Porumamilla, Hemanth  

Although i didnt have HP for a real class, he was alot of fun in intro to me. you can tell he has a joy for teaching and he loves his students. all of the class was about teaching you how to be prepared for school and id really recommend taking 134 as a first quarter freshie!

Intro to Mechanical Engineering taught me many things. First and foremost: I don't really like most of the stuff that MEs do. If I hadn't had Hemanth, I would not have realized that the only thing that truly interested me in the ME department is Mechatronics. Hemanth himself is a pretty nice guy. Prof HP makes the labs more interesting than they probably should be, but tends to drag on about many subjects (especially during the Engine dissection). Yet, you can tell it's all good-at-heart. He truly loves the things that we're learning about and believes that there is something to learn from everything. Also, don't fear the name. Despite his ethnicity, he is very easy to understand and very comfortable to converse with. Mediocre class, good teacher.

HP was a good informative teacher who had many lessons to teach and executed a fun and interesting into to ME class. The only small critique I have is that sometimes he assumed students had knowledge that they were not taught before. Other than that he was great.

HP talked too much about how hard grad school was, and how students at cal poly are so much lazier than him. Really full of himself--went in depth about how he wanted to be addressed. Class consisted of withering away for an hour in a conference room while HP presented slightly on topic information about the days lab, then heading over to complete labs. Labs were easy and could be performed in a matter of minutes, but HP wanted to "enrich" our experience by asking "insightful" questions that were a pure waste of time. We were not allowed to leave until the full three hours of the class were up, so much of the time was spent twiddling thumbs.

He has an accent that takes a little getting used to, but he is a very decent instuctor. Office hours are always crowded for statics, so you will probably have to wait in a line to have your question answered. That said, I would definitely recommend going as the material didn\'t always click for me in the lecture. One-on-one, he was great though. He also puts all of the class notes on blackboard, so you can study from home. Typically expect three homework problems per class meeting (that\'s 9 a week), each problem taking 20-30 mins. Our first midterm was one question weighted 20%, the second midterm was three questions weighted 40% and the final was weighted 30%. Do NOT bomb the second midterm like me- I aced the first one and final and still got a B overall due to the heavy weight. Unfortunately, sometimes statics problems will seem very difficult on a test, but when you look back afterwards they seem obvious. That said, at the end of the day I feel I understand all of the material thoroughly. He was a good teacher, I just wish I could have picked up on the material right away instead of a week later.

H.P. is a BOSS. He has an accent but he is very articulate. He is very knowledgeable about the material and he makes sure we know everything we need to know to pass the final. His jokes are pretty funny also. The grading is a bit different than most. The first test was one question and it was worth 20% of the overall grade. The second test was 3 questions and 40% of the overall grade. If you keep up with the homework, the tests are easy and straightforward to answer. Homework isn\'t easy but it isn\'t horrendously long either. There is a long line for help during office hours but it\'s worth the wait. He prepares you well for the final. I\'m taking him again for dynamics. Statics isn\'t an easy class but he made it fun and not so bad.

His accent took me a lecture or two to get used to, but H.P. knows his material. The material was presented quite well and he had all of the notes up online if you missed a class. Given that there were two or three furlough days, I\'m amazed that we even got to the last topic for the class. If it weren\'t for the furlough days, he would\'ve given us three exams, which I thought would\'ve helped a lot more. He\'s a fair grader and checks if you made an effort on your homework, so you\'re expected to get the right answer because it could be on one of the exams. The office hours were near impossible to get in as there were too many people waiting in line to talk to him. Treat statics as a 5 unit class rather than a 3 unit one; the class isn\'t a stroll in the part. You have to put a lot more than just a glance at the problems to pass.

H.P. is legit. He knows his stuff and can teach it. He never really gets confused or anything in class and is super organized. He lectures by projecting a tablet he writes on. Then he just saves the lecture notes and posts the pdfs online which is amazinly usefull. I whish all profs would do the same. His office hours are always busy cause Statics is hard, but form a study group and you\'ll make it through - just don\'t plan on getting away without spending 8+ hours on homework some weeks. I\'m honestly amazed at how well H.P. taught this class considering it\'s difficulty and speed, so take him if you get a chance.

HP is the man. Definatly recommend him for any of the ME series. He explains the material clearly and understands the class\' needs. He posts all the solutions and lectures online so you dont need to take notes during class but do go to class cause he explains everything more clearly. It is a hard class but he was able to make it reasonable.

