-This evaluation is for Astro 117-

Professor Jura is a smart, nice guy, but he's a little scatter-brained. The first half of lecture he derives equations, and the second half he goes off on tangents talking about applications of the equations he just derived. Because of this, it's a little difficult to conceptually understand what's happening with all these equations.

His homework was challenging. The problem was that many problems very vague, or he would make assumptions in his solutions that you didn't know you could make. However, the homework is great preparation for the midterms/final. Many times, his tests will reuse homework and old test questions, so make sure you know those problems inside and out. One drawback is that you aren't allowed a cheat sheet, so you have to memorize pages and pages of equations. Even still, I got 83 and 81 on the midterms, 88 on the final, and ended up with an A in the class. (He method of curving is that ~80+ is in the A-range, ~70-80 is a B, etc.)

Also, don't buy the book. He gives you an online copy anyway, but I never found it helpful. His lecture notes are more than enough.

tl;dr: Hard to follow as a professor, so you'll lose track of concepts, but if you do the homework, you should do well in the class.