Mase, Tom  

I had Dr. Mase for statics and thought he was an excellent professor. Very neat, careful and understandable lectures. Everyone always gets scared for that big common final, but he prepared us very well yet somehow still kept the classwork, quizzes and midterms fairly easy. My class was prepared so well that more than half of the class finished early and left the testing room whereas all of the other sections stayed until the end scrambling to finish. I've heard that other professors teach with all-or-nothing grading policy with brutal midterms and quizzes with the promise that the final will become comparatively easy, yet those students still struggled in the final that was supposed to turn out to be a cakewalk. Clearly, he's doing something right. All in all, an underrated professor who understands student's difficulties, clear lectures and easy workload that still prepares you well for the final. He doesn't teach statics often, but when he does, take him.

PERSONALITY: Not great, not bad. Strangely enough i think i was one of his favorite students, since every now any then i would come up with some sort of brilliant comment. So i guess if you want to get on his good side, clever commentary is the way to go. LECTURES: Don't expect to learn much. It's the end of the quarter, and i have in total about 7 pages of notes. 7 pages. Yeah, he doesn't really teach much. By comparison my Calc notebook has at least 50 pages of notes. i can honestly say that of all my statics knowledge, the vast majority of it did not come from Mase. He just doesn't teach much. FINAL THOUGHTS: How about a poem? Thomas George Mase, I think i'd learn a lot more, from being smacked in the face, by a hard steel mace, descending from outer space, than by taking 211, taught by Thomas George Mase

Mase was not the greatest teacher. That being said, I could have probably done worse for statics. His lectures weren't always the easiest to follow, and I had to do a lot of work outside of class. This is typical for most statics classes though. Homework was done online with Connect problems. Half of the time the solutions that he let you see before answering the question didn't help if you were lost in lecture. Other times the solutions missed steps and the algorithms were wrong. Even if you followed them or did it your own way, you wouldn't understood what was wrong. The midterms weren't too bad, but you definitely need to study lots and make sure that you know what you are doing. If you are confused, go see him in office hours. I would recommend taking it with a friend so you can study and struggle together. Not the worst statics teacher, but definitely requires work.

I failed the class so obviously my thoughts on him won't be sunshine and rainbows. Engineering Statics with this man was so... uncomfortable. My biggest complaint is that he would just write formulas, symbols, diagrams, and equations on the board without explicitly stating how he got from point A to point B; he taught Statics as if everyone has seen the material before and as if everything was intuitive. After the first two weeks, none of his lectures made sense anymore and I found each consecutive lecture thereafter more and more difficult to follow. However, I sought help from the very beginning. For the first half of the quarter I went to extensive office hours, the Engineering Success Center, and drop-in tutoring. Drop-in tutoring somewhat helped but the other two resources did not. I would ask Professor Mase countless questions just to become more confused after he answered them. Two weeks after the first exam I basically lost hope in all things good and beautiful; I only showed up thinking that I could score something higher than an F on my transcript-- this obviously wouldn't be the case. Too many of the key concepts passed me by far too early. I failed both midterms miserably (thirty percent range), most of the quizzes, and even the final exam (which you only needed a 50% on in order to pass the class). Yet, I am partially glad that I didn't pass Statics for this reason and this reason only: I would not be realistically prepared for Dynamics and I would only be going through the motions (non-intentional pun). With all of this being said, I find it necessary to mention one thing: different types of students will have different types of experiences with this professor. I am ready to move on and, ultimately, learn from my mistakes as I transition into this next stage of my academic career. Please... do not become a statistic. :[

The thing I liked most about Dr. Mase is the fact that he doesnt carry any ego or arrogance that some professors do. His lectures can be a bit dry but he's super chill and will prepare you well for the dreaded common final. Do everything that he asks as far as outside work and you will be golden.

I'll be honest, during the beginning and middle of the quarter, I didn't really care for Mase as a teacher, but if you start thinking about dynamics problems as he describes them and following his instructions as to how you go about doing them, they really become more straightforward and not as daunting as before. Yeah, they're still somewhat difficult in some aspects, but all in all, they tend to start blending together, especially if you take care in doing the homework. However, in class, he does take up a bit too much time (barely) recapping what happened a couple days ago instead of using that time to maybe do some example problems. He doesn't as many example problems as one might like, so if you prefer to see lots of examples, be careful. I felt that his midterms were quite a time crunch, but he gives a very fair amount of partial credit for your work, so show a lot of your thought process. However, since you get used to the midterms and the rush for time, the common final will seem to supply you with plenty of time.

Mr. Mase is probably the best professor you can get for dynamics honestly speaking. I've heard about how other professors make students go through the dreaded Connect+, and Mr. Mase recently stopped using that since he realized it only makes things more complicated. He assigns only 2-3 homework assignments throughout the entire quarter that he collects. Other than that, he gives suggested problems to do everyday, WHICH YOU SHOULD DO! The problems on the midterms and finals are pretty much a variation of the homework/suggested problems, so if you want to pass the class, you have to do all of those problems. Also the quizzes might seem hard at first, but there are a lot of group quizzes, and your lowest quiz score is dropped, so don't worry too much about it. He never says that he curves the midterms/final, but he says that he will look at the normal distribution of the class grades and adjust the grades accordingly. ME 212 is probably one of the hardest classes I've had to take, and I was super nervous heading into the class, but honestly Mr. Mase is the best teacher to help you actually understand dynamics! Good luck!

Business majors: A degree for the intellectually impaired, HA HA.

Mase was okay. not intimidating, instead very personable. he just cannot teach for shit. he threw graduate level mechanics at us, no one understood it, and it was never on the exams. this class was 80% self taught. first couple of weeks he would waste time in beginning of lecture with small talk. he cancelled classes. he made video lectures. homeworks do not prepare you for exams. get someone else if possible.

Pretty much a useless professor for 329. He scanned the book and his lectures were slide shows.. which definetely did not work for most of us, not just because it was painfully boring, but because he completely blew describing the basics behind all topics... or describing what the constants were, etc... and for the most time, he did not even know himself what the heck was going on... If you have him, be prepared to learn by reading the book and be utterly bored in class... the class time goes by soooo painfully slow. Not to be too harsh, this is his first time teaching here at Poly, but not the first time teaching... came from some other school.. If you can, take Ridgeley instead... I sat through some of his lectures instead & it rocked compared to Mase's... he's interested in the material, goes through the basics, starting with FBD's, and gets towards big equation crunching once you have the basics down... His classes pretty enjoyable...

Professor Mase is a good guy. First off I think this subject is kind of difficult to teach, especially all of the notation you have to learn in the beginning. I though he did an average job of instructing, but the use of powerpoint slides with "fill in the blanks" didn't work well for me. I seemed like it allowed him to skip over things and not explain things in detail that were already written on the slides. Homework was oftentimes confusing and had typo's regularly, but was never overwhelming. He is helpful in office hours. Two out of our three tests were take home which made them a lot less stressful. It's too easy to make a careless error in the course with all of the different symbols that get used in a problem.

This is strictly for the prof. We understand the material is hard and the notation alone is enough material for one quarter. You flew through the material so quickly it was hard to even keep up with taking notes everyday, let alone comprehend anything that was written on the board. It would be nice to stop and explain even what you may think are the most minor details. Also, when you introduce new variable #100 that has the same letter as another variable, it might be nice to know what those variables are. The big picture of the class also needs to be explained more clearly. We should know what equations we need to satisfy (EOM, constitutive, ???) when doing any problems plus being able to accurately define BC's (I still have no idea how to do most of this). The class seemed really interesting, but I still have no idea how to elastic continuum mechanics.