Schuster, Peter  

Briefly, someone needs to slash his tires before each class. otherwise your grades will be slashed. there is more to life than physics and homework schwartz

Schuster had only taught Statics once before I had him, and I am certain that most of his difficulties came from merely being inexperienced. He was a better than average teacher who definately cares about the students learning. He is helpful in office hours and very approachable, but he doesn't always get through everything in class. There are 3 midterms each worth ~18% each, homework (about 4 problems per section) worth ~15%, and the common final. However, he doesn't really stick to this scale. Basically, he curves the class and looks at improvement to determine final grades. For the midterms, he takes problems directly from the book and homework, only changed the numbers. Overall, not a difficult teacher, who should only get better as time goes on.

He is an awesome teacher who really cares about his students. His office hours are really helpful, go to those.

Schuster is a pretty good teacher who cares a lot for his students. I had him for his first quarter of teaching statics and was impressed at his level of organization. I had a few problems understanding some parts of this course, maybe the fault of his sometimes unclear lectures, but he was more than willing to help me through it in his office office hours.

Good prof, always in office hours, presented material clearly, midterms were fair, would answer questions in class, 211 is a hard class whoever you take it with and I think he did a great job.

great statics teacher. helpful during office hours. challenging class but do-able. nice guy. he tries to help the student and he is sincerely genuine. i recommend him for statics. i got a lot out of his class. you must work hard to get an A.

Not happy with Schuster in this class. When the professor struggles with the material himself, you know the class will be a nightmare. Schuster is a nice guy and he taught a very fair class, however he didn't present the material as clearly as he could have. He RARELY did examples, and almost never completely finished lecturing on the topic, so homework was always a shot in the dark as the textbook is the biggest waste of paper I've ever seen. This class was also very behind compared to other statics classes, so we received no time to review for the final. Not enough time is alloted for the quizzes so almost no one finishes. There is also no curve for the class, which there should be because the average was a low C.

Dr. Schuster is an okay professor, and statics is a weird class. i felt like his lectures just regurgitated the book and we did the most basic examples in class. when it would come time to the homework, the problems exponentially increased in difficulty. he assigns online connect and written homework every week. the online homework sucked because there was no partial credit; only exact answers could get points. this is a hard class; i recommend doing many example problems outside of what is assigned. i feel like he did an okay job preparing us for the common final . 7/10

Schuster is one of the best professors I have had at Cal Poly after attending for 3 years now. The class consisted of a weekly written homework assignment, online Connect homework assignment, and a quiz (which was literally an easy problem from the online Connect homework). There are 2 exams and a common final. His homework assignments were very reasonable with 3 moderate difficulty written problems and I actually really liked the Connect assignments (even though they sucked while doing them) because it gave me instant feedback if the problem was correct or not and forced me to learn it. Many people complained about Schuster all quarter saying that he was unreasonable and never teaches us anything and that the homework was impossible. These people ultimately failed... The reason for this is that they relied on the solution manual or did not put in any time into this class. Schuster is incredibly helpful in office hours and will lead you in the right direction without being condescending at all. Schuster's class is very straight forward and I ended up getting an 86 on the common final with little studying because Schuster had prepared me so well. You have to work if you want to learn and be successful in any Statics section and the many many hours I put into this class allowed me to get a B+. If you think Statics is hard, just wait until Dynamics or any other upper level classes and you will miss the days of simple sum of the forces = 0.

Schuster will give you work, no doubt about that, but he knows the field. For "philosophy of design," he used a lot of his past experience as a design engineer to help us understand different ideas and what could arrise when designing. If you just get the work done rather than complaining about it, you will realize you can gain a good amount of knowlwedge from this class, and get a feel for a group design project.

Very unspecific on what he wanted, yet graded very hard. It was a constant guessing game the whole quarter trying to figure out what he was looking for. Add the fact that you don't really know your final grade until the very end and this class becomes frustrating. It's a lot of work for a bullshit Philosophy of Design class, I'd take Harding over Schuster.

