023	While we were spending hours working on Kruskal's homework, he didn't prepare for any single lecture. Everything was up to Kruskal so far, hopefully I can pass this class.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 02/16/2023	Took the course in Fall 2022. He was very generous with the curve but I didn't feel like I learned much from his lectures. However, the projects were pretty fun and useful for getting some experience with data science. You can do something meaningful for the final project and add that to your resume as well.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A- Anonymous 02/09/2023	I had him in the previous semester. Great guy, cares about his students. He makes class very engaging and tries his best to make sure students understand the material. Some issues did come up, but this was his first time teaching, some mistakes are expected. He also made sure that his mistakes didn't screw over students giving VERY generous curves on exams when they did happen (many of the negative reviews came immediately after the exam, before he announced the curve). For a normal exam with no mistakes, they can be pretty difficult but he also curves it up to an average of 75%. Overall I'd recommend this professor, I genuinely enjoyed his class and he's good at teaching imho. Giving 4 stars for the the mistakes, but I have no doubt that he could get 5 easily. Definitely one of the best CS professors at UMD. For reference, I'd personally put him next to Nelson and Jose Cauldron in ranking.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 02/02/2023	Overhated. He is a nice professor, and chances are if you ask him after lecture, he will accommodate you best he can. Exams could be somewhat challenging, so I recommend you find study groups and follow his study guides he releases. Like any CS course, most of my learning is from Googling and stackoverflow, so I can't really hate on him. He was lenient in the projects being turned in (we had an extra day for like 3 of them). I am sure he will get accustomed to everything in the Spring.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/14/2023	The class was a mess. Lectures kept getting sidetracked. We were never prepared for exams. Exams had weird grading. Grades took forever to come out.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/06/2023	Disorganized course admittedly. However, he's a really nice guy and has definitely been trying his best. The biggest thing is that he's always willing to make up for things he's made mistakes with. He curved generously when the exams went (on average) poorly. I did abysmally on the first exam (failed it even after a 15% curve), because the class is harder with Max than it seems to have been with some other professors. The final project was interesting and topic selection was lenient (although grades took a while). I ended up with needing about 0.01% to get an A- and I emailed Max asking if he would round me up. He graciously rounded me all the way to an A (approximately a 3-4% bump iirc). Ultimately, you shouldn't not take a class because it's with Max. Even if you feel like you don't know what's going on during the class, your grade will reflect your understanding as relative to your peers. Give him a shot, sit in the front of the class, and you'll like him.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Anonymous 12/24/2022	Will be good in 2-3 semesters. But for now he remains disorganized and uncoordinated with the material he teaches in lecture and what he expects from projects and exams. Very reasonable guy however and generous curve was given for any mistakes. Once he figures out things I imagine he’ll be a great addition to the department.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/22/2022	He definitely cares about his students and makes the effort to answer questions and improve our understanding of whatever he's lecturing. That being said, here are some general points about his class: - He redid the CMSC320 curriculum in the beginning of the semester, but relevant lecture slides/notes and recordings sometimes weren't posted until weeks later - Projects and class material didn't really line up - The first exam had a really low average which led Maks to curve our grades (by a LOT). Second exam went by much better. We also had an opportunity for extra credit for each exam (posting an exam question on Piazza). - No real practice exams or questions (outside of the questions posted for extra credit) - He has prior knowledge working as a Data Scientist for places like Google and Ebay and tells us about his experiences there - Grading is kind of slow -- 2/4 of the mini-projects still aren't graded (and one was turned in around a month ago) - Googling is an important skill to have - Maks is open to feedback, willing to improve, answers questions, will offer advice and ways to improve, and cares about his students This was his first semester here though, and I definitely see things with him improving next semester.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Anonymous 12/22/2022	Good lectures. Reasonable grading.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/17/2022	Every lecture was kinda scuffed but content was interesting and lot of topics were covered. Max is the chillest lecturer I've had. Definitely has GOAT potential. I'd give it 2 more semesters.