MAE 3610

The material of the course is pretty interesting, but the way the professor teaches it is horrendous. Lectures are literally about an hour of him reading word for word off of PowerPoint slides, which are exactly copied from the book 99% of the time. It's a required course for Aerospace Engineers, but it's probably not even worth it to attend lectures; just read the book.

this class is horrible and so is Wadley. He obviously doesn't want to teach. He refused to post the lecture slides (which are actually impossible to takes notes on because this is a MATERIAL SCIENCE CLASS) because the class is so early and he doesn't want people to skip. The TA was also horrible and not helpful. The homework often has nothing to do with the lecture, and the tests are horrible, so they are open book. I literally went to class 4 times because it was a huge waste of my time. If you have taken MSE 2090 and spend time going through the book before the test you can probably scrape a B. Also try to get the entire class to complain about the slides and he might give them to you before the midterm/final. Also the design project is super annoying (Wadley's example is not the right way to do it) but if you spend a lot of time in the office hours for it (which were with a different TA for some reason, who was actually kinda helpful) you can do well on it.

This class is terrible, and professor su,cks, plz do not take this class!

Best course I have taken in MAE department thus far. Professor Wadley is incredibly knowledgeable about aerospace materials, and his lectures present a fascinating view on how materials have advanced over the years and how they can further be improved in applications like the turbine blades of a jet engine. Lectures are at 8 a.m., so a lot of students don't come so if you do come and work hard you'll do well.

Wadley espouses not being satisfied with being the best in the state of Virginia and striving to be the best in the world, justifying to himself hard homeworks and hard exams; however, he does not seem to realize that this also requires him to strive to be the best professor in the world. This disparity in mindset came to a head when, upon learning that the midterm average was near a 60%, chastised the students and said they should have studied better. He never posted office hours and was only available by appointment.

He very clearly was more focused on research than teaching this class. He allows the TA to have full control of homeworks and the midterm, which resulted in continued frustration as the difference between what was covered in lecture and what was covered on the homework could not have been greater. I am willing to bet that Professor Wadley has no idea how many homeworks we have been assigned, nor do I think that he could satisfactorily answer the homework according to the TA’s draconian, hidden grading rubric. We received grades for Homework 6 while working on Homework 11 and Homework 12, while also being ‘reminded’ (read: being told for the first time) that this is the one class where homework is supposed to be an absolutely individual effort. Whose policy was that? The TA’s? The professor’s? Who knows, because there is no syllabus available.

There was no information -whatsoever- given about the midterm, which lead to some students correctly guessing that it would be like the homeworks. Other students guessed incorrectly, studied the lecture notes, and got 40% or worse on the midterm. (And then were accused of not studying and/or having bad study techniques.)

The final is 40% of your grade and it is 5 questions. That is a ridiculous grade distribution for the crazy (read: lots) amount of time spent on homework. Final class attendance was about 15/60 which tells you all you need to know about this class