Hanson, Jim  

The class is only half way done, and we havn't had a test yet, but I think it is safe to say he is a good professor. He is nice, well prepared, knowledgable, and good at teaching. He is the type of professor who is very precise and thorough. Homework load is middle range.

Hanson is a straight up G. I don't think i've ever gotten more out of a class than his. He makes soil mechiancs interesting and is very straight forward with what he wants. Take Hanson, he is the man!!!!

Hanson is a wonderful teacher and an awesome person. He is extremely organized and his tests and homework are applicable and appropriately challenging.

Jimmy Hanson straight from Minnesota. He's even got that accent. This guy was really organized with his lectures and his tests were really fair. Just make sure you study every minute detail from the notes. He busted his face during my quarter. Apparently, he tried jumping across his roof to fix a window pane and ate shit while doing it. WHAT A G! Anyway, take this guy! A+

Take Hanson, he is a boss. He knows his stuff, the class is laid out clear, and the workload is average, but I feel like I really know my Geotech after taking this class.

I recommend taking this professor. It is very clear what the objective is. He is very organized and you know what to expect for his midterm and final. Since there is only one midterm in the class and no quizzes, the midterm and final are weighed heavily. The average on the midterm is roughly a B. The midterm isn't too hard. The homework isn't bad. It's mostly problems from the book along with a few additional problems he assigns out. Homework is due every week.

Seriously by far one of the best professors I've ever had. Dr. Hanson is extremely knowledgeable and genuinely cares about you learning. The classes can get a bit boring because I mean he's lecturing on dirt, but he still makes the lessons informative and relative. I didn't think I'd like geotech and after taking this class with Hanson I'm definitely going to take a couple of ATEs in geo. Thanks a lot Dr. Hanson!

I failed this class and I still loved hanson. his lectures are perfectly timed out to fit half before a break and half after. He fits all the material perfectly into the classes and quarter as planned. He even had to cancel a class this quarter and still fit all of the material in without rushing. His lectures are suuuuper neat and go at a good pace. this was really important for me when taking notes. I think he has the most organized beautiful lectures on the boards. His pictures help a lot too. he cares a lot about the subject and it shows and makes the class better. He has a couple fun stories too. I only went to office hours once. Which was a mistake. he was great in office hours and was making analogies to help a student understand concepts. then he went through step by step with me over my midterm that i failed. Also, when you ask questions in class, he always sees your hand and always answers. I had 3 questions during one part of one lecture and he was happy to answer them all really thoroughly. I wish there were two midterms. the homework was heavy but worth it. I also wish he told us that the final was all new stuff pretty much and didnt include anything from the first midterm. I want to retake this class with him!

He is a good teacher and very well prepared. My only problem is that he assigns homework that has very little to do with the lecture notes and most of it can't even be completed without help in office hours.

Hanson is extremely knowledgeable which can be a good and bad thing. A lot of his assignments have you doing really detailed orientated busy work. I think this guy has a lot of interest in what he does but it makes his class hard for those who do not share the same interest in geotech. I like the guy but I have to admit that I wish I never took any of his classes

Dr. Hanson knows his stuff which made Shallow Foundations pretty easy, conceptually. There were two big projects, but I thought that they were really interesting. I'm a lot better at Excel than I was before this class, that's for sure. If you like geotech, definitely take this class.

This is a must take course for geotechs, but i think this a great course for anyone to take. For starters, after this class you will pretty much be an excel expert as both his projects require you to use excel extensively. It was a bit intimidating at first because i had never used excel at that level (pull down menus, goal seek, massive conditional equations), but if you take your time its very manageable. And whats nice is you use the first excel project to aid in homework and the final project. As far as his teaching abilities go, he is right up there with the best engineering teachers ive had at cal poly. he knows his shit, is very prepared during lecture and wont put you to sleep. his homework is very fair, some assignments a bit longer than others (he warns you of this beforehand) and it prepares you very well for his tests. his midterm was nothing unexpected. if you did the homework and took good notes in class you easily got an A. same thing with the final. he tries to throw some fun variations to problems at you on the test but if you sit and think about it for a second you realize he's asking the same question you had on homework just u gotta come at it from the side entrance rather than the front door. And as would be expected with a course like this that has so much info presented, the exams are open everything. So that means take good clean notes, be organized and occasionally print out the resources he has you use for a couple homework questions. I was always amused by the "try hards" who would bring 3 geotech books in for exams. Those are probably the people who got 60%s on the tests. And i hope you guys didnt throw away your 381 cheat sheets from those tests. i pulled mine out and it saved my ass on a couple of his exam problems involving phase relations. (oh yes, dont think u were done with those when 381 ended). Luckily when i had Moss for 381 he gave us this sweet handout with commonly used convenient equations for the phase relation stuff. it helped a lot on Hanson's tests because the intro to a lot of his problems was a small phase relation puzzle. overall, great class, you will learn alot. great teacher, knows his shit, wont put you to sleep, and he has a sweet ponytail. what the hell else do you need?

Hanson is a boss. I heard he was asked to leave a landfill site because he walks with so much swag that he was putting holes in the geomembrane. Seriously though, you can't go wrong with him as a teacher.

As always, Hanson does a good job at bringing the class topics back to real world and industry applications. Sometimes the material is dry and the lectures seem to drag on but its important to pay attention since this class is more informational than computational. The class has a midterm (pretty straight forward), homework, a big/open-ended project with a presentation, and a final. Not a particularly hard class but it can be pretty time consuming, especially in the second half of the quarter.

I learned that if I were to take up hunting, I should shoot deer, not bears, because a bear will hunt me back if I successfully wound it. Fascinating! I didnt know that the key to production and operations management was so brutally simple!