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/16/2022	This is Max's first semester and I definitely think he will improve as a professor, however I feel like I did not get as much out of this class as I had hoped. He doesn't really have any lecture notes, so sometimes it is hard to follow and know what is and isn't important in lecture. The only exam practice that is given are practice problems created by other students in the class, which is nice practice but gives you no direction about what you actually need to know for exams. He does curve exams pretty generously. He rarely answers Piazza posts, which can be pretty frustrating especially when questions that are asked days before projects are due are never answered. I feel like what we learn in class isn't super helpful with the projects, and I usually spend more time googling than I do coding. It's not too difficult to do well in this class, but unfortunately I don't feel like I have learned a ton. Outside of teaching, Max is a very nice guy and I can tell he genuinely wants everyone to do well in his class, and I think his classes will definitely get better after he gets more practice as a professor.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/13/2022	This class started off very disorganized, as Max restructured the entire course curriculum. He taught what he thought was useful, and gave lots of stories about his time in industry and was clearly very experienced in the field. The big knock was that exam 1 was poorly structured, and even though I didn't agree and thought it was fine, he gave such a big curve that my 77% became a 110%. Projects were admittedly unrelated to most course content, but there was an emphasis on trying to learn how to Google, and they were easily manageable. Overall, nice professor and good class.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/13/2022	So here's the thing - I don't think the 1-star grades are fair. Maks first and foremost is a genuinely nice person - this goes a long way. The only real issue with the class is the material covered in class is pretty orthogonal to the exams from what I understand 320 also has a reputation of being a very chill class so the departure from this I think makes a lot the ratings (unfairly in some sense) lower - he's a new professor and I truly think he wants everyone to do well. Also just wanted to point out that the claim in an earlier review that the class material not corresponding with the tests/projects is common in upper level classes is completely wrong. I've taken 6 or 7 (I can't remember) 400 level CS courses - this has never been the case. I generally agree with the review left on 12/06/22
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/13/2022	Maks is a fun lecturer, as a data scientist who had worked in the industry he shared a lot of interesting stories relating to his experience with past jobs. However the class itself is disorganized, you have to rely heavily on the notes you take during class as he doesn't consistently have official class notes, and the exams didn't have any official practice questions other than student-made ones posted on Piazza. The projects rely heavily on your ability to google the right things as there's not much in the lectures dedicated on teaching students how to use Python other than a few mentions of some random Python methods here and there. As this is his first semester teaching here he is willing to improve, he does listen to students' feedback. His second exam was much more fair and comprehensive compared to his first exam.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/12/2022	Max gave very interesting lectures and is a great presenter and I feel like I learned a lot in the course. He has a lot of experience in the field so he makes sure to focus on the things that people will need to be successful in their careers. He also gave lectures on important skills that aren't taught in Computer Science like ethics and how to talk to people. He makes the class feel like a safe space for everyone and is very accommodating. His first test was very disorganized but he gave lots of extra credit to make up for it and worked things out with people who had problems on top of that. The second test was a lot better and he still let people talk him into extra credit for certain questions. The final project is one that will look good to employers and replaces any final test. There are 4 projects in the class that can take a bit of time to complete if you don't understand the tools but once you know how to use the them the projects don't take long at all. Overall, I highly recommend taking this class with him.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/12/2022	This was genuinely one of my favorite courses at UMD. The lectures were a useful overview of tools available to data scientists, and the projects were realistic representations of what it's like to work with data. Max is a really fun lecturer and I highly recommend stopping by his OH to chat / get life advice. It's really unfortunate that so many people gave him bad ratings after the first midterm - he's a super reasonable guy and adjusted the rest of the course after receiving feedback and I don't think anyone can claim that he made the course unfair. Anyways, highly highly recommend taking him for 320!
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/12/2022	This was genuinely one of my favorite courses at UMD. The lectures were a useful overview of tools available to data scientists, and the projects were realistic representations of what it's like to work with data. Max is a really fun lecturer and I highly recommend stopping by his OH to chat / get life advice. It's really unfortunate that so many people gave him bad ratings after the first midterm - he's a super reasonable guy and adjusted the rest of the course after receiving feedback and I don't think anyone can claim that he made the course unfair. Anyways, highly highly recommend taking him for 320!