HP starts out the quarter on a good note, until the first exam. I made a mistake in the first step of the (one problem) exam, which carried through the rest of the steps of the solution. He marked it as if conceptually I had no clue what I was doing, and thus I failed the exam. This same thing happened to many other people. HP seems to try and trick students on exams rather than test for conceptual understanding. Try to avoid him. He doesn't recognize student difficulties at all.

HP is a great teacher. His notes were very helpful for understanding the material, and he assigns a fair amount of homework that is representative of all the material. My only gripe is that he grades the three tests RIDICULOUSLY hard. Begin the problem wrong, and you should expect to receive almost no points for it. The averages for the tests hovered around 11 out of 20. Luckily this motivates you to study hard for the final, which is common for all the statics classes. He prepares you very well for this, i felt better than the other teachers. I would recommend Dr. HP.

overall HP was an alright professor. if you're looking into taking him for ME 211 i'd say go ahead and take him. he posts lecture notes beforehand which is really convenient so all you have to do is fill in the blanks. the only problem i had with HP was his damn exam grading. on the first exam, in my rush i accidentally switched sin and cos but did the whole rest of the exam 100% correct. this resulted in a 9 out of 20 on that exam. when asked about my grade for all the correct work he replied in an indian accent "no correct answer, minus 80%." luckily i aced the rest and ended up with a B-. I'd take him if he's available

HP is an amazing professor and I'm so happy that I took him for Statics. Basically, how HP teaches via his tablet PC. He has notes for each lecture that he puts on PolyLearn a week in advance so you can look over them. (As a side note, this guy has the most beautiful handwriting of anyone I've seen and he does it on a tablet.) I cannot recommend printing out the notes and bringing them to class enough. He has the things he will be showing and going over with you on the notes so you can walk through them with him and then he works through examples with you in class, which shows you how to approach the question and how to format your answer. His first test was easy, but the other two were a little on the hard side, but he is a very generous grader as long as you are clear in what you're doing. He is extremely helpful in office hours and won't give you the run around. He is very good at preparing you for the common final, which is what you want in a statics professor. The common final is a lot about learning the tricks of other professors, so I would also recommend studying with other sections before the final. Overall, he is a fantastic teacher and a really good guy. Take him for Statics!!

Don\'t let HP\'s high poly ratings fool you. They\'re mostly from his ME 211 classes, not ME 212. I personally didn\'t have him for Statics, so I can\'t be sure about that class, but for Dynamics, it\'s pretty obvious that he isn\'t quite used to the quarter system. He got behind fairly quickly, and we stayed behind the whole quarter. We skipped a few important topics in class (conservation of angular momentum), and all he did was post his lecture notes on blackboard to make up for them. He didn\'t explain them at all during class. He did make a serious effort to help students, and was really willing to help, however I felt that the best way to get through this class was to simply form a study group and work problems out together. Other classes were finishing up to 2 weeks before the final, yet we were still going over new material up until the Friday before the final (on Monday). He wasn\'t really helpful in preparing for the final, and really left us hanging in terms of review problems, or advice. All in all I felt like he really cared about his students success, but just got behind quickly and had to play catch up all quarter. TLDR; He gets behind, can\'t keep track of time, and sometimes doesn\'t explain things well. Try to find someone else, but I guess there are worse professors out there.

Agreed with everything the post below this one says. Never had him for 211, and I kind of wish I didn\'t have him for 212. I was signed up for someone different, too, but switched last minute to HP and now I am kicking myself for that. He definitely has the POTENTIAL to be a GREAT Dynamics professor, but this was his first quarter teaching it and we fell WAAAYYY behind as a result. Every other professor was reviewing for the final at least one week before the quarter ended--not HP. We literally had a lecture up to the Friday before the final. The latest material was crammed in and rushed to put it lightly. I also am not really understanding why he grades the \"quizzes\" (aka tests since they\'re worth 20% of your grade...each); he just docks a few points here and there without giving reason why. He is clear in his lectures, but I don\'t think he\'s clear enough on certain specifics that are valuable to some of the types of problems you\'re exposed to. I DID NOT FEEL LIKE HE EXPOSED US TO ENOUGH DIFFERENT TYPES OF PROBLEMS. I\'d try to get a different Dynamics professor before HP--at least until he\'s a bit more experienced with teaching the class.

I had HP for both 211 and 212. He wasn\'t too bad of a statics teacher but he was not prepared to teach dynamics in a quarter system. His style is to practice as many problems as possible in notes and for homework. It\'s nice because he goes over lots of examples but his lectures are often hard to follow and it is pretty much mandatory to go to office hours to complete/understand homework. He assigns a ton of hw but it\'s not worth too much and has three midterms that buffer your grade. I would look to take someone else but he isn\'t the worst professor out there. You will be able to pass but you will have to put a lot of effort in.

