Professor
Chadwick Sprouse
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Most Helpful Review
Summer 2020 - Professor Sprouse is fairly generous in the way he grades. I believe he gave everyone who got a 90% or higher as their overall final grade an A, not an A-. Whenever I had a question and I emailed him, he was prompt in responding which I was very appreciative of. The homework was a bit much but I will say it prepares you well for the two midterms and the final. He docked a few points on the exams for minor errors, but I think this is the norm for math professors. VERY IMPORTANT: Make sure you go over the notes very carefully and take note of the way he wants you to solve problems on the exams because if you do it your own way and still get the right answer, he will mark off a ton of points if not all of them. Solve the problems the way he wants you to solve them and you can figure out the way he wants you to solve them by carefully examining his notes. The bottom line is if you need to take Calc 31A, take it with Professor Sprouse. He is nice, a little funny, and really cares about his students. With Covid-19 going on, he was very understanding and tried to make the difficulty of the class fit the trying times we are currently in as best he could. In addition, my TA Mr. Johnson was great. I would highly recommend him as well.
Summer 2020 - Professor Sprouse is fairly generous in the way he grades. I believe he gave everyone who got a 90% or higher as their overall final grade an A, not an A-. Whenever I had a question and I emailed him, he was prompt in responding which I was very appreciative of. The homework was a bit much but I will say it prepares you well for the two midterms and the final. He docked a few points on the exams for minor errors, but I think this is the norm for math professors. VERY IMPORTANT: Make sure you go over the notes very carefully and take note of the way he wants you to solve problems on the exams because if you do it your own way and still get the right answer, he will mark off a ton of points if not all of them. Solve the problems the way he wants you to solve them and you can figure out the way he wants you to solve them by carefully examining his notes. The bottom line is if you need to take Calc 31A, take it with Professor Sprouse. He is nice, a little funny, and really cares about his students. With Covid-19 going on, he was very understanding and tried to make the difficulty of the class fit the trying times we are currently in as best he could. In addition, my TA Mr. Johnson was great. I would highly recommend him as well.
Most Helpful Review
Summer 2024 - Been here for a couple of years and this guy is easily one of the worst professors I've ever had. I have never in my life taken a course where attendance is mandated and there are punishments for not doing so on your grade, including the threat of not receiving the recorded lectures (it was on zoom). in other words, you can not work/intern (which almost everyone does) during the summer, he even says NO accommodations for internships in the syllabus which I found to be unnecessary. There are polls, clickers, etc to make sure you are there haha. There are also 3 exams and no alternative grading schemes for a low exam score/missed exam, so If you have an emergency, you are out of luck as missing an exam is worth 23% of your grade. Taken from the syllabus, "No makeups will be given on a different day, unless negotiated at least ONE WEEK in advance, no matter what the reason." So only if you know you'll have an emergency a week in advance is when you'll be able to reschedule an exam haha. He also says in the syllabus "Please do not try to negotiate, make deals, or get me to promise anything in private that is not on the syllabus." Who says please don't negotiate with me or try to make deals but then says only negotiate with me if it is a week in advance. Just sounds incredibly lazy and a weird use of the word negotiate in a school setting, its not a business. Maybe say in cases of DOCUMENTED emergencies we can reschedule a test, some common sense. Giving people an out a week in advance if they just plan it accordingly lets people with other plans outside of the course get their own way rather than accommodating for those with real documented emergency situations, doesn't make sense to me. This is also a 6 week course, so it is very short, but 20+ questions every week is insane. Most of these questions have very many parts to them and include drawing up many graphs/heavy computations as well so it takes essentially the whole week to complete them. I don't see how he can say that because it is 6 weeks you have to write up 50+ pages of work every week, I get that its condensed but its still insane. He also warns to only take this course and nothing else at the same time (should've noticed this red flag) because I assume he knows you'll be glued to a desk. Also no solutions which makes the experience so much more fun! maybe make a solution set for all future 134 courses? it would help the students solidify the HW material AFTER they have already turned it in and will only be reviewing it at that point. I would complete the HW and did not know if I was correct at all since the HW was usually graded after the correlated exam was completed, so I essentially went in blind most of the time. I get that we can go to office hours but he is not reviewing the 50+ pages of work to ensure it is correct. so awesome His lecturing is okay, but to complete the HW you'll have to read the textbook regardless or seek other sources as much of the HW can't be completed with just the lectures, but you'll still have to sit through the meeting and make sure there aren't any polls to answer. You'll get that he tries to come off as a no BS guy but he isn't a very good one. you can be strict with students (as every professor should be) but also offer an alternative grading scheme for missed exams/one poor performance and a regular amount of HW problems that include solutions to verify correctness of all the work. At the end of the day, he offered a slightly altered grading scheme for the course where a missed or poor performance on an exam would be worth around half of the usual 23% per exam (still crazy to me but whatever). Not sure why he did this, maybe lots of students did poorly/complained or just trying to score points with students but this could've just been applied to the syllabus from the start. I imagine this is how most of his classes go: he pulls out this grading scheme out of thin air and (slightly) saves the day. The class size by end of the course was around half or less than half of the original size but why would anyone want to leave this wonderful course? I would just take it during the year as I believe he only teaches during the summer and works at a different school during the year. There are other amazing 134 instructors that offer some leeway, attendance freedom, and regular sized HW assignments which are all conducive to a good learning experience. I did not get this from this class unfortunately. Just take someone else.