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/12/2022	This was genuinely one of my favorite courses at UMD. The lectures were a useful overview of tools available to data scientists, and the projects were realistic representations of what it's like to work with data. Max is a really fun lecturer and I highly recommend stopping by his OH to chat / get life advice. It's really unfortunate that so many people gave him bad ratings after the first midterm - he's a super reasonable guy and adjusted the rest of the course after receiving feedback and I don't think anyone can claim that he made the course unfair. Anyways, highly highly recommend taking him for 320!
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/11/2022	did an oopsie woopsie with the first midterm, curved it to make up for it projects are heavy on googling but its not terrible/pretty obvious what to do from the descriptions second midterm was better written than the first, still relatively low average but imo questions were very googleable (which he hints as a solution for exam problems)
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/10/2022	oh you thought 351 was the CS weed out class? think again and welcome to 320 with max
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/06/2022	Ill break it down for everyone as best as I can. Cons: - No lecture slides - He has lecture notes he wrote, but only sometimes do they get posted - The first midterm was a mess. He put a huge curve on it to make up for it though. - Not many code examples Pros: - Relatable nerdy guy with stories from the industry (he is not a professional professor, he is data scientist with an insanly good resume) - Willing to do better as a professor, the first exam was a mess, the second one was not. If someone did bad on the second exam it was probably because they did nothing all semester. - Gives warm-up questions at the start of lectures which he describes as interview problems All in all, he is not the worst professor. The projects are related to the materials despite what some other peoples reviews are saying. The exam questions were related to the lectures, despite what some other reviews are saying. Do the projects require a lot of Googling? Yes, they do. There were not too many code examples given in the course but the documentation surronding what you are doing is actually really good. So, having to Google it, is not like shooting yourself in the foot. I'd say 4/5. There is room for improvement, but it could of been way worse. I found it was best to skip the in-person lecture as watching the recording of the lecture made taking notes easier as the lectures are actually him just talking to you and not reading off a slide show. So if you cannot take notes based on speech in a quick manner like myself, watch the recordings.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Anonymous 11/27/2022	AVOID. Not only learn nothing, but also take your time complete projects that are completely unrelated to the course content. Be prepared to spend hours understand the project and google.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Anonymous 11/26/2022	The worst course I have ever taken! Attending lectures is a total waste of time because you cannot learn anything. You need to teach yourself everything when doing projects and reviewing for exams, and when you are taking the exam you need to google almost everything. If you want to pay a lot of tuition and gain the ability to be a self-learner, take this course with Max. Although Max is a nice professor, who likes talking about his success in the industry, this course is so unorganized and that is because he removed all the good slides from the previous semesters and wants to teach this course in his own way. The first exam was a nightmare. The exam was not related to his lecture and we had no idea about what kinds of problems would be in the exam. He curved a lot to make up for that, but it still can't change the fact that we did not learn ANYTHING.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/25/2022	terrible professor. picture this: jose, a very good and well respected professor, teaches this class the previous semester, takes his time to redo the course material, makes all these projects and slides, proper organized class. then max comes along, deletes all the slides, keeps the projects because he is too lazy to create new ones (he literally wont stop talking about how he has never even seen the projects) and whos lectures consist of word vomiting material he only has surface level knowledge on, then has exams that are designed to be googled on. he has amassed a weird bunch of groupies who will shill for whatever he says (hence all the 5 stars who sound like they were written by the same person). Do not take any class with this man
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/22/2022	Sucks. If you want to learn anything avoid him.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/22/2022	A pretty unorganized course to be honest, but it's his first semester teaching so it's to be expected. Only problem with this course is that there isn't enough code examples in class and the slides/notes are unorganized if there are any at all. Other than that, he's a cool guy and completely understanding/willing to take feedback. The 1-star reviewers are all crybaby's and think everything they need to know for this class needs to be spoon-fed to them like a little child. People even tried to take advantage of his kindness claiming the stat questions on the midterm shouldn't count because STAT400 isn't a prerequisite for this class. Well... if you made it through CMSC250 and can't solve a simple Bayes Equation question then I really don't know what to tell you.