I cannot describe how viscious this class is. For anyone who has spoken to anyone or done any reddit searching, they know that 107 is notoriously one of the most difficult classes across the MAE curriculum. I am not here to talk about the class. Yes it is undoubtedly annoying and difficult and a unique way of thinking unlike many other upper division classes. We are here to talk about Dennis Kim.

To get it out of the way, take it with someone else. Quite frankly that is the best advice I can give.

If you have to, let me start with the good. He responds pretty fast to the emails. Very willing to answer most questions if not all. The TAs, assuming you have Will and Jimmy, are super nice, and super helpful. And he definitely cares about the subject. If anything, I think he cares about the subject more than he cares about you, the student. Good transition to the negatives.

Some may think it is a good thing, but he literally memorized everyone's names? Sometimes he would cold call you in class even if you never spoke to him. He would call people out when they sat in different seats. Terrifying.

He has lecture almost ALWAYS at 6-8pm, to which he takes the entire time or more, including the lecture before Thanksgiving break. He does not record, but does provide notes of the course (ish, if you attend all the lectures you start to realize the notes over time don't really include everything, but you can figure it out from the notes)

He writes very fast on the chalkboard and it's a lot of stuff, and he isn't the best at clearing up misconceptions because he is so deep in the content.

For homework, they are pretty long, and for whatever reason they're always due at 5pm and not 12pm. NO LATE POLICY, like he is so incredibly strict about it like literally if you are one second late sorry he will not give you any grace under most circumstances. Sucks. I used to praise how fast homework was graded (which is done by a reader, not by him), but it is because they give NO PARTIAL CREDIT on homework. If you get it wrong, sucks man.

Tests are insane. The midterm was 3 questions (with parts obviously), and most people didn't finish. He then made the final 4 questions. Awesome. Our average on the midterm was I think a 14/30, to which he said "pretty good" and "when combined with hw and lab scores, brings the average to about a 70 overall for the class, so I think I won't curve." To me, I felt like that was harsh.

Labs are usually not too bad in my personal opinion? You work with one other person. Some of them the MATLAB could get pretty tedious, and it requires you learn quick or remember a bunch of random stuff in order to pull it off, but the in lab stuff itself is always quick. I found it didn't end up integrating TOO well into the course itself, but by far it is the easiest part of the class, and it is led by the very helpful TAs.

Only one midterm, so that's good unless you bomb which I did. This class consumed by soul, and Dennis Kim is terrifying. Good luck to all.

Dennis was not a helpful professor at all. He writes way too fast on the blackboard, and his writing is often incomprehensible. When asked a question, there's never a clear answer from him. He also tends to throw in a lot of terminology and theory that has not been introduced in lecture yet, confusing students out of their wits. His homework always contains at least one problem about something which has not been taught in class yet. He even recorded students taking the midterm exam without any form of written or verbal consent, to prevent cheating (is this even legal??). The midterm solutions were never comprehensive, would only contain answers without any proper working. The material itself felt like it was being taught in an extremely disorganized fashion, out of order. Several students and faculty alike were surprised at the fact that the concept of Laplace transforms was moved to the end of the course, which makes absolutely no sense given that they are critical for understanding the purpose of the transfer function and frequency response functions. The only saving grace for my interest in the course was the TAs and the Labs that involved using MATLAB. Overall, though I gained a minor interest in further studying the subject on my own, I did not gain an appreciation or flavor for the applications of these concepts in the real world at all through the course alone and was largely clueless. It is my sincere plea to the department to remove this lecturer and only have Dr M'Closkey teach this course.

Great professor, not too sure why there aren't any reviews for him. I took him over summer so the course went by really fast but he honestly made it really manageable. Every lecture was clear and for what others say is one of the hardest undergraduate upper div in mechanical engineering, it was probably my favorite. That isn't to say his class was easy, the midterm and final average were in the mid 70's and low 60's respectively, but he obviously curved so it was nice. But the key to acing his exams is to just really understand the Hw and to do the practice problems he gives you.
Overall, I felt like I learned A LOT from him. If I were to take this class I would definitely take it with him again.