Great guy, he really tried to make this class beneficial. Lots of busy work but I'd say it was worth it because I had fun in this class.

Schuster is an alright professor. It may just be because it was his first time teaching design but it seemed like he didn't know the material as well as he should have which made it more difficult to understand. I will say i enjoyed the lab part of the class. For our class, we had to design a crane to meet the criteria while costing the least amount. That was a fun, although difficult, lab.

Peter Schuster is a good guy. Eventhough one can tell that he still needs more experience as a proffesor, he still does a good job. I took him for statics and i thought he was an ok teacher but after taking hard ass professors like locassio, I actually appreciated having schuster for another upper division course (328). Homework is cake as long as you start with enough time, exams are medium difficulty just go over all notes AND HOMEWORK HE ASSIGNED (thats where all problems come from almost exactly), and lab is ok too. I would recommend schuster for 328 since it is still challenging but you will have plenty time to do everything.

Schuster is a great guy. He really cares about teaching and his students. He is very helpful during office hours and if you have questions during lab. However, he hasn't been teaching for a very long which sometimes shows, but with time I think he will be among the best ME proffessors at poly.

great professor, very fair with tests and grading, hw, etc. definatly a guy to go out of your way to get. im looking forward to having him for 329.

Schuster is a good guy. Definitely take him if you can. Two Midterms at 15% each, Lab 25%, Quiz 8%, HW 7%, and Final 30%. The quizes are tricky T/F and multi-choice only over the reading you should have done ahead of time. The lab rocked with him even though it was pretty hard to get a check plus(I think that is an A) and they took quite about of time. His tests were fair and curved to make up for them if they were to difficult. If you do badly on the midterms you have the opportunity to do better on the final which can count up to 75% of you grade, that is everything besides the lab. Overall great teacher look forward to taking ME 329 and ME 401 with him.

Dr. Schuster likes to talk over your head a lot and doesnt ever do sample problems. In lecture he just derives formula after formula, and you have to go because he has pop quizzes on the reading thats do BEFORE the lecture. Text books are hard to read, granted, but reading uber-complicated engineering textbooks help. I read before each lecture but I could never score more than 5/10 on the quizzes because he always asked obscure questions. If you have the solutions manual he is a fine teacher because you can teach it to yourself as you do the homework. I didnt have it until finals week and that is probably why I failed since everyone else did have it. I am retaking with Dr. Widman and he is a 10 times better, clearer, and friendlier teacher.

So the beginning of ME 328 is a review of CE 204 an 207, then it just gets hard and stops making sense. Schuster was reasonably good at presenting the material and forgiving when it came to grades. Put in a good effort on the homework and you should be prepared for the exams. The lab was also cool too.

So 329 is pretty much plug-and-chug, so the lecture is pretty easy and pretty boring. Not much can be done about that. The lab, however, kicked ass. Take Schuster for lab if you can. This guy really appreciates the stuff we (students) come up with. No matter how shitty your design turns out, Sneaky Pete will find some aspect of it that is very cool. Oh, watch out for the quizzes (hence his nickname). The T/F questions are often confusing or deliberatly tricky, but the problems are always fair and usually pretty easy. The best way, IMO, to deal with the T/F is to skip the reading and just use common sense. Once he assigns the lab project, you won't have time to read anyways.

He\'s a good teacher who does a good job of drawing from his industry experience to relate the material to the students. He seems to always manage to quiz on the material you spent the least amount of time studying, but he\'s a good teacher and if you listen in class and do the homework you\'ll do fine. I would recommend him.

20 hours a week on matlab. And thats not even thinking about the 3 big lab projects. Take him if you want to die...like I am right now.

