APMA 2120

Any class in the APMA department is naturally going to be a grind. However, Hellings make the experience in multi ten times better. Chris is exactly what you want in a professor in almost every way possible. He is clearly interested in what he teaches and makes learning even the most boring topics enjoyable. His teaching style is very similar to Khan Academy. He is very nice and easy to approach and always keeps the class upbeat and lighthearted. He will help you with as much as he can during office hours and after class. Although it is a pretty rough class in the thick of it, by the end of the semester you'll be happy with the results if you have consistently put in effort and studying before the midterms and final. He seriously puts all the other APMA professors to shame. TAKE APMA 2120 WITH HELLINGS!

Definitely try to take the course with Prof. Hellings if you can. He teaches the concepts really well, without going too fast for people to keep up. However, to encourage attendance and note-taking, he doesn't post the recordings — you need to email him to get the recordings, and sometimes he doesn't respond until a few days after.

The instruction is partially in pre-class videos, which you watch and then complete a simple pre-class PDF worksheet. Then, in the lectures, Prof. Hellings teaches the rest of the material and gives you some time to complete the worksheets with other students and ask him questions. If you don't finish, you usually have until the next day to finish the worksheet.

The course doesn't require you to read the textbook, but you still have to buy the textbook + WebAssign (which is quite expensive; I think you can find access keys on eBay for cheaper but I didn't try that). There are two or three WebAssigns per week; although these aren't super difficult, don't leave them to the last minute.

The midterms are okay (if you study well for them, that is) and the final was pretty fair (not super hard).

Overall, it was a pretty good course under Prof. Hellings.

#tCFF23

A lot of people say you either find Calc 2 hard and Multivar easy or visa versa. I'm one of the people that had a harder time in Multivar. That said, I think professor Hellings is a big part of why I was still able to get a good grade in the class. I enjoyed his teaching style, and I found him to be very clear when explaining difficult concepts. He always asks if the class has questions, and is very understanding of any circumstances that may come up.
Homework is decent, what you would expect for an applied math course. There's always a worksheet due after each lecture, but he usually provides some class time to get it started. Additionally, you have up to three attempts on the worksheets, so you can get a 100% without issue.
I loved having professor Hellings. I definitely recommend him; try to take his course if you can.

#tCFF24