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a B Anonymous 11/22/2022	Yeah anyone who gave him a 5 is a complete lunatic. I'll admit he has promise but for now he is currently teaching one of the worst run CS courses in the entire department. Nice guy, would love to get a beer with him some time but the course is so disorganized to the point where it makes learning horrible. He was adamant on changing the slides in the beginning of the year because they "weren't good" and now instead teaches off whatever tangents his brain works off of. I can't imagine how Jose feels as he recently revamped the course just to have it ruined by Max. Maybe once he sorts this all out he'll be better, but for now he deserves the 1, ignore anyone who gave him a 5.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a B+ getgoldget3 11/19/2022	Honestly, ignore the 1-star reviews. He has a 5 star on ratemyprofessor out of 30 ratings. It's from UMBC and it's the same Max, I checked his LinkedIn. I can guarantee the 1-star reviewers are all nerds. Max is hilarious, makes lectures fun, and teaches valuable course material. People are mad because "what he says in lecture doesn't help us with the projects", yea, it doesn't. That is a common occurrence for higher-level CMSC courses. I guess none of those reviewers have gotten past CMSC351/CMSC330 yet. Projects involve using code to extract text from websites, organizing it, and making graphs/visualizations out of the data to make a point. Do people actually expect Max to stand there for 90 minutes every lecture teaching us how to code in pandas? He showed us the basics then everything else builds on that. Making a pretty visualization is something google helps you with. I do think Max should provide us with documents with code examples relevant to the projects outside of lecture, which is something he currently does not do, otherwise I don't mind his teaching. Max also uses his experience from working in the field to teach us and explain what is and is not relevant. I love knowing what topics are actually used in the field because I want to work in data science. Knowing what to expect means I can focus on certain topics more and do better on interviews. Everyone that is roasting Max for talking about his work in the field is an absolute donut that just wants to be spoon-fed code instead of learning topics at a high level and figuring out the code on their own. Max is also a very considerate and reasonable instructor that understands that students have a life outside of his class and is willing to accommodate for special circumstances. Very down to earth and likable dude
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/15/2022	READ! This semester was his first time teaching and he caused a blunder with the midterm, which wasn't even that bad in my opinion. That's the only reason a bunch of nutcases spammed him with 1-star reviews. Anyway, he curved very reasonably and is set on not repeating his mistake. Aside from this, he consistently enlightens us about the Data Science industry and teaches us useful concepts relevant to the industry. His lectures are fun to go to! Additionally, he listens. He's always asking for feedback and genuinely feels bad for the mistakes he has caused. You study for exams (both online) by following a well-written study guide he provides. Regarding projects, they are also fun and you learn applicable Data Science skills. There's no final exam, but instead, a final project where you can make what you want to while fulfilling certain requirements. Max is super lenient with your ideas and is super easy to talk to. If you're uneasy because of his reviews, just go talk to him and decide for yourself.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a W Anonymous 11/14/2022	Absolutely horrid professor and class. If you take this class get prepared to teach yourself all the material related to any assignment or quiz. He has no comprehension of what it's like to be a student in his class where he handwaves every topic briefly with no reinforcement and then assigns us projects where it is NOT RELATED AT ALL to what he is teaching. He is more concerned with his job at EBay than he is with actually being a good professor and to compensate for this just showers the class in extra credit (which does not make him a better professor). Overall, horrible professor. If you enjoy learning any actual material don't take a class with him. You will regret it.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/13/2022	Horrible teacher. He fails at not only teaching but also responding to relevant questions. His lectures are more about his personal life than it is about data science, and I feel like I wasted a lot of time by even attending the lectures. The fact that he had to curve an exam by >30% in a class that's not even meant to be difficult speaks volumes. As much as I'd like to say he's a good person but bad professor, I'm afraid to say an irresponsible professor is not exactly the best person. If you're reading this, kindly teach relevant information. As much as some members of the class enjoy your tangents, I (and many others) came here to learn and nothing else. Please teach in a practical and planned manner. I loathe those who are fortunate enough to not value over 90 minutes of time. To reiterate, if you are reading this: Students come here to learn data science. You are obviously a talented and tested individual, and clearly possess the capability of teaching. I can only assume you think we don't take this course seriously, and therefore neither should you.