Smith, Nathan  

Mr. Smith is challenging and expects a lot from his students but you will actually learn something from his class. He knows his material inside and out and will take the extra time to help you understand and learn the material. He cares about his student?s success and puts in the extra time to help anyone who asks. Any way you cut it Dendrology is a tough subject that just takes lots of time to memorize no matter what instructor you have. Mr. Smith makes the class fun and interesting and actually makes you want come to class everyday. There are two midterms and a comprehensive final which you must study for to do well in the class. There are three field trips were Mr. Smith helps you collect all the samples you need for your plant collection at the end of the quarter. The collection seems intimidating at first but as long as you start collecting samples on the first field trip you will be fine. Mr. Smith is a great instructor and everyone should try to get him if they can.

So dendrology is the weed out class for FNR and ENVM majors. The course is extremely hard and is very time consuming. With that said, Nate is a terrible teacher. His witty comments and lack of respect for his students makes him one of the worst teachers I have had at Cal Poly. I felt like I learned more about him than about the lecture material. He wasted our time at almost every lecture and was extremely unprepared for the lab that followed. We had 4 midterms (All of which were difficult). The final was cumulative and was roughly 25% of our entire grade. Nathan was very unreliable and hard to get a hold of outside of class. He even had the audacity to leave for a hunting trip during an entire week of lecture, which tons of stuff was do on. Overall, I would never take a class from nate again. BEWARE of this teacher.

I took this course the same time as the person below, and it really wasn't as bad as they claim. Nate is a better teacher than many at Cal Poly, and makes fairly clear what info you need to know. If you are not good at memorizing plant names and having an eye for detail, sucks for you. I fortunately have that gift, but I know many do not and that is why they find this course difficult. Nate doesn't emphasize the lecture material much on the tests, which is cool because that info isn't as important as knowing what a plant species looks like, imho. But the plant samples you learn from that aren't on the field trips are dried tiny samples that are not very helpful for identifying plants from a distance in the field. If you want to do well, go for a hike and recognize the plants along the way. The plant collection is quite a bit of work, but is the only real outside-class assignment in the course. Nate works as a state park ranger at Oceano Dunes, so he isn't on campus much. And he wasn't on a hunting trip; he was gone for cop training. He likes to tell stories of his law enforcement adventures before class. I only spent about 2 hours a week outside of class studying. Plant ID is a basic skill for forestry, so if you can't do well here, you might be in the wrong field.