ENGR 1010

I had Professor Goldschneider and only have great things to say about him. If you have the choice, definitely take it with him. He cares a lot about his students and makes the class so enjoyable. The class itself is pretty stress free and honestly kinda fun. The hardest part about the class was the CAD assignments, but even those weren't that bad.

I had Professor Starling (it wouldn't let me select an instructor). She is a lovely woman who is very passionate about teaching engineering and genuinely cares for all of her students. Also, she is a pretty lenient grader, so I would recommend taking it with her if you can. This was the first semester this course was taught at UVA, so I am not sure if they will be making any changes going forward, but this was definitely my "easy-A" class. It was mostly groupwork, with one individual sustainability project and a handful of career and CAD assignments sprinkled in. A lot of it felt like tedious busy work, but trust me as an engineering student you will probably be thankful for that.

Professor Starling - Great professor (gives everyone an A as long as you show up), I've heard mixed reviews on how good her advising is, but my advising advice in general for UVA is relying on your own research and asking upperclassmen students.
Don't really get to choose groups so pray you get along and everyone is responsive and contributes.

On the two class days that are "career days," you'll see it on the schedule, lowkey just skip. The career lady who comes in is INSUFFERABLE genuinely.

This class is often said to "give first year students a look into all engineering disciplines so they can decide," but really all it does is tell students to go talk to people in the major and decide for yourself. Nothing in the coursework itself relates to exploring different majors as the advertise, so once again I recommend talking to current students and faculty in each major.

At the end of the day, imo the course is fun, but half-jokingly should be renamed ENGR 1010 Arts and Crafts. I would write something to recommend or not but since it is a requirement, I'd say just have fun, and if you want to put in a lot of effort on projects, that's great, but just know that everyone will get the same grade no matter the effort so if you want to do the bare minimum, or as we say in engineering, produce the minimum viable product, then that is also completely ok.

I had Professor Tian, and she was fantastic. This class was fun and low commitment, didn't really do anything of substance in it, and as long as you submitted the assignments you are pretty much guaranteed an A. Not much work involved, and what we did have to do was pretty much just busy work and some pretty simple group projects. Some of my projects didn't even work and we lost maybe 1 or 2 points whereas I know some of my friends with other professors were a bit more strict on grading. She was a pretty good advisor and she really cares about her students, she knew my name and would even say hi outside of class. Easy class and lenient professor.