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 11/13/2022	Has a super fun personality. Unfortunately, this personality also involves him being incredibly hand-wavy for just about every topic, making it impossible to do the projects or the exams without literally learning all of the details and processes (which are deemed uncool) yourself. This is made more difficult by the fact that he's thrown out all of the previous relatively well-structured course material, replacing it with his free-form, tangent-filled lectures, with no useful slides or notes posted. Logistics is a nightmare. Completely unreliable and disorganized. Difficult to get in touch with and has yet to timely follow through (if at all) on a single assurance he's made all semester when you do. Hasn't bothered to figure out the most basic software used for the course, making things even worse for students in every way (exams, projects, recordings, notes, slides). Even if we end up with an insane curve to make up for his incompetence (which seems to be the case from the first exam), we've been taught little in a potentially fascinating course and have been enormously stressed and frustrated.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a B Anonymous 11/12/2022	Great professor that is a little unorganized but makes up for it with real life industry work experience. Max shares his work stories about projects he did and how he did them, which is a lot more valuable to me then just coursework Max is a breath of fresh air in the sea of super boring work heavy CMSC courses, love the dude This is his first semester teaching the course and he is very gracious with curves and listens to student concerns. Super down to earth dude. Some technical difficulties in the class but he’s working on them Overall: he a little confused be he got the spirit
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a B Anonymous 11/12/2022	Professor Max is a super down to earth dude. I personally really enjoy his class and he makes lectures fun. The way he is teaching CMSC320 is unusual but it comes from a person who has worked in the field, which holds a lot of value in my eyes. Projects: not easy but he is reusing projects from other semesters so I don’t understand why people are complaining. A lot of project work is fully self taught, which isn’t unusual for CS courses. The project grading is lenient and Max is super easy to talk to if you have any issues. If you don’t want to self learn then you are going to have a lot of trouble in various CS courses, it’s just how it is unfortunately Exam 1: This exam was online so we had access to Google and any notes we had taken. The average was around 65% but Max is giving us a generous curve and again, none of this is unusual for a CMSC course, it’s only really bad if the professor isn’t fair with curving based on the averages, which is not the case here. There were technical difficulties but Max accommodated for that and helped anyone that had issues. Also, the vast majority of the grade comes from projects so this isn’t even a big deal Lectures: Max talks about the fundamental topics briefly and doesn’t go into too much detail. Again, most of the code you will learn is self taught and contained in the projects, lecture is for high level explanations of the different topics of the course. Max also shares stories about projects he had to do in industry and problem solving techniques he used to get his solutions. All very practical and useful information. if you’re a geek that doesn’t care about real life and want to stuff your face in a text book and fully learn everything in depth, this gem of a lecturer isn’t for you. Overall thoughts: I personally think this class is a breath of fresh air amongst the sea of boring and difficult computer science courses. Max actually makes me want to come to lecture as opposed to feeling like I have to. I love having professors that are easy to talk to and feel more down to earth. This is definitely one of the rare instances of a professor that understands that students have a life outside of their course and is willing to accommodate for real excuses. Other ratings: I honestly feel like Max is getting a lot of unfair reviews. This is his first semester teaching the course and he is demonstrating a clear willingness to learn and improve as a professor. There are lots of complaints about the unorganized lecture styles, which is a fair criticism that I’m sure he will address in the future, but also bs criticism about an exam that isn’t worth very much of our grade and projects that he didn’t even write? These are literally reused projects from other semesters so if that’s the complaint then you have a problem with the class, not Max. There seems to be two sides to this. If you want to hear real life experiences and get advice about how to make it in the industry, then you’ll like Max. If you’re looking for a professor that solely focuses on teaching the class material, then Max is not for you. Conclusion: He a little confused but he got the spirit
