Reviews for Michel Cukier
Average Rating:| Anonymous Course: ENME392 Grade Expected: AB December 11, 2010, 4:13 pm | This is by far the worst professor I have ever taken. Homework assignment on the second half of the semester to up to 10 hours to do. And they had nothing to do with the exams because you cant use excel on the exams, but he expects you to know how excel calculated it and for you to show it on the exam. He did not give ANY practice exams. We all just groped in the dark, guessing for questions for practice. I think he's lazy and tries to recycle materials from semester to semester and doesn't want students to see the past ones. Also he does not give you your exams back. If grading was incorrect you will never know about it. He makes the exams cumulative but he doesn't give you back exams so you have no idea what you need to work on more for the next exam. The formal sheet he gives you for the exams have nothing labeled. If you don't know what the equation is for already you are pretty much screwed. Summary: Way too much work for a 3 credit class. Hard exams that are even harder to study for. |
| Anonymous Course: ENME392 Grade Expected: November 23, 2010, 2:29 pm | Wow Frostea took the words straight out of my mouth... His own HW problems are horrendously awful and take incredibly long to complete (HW is worth 25% of your grade). Like Frostea said, you *waste* half your time figuring out what he wants! The TA's were such a blessing. I wish Mary was teaching the class.. This is the worst class I've ever taken and statistics is an incredibly important subject. Its a shame this guy is so awful, avoid him like the plague. Dr. Barker teaches this class sometimes, he's an excellent professor. |
| Frostea Course: ENME392 Grade Expected: B November 13, 2010, 10:50 am | I honestly get the impression he is teaching this course not out of desire, but necessity. Be *very* careful with this teacher; he purposefully quickly glosses over information and AVOIDS explaining it when he intended to have a clicker question on it or emphasize it on the exam. This isn't always the case, but often is. He is very passive aggressive in his teaching style. When he makes a mistake on his custom made homework problems since he worded it unnecessarily vaguely, he says it's your fault for not assuming X, Y, or Z, when it could very well be that the assumption could be invalid if you interpret the data differently. Students actively argue with him about his homework problems, which are often UNNESSARY. If he assigned just book problems, they would be bearable. But a HUGE amount of time always goes into trying to interpret his custom problems, NOT into actually applying the material. I did very well on the first exam but awful on the second exam as I had ZERO sleep due to staying up all night trying to play catch up for my other classes after one of his god awful homeworks that I had to spend my entire weekend + monday in order to complete with some understanding of the material. So I was a complete wreck for his exam. In a nutshell: he has a very typical professor-complex where he considers his class the only one in existance and expects you to "get rid of conflicts" if you can't attend the problem solving sessions on friday. Sorry sir, you cannot ask a student to drop classes just to attend the friday sessions. That is not only egotistical but also unethical. This a 3 credit class that you assign 6-9 credits worth of work per week. I've researching the necessary paperwork to report this teacher to the academic board; his unethical practices are negligent and destructive. If you do not like to teach, please leave. I shouldn't pay you tons of money to berate us in class. |
| smefeman Course: ENME392 Grade Expected: November 2, 2010, 12:54 pm | This guy is a horrible lecturer. His lectures don't help (learning from the book is better) and he is bad at answering questions. When asking questions during class, he will be easily confused with your question and probably give you a BS answer like "it depends what you're doing" and continue on with lecture. He gives the worst clicker questions at the end of his lectures (usually 2 or 3 questions) which are on some mundane detail of his lecture he went over for 30 seconds. These count for 5% of your grade (syllabus is not clear). He gives more homework than my other engineering classes (like 12-20 problems per week along with analyzing raw data). Also, he'll take off 2% of your final grade if you don't pick up your homework from his office. Seriously, wtf?? Tests are tricky on purpose, so you'll need to be very careful reading the problem over and over. They are long and you'll need to be proficient to finish on time. He does hold problem solving sessions on Fridays (can't go to them because of class), but I hear they are largely useless like his lectures. Overall, one of the worst professors I've had, especially for a course that needs a lot of careful explanation. |
| Anonymous Course: ENME392 Grade Expected: A August 29, 2010, 10:19 am | Michel is a difficult professor to put a grade to. His lectures are largely useless even though he does put them online. They are very scattered and doesn't show work, so often it looks like he just jumps to the answer with no explanation. The worst part of the lectures was the clickers at the end. There are 2 questions that are graded as quizzes. The questions are usually about some very minuscule detail and his wording is sometimes very unclear. If you have him, I recommend bringing the textbook or his lecture notes and looking up the answers because he allows this. Sample exams: "How do you mean sample exams?" was one of his quotes from the year. He does not give sample exams and his regular exams are very hard and curves them to around a 75% average. Homework: Gives a lot of homework but pays more attention to effort, though the correct answer does count. Availability: He makes himself very available to students and is very approachable and a nice guy, and is always willing to help out students. His accent was somewhat of a barrier, but once you learn what certain words are, it's not too bad. The curve at the end seemed pretty large because the average grade was very low. I'm sure you could do worse than Cukier, but I'm sure you could do better as well. |