Nelson, Jill  

Nelson knows her stuff...she just CANNOT TEACH IT!! She taught from the notes/tests of another teacher because she's never taught the class before (in fact she's never even taught any class before!!)! I give her some slack in that it was her first quarter teaching EVER...but still. Lectures don't help at all...she rushes through the problems and doesn't notice that most of the people in the class get completely lost. (Nelson, if you're reading this, when you draw a diagram, please hold off on jumping right into solving the problem...but could you please wait until we all have the diagram copied to our notes too...gracias.) For the class...homework (worth 15%) is due every week (I think the grader for those hw's tried to look for anything he/she could to take points away from us). There's a lab every week (easy 10% if you show up) and then Two midterms and a final (20%, 25%, and 30% respectively). Overall, from what I hear from most people (despite what teacher they have), 211 is a tough class; taking it with Nelson makes it that much tougher. If every other section is full and you end up with Nelson, be prepared to commit a lot of time outside of class to teach yourself the material(workshops, the geniuses who think this class is easy, and maybe even some office hours). Other than that, good luck!!

Not knowing other ARCE professors to compare to, Nelson seemed a competent professor. She tries to get to know her students, and often engages in informal conversation. Lectures and examples done in class feel rushed at times, with her doing much of the examples, but nothing that outside tutoring can\'t fix. There is an adequate amount of partial credit in her quizzes and exams (I came in late one day and could only scribble an answer without work before turning the quiz in, and got half credit). However, she may be quite rigid/uncompromising at times, rejecting late work. She also has a particular hate towards tardies.

I highly suggest you take another professor, unless you would like to teach yourself the material and concepts. ARCE 211 is already a hard course for only being 3 units, and to take it with Prof Nelson makes it more difficult because she doesn\'t have very good teaching qualities. She rushes through examples during lecture, sometimes not even going through the entire example and expecting us to know right away how to solve it and how to do it on an exam. We would do more lab than she would lecture, which I would have hoped would have been the other way around because more students would have done better in the class. During midterms she would say the exam is \"easy\" but to give you an idea of how \"easy\" it was no one would finish on time (even when the exam was only 4 questions). It would take the first student 5 minutes after she would call time on the exam to turn it in. Some other info about her class is she gives quizzes everyday of the week at the beginning of class, homework is given every week as well with an average of 8 problems (no late work accepted), and she gives 2 midterms. Please stay away from this professor; you\'ll be happy you did.

THE WORST ARCE TEACHER TO WALK THE EARTH. TAKE TARANTINO OR GUTHRIE!!!

No ARCE class is easy, but I thought Nelson was a very fair teacher. Her homework is very difficult and her grader is total hardass but her quizzes and tests are not too bad if you take some time to study. I had a tough time with physics 141 so I realized that this class was going to be tough, so I went to the free tutoring Tuesdays and Thursdays for an hour; that definitely helped out. She likes CM's a lot more than ARCE's, which definitely helped a lot of us out. Overall Nelson is a good teacher, and I'd definitely recommend her. She's also super cool to talk to.

Really helpful during office hours!

Jill is not the easiest person to like, but she's serious about being a good professor and good at presenting the material in class. She takes it step by step and encourages class participation, prompting students to work out problems themselves in class, where she can help. Before one of the big tests, she also hosted an evening study session outside of office hours to answer last minute questions. Just take the class seriously; Do your homework (if you just copy a friend's answers, you'll regret it during the tests) and go to class (weekly quizzes on the material covered), and take advantage of the free tutoring in the ARCE building.

Absolute worst professor you'll ever take. Hates architecture majors and bashes on them constantly. Will complain about being a professor constantly and prefers to go back to the good old days. And completely screwed our class over during the final. Presented a problem that was infinitely times more complicated than anything she ever covered in class. A few students cried while others walked out while slamming the door behind them, the problem was that bad. She ended up curving it like 15 percent because of how poorly everyone did. Dont take her!!!

he sure does like his women, wet!!

Jill is a great professor for this class. She is very skilled with timber and knows how to explain why and how things behave the way they do. I was always impressed with her ability to explain concepts that I struggled with. She is very patient and understanding when it comes to conceptual struggles, but she assigns BIG projects. Be ready. Don't put it off to the last day.