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/12/2022	Take it with someone else if you actually want to learn something. He's a nice guy, but doesn't really teach anything substantial that's useful for the projects and exams. He talks about various topics at a very surface level but doesn't go into any of the details. The first exam was just STAT 400 questions and student-made questions from Piazza. Also the things we were tested on he didn't really go into much detail in in lecture. Only thing that I have found valuable from this class so far are the projects created by previous professors for the course.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/10/2022	Really nice guy passionate about data science. Not a good teacher. If you want to self-teach yourself all of the content in this course then take Maks. His lectures are hard to follow as they involve at least 3 tangents minimum. He is not organized and it is very unclear on how much we need to know about mentioned topics. This makes studying almost impossible. I only did well on the first exam due to prior knowledge and google. I would recommend taking this class with someone else and make your life easier.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/10/2022	Everyone who gave him a 5 star review doesn't understand that just by curving an exam by 30% makes you a better professor. His lectures are still uninteresting, he goes on niche tangents with 3 kids in the class that make lecture an unbearable nightmare where you don't learn anything. I'm willing to bet that the 3 people who gave him those 5 star reviews are the same people who sit front of the class asking him questions to get him to go on random tangents for 90 minutes.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/10/2022	The main issue is poor organization in lecture. Does not provide clear explanations of each topic nor specific examples. Hand written notes are his passing thoughts rather than coherent, structured notes. I often leave class feeling as if I learned nothing. I struggle to take notes because of lack of structure in lectures. Exam was not very relevant to what was covered in lecture, but he is working on this for the next one! Lectures are not really related to the projects. Despite all this, Max is a funny and really cool dude. I enjoy talking to him and hearing his thoughts and stories. It's obvious he's working to improve. I appreciate he has industry experience, which he ties to what we're learning! My recommendations for improvement: - Organize lectures with clear explanations of each data science technique, use cases, and relevant examples. - Create more organized hand written notes that can serve as a reference. - Review key concepts necessary for projects and exams. - Keep sharing cool stories and industry insights!
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/09/2022	Really gracious curve and very responsive to feedback. Really interesting class.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/09/2022	I really enjoy his class. He makes the material fun and engaging, and added a lot of real world applications to our lessons. This is his first semester teaching it, and so it's a bit bumpy because of the transition to new material, but he's been doing his best to make it smooth and respond to student feedback
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a W Anonymous 11/09/2022	The way that CMSC320 is being taught in the fall 2022 is a disaster. The class was known as a easy CMSC elective class. But it is not this semester. Morawski is a cool, fun guy. Maybe caring according to my friends, but he is far away from good professor this semester. He has a few little lecture slides at the beginning of the semester, but no more after he decided to remake the class. We get speaker notes sometimes, but it is only converging the topics he went over. Furthermore, the lectures he gave doesn't teach us how to do our projects and exams well. We basically need to learn how to do the project on our own - it is much workload that I was expecting for CMSC320. It is probably the workload similar to CMSC216. BTW I start projects early so I can ask TA for help, but they are still time consuming and suffering because you have to find out what are expecting (the project description doesn't always tell you where you graded on) and teach yourselves (since you didn't really learn how to do the project yourself) Also, I do agree that he is trying to make "us to think data-wise and not just be code monkeys". But we need to think data-wise AND how to code. Many of the exams questions went far away from the scope of the class. And some are bad written. The projects we did (and cmsc320 is project heavy class) probably worth 6 points in the 42 points exam (which is 32 after he gave curve). Also there is no timer on the gradescope when we took the exam so we will realize "we had to time ourselves!" after you read the exam starts 3-5 mins. He might improve next semester (Spring 2023) based on the feedback he got this semester, but honestly, if you have choice, try to wait a semester to see how it went . At this point, I will say he is definitely 1/5 at CMSC320. If you have to, I will suggest to treat this class not as elective CMSC class that is kinda easy as the previous reviews have, treat it as a CMSC216 class that will took your lots efforts to get A.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/08/2022	This review is after Maks addressed what has happened in the class and the midterm recently, which is why you are going to wonder why all the 1 star reviews. I do agree that he isn't the greatest lecturer, and that a lot of topics that he very lightly brushed on the exam came in full force in the midterm, however I am posting this after he gave an EXTREMELY generous curve and on top of that he admitted that a lot of the questions that seemed out of scope of the class or that were badly written, well that was actually the case, and he made it up within the curve that he gave us. It's his first time teaching this course, not sure if actually it's his first time lecturing huge sections, and actually. I was frustrated too with his lectures but I can see why he wants us to learn all of this and he is trying to re-make the class. It's to get us to think data-wise and not just be code monkeys who just do python,sql, and stuff to whatever we are told to do for the projects. He is a caring and great guy and I have never seen instructors be so caring to the point of admitting their own mistakes and taking student input in order to improve. There could be more in depth examples and case scenarios for the next exams theory/stat/math wise, and perhaps include a bit of the project stuff in class, but he is great and trying his best at getting us to get the most out of this course.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/08/2022	easy class, only con is you have to take it with Max. Fun if you want to hear a tech bro boast about his salary every lecture