The post below this isn't far off from the truth. In the beginning of the quarter, the workload was ridiculous then it seemed to ease up a little bit, not much, but a little. I learned a lot in this course (and actually like a lot of the material), but it is not easy. Sneaky Pete gives 2 tests during the quarter and a final. If you do well on the tests, you don't have to take the final, but I hear he switches his teaching style up every quarter. Sometimes his lectures are all over the place, but most are clearly laid out. It's hard to dislike the guy even though he gives a crapload of work. I graduate in a year and so far this class takes the cake for workload. It helped that I only took 12 units this quarter, and if you do take Schuster, consider doing the same. He has pop quizzes on the required reading, about 10 of them in the quarter. I didn't read a page of the book before I came to class since he already gave enough work, but if you pay attention in class, you can do okay on the quizzes. I think I ended up with an average of 6 out of 8 on most. If he's the only professor teaching ME 329, just take him. It doesn't suck that bad. Oh, and one more thing, He was pretty fair on the tests I thought. Each exam was an "in class" exam and a take home test, so when you're done with the exam, you're not done. Lotsa material! Well, there you have it. After all this, I gave him an "A"

Don't be scared by some of the comments about ME 329 below this one. Prof. Schuster made dramatic changes to how he teaches the class before Fall '11, so the workload is a lot more manageable now than it appears to have been for past sections. There are ten fairly straightforward homeworks, about eight quizzes based on reading and paying attention in class, a few multi-week labs, and two midterms. The MATLAB programs the people below me were freaking out about are now incorporated into the lab periods instead of posed as additional work, which makes a huge difference. In addition, half of each midterm is take-home. That might seem to prolong the stress, but it's actually pleasant to work on an exam without worrying about time (in any case, the take-home portions padded my grade significantly). This is by no means an easy class, but it's sure as hell easier than the horror stories below would imply. Take Schuster. He knows how to teach this stuff and has industry credentials to back it up.

Schuster obviously knows the material and can teach it realatively well. But, Schuster was horrible. He Does not take into consideration that students take multiple classes every quarter and assigned way too much work, especially MATLAB assignments. He for some reason did not like me and gave me a really hard time even though it was obvious I knew the material. He always decided to give me just the right amount of partial credit on tests to where I just barely failed. He always has a stupid shit eating grin on his face that you just wanna slap right off. He acts like he is a really nice guy, but you will find out that he is just really passive aggressive. If you are a suck up type student, you will probably do well in his class because you can tell that was the kind of student he was in school. If you aren't a brown noser, then you will probably end up hating this class. The material is by no means boring. It is actually very useful, but I'm the type of person that can see through the facade that this spineless prick puts on, and therefore ended up failing.

Kept hearing how much work Schuster was. Not true at all! The guy is incredibly nice and is a really good teacher. He didn't do midterms but had a quiz every Friday. He was great for lab and lecture. Really glad I took him over Fab.

Schuster did a good job of presenting a huge amount of material for 4 units. There was 10 quizzes, a final, and lab work that counted toward your grade. The lowest 2 quiz scores were dropped. If you did the lab work, you came out with at least 90% in lab. All labs besides the final project were only skimmed over and given 100% for the most part. The lab took a decent amount of time but nothing crazy. I put about 40 hours total into this lab and another 25 hours studying for tests over the course of the quarter. Nothing crazy like previous polyratings say. I would have liked if he would have put quiz answers online. Also, it may not be his fault, but we covered probably a third of the class material in class. The rest was learned in the homework and on our own. Homework was not collected but you should do every problem, trust me. He made the final optional for those with a score of 135/160 or higher, which I didn't have. I'd take him over some professors. Not my favorite teaching style, but far from a bad professor.A

ME 401 is the theory behind CE 204/CE 207. I actually like solid mechanics and so this class was pretty enjoyable. Schuster was a good lecturer for this Tech Elec. The one disappointment, however, was that the labs are actually problems you work out. No experiments. Schuster was pretty lenient on the grades, since I totally tanked the first midterm (F-) but did well on the second midterm and final, and came out wit an A. Office hours are very helpful, but be sure to spend a few hours on the homework first.

