Mamadou Wade

This professor has taught: ENEE150, ENEE244, ENEE245, ENEE459F

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Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A- Anonymous 02/14/2024	Class, is medium difficulty but Wade curved. Take it with Wade
Mamadou Wade ENEE245 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/28/2023	Wade is still not a great professor for 245. However, unlike 244 where all of the shortcomings of that class fall on the professor, 245 has been such an infamous class for several years that Wade might actually be an improvement for the class's direction... which is honestly really sad. First off, a few good things I have to say. This class, despite how much work it is week by week, is at least an easy A if you try. The TAs graded fairly and mostly gave everyone A's on assignments as denoted by most of the lab report averages. Additionally, I believe any overdue lab reports were accepted on the last day of classes for full credit. I would strongly recommend against abusing this for both your and the TAs' sake, but the option is there if you're struggling to get in the last few reports. Finally, being able to choose lab partners each week is a godsend for this class. With that out of the way, this class is an absolute mess. First off, lab 0 was almost completely useless for me, as we had no hands-on experience with using the equipment. We instead watched videos for most of the time, including an hour long review of the oscilloscope we used in lab, which didn't help me understand how to use it in the slightest (keep in mind this is the first time I've used an oscilloscope, and neither PHYS261 nor ENEE205 are prerequisites for this class). Speaking of the oscilloscope, literally every new piece of equipment for the class including the oscilloscope, OrCAD PSpice, the DLA software, and the FPGA software are all incredibly poorly documented. All of my skills with the oscilloscope and PSpice were gained from the 205 labs because those are at least properly documented. For instance, prelabs 2, 3, and 4 of 245 asked for PSpice simulations, and I didn't figure out how to get those simulations until it was cleared up in the 205 PSpice lab, as there is nowhere in the provided 245 documents which clears up how to get simulations working, and trying to look online either brought up corporate nonsense or documents which didn't help in getting started in the first place. For the DLA and FPGA software, we just had to flounder around aimlessly until something worked, as the TAs were almost completely untrained on the software we use. Even disregarding that, the class is just an unreasonable amount of work each week. I swear that this class is two credits, yet it sometimes feels like it's five. It gets really bad towards the end, where they throw weekly labs at us such as the vending machine controller, integer square root finder, and floating point adder on a weekly basis, where such labs feel much more like 2 week Verilog projects they cram into a week. It's probably even worse than it sounds because the labs essentially have to be fully completed in prelab, and every lab as an associated tedious lab report to fill out. Unfortunately I didn't really have a choice to pair this class and 205, and both combined nearly drove me insane this semester with the seemingly never-ending prelabs, labs, and lab reports nearly every single week. Finally, exams. They're not weighted a whole lot, but they're a mess. For exam 1, it takes place in lab 4 labs in. As far as I'm aware, the TAs write unique exams, and while this semester's exams weren't bad, I heard last semester's first exams varied wildly in difficulty and quality. I'm not sure the origins of exam 2, but I do know that its quality was terrible. The multiple choice were each 5% each and tested us on features of Verilog we never touched, such as obscure data types and scalar values. Meanwhile, the rest of the exam was just a bunch of Verilog feature checks and basic 244 stuff, which was easy, but at the same time things like parameters are things we haven't used for about 2 months. This class's reputation is deserved in every respect. It is by far the worst and most tedious major class I have taken so far, which is a shame since it could be so much better if the class was just toned down a bit and had better documentation. Do yourself a favor and if you can, do not take this class alongside 205. If you do end up with both in the same semester, all I can say is good luck.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/15/2023	He’s a very nice guy and cares about his students learning, I would just recommend some more examples in the slides and he would be perfect
