This was the most ridiculous class I have ever taken. I only bothered to go to the in class weekly quizzes, then did crosswords for the lecture. That’s how bad it is. This was undoubtedly, the very worst professor I have ever seen in my life. The other reviews sum it very well. Why the hell would you let us make our own “cheat sheet” if it’s really just us making our own equation sheet, since we can’t have notes, drawings, or problems. Just give me one instead of having me make one at that point! Then he lies about the final, says chapters 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, and one specific question from chapter 10, then made more than half the exam about chapter 10, and not even the specific problem he said. I can’t tell if he’s this bad on purpose or not. Expect to feel helpless, and not because the class is hard. The problems and material is very simple and straightforward. He just makes it as difficult as possible for you in every other way. I am unsure how something this awful can slip through the cracks of what I typically consider a strong engineering department at UVA. If you’re reading these reviews for the semesters after this, that means he’s still teaching and UVA MAE let us down once again.

This instructor is terrible at teaching; his notes are unintelligible and don’t relate to what is expected of students and there are limited resources to learn the material. The in class quizzes are somewhat helpful to prepare but little to no information is given in advance to them. As discussed the grade breakdown is:
10% for 10 quizzes
30 percent per midterm (3 total and one dropped)
30 percent final.
Also as discussed he deceived all the students by lying about what was going to be on the final.

Course Breakdown:
10 1% Quizzes
3 20% Midterms
1 30% Final
2 1% Extra credit Quizzes

To start, I hope you do not have to take this class with Professor Ward. At the end of the semester, I can say that I actually do enjoy the content of the class and it's very cool to be able to apply whatever concepts you learn, but:

I have never in my three years here been more frustrated with a professor. The classes are almost completely useless because he will spend about an hour deriving equations that don't actually apply to the exam or quiz content. He has prewritten notes that he just copies while also covering it with his hand. The last 15 minutes might cover some problems from the textbook but don't expect it to be helpful for your understanding (or legible). Don't get me wrong, I see the benefit of understanding where equations come from but not if they are never used (plus he goes into more graduate level depth). He always answered students with an attitude or made questions about quizzes/exams feel stupid. He genuinely seemed like he didn't want to be in that classroom and couldn't care less if we learned the material.

There are "quizzes" every Thursday you may or may not get the equations to solve them. You only get 15 minutes and if it's your first time trying to solve that kind of problem, you will not finish in time. You have to use a basic scientific calculator (like from middle school) which makes it extremely difficult to tell if you input the numbers right or use parenthesis. You do get half the points for just taking the quiz but the rest of the grading is dependent on if you get the right answer or not. I would have much preferred having weekly homeworks that give the chance to practice in a lower risk environment than these quizzes of doom.

The exams are worse. You may only have an equation sheet; that's it. No pictures, no tables, no notes, nothing; only the equations or you will get 25% off your exam. He may or may not tell you what you can expect on the exam, that's probably up to how he is feeling that day. He will send you an announcement an 9pm the night before the exam changing what you can expect or sending reminders... The grading on these is far worse than the quizzes. You will not only lose points for having the wrong answer, but for every step that contains an error (carried from whenever you first made that error). Make one mistake on one problem and there goes 20% of the points. The calculator problem gets progressively worse as equations become more complicated.

The final was the craziest of all. As you may have seen in other reviews, he blatantly lied about what would be on the final. Originally, he said the majority would be on Chapters 11 and 12 in the textbook but in reality, there was no content from those chapters. Instead, it was mostly on Chapter 10, which he said would only contain one specific problem. I think the others who took this class this semester would agree that he is not fit to teach the class.

Have fun.

What a horrible class. Take this if you want to learn from possibly the worst professor at the entire school. The notes consist of straight bs that isn't comprehendible by anyone who is not schizophrenic. He also somehow makes even the simpler concepts in the class completely not understandable. Not to mention the fact that he will purposely deceive you on exam material. He specifically said that the only problem on chapter 10 material on the final would be a specific one, and then he proceeds to put 4/6 questions on chapter 10 material.

Terrible class, terrible notes, terrible professor.

The lectures are useless. All that happens is he writes on a sheet of paper, while blocking everyone's view, and projects it onto the screen. He goes through derivation after derivation which are always useless.

The textbook is great, however, he really loves to put questions from stuff not in the textbook and from his lectures onto the exams, which you can't follow or read. You would need to go to a pharmacy to find someone capable of reading "the notes". He will also not tell you what is on an exam, except for the final, in which he will lie to you and half the final will be made up of what he said wouldn't be on the final.

His grading is terrible and you will lose 15 points for accidentally using a wrong number, and then lose 1 point for doing nothing right.

And to top it all off, you can only use a four function calculator. Have fun !

The lectures consist of long winded explanations and derivations from scratch for formulas that are easily available from the textbook. 95% of the notes will be stuff that is not useful to solving problems in this class.

The final exam covers chapters/material he said won't be on the final, so I suggest just getting practice on everything?

The formula sheets he allows are super restrictive, no figures or practice problems, and requiring a 4-function calculator to complete quizzes/exams adds an extra level of complexity to this class that has nothing to do with your actual understanding of the material.

Dr. Ward is a great guy one-on-one; however, I did not find his lectures particularly helpful and found it more useful to simply read the assigned textbook. The grade breakdown is as follows: quizzes are worth 10%, which are pretty easy; three exams are worth 20% each, which I found difficult to prepare for; and the final exam is worth 30%, which is quite similar in difficulty to the other exams.

The biggest thing I did not like was him releasing exam preparation materials without an answer key to follow, making it difficult to confirm if you did the work correctly. Additionally, the exam prep questions weren't always relevant to the exam material.

Lastly, it is difficult to get straight answers to in-class questions.

Overall, the class is heavily focused on theory, which makes sense, but I would love to see some CFD included in the course. It is doable to get an A, but be prepared to spend a lot of time reading the textbook.