Schuster is a straight up slave driver. He somehow assumes that you don't have any other classes or senior project, and therefore FEA should keep you occupied 24/7. Seriously, this was one of the most work intensive classes I've ever taken, and it was a fucking tech elective! Extremely uninteresting, every day was a struggle to stay awake, and I couldn't believe the constant workload. Expect all the labs to take at least 8 hours outside of lab, and the homework will either be easy or absolutely impossible. Schuster is a nice guy, but he is a crappy teacher and has no understanding of the intended workload for a tech elective. Avoid this class like the plague.

I thought Schuster was great for ME 404. Yeah, the workload was heavy, but I thought it was very pertinent and helpful when going into industry. I didn't think FEA is really that exciting (except for the color pictures), and I'm the one who usually falls asleep in EVERY class, but not this one. Schuster gets the class involved often to help keep everyone's attention. I also thought he was VERY lenient when it came to grading the labs. Overall, I've noticed he likes to make the class tough and then build everyone back up by being lenient on the grades.

Great professor. Conveys material well, he is kind, and great in office hours. HOWEVER! He is a total slave driver. I put more hours into this class than any other at Cal Poly. Be warned

You will notice I received an A in the class, so what I am about to say is not a result of receiving a bad grade. This is actually the first time I've written one of these, I guess I just feel particularly motivated. I'll try to keep this professional, but I expect it to turn into a rant. Professor Schuster was put in charge of leading our senior project class, which means he coordinates all sections of senior project for their entire 3 quarter duration. I cannot speak to how senior project has been lead in other years, but I am deeply disappointed with this one. We spent pretty much the entire first quarter sitting around twiddling our thumbs; there was an empathy day, a crafting day where we build stuff our of foam, and we even got to play around with excel to make pretty tables and charts! I'm being sarcastic if you can't tell... basically the entire first quarter boiled down to a colossal waste of time. I never miss class but decided to stop attending Professor Schuster's Friday lectures because they were plain useless. Our senior project sponsor, you know the guy who approached Cal Poly with a problem he wanted us to solve, actually got somewhat frustrated with how the class was being run. He could not believe how little we were accomplishing given so much time. When I showed him pictures of the brainstorming models we made out of foam he pretty much broke down laughing. I could not possibly list all the random assignments they come up with for us to do - I blame Professor Schuster as he is the one coordinating the curriculum. Here's senior project in a nutshell: oh hey so you guys know you have that 100 page report due in two weeks, but don't forget about your ethics presentation which is on a topic completely unrelated to your project! Oh and when you get that done, we'll mark you off for a bunch of stuff on your drawings because we outsourced the grading to Larson's TA's and you had no idea what they'd be checking for. Ok thanks, thats all! Oh ya, don't forget to have your operation manual, project update presentation, ethical presentation memo (because just doing a presentation wasn't enough), status report memo, and logbooks ready next class! Not that any of that will be worth any significant portion of your grade mind you, we just want to make sure you stay busy! As you can tell, I'm deeply disappointed in how Professor Schuster has run our senior project. It's a shame because I always heard great things about it and looked forward to my project my entire Cal Poly career. It could have been a really great experience and I could have learned a lot, but instead I was too busy scribbling random crap in my log book to fill pages.

Schuster is a nice guy, but his 502 class killed me. The class was on the theory behind Finite Element Analysis, but it felt like a math class. It was not very related to actual FE which I found troublesome. This may or may not have been Schuster's fault, but his lab assignments were very lengthy. Meanwhile he would leave after the first hour of lab while the whole class stayed late. Nice guy, lacks organization.

504 is the hardest ME class you can take. Work hard and you can get an A. Schuster is good for 404 as well. You\'ll learn a lot but you can\'t slack or be a noob in general.