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/14/2023	Dr. Wade is super understanding. I had a rough semester, and him being understanding about it helped me a lot. He is approachable and will happily help you in his office hours. His exams are easy and fair, and he is very lenient grader. There are 2 midterms which are both 25% and so is the final. Although, I did have have to teach myself most of the class. He just reads off of the lecture slides and doesn't really teach you the why behind things. I think it would help a lot if he had more engaging slides, I just feel like he picks up the textbook definitions and puts them in the slides (but I have never opened the textbook so..). Reading through his slides will guarantee you a 100% on the tests. This class has no complicated concepts anyway (it gets complicated after ch5) and you should be good with YouTube vids, HW, and asking TAs questions. He doesn't post solutions to homeworks which I wish he did because they can help a lot during revision. He has pop quizzes which are 10% of your grade. They are super easy and he tells you about them in advance. Take him if you want an A in this class.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/11/2023	Even though Dr. Wade is a nice professor who's lenient with grades, he's not a great lecturer. He takes the examples and information directly from the book that we follow in class, even though the book has mistakes in both its concepts and its examples. Sometimes, he catches on to these and lets us know in the lecture, but other times he does not; regardless, I felt like I couldn't trust 100% of the information he presented in lecture. Additionally, his homeworks felt hit-or-miss, because some of them took extremely long to complete but were easy, while for other ones, I didn't really understand what the problem was asking for and the mentioned problem felt too far to what we were being presented in class. Finally, Dr. Wade's pacing isn't great, since he spends a lot more time with binary-related computations such as addition and subtraction (and not as much on other topics that seem more useful, such as k-maps), but TAs can go more or less in detail on what is more or less important in the class.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/02/2023	The fact that Wade is the only professor for 244 and 245 would be less than ideal even if he was the best professor in the world, and he very much is not. He doesn't really plan his pacing well for going through content. The homework for each chapter is due "a week after finishing the chapter" and the exams are "a month after we finish chapter 3." It's not like he was springing exams on us without warning or anything but as someone who likes to plan I really would have appreciated actually knowing when exams were going to be at the beginning of the semester. We are almost at the end of the semester and it seems like we won't finish chapter 7, which seems common for Wade. Also, homeworks are incredibly lengthy so definitely do not procrastinate. Luckily he just assigns problems from the textbook so pretty much all the answers are online. I would tell you to try and get someone else but it doesn't seem like you can.
Mamadou Wade ENEE150 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/01/2023	Dr. Wade is very lenient and understanding. He has given our class multiple extensions on our projects and homework so that everyone has enough time to complete them all. Anytime someone has asked, he has extended deadlines for everyone. However, Dr. Wade's teaching style is not for me. Every class, it is just him reading off slides upon slides of information pulled right from the textbook. All of the exam content will be pulled directly from the 500+ slides he posts throughout the semester. I personally have found it really hard to focus in his class, but other people might not have that issue. From what I've seen, a good amount of people just skip his lectures as he posts them all on Canvas and doesn't really elaborate too much on anything on the slides. He does curve the midterms so that he has an 80% mean grade on the midterms. Homework and Projects are simple, specifications and test vectors are given by the TAs, and are pretty much a free grade. By the end of this semester, we will have had 3 Homework assignments (15%), 2 Projects (15%), 2 Quizzes (10%), 2 Midterms (20% each), and the Final (20%), which isn't a lot of assignments in my opinion. Overall, pretty easy class, boring but really kind professor, and boring content. If you skipped ENEE140 with the AP Java Credit like I did, definitely pay attention for the first few weeks, as I struggled in the switch from Java to C.
Mamadou Wade Expecting an A Anonymous 11/29/2023	class material coverage depends on wade's speed throughout the semester. This semester we are probably only getting up to chap 6 so registers and counters. Material overall was pretty easy so homeworks and slides were just all about what you need. Homeworks do take awhile, but they get easier with time and most of them are on youtube for a in depth explanation. Quizzes are "pop quizzes" announced 2 weeks in evidence... i know. 2 mids, 1 final and coverage also depends on where wade gets.
