Klay, Jennifer  

I had Klay for Physics 101, which is a liberal studies required class. She taught absolutely nothing, I was lost the entire quarter. She would instruct for about 10 minutes per 2 hour class, and explain absolutely nothing. She would tell you something was wrong but would not explain why or try to help you fix the problem. She did not know how to teach at all, and seemed to barely understand physics herself. She stressed me out the whole quarter-avoid her if you can.

OMG this class was so fucking boring I wanted to rip my hair out. Easiest B4 gen ed tho-trust me I took chem and bio too and have compared the three. Pretty easy physics class tho cuz i usually suck ass at physics. Good luck if ur enrolled in this clas lmao. its pretty easy just boring as hell and she grades on attendance so show up to pretty much every class motherfucker. Your lab book is EVERYTHING. Study that thing for the midterm and final because the material is pretty similar. Complete it for the lab book checks (easy A), and if you don't get something, go to her office hours to get her to explain to you. Stay on top of the stuff you learn in class because it's so much easier and simpler than if you wait until the last minute to learn everything it's just very stressful and confusing ok. She's kind of an intimidating prof and I couldn't stop staring at her teeth when I spoke to her because they weirded me out. Overall, easy ass class just hella boring AF and made me lazy.

Initially, I was pretty nervous to take this class bc I'm not good at science or math and her polyratings score is pretty low, but for this GE class, it is soo easy!! Klay is incredibly friendly, nice and passionate about teaching this course. This class is officially taught in the way that elementary school teachers will be teaching STEM subjects to their kids in the future, therefore the material is super easy to understand for people like me who hate stuff like this. You work in 3 person groups that she switches up after each midterm. There are two midterms, one lab practical in which you just show you know how to perform stuff, a project, and a final. Exams have 6 problems, each a page long, but basically what you have been doing in class everyday. I've never studied for this class, just flipped through my notebook and workbook to get the main ideas, and show up to the midterm. As long as you actually know the concepts then no need to study. Class is mostly discussion and a lab. You play with magnets, carts, and other random objects and then discuss as a class the concepts we're learning by writing stuff on whiteboards. Overall, this class is super easy. Don't be intimated that its a physics class or that her other classes give her such low polyratings.

As the person said above, she is easy! I did not learn anything.

Professor Klay is very nice and understanding and easily approachable. The class is easy. It is a combination of a lecture/lab but more lab than lecture. The class is heavy in class discussion but she leads the discussion well and you don't ever have to talk if you don't want to. The homework is all online except for the first assignment and its all some reading and then a quiz on the concepts in the material you read. The class is basic concepts of physics and the exams are graded fairly using a system developed by all the PSC 101 professors. If you don't understand something or have questions about your test, GO INTO HER OFFICE HOURS. She is more helpful at answering your specific questions in her office hours than during class time because she will have more time to look over the issue and help. She is quite generous if you explain your situation to her too. Overall, Professor Klay is not a phenomenal professor, but I would recommend her.

Klay is super nice but wildly oblivious. Her lectures are a complete waste of time and tends to treat her students like children. I went into Astronomy thinking that it would be a cool class but she makes it so difficult to understand. The class is mundane and not worth it. DO NOT take this class.

Dr. Klay is an extremely sweet woman and seems to care about her students. That being said, much of the material was presented in a manner that was difficult to understand. When students asked questions, she would constantly say "just hold that thought," and never get back to it. Our class as a whole struggled to grasp the material and although she noticed that, she did not do much to help us. Anyway, here are the facts of the class: 25% mastering astronomy (online homework that really buffers you grade so do it!), 10% observatory visit (on campus observatory), 10% participation (in class workbook), 15% each for two midterms, and 25% final. Tests are difficult but not outrageous. At the end of the day she curves the class which is the only way I was able to get an A but if you really want to learn and understand the material, I would not suggest taking this class with Dr. Klay,

