ENGR 1010

Professor Tian is a great professor and she seems very passionate about engineering. There are 2 main projects in this course and a number of other assignments to do each week. The first project is a smaller project where you work with CAD and Arduino in a group to design a product based on a single prompt. The second project is a longer and more intensive project where you work with a different group to make a solution for a sustainability issue. Most of the assignments in this class are not super time consuming but some of the CAD practice assignments I could see being difficult if you have no previous experience with Fusion 360. If you follow the rubric and submit on time then you should get good scores on everything. Overall, this class is more about getting to work as a group and less about actually learning a ton of material. The one complaint I had was that occasionally the slideshows went on for a little long and it gave less class time to work on important group work.

This course is enjoyable and a fairly easy A. The main bulk of the course consists of two engineering projects, each taking roughly half of the semester. Through these projects, you get exposure to basic engineering skills like CAD, 3D printing, and electronics with Arduino.

Professor Tian is very enthusiastic and does a good job keeping students engaged. I’d definitely recommend taking the course with her. Lectures can feel a bit slow at times, usually taking up more than half of each class, but there’s still plenty of independent and small-group time.

Project grading is lenient and timelines are generous, so the projects themselves are not stressful. However, there really isn’t enough time to finish everything during class, so you’ll probably need to schedule a few out-of-class group meetings to stay on track.

Homework is generally short, but some assignments feel unnecessarily annoying. One example was an assignment requiring you to interview a professor or 3rd/4th-year engineering student, which largely boiled down to wandering around and hoping to find someone who met the criteria.

TL;DR: Fun, hands-on, and low stress with a great instructor, dulled by some mild busywork and the occasional out-of-class commitment.