I had HP for dynamics like the last two guys and I think he did pretty good job. Yes, he didn\'t have time for review at the end of the quarter, but there were good reasons for that. There was one day for instance when a huge accident made him cancel class and postpone a test and homework which saved all our necks to be honest. Nobody I talked to was even close to ready, but yah he got behind a bit. Still, I was able to figure out the stuff at the end and lol since most of it wasn\'t even ON the final, I think it\'s funny that anyone could criticize him for rushing through it. HP\'s hilarious, awesome, organized, and all around legit. You should take him if you can. My friends and I got together to give him a thank you card, he was that awesome.

HP is an excellent communicator of concepts. He is very organized in the way he presents material, and does it in a step by step way that is helpful. HOWEVER, when he taught dynamics for me, it was his first quarter doing so, and this was a big problem. The way dynamics works is that about 2/3 of the final is rigid body dynamics. However, HP spent about 1/3 of the time on rigid bodies. This made me feel under-prepared for the final. Also, he has a much more strict curve for his classes than professors like Kennedy. I have yet to meet anyone who actually got an A in his dynamics class.

HP has been one of my favorite professors here at Poly so far. He does a great job teaching statics and makes what is normally a really difficult class relatively easy. I also had him for ME 134 and he was awesome there as well, although that is literally the easiest class ever. HP all the way!!

May be good for all these lower level classes I don't know, but when it comes to vibes the man can not present the material clearly to his students. He's basically a grad student with zero real world work experience, and it shows in his teaching of the material.

I agree with the guy/gal below. I was expecting HP to be a pretty good professor based on all the good reviews, but it's just for lower division classes. HP can not teach vibrations. He does few examples in class and assigns little homework. His reasoning is that if we understand the theory we should be able to solve any problem, which plainly did not work when the average for both midterms was failing. It's unfortunate because HP does seem like a cool guy and we can all tell that he knows his stuff, just can't teach it.

H.P. is a good guy but not a good lecturer. He recently got a tablet pc and thinks it is the only way to lecture. It is actually a lot harder to follow than he says. He assigns little homework and says he "copies" the homework for the exams. The exams themselves were overly difficult and did not reflect the way H.P. described them. H.P. loves vibrations and as such has trouble with relating to students who are having trouble. Its all easy to him so it must be easy for everyone.

Can be hard to understand. His grading on test's doesn't give much partial credit, you either get the right answer on an hour long problem or you get a 50%. Class average is commonly in the 50's.

He means well and has a passion for what he's teaching, but his inexperience and inability to clearly present the material makes the course incredibly more difficult than it needs to be. Also the way he lays out his notes on a tablet pc may be "nifty", but it makes a mess of things when he is presenting material(i.e. scrolling up and down, switching quickly between lectures, random scribbles) He will easily get ahead of himself on different tangents when presenting new material leaving students confused. He maybe better for the lower division courses, but he needs some work on this course. Although I do think he is a good lab instructor. I would recommend him for lab, but NOT for lecture.

There is no doubt that Dr. H.P. is passionate about what he teaches. This enthusiasm gleams brilliantly in the lab, where he is extremely approachable and will discuss any aspect of any experiment--or vibrations in general--for as long as you need. His office hours are also a joy to visit for the same reason. Unfortunately, Dr. H.P. has a downside, and it is a big one: he has extreme difficulty distinguishing his level of understanding of the material from the class'. This man knows vibrations so well that every topic is second-nature to him; however, he can't see it any other way--he expects nearly the same level of understanding from his students. This conflict manifests itself as repeated tests where the class fails an "easy question" that was taken "directly from the notes." There were also numerous times where he was inconsistent in his expectations. More than once, an equation that was to be given on the test was not given because he considered it a "concept." Sadly, the distinction between "equation" and "concept" was not established until after our tests. Finally, the homework was short and very easy, but there wasn't enough of it to use it as a review resource, in my opinion, because the answers were not provided in the back of the book. I really wanted to do well in this class. I really wanted to like the material, and I feel I could have accomplished both with a more consistent teacher who was better attuned to the class' needs. If you have to take Dr. H.P. for lecture, the two biggest pieces I can offer are 1) Be absolutely crystal-clear on the terminology (peak frequency versus natural frequency versus damped natural frequency, etc.) and 2) Perform the in-class examples a second time from scratch. His tests rarely deviate from the notes. The bottom line is that Dr. H.P. is a very frustrating teacher in lecture, but a precious resource in lab.