she brought her damn baby to the midterm. 'nuff said

I'm pretty blown away by all of the negative reviews on here, at least from people that had her for 102. I think people may have had a mistaken understanding of what the class was going to be about going in but I still don't understand some of the comments. 102 is a weird combination of going over some very basic chem and physics for some ground work knowledge and then incredibly complex theoretical physics like the study of black holes, so I think she may struggle a bit with bridging the gap between people that have trouble understanding things and people that already knew most of the information. People ask her questions and then get upset when she can't give them a straightforward answer as if she just doesn't know when the reality is the answer is probably a combination of calculus and quantum theory that would sound like another language. Klay was incredibly nice, organized and effective. Above all anyone that says she doesn't know the material clearly just doesn't understand how complex astronomy really is. I stayed often after class to ask her about science related news and she definitely knows plenty. A good portion of the class is based on homework(online,helpful if you try, and you can manipulate the program to get 100% every time), classwork(graded for completion, collected on test days)and going to the observatory one time. The tests weren't super easy but I didn't study and did fairly well and the whole class is curved. Extra credit is offered. TL;DR I went to class and mostly sat on my phone, actually tried on the online homework, didn't do any reading, and studied for less than an hour for each exam and got an A. If you are remotely interested in the subject it's an easy class.

I have never had a professor present material so poorly and give tests that are unbalanced. I am disappointed in her teaching abilities and so was the entire class. The final had difficult questions and an impossible free response section that had the class upset. NEVER TAKE KLAY FOR ANYTHING!

Klay was a good teacher. She made a fair amount of errors when doing work on the board, which was confusing, but overall she was a decent lecturer. Her midterms and finals were very fair and she is very clear on what will be on each test. I would take her again if given the opportunity.

I dont think Jennifer Klay has ever taught physics 132 before. So if you have her for this class, be warned. She assigns quizzes and online homework that she hasn't written, so when you ask her for help on them she either doesn't know the purpose of the question or takes a while to compute it on her own. She uses worksheets in class that are related to what's on the actual exams, so the exams are pretty straightforward and easy as long as you practice with the worksheets. She also did this super fun thing where she doesn't write her own final exam in its entirety, so the content of that was a wild card.

Should be teaching grammar school.

Professor Klay was pretty good. The homework assignments aren't that bad and she's very helpful during office hours. She loses track of time during lecture sometimes, and we were a little behind but she was great about adjusting HW to fit where we were. She hands out worksheets and the exam questions are based on those. It's not a super difficult class.

Klay makes a ton of mistakes on the board. Despite this, her class is EASY compared to other professors. She told the class 4/5 questions on the midterm 1 and they were exactly the same as worksheet questions we did in class. She gives 2 midterms, a final, weekly homework, and weekend reading and concept quizzes. The reading and concept quizzes are through polylearn and all the answers can be found online, although I would encourage you to do the quizzes and the readings to excel in the class. Overall, shes easy compared to other teachers, but she is definitely not the best teacher. If you have previous physics experience and want an "easy A", then I recommend her. If you do not have experience in this class it will still be fair but definitely not easy.

Dr. Klay She was very nice and kind in office hours, having no problem clarifying and explaining the concepts to anyone. She loves using Mastering Physics to collect & explain the homework, and uses blackboard to explain everything from what she expects to grades and percentages. She is very organized and shows good examples in her lectures. Honestly, She is the best Physics Professor at this school. All midterms are reasonable. She knows and knows how to teach the material inside and out of the classroom. Do not let the fact that she is a Nuclear Physicist scare you.:-)

Dr. Klay is a very nice person, but she doesn't explain anything in class. You can go to every class and take excellent notes, do all the homework, and still get a C on the tests. She never does any difficult examples in class, whcih makes homework somewhat difficult. She expects you to learn most of the material from the book. Any of you who have done any reading in a textbook know that this is impossible. The tests are VERY hard, and include things that she never talked about in class or assigned homeowrk problems about. However, even though she does a poor job of teaching in class, she knows her shit, and is more than willing to explain in office hours. So if you get confused, just go to office hours. She is nice.

As mentioned before, Klay is an extremely nice person. She really wants the best for her students. Her tests are very straightforward and relatively easy IF you do the homework. The examples she does in class are always super easy and then when you get to homework, you have to look a lot of stuff up in the book, but hey, that is what you are supposed to do in college so get used to it.

Took her the first quarter she was here. She was a good lecturer, but she was new so she wasn't solid on methods of teaching and how things worked. But after a couple of quarters, I'd say she had potential to be great. Very nice lady.

