[264-267; 270-312] The professor for principles of engineering is actually the chair of the engineering department and he was actually my boss for the satellite project that just got launched into outer space actually last week. Since I had had him as a boss before I felt like I could talk to him one a more personal level than my other professors, and sort of say like, “Hey, are the sophomore classes not doing well? We are very concerned about this class that you’re teaching now.” Because the former professor that taught both circuits and this principle of engineering class, the group of them has left and so that’s why we had new professors for each. The chair of the engineering department was not the one that taught the class last semester. So, they split it up.
Anyway, so he said, “Well, don’t worry about that all.” And he’s like, “From what you’ve probably heard about me I’m an excellent professor.” He’s like, “I’m not trying to boost myself up and make myself look good, but I haven’t had bad reports come back from students. They all like the way that I teach.”
And I knew that I shouldn’t be worried because he was an excellent boss and very lenient. Very good at his skills towards explaining things and engaging his students I knew was really good. Yeah, so the semester started, and he addressed the class on the first day and he said, “We’re just going to talk about, the first lecture we’re going to start out easy. We’re going to go over what you think you know from last semester and we’ll make a list of the things that you think you know, and the things that you were supposed to know from last semester. And we’ll talk about…” He’s like, “I’ll give you a little bit of an intro on myself. Sort of my life story and you can ask whatever questions, and doubts that you have about the semester.” Either in his class or any other class. And that made us all trust him a lot more, and that just set up the semester for success.
Since then he’s done an excellent job of having engaging lectures where he asks questions on a regular basis. If anyone looks confused, he calls them out and he’s like, “Hey, you look confused. What can I do to explain this?” And if he can’t fix it in a couple minutes then he says, “Come to my office hours.” And labs go pretty well too. He’s excellent at answering questions and providing adequate instructions. As the semester goes on the goal of this class is to develop your mind into thinking like an engineer so he gives you, instead of giving you step by step instructions like he did for the first lab it’s more of you have a drone. So, this is our final project. We have a drone and we are supposed to make a thrust measurement system.