Summer 2024 - Been here for a couple of years and this guy is easily one of the worst professors I've ever had. I have never in my life taken a course where attendance is mandated and there are punishments for not doing so on your grade, including the threat of not receiving the recorded lectures (it was on zoom). in other words, you can not work/intern (which almost everyone does) during the summer, he even says NO accommodations for internships in the syllabus which I found to be unnecessary. There are polls, clickers, etc to make sure you are there haha. There are also 3 exams and no alternative grading schemes for a low exam score/missed exam, so If you have an emergency, you are out of luck as missing an exam is worth 23% of your grade. Taken from the syllabus, "No makeups will be given on a different day, unless negotiated at least ONE WEEK in advance, no matter what the reason." So only if you know you'll have an emergency a week in advance is when you'll be able to reschedule an exam haha. He also says in the syllabus "Please do not try to negotiate, make deals, or get me to promise anything in private that is not on the syllabus." Who says please don't negotiate with me or try to make deals but then says only negotiate with me if it is a week in advance. Just sounds incredibly lazy and a weird use of the word negotiate in a school setting, its not a business. Maybe say in cases of DOCUMENTED emergencies we can reschedule a test, some common sense. Giving people an out a week in advance if they just plan it accordingly lets people with other plans outside of the course get their own way rather than accommodating for those with real documented emergency situations, doesn't make sense to me. This is also a 6 week course, so it is very short, but 20+ questions every week is insane. Most of these questions have very many parts to them and include drawing up many graphs/heavy computations as well so it takes essentially the whole week to complete them. I don't see how he can say that because it is 6 weeks you have to write up 50+ pages of work every week, I get that its condensed but its still insane. He also warns to only take this course and nothing else at the same time (should've noticed this red flag) because I assume he knows you'll be glued to a desk. Also no solutions which makes the experience so much more fun! maybe make a solution set for all future 134 courses? it would help the students solidify the HW material AFTER they have already turned it in and will only be reviewing it at that point. I would complete the HW and did not know if I was correct at all since the HW was usually graded after the correlated exam was completed, so I essentially went in blind most of the time. I get that we can go to office hours but he is not reviewing the 50+ pages of work to ensure it is correct. so awesome His lecturing is okay, but to complete the HW you'll have to read the textbook regardless or seek other sources as much of the HW can't be completed with just the lectures, but you'll still have to sit through the meeting and make sure there aren't any polls to answer. You'll get that he tries to come off as a no BS guy but he isn't a very good one. you can be strict with students (as every professor should be) but also offer an alternative grading scheme for missed exams/one poor performance and a regular amount of HW problems that include solutions to verify correctness of all the work. At the end of the day, he offered a slightly altered grading scheme for the course where a missed or poor performance on an exam would be worth around half of the usual 23% per exam (still crazy to me but whatever). Not sure why he did this, maybe lots of students did poorly/complained or just trying to score points with students but this could've just been applied to the syllabus from the start. I imagine this is how most of his classes go: he pulls out this grading scheme out of thin air and (slightly) saves the day. The class size by end of the course was around half or less than half of the original size but why would anyone want to leave this wonderful course? I would just take it during the year as I believe he only teaches during the summer and works at a different school during the year. There are other amazing 134 instructors that offer some leeway, attendance freedom, and regular sized HW assignments which are all conducive to a good learning experience. I did not get this from this class unfortunately. Just take someone else.
AD
Most Helpful Review
Summer 2020 - Chad is super passionate about mathematical modeling, so you'll learn a lot of concepts in addition to the regular curriculum. If you're interested in doing research in applied math/math modeling, I'd imagine that this course would be helpful! We had to look at several research papers for our homework sets, and in light of COVID, he even taught SIR models. Chad really tries to keep his class relevant and interesting in terms of subject matter, though I did find his lecturing boring at times. Homework sets, however, tended to be on the longer side, though manageable and not entirely out of the ordinary for a 6 week upper div math course. Chad is super helpful during office hours, and he'll basically tell you how to solve each problem if you ask. And if you even put a semblance of effort into the homework, tests should be very straightforward. Instead of a midterm and a final, there are three non-cumulative exams. The problems are basically pulled straight from homework problems, so the 24 hour open note format of 'rona-era math courses made them pretty easy. Our test averages were around 95 for each exam, and Chad doesn't curve down or give +/- grades, so anyone with a 90+ (most of the class) got an A.
Summer 2020 - Chad is super passionate about mathematical modeling, so you'll learn a lot of concepts in addition to the regular curriculum. If you're interested in doing research in applied math/math modeling, I'd imagine that this course would be helpful! We had to look at several research papers for our homework sets, and in light of COVID, he even taught SIR models. Chad really tries to keep his class relevant and interesting in terms of subject matter, though I did find his lecturing boring at times. Homework sets, however, tended to be on the longer side, though manageable and not entirely out of the ordinary for a 6 week upper div math course. Chad is super helpful during office hours, and he'll basically tell you how to solve each problem if you ask. And if you even put a semblance of effort into the homework, tests should be very straightforward. Instead of a midterm and a final, there are three non-cumulative exams. The problems are basically pulled straight from homework problems, so the 24 hour open note format of 'rona-era math courses made them pretty easy. Our test averages were around 95 for each exam, and Chad doesn't curve down or give +/- grades, so anyone with a 90+ (most of the class) got an A.
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