She is SUPER NICE. There were only 3 required homework assignments for the quarter. She would save her harder problems for homework because she wants you to really try and understand the problems. The exams are mostly all problems taken directly from a list of focus problems she gives you. This is good because it is easily to do well in this class. However that applies to everyone so the min score is usually around 50%, which is high for a physics class.

Good instructor!

Professor Klay is a very nice lady. But that's where the positives end. As a professor, she was god awful. Lectures were pointless, and I did a majority of my learning out of the book. Her homework has a ridiculous grading policy, and if it weren't for the participation that's 10% of the grade, there seriously would be no reason to come to class. She conveys ideas poorly, her examples are OK, but don't really challenge you and aren't at all similar to what's on the test, and she fails to cover all the material in class that then gets assigned in homework. So my recommendation is to not take her if you can help it. Of course, they're now just posting STAFF as all the physics teachers, so you might get screwed and end up with her anyways. If so, I highly recommend finding a new class if you want to learn anything at all.

She says she worked at the Cern Supercollider, but as far as I can tell, she must've been a janitor or something there, because she knows nothing about E&M.

I had professor Klay for E&M physics, for the most part going to class was a waste of time. Professor Klay would often spend a huge amount of time explaining very simple subjects, while spending very little time explaining the difficult concepts. Overall this class felt more like directed self learning given that in my experience all my learning came from reading the book, doing the homework, and asking my room mate to explain concepts to me when the book was insufficient.

There are a lot of negative reviews on here about Klay, but here are the facts: Grading: Participation: 10% (In-class responses to questions on her powerpoint. They seem to be graded on completeness. They are super helpful for understanding the subject) Lab: 10% Homework: 10% (~13 problems per chapter, graded very strictly) Quizzes: 20% (only four quizzes all year, given in lab. That means that they're 5% apiece. They're on page, single-sided in length and 100& conceptual. I'd say they're medium to hard. If you did the homework before hand, you can expect an A without any additional studying) Midterms 20% (Calculation problems. If you did/understood the homework, you can expect an A. No real tricks. Medium difficulty. Not worth a lot of your grade) Final 30% (Medium to hard difficulty, depending on how you studied. She literally gave us the subjects that the problems were about. If you studied those subjects, you'd get an A. If you didn't, you'd probably get an F. The questions were calculation/theoretical. If you studied what she told us/understood the concepts very well, you could expect an A. Some tricky problems, but most were straightforward.) Teacher Skill: I'd say Klay is average for most people, but I really liked her. She's clear in class, but sometimes leaves you to learn about things while doing the homework (maybe ~10% of the material). Anything she doesn't cover in class will not be on her tests, but it will be on the homework. When compared to the other physics teachers at Cal Poly, Klay is well above average. I recommend her, it was a good quarter for me. No real complaints.

Appears to be a nice person that does not understand physics.

Brutal professor. Made mistakes all the time and was not prepared! Should be fired!

Klay for my class taught Pete Schwarz's material, and for the most part, the class was a waste of time. Anyone with a basic understanding of physics can easily pass with flying colors, so if you want a challenge, don't take this class. She (and I assume Pete) will make you do extra parts to problems so you "understand " it more thoroughly, so if you are too smart, this class can get very tedious and annoying, because their grading is also based off using their problem solving strategy. Still not sure if she can really teach or not (from other reviews here, I doubt it. Easy to get an A but such a waste of time I rarely went to classes. Weekly easy 1 problem quizzes, no midterms, and fairly easy final.

This is a course on physics on the computer and we have learned no physics!

Fuck programming. Fuck klay. Shit ruined my GPA

Honestly, this was the most frustrating class I've ever taking at Poly. Klay is a super nice lady and she's definitely passionate about her work, but she's not good at teaching it. The first couple weeks were manageable, but after that I was lost in a sea of words I couldn't begin to understand. Take Klay, but accept the fact that you may reduce your lifetime by a few years from the stress of having Schrödinger's dick continually thrusted up your nose into your brain.

Klay is approachable and understanding. Solid teacher.

What the guy/gal below said. Amen. I too took this class and have long since graduated from Poly, but I was cruising Poly Ratings for a kick and thought that I should pipe in and let you know how much of a joke this prof is.