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a C Anonymous 11/07/2022	Max is a really nice guy and on the first day of class got me excited about the course by telling some very interesting stories about his time in the industry. This was the first time in a CS class that I had been excited to learn or thought to myself, “wow that sounds like something I want to do when I graduate.” That is why I’m extra disappointed by this class. I suspect that all the Max does to prepare for each day is make a general list of things he wants to talk about and the occasional very plain PowerPoint which he doesn’t stick to. What happens in class is that he simply rambles about said topics without any semblance of structure. There are no key points even if he is using a visual aid. Max will often hand write notes but this is pretty spotty and no one would be able to understand the full picture if they were to try to go back and look at the notes. It is often as if his lectures are simply a conversation between him and people sitting in the front row which quickly breaks down the flow of class and creates too many tangents. It also reveals how unprepared he is when people ask questions and he realizes he should have planned to address that but that it had slipped his mind. This is only a small summary of the issues in this class. Projects are way too hard in comparison for how casually he teaches and test questions seem to be first drafts without any revision. Unless you have the time or personality that would allow you to live in his office hours, don’t expect to get much from Max because his lectures are very difficult to learn from.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/07/2022	Great guy, very funny, clearly has experience with what he is teaching. While the first midterm we had did have some more vague questions, it was graded very fair with a curve and numerous questions converted to extra credit. Lectures don't always line-up exactly with projects/exams but are interesting in useful in overall terms for data science. Would guarantee most of the reviews on here that are negative are people who aren't putting in effort/starting projects last minute, etc. Would highly recommend for anyone interested in data science and would advise to take most of these negative reviews with a grain of salt/open mind
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/07/2022	Horrible professor contingent on making your life as confusing and miserable as possible. First exam was a complete crapshoot, so bad in fact that there was not even a GradeScope timer. Genuinely ignore the 5 star review. I ended up with above a 100% on the exam after this curve to compensate how horrible the exam was (removed 10 points from a 42 exam) and I'm telling you he's horrible. Quite horrible.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a B Anonymous 11/02/2022	I learned nothing from his class.
Maksym Morawski Anonymous 11/02/2022	Cool guy, awful professor. He's always extremely unorganized and unprepared so he just rambles during lecture about things that aren't related to the projects. Additionally, he regularly entertains useless questions that have nothing to do with the class, leading him to go on all sorts of tangents and impromptu comedy bits. He still doesn't understand how to use ELMS, Gradescope, or his class webpage, so from a student's perspective, that makes it really difficult to remember when and where to submit an assignment or take a quiz. Don't take his classes.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 10/27/2022	Classroom lectures, while interesting, aren't relevant at all to what's actually on the exam, and concepts that are briefly glossed over in class show up as a full-fledged exam question. Nothing in class is really relevant to the knowledge needed to complete the projects past the first couple of lectures.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Anonymous 10/26/2022	He doesn't know how to teach. He deleted all lecture slides from the previous semester which are rather clear and useful, and teach classes without slides. He also canceled a bunch of classes without trying to make up.
Maksym Morawski Anonymous 10/26/2022	Avoid him. He rewrote the whole class and made all contents unrelated to the projects and exams. His lectures are not useful at all.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting an A Anonymous 10/19/2022	Love how the rate my prof ratings are so much better. https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/professor?tid=1822434. Exam wasn't that bad as long as you listen to what he says in class. He doesn't always teach everything in lectures, a lot of self learning is expected of you as well; however, he always points out the topics you have to self learn. It is very clear and probably like an hour of learning outside of class a week.
Maksym Morawski CMSC320 Expecting a B- Anonymous 10/17/2022	DO NOT take this class with Maksym Moraswki. His lectures is interesting but has nothing to do with our project/exam. His project description does not match how he grade it.