Dr. HP is the man. Sorry to the ME students below who said he was terrible for Vibes, but i don't think you guys are meant to be ME's then. Take HP for Vibes, he knows this stuff inside and out. I found his lectures to be over my head at times, but once I was caught up on the material, they were great and really solidified the material. I really liked his lecture style; he uses a tablet and provides you with note-outline printouts on blackboard. You bring them to class and then complete them during the lecture. They were very well structured and easy to look back on when studying. His tests were just fine if you read through the notes and book sections before the tests. You probably will be tricked on the first test like I was, but after that you'll be able to anticipate what kind of questions he'll ask based on his style. Unlike Locascio, who will force you to know the material using fear and other tactics, HP will force you to understand the material by challenging you. Trust me, you'll know your shit by the end of this class. He's also a funny guy and really helpful in office hours. I was pumped on Vibes by the end of the class, too bad i had Wu for controls next and she ruined that.

This guy isn't a very good teacher, he gives you fill-in-the-blank notes like you are in middle school again. He was also very annoying: he always boasted about how smart he was and how much harder his college was than cal poly. He also told my class that we were dumb because one of the midterm questions was taken directly from the notes and a few people got it wrong. Long story short don't take him.

HP is a great professor. He presents very clearly, loves the material and is an all around good guy. His grading seemed a little unfair, but such is life. My favorite class thus far at Poly.... He's HP!

Shitty professor. Too caught up in his research to give a fuck about the students. I would really love to hear more about his research, haha. Take another professor for this number (318).

HP gives you handouts for notes which was great. You didn't have to read the book because everything was on the handouts. Midterms only have two problems on them so it is really hard to do well with the lack of points. All in all though I thought HP was good and would take him again.

Fantastic professor. I was honestly terrified of taking vibes because i disliked dynamics so much. HP presented this class very well. I enjoyed his handout/fill in the blank lecture style. His exams always have a trick or a very specific detail that he wants you to catch. I'd highly recommend taking HP, one of my favorite professors as CP.

HP HP HP... I definitely think I learned quite a bit in this class. HP makes lecture interesting and he always has plenty to talk about. I like his organized fill-in-the-blank notes, but he did have a lot of moments where he was vague about a topic or just confused himself trying to explain it. Like someone mentioned, it isn't easy to do well in his class because his midterms were graded out of 15 points and the final is out of 30 points. He also has this 30 minute "quiz" during week 9 that is one question based on anything learned in the quarter thus far. That's 10 points. No hw is collected in his class. He assigned plenty of it, but his midterms and DEFINITELY the final have something that wasn't expected. I thought I'd receive a better grade, but such is life. No curve. Good luck if you take him!

HP was great, the man. By far one of the nicest and most easy going professors I've had. While his grading is unique in that each test is out of the number of points that it makes up in the percentage of your overall grade (like a test worth 15% is only out of 15 points), he DOES curve! There is no way the grade I received was a raw score. While he was rushed in completing the material, he was an excellent lecturer and knew how to convey material both in his notes and his lectures. I also feel like I learned A LOT, probably more than any other class I've taken here. And I also really like the topic now. He's also great for lab. TLDR HP is great, make sure to take him for this number, as he would say.

HP is the man. One of the best lab instructors at Cal Poly. Always presents the material in a concise and easy to understand way prior to starting the labs, and is very helpful and straightforward when questions are asked. Take lab with HP.

HP is the !@#$% Bomb, seriously I would give my left nut to the guy. I took him for Vibes Lab and then the controls lab and i honestly learnt more in the Labs from him then in the classes. He will teach you the material, even if it means coming in on consecutive sundays to do so. HP is super smart but still understands how to teach at a basic level and gives you great grades for simply attempting the work.

Professor HP is the greatest. He is a very practical professor and very knowledgeable in control systems, vibrations and dynamics. He expects a lot out from you because of course you are being trained as an engineer; you can't just pass the course barely knowing anything about the material. For those of the 318 students who complained about his methods, grading style and such, you guys are just making an excuse to blame Professor HP. Take responsibility for own actions. If you're doing bad, you're probably not studying hard enough. You expect to learn everything from lecture? Start from basics! Read the book, make your own notes, and use his lecture time to guide your through the material. A professor serves as a person to guide you through the methodology in that particular subject, NOT give you the answer. Only the brightest, hardworking students can take Professor HP. If you're not one of them, don't expect to pass his course, don't waste his time and don't sign up for his class. Let those who really want to learn have this opportunity.