Mamadou Wade ENEE150 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/18/2023	From Spring Semester 2023: Dr. Wade is a very kind professor who will give ample time for students to complete their assignments and posts all the slides he uses to Canvas. However that’s about where the positives end, the class is pretty disorganized and extremely repetitive. It is a very rare occurrence for a lecture to start and the first 20 minutes to not be the exact same slides from the end of the last class. The exam content is from the slides, however they don’t really make sense. You will learn about pointers early but we weren’t tested on them until the second exam. Instead 20% of that first exam was multiple choice on Dr. Wades personal opinions on testing and debugging from 2 slides on syllabus day. Unlike enee140 the HW does not feel like practice, it feels like busy work. The projects are uninspiring and will teach you almost nothing. And instead of a concise lecture where you learn a topic a week and get better at C, you will be drip fed random snippets of information in a sea of side tangents. He will frequently use the whiteboards in addition to his slides. But he will not add anything new or explain it any better, he will just rewrite whatever is on the slides. All these issues are not a fault with enee150 but entirely caused by Dr. Wades teaching style. Ultimately take this professor if you would prefer boring busy work that might be less time consuming than actually learning something.
Mamadou Wade ENEE150 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/14/2023	Wade was incredibly thorough in lecture, he explained every single example or concept in incredible detail, to the point where often it felt like overkill and was somewhat boring when you already understood what he was saying. Though his teaching could get very repetitive and boring, being confused is certainly not a problem in his class. He was also really lenient with grading and deadlines, with regular deadline extensions and generous curves on exams. Homework and projects often had really vague directions, leaving students to have to guess about what he wants us to do. The exams and quizzes, though, were very much based heavily on the slides, and he told us this at pretty much every point. Bottom line, everything you need to know in the course is on the slides which he goes very in depth on.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/07/2023	Full disclosure: I haven't finished the course. I haven't even taken the second exam (it is on 5/10, the current day is 5/7). This class. I don't even have words to describe how bad it is. Easily the most poorly paced class I have taken so far at the university. Let's start with exams. The first exam covered chapters 1-3, or in other words, the units so incredibly easy that a 5 year old could do it. The only reason I didn't get 100% on that exam is because I didn't fully simplify something. That was in mid-March. The second exam is covering chapters 4-7, which is digital logic is actually somewhat applied. It is on the last day of class. The final is immediately the following week, which I know for a fact we won't get the second exam back to help study for it. And guess what? We don't have chapter 7 homework, but content from it can still show up on the second exam and final. The "Midterm 2 Practice" folder on ELMS? IT ONLY COVERS UP TO CHAPTER 5. It's not like this class is difficult either. Every quiz and exam I've taken has been incredibly easy, and I don't anticipate the upcoming exams to be difficult either. It's just that Wade does not know how to pace his class, and doesn't provide anything to compensate. His lectures are almost completely skippable. Don't go to them, except when there's a quiz or exam. I promise, you will likely get nothing from it. I certainly didn't. All he does is regurgitate the slides, which are posted to ELMS anyways. He barely adds his own touch, especially as the semester goes on. Honestly, part of this is a failure of the ECE department. Some concepts are introduced, such as the carry-lookahead adder and synchronous counters. But forget about breadboarding, we don't even see a simulator such as Logisim used to give an intuitive understanding of why these would be used instead of the ripple counterparts. I've had experience with breadboarding digital electronics before, so I am fully aware of everything introduced in this class. Heck, much of this material until chapter 6 is pretty much verbatim what I learned in PLTW Digital Electronics, and I didn't need a programming prerequisite to take that class. I certainly didn't need to have a sophomore standing in college. I even got breadboarding experience out of that, which I certainly can't say for this waste of time of a class. Anyways, I feel bad that 3 classes next semester are being stuck with Wade. How is it possible that 3 major track courses for electrical engineering only have 1 professor? I was debating whether to give this professor a 1 or 2 star rating, and honestly, I fully believe he deserves a 1 star for his teaching in ENEE244. It isn't hard, but it's entirely worthless. Just hope you get a good TA in case the awful textbook trips you up.
