Reviews for Gilmer L. Blankenship
Average Rating:| Anonymous Course: ENEE222 Grade Expected: A March 2, 2013, 6:02 pm | Dr. Blankenship is pretty terrible. He teaches every semester differently and in an arbitrary manner. He confuses almost everyone in the class, and fails to teach in a remotely structured manner. If you want the easy A though, and you're decent at Math, he's the guy to take, since he grades on a really nice curve (makes cut offs on average so approximately 40% of people get As). You might find you learned a decent amount for ENEE322, though the class could be much better used for its 4 credits. |
| bigbabby Course: ENEE222 Grade Expected: A February 13, 2012, 7:20 am | Blankenship's teaching style is very different from other teachers in ECE. Unfortunately I could not learn very much from him. Lectures are very technical and hard to follow unless you have a prior knowledge of the topics before class. Blankenship has alot of background knowledge which he shares during lecture, but it goes so quickly so that you're not really sure what you just learned when you leave. I had to rely on outside sources and notes to figure out what was going on. He teaches off of a set of notes found online, which is equally hard to understand. Homeworks were assigned about every week (unless he forgot) and they took a good 5-7 hours to complete. Often times the homeworks would be on entirely new concepts, completely different from what was going on in class. Depending on your TA the hw could be graded rather harshly, or more for completion. Tests were...interesting. Blankenship himself says he likes to put new concepts on tests and the result is a combination of things you haven't seen before, and things that you thought you knew - except with a hidden trick or secret. Fortunately the class is graded on a curve so as long as you do slightly better than the rest of the class, you should be in good shape. I really wanted to like this class - I just couldn't do it. Blankenship's teaching style just isn't for me. I feel that if you know what you're doing already on the subject matter, take Blankenship, as he'll throw new concepts at you, but if you don't know the relationships between fourier transforms and fourier series out of the gate you might want to look elsewhere. Edit: He curves generously, but since the content in the course is referred in future classes, I don't feel as confident in much of the subject matter (complex numbers, fourier transforms, etc) |
| Anonymous Course: ENEE222 Grade Expected: November 9, 2011, 2:38 pm | First semester at UMCP This "genius" guy intimidated me so much. His lecture is .1% understandable. No guidelines whatsoever. Homework is literally impossible to finish. I feel like being in a PhD class. He lectures with so much confidence as if every one is totally understanding it. I know that I am not alone in this class who have such feelings. He seems like a good guy but knows nothing about teaching. He expects you to be a PhD before he lectures |
| Anonymous Course: ENEE241 Grade Expected: A August 11, 2009, 10:33 am | He is a very great guy, and also very intelligent.Unfortunately, he has no teaching skills.Lectures, homework and exams will make you think that they belong in three different classes. My advice is to take this class after linear algebra, calc 3, and differential eqns. Or just take the class with another prof. |
| Anonymous Course: ENEE241 Grade Expected: A May 19, 2009, 2:56 pm | Dr. Blankenship -- well his lectures were pretty hard for me to understand. He seems to love to do everything in greek letters; and his "notes" (/textbook) online weren't really that helpful. The homeworks were quite difficult and took a lot of time; but the one thing this class did was make me think. The homeworks contained between 50 and 100% MATLAB assignments and I didn't really know MATLAB that well going into this class but I've learned SO much about it and how useful it actually can be. Dr. Blankenship really emphasized signal processing in the course, which I found to actually be quite interesting. All I can say is that Dr. Blankenship himself said he's not here to hold our hand. In fact, he's more of the type of person to put everyone in the ocean and observe who can swim. His grading is quite lenient though. The way it worked for our class was that if you had one point above the average for the class, you had a B, and if you had 1.1*the average number of points+1, you had an A. His exams are very difficult but as someone else said, he really grades on approach more than getting the answer. Study hard for the first exam and you will be rewarded later as the later exams don't go so well. |
| Anonymous Course: ENEE322 Grade Expected: A November 9, 2008, 1:33 pm | Nice guy, very approachable. However, lectures can at times seem to have nothing to do with the homework. Pretty decent prof, but I would say I learned the majority of the course material from the TA and not from him. |
| Anonymous Course: ENEE241 Grade Expected: A December 28, 2007, 7:11 pm | I read all of the comments on pick-a-prof and on here, as well. Blankenship is an EXCELLENT professor. The homeworks are extremely difficult, however, the class is graded on a curve. What I came to realize was that if I couldn't do the homework, neither could anyone else. The exams are exactly what he says they will be with one question that always "tests your actual knowledge of the material". I was aiming for a B when I got in the class, somehow after exam 1 I had an A, then exam 2 I still had an A....and after the final, I had an A. He prepares you for enee 322, you will be ahead of the class when you walk in the door for 322, TRUST ME. Blankenship is a great teacher, plain and simple |
| Anonymous Course: ENEE241 Grade Expected: December 23, 2007, 2:10 pm | Prof. Blankenship is one of the few ECE professors at UMD that really impresses me. Not only is he very knowledgeable of the subject matter, but an excellent teacher as well. His lectures would be worthy of recording. Homeworks may be difficult, but they are so for good reason. I highly recommend Prof. Blankenship. |
| pelers Course: ENEE241 Grade Expected: November 7, 2007, 8:24 pm | Blankenship is definitely a difficult professor, but he is very fair. He is much more interested in how you set up problems to solve them than he is in the answers you get. |