I'm sure Professor Stevenson is great when it comes to his research or grad classes that he teaches, but to all incoming first year engineering students, stay away from this professor. As the semester went on, it felt like I was wasting my time sitting in on lectures that made no sense. It got to the point where I understand the concepts more using YouTube videos and taking notes on the textbook than trying to understand his lectures with his illegible handwriting for 50 minutes. He always started with a blank page on his iPad and just did practice problems the entire class, which I don't know about you but did not help me AT ALL. And if you had a question, well that's also too bad because it's not like he takes a second to look up at the class and try to clear up any concerns. If you have never taken a physics class before this, please do whatever it takes to absolutely stay away from this professor. There was one lecture where he was absent, so we had another physics professor substitute (Professor Dukes), and let me just say, that was one of the only times during the semester where I could actually follow along with what we were learning. The slides were organized and they explained variables and the key equations you would need to know and understand during a midterm. The best part was he actually tried to get us to engage with the lecture by asking questions and would answer some questions as well. So while the physics department overall is not the best when teaching physics, there are some decent professor within the department that you should try to enroll with, but Ian Stevenson is NOT one of them.

I don’t have anything against Professor Stevenson but I really would just avoid taking this class in general if you can. With any professor. Professor Stevenson’s lecture style is more just going through example problems which personally I didn’t like as much because I felt like it left some holes in my understanding of the concepts themselves. The course seemed disorganized at times. All the professors have different exams which I guess is pretty normal but their difficulty seemed to be quite different. The first exam average for our class was around a 40% without curve if I remember correctly, while other classes had averages around 70% or 75%. It was curved but by 20 percent. I understand why this happened as Stevenson is a relatively new professor and it was his first time teaching this course. The next exam was easier but I heard from a friend with another professor that their exam averaged around 40% on this one. In addition to this, most days we covered multiple topics in a single 50 minute lecture so there is virtually no time to practice material before moving on. We were also learning new content until the last day of class.

There is group parts of each exam that make up a portion of the grade but honestly unless the exam is pretty easy they won’t help you a ton because a lot of the time nobody knew what they were doing even in a group. The final was really difficult, specifically the free response but I think it was curved.

I guess this class isn’t insanely difficult to get a decent grade because the homeworks make up a lot of it, but it’s painful because of the pace and it’s difficult to study for because there is so many different types of problems you could face in physics.

I would absolutely avoid taking this class with Professor Stevenson. His lecture style is terrible, and he pretty much only does practice problems or demonstrates the derivations of equations, without explaining core concepts well. He does not connect course content to the real world or teach in a way that is engaging or interesting.

The course is structured so that we have a lecture 2 days per week and a group quiz on the other day. The group quizzes were sometimes quite hard and it was difficult to get extra help as the TAs were unhelpful. Professor Stevenson was unavailable outside of class. I showed up to office hours one time, and it seemed as though my being there was a huge inconvenience for him. The homework was extremely time-consuming, and the tests were very difficult. The final was super hard and very unfair. He curved one midterm and did not curve the final or the class as a whole. The success of his class or our readiness as students did not seem like something he cared about.

Professor Stevenson ultimately did a very poor job of instructing the class and it seemed as though he viewed it as a side chore, taking time away from his research. He was rude and unfriendly on a number of occasions. Do not take this class.