Mamadou Wade ENEE245 Expecting an A xtermn8 05/05/2023	His teaching is acceptable but the class structure needs a lot of revamping. Not easy material but there's a lot that he could do to structure it better and help us out more. In the last lecture he did admit this, though, and there will be some changes made in coming semesters. I think he said this is his first or second semester teaching it, so I've got to cut him some slack. Your TA will make or break the course, though.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/03/2023	The homework in this class is no joke. Wade assigns a homework for each chapter we learn, approximately once every two weeks. Make sure to get started on it early because it will take many hours to complete. Homework is not very hard but VERY time consuming, i.e. making us draw a truth table for a massive circuit that takes up an entire page (I feel bad for the TAs that have to grade this stuff). Basically just busy work but at least it forces you to get a ton of practice and get the concepts down well. Wade is somewhat lenient with due dates for the assignments, allowing students to turn it in a few days late. Lectures are extremely boring, more than half of the class doesn't even show up. Looking at the lecture slides and watching YouTube videos is likely a lot more productive. If you've taken CMSC250 already, the first half of this class is basically just a review of stuff you already know. Exams and quizzes weren't very hard.
Mamadou Wade ENEE245 Anonymous 05/01/2023	Wade strikes back from 244, now in 245. His class is disorganized and requires a disproportionate amount of homework for a 2-credit class. Lab assignments are riddled with mistakes and inconsistencies, displaying a clear lack of effort from the class administration.
Mamadou Wade ENEE245 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/04/2023	He does his job. Many students find 245 difficult regardless of the instructor, and I think that he's doing decently with preparing us for the labs. Your mileage may vary significantly depending on your lab TA.
Mamadou Wade ENEE245 Expecting a B- Anonymous 03/01/2023	Easily the worst class and professor I have ever had. There are no resources, nothing is graded on a timely manner, and the course material is so complicated to the point where its hard to even find resources on the internet for it. There is not an ounce of teaching Wade has done, and the labs are insanely tedious. If you don't have extensive experience with circuits or breadboards going into this class, you are in for a horrible semester
Mamadou Wade ENEE150 Expecting an A Anonymous 02/28/2023	Wade clearly cares about his students. He is very thorough with his lectures and if you go to office hours, you can get extra help. Because it was his first semester (fall 2022) teaching at UMD, I believe he had little time to prepare for ENEE 150 and 244. While his class for 150 wasn't as challenging as previous professors, he was still very knowledgeable and educational. I am taking 244 with him right now and he has definitely gotten the hang of teaching ENEE 244. We are almost halfway through the course, meaning he is pacing himself well this semester. I genuinely believe that he is a good professor but wasn't given enough time last semester to prepare.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 02/13/2023	Pacing was poor and resulted in not covering content which was necessary for ENEE245. Although the exams were easy, homework was tedious and miserable. Although this class was an easy A given the content, I would not recommend this professor for anything more involved.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/05/2023	HW is really tedious and repetitive, although it is not difficult to do at all and you are given insanely long periods of time to do it. Exams are very easy and Prof. Wade will answer any questions you have thoroughly. However, Prof. Wade teaches this class extremely slowly and at the end of the semester there were large chunks of content Prof. Wu's class went over that we just never did (half of chapter 5 and onwards). I basically never showed up to class and vague memories from PLTW Digital Electronics in highschool as well as CMSC250 was more than enough to comfortably get through this class. Take Prof. Wade if you want an easy A, but don't expect to learn very much. I'm somewhat worried that ENEE245 is going to be terrible now because we didn't go over so much content that is the basis for it.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/01/2022	Prof. Wade's teaching leaves a lot to be desired. His pacing is way off which can be quite frustrating. Homeworks are long and hard, tests and quizzes are the exact opposite. Do not reccomend.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/25/2022	Straightforward lectures, but we are critically behind the syllabus (Chapter 4, out of 8 in syllabus at Thanksgiving Break). Infrequent but absurdly long homework (4-5 hours). Easy quizzes and exams. Would not recommend.
Mamadou Wade ENEE244 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/16/2022	His lectures are rough and straight from the text book, but that does allow easy review and he posts his slides which are basically cliff notes of the text book. The homeworks are long but the quizzes and exams are extremely straight forward.