Murphy, Chris  

DO NOT TAKE MURPHY for ce 112!! Unless you want an easy class to be harder than it should be. He gives quizzes that most people fail and stupid projects that are impossible to do correctly. Nobody knows what goes on in the projects because it's material that 3rd years are just starting to learn. For an intro class, he makes it soo much harder than it needs to be. Plus I haven't learned anything valuable except that I HATE geotech and water. If you can TAKE SOMEONE ELSE! The other teacher (Rahim) I heard is way easier.

horrible!! do not take this guy. he makes you study about 6 or more hours for a short little quiz and people still will get Bs and Cs. he grades SOOO hard and basically fails everyone. he is awful professor and should never teach 112 ever again.

This guy is whatever. His face is annoying though.

Murphy's CE 112 is not bad at all. For most people it's a wake up call. Just because it's an intro class and is 2 units, doesn't mean you don't ever have to study or put effort into it. Take it seriously. Murphy is fair and presents the material effectively. The quizzes are not bad, it just takes some studying (not that much material). He is obviously very knowledgable about the subject matter and adds humor occasionally. As long as you don't fall asleep during class and put in effort, you will do fine. Overall, I would definitely recommend Murphy as a CE 112 professor, and a professor for any class for that matter.

OK, to start off the two negative evaluations a couple under me are either written by idiots or people that don't care. His quizzes are totally fair and straight off the lecture. I studied five minutes for the first got a D, realized I needed to put more effort and studied 1-2 hours for the second one and ended up getting an A on it. His lectures can be slightly boring but he tells you so himself. Overall it's a fairly interesting class and I think hes a great professor. His tests and quizzes are among the fairest I've seen. His assignments can be tedious and hard but I really don't think they're way out of our league and he grades more on effort than correctness on these anyways. Once again, don't listen to these idiots under me that will probably end up switching out of CE anyways. MURPHY IS THE HOMIE.

One expects a 2 unit class to be relatively easy, which this was. But every now and then there was a slightly challenging assignment to spice things up a bit. Murphy's a good guy and the material is presented a bit fast, but Without going to office hours, I still managed to get good marks on the quizzes (which, contrary to what some may say, are in my opinion just the right difficulty. Something that you need to review your notes for, but not something you spend ours preparing for. Overall, I'd say my experience in Murphy's CE112 class was good - not amazing, but good.

Anyone complaining about this class is probably going to fail all of their classes. Yeah there was the occasional project, but they were pretty simple and interesting. People do pretty poorly on the quizzes, but I did well by studying just a little. Set the curve one one quiz and got 55/58 on the final quiz. We skipped the last project, saving us a week and a half of class. Murphy is a cool dude, but haters gonna hate.

Murphy is a cool dude. He gave the class a lot of time to work on the assignments and let you do them in groups. The lectures were the most simple and straight forward I've ever heard. Quizzes were free-response and straight from the lecture which means all you have to do is write some few facts from each slide and look at the power points which he posts online. He may be a little harsh on grading but I doubt he does it himself. Even the "final" was graded by a student. Overall, I do recommend Murphy for THIS class. Good luck!

Murphy is da boss. For anyone who complained about the difficulty of his CE 112 class shouldn't become engineers. Getting a passing grade was easy. His quizzes were fair and straight from the lecture. However anyone thinking that this is still CE 111 is in for a rude awakening. Studying 1-2 hours max for the quizzes should land you a good grade. I studied less than 15 min for the first and got a D, the second I studied about an hour and got an A. To address the comment someone said below me, some of the projects were similar to the ones he gave his 3rd years. HOWEVER, several factors had been removed from the project's criteria which reduced the difficulty level to some simple, but tedious measurements and plug and chug calculations. I basically did all of them the day before and got A's and B's on them. The research project was the only truly difficult assignment, but with a group of four, definitely not impossible. He even cancelled the final project and the final was more like a long quiz that covered some new materials and old questions taken WORD FOR WORD from the other two quizzes. Overall, easy but informative class. TAKE MURPHY!!!

Murphy is an awesome part-time professor, part-time Engineer that really tries to start off each lecture with a bit of humor. For the course, he presented the material really well and gave an accurate overview of what the major is about, not just typing research papers, but doing some actual, though fairly simple, projects. While it is true that he sometimes gave an overload of work for a 2 unit class, he ended up being really fair about his grading and was nice enough to drop a project because we passed his expectations on a previous project. I recommend taking him for CE 112 if you can, but prepare to do a bit of work and studying.

murphy is a nice guy and he definitely knows his stuff (lots of experience, but dont exactly remember how much), however i will say that the material he teaches you in class isnt going to be exactly what you see on the tests or quizzes. he has a tendency of either presenting the problem a different way than you were taught in the class or putting a question on the test that you didnt go over very thoroughly. the lesson here, look over ALL your notes, even if he didnt talk much about certain things. I did thoroughly enjoy the group projects that he gave us (calculating the weight of a building, sketching a CPT boring log, calculating water run-off, and a case study for our final). the projects start to give you a taste for what real civil engineers do and it was pretty fun to see that.

During this entire quarter all I could think about was how this professor reminded me of that small little dog that runs through the back of scene 23 in The Incredibles by Pixar. Seriously, if you look it up you will only be able to see it...

Murphy is not a bad professor. He prepared me for the final very well. The final was easier than the midterm. For our class, he decided to not give any pop quizzes. His quizzes aren’t that hard. Most of them look like random problems in the book. If you study the problems from the book (outside of the homework), you should be ok. The problems on the midterm were not hard either. They looked like the homework problems. The only hard thing about the midterm was the timing. Murphy gave us 17 problems and we had to complete them in 1 hour and 20 minutes. It was ridiculous. The final was about 3 hours and had only 12 problems. Most students were rushing through the problems on the midterm. I hardly had time to check my work. Murphy does end up curving the class a lot at the end of the quarter. There are a few things I disliked about his class though. One is that he tends to skip steps and move too fast while working on problems. Some students had to keep raising their hands and ask him how he got to a certain step. Second, he is a bit disorganized. He doesn’t write everything in order on the board and doesn’t have a clear date of when the homework is due. Usually, he would say that homework is due on Thursdays. On some days, he would post the homework on Friday. On other days, Sunday. Whether on Friday or Sunday, they both had about 12-15 problems due. If he ends up posting the homework on Tuesday, he would then tell us that homework is due in another week and would give us 1.5x the amount of homework he would usually give us.

Murphy does an excellent job of explaining the concepts and providing you with analogies to help you apply the concepts. Be aware of his quizzes/exams as he occasionally throws you a curve-ball.

Murphy is by far the laziest teacher I've ever had. He handed my midterm back later than everyone else because he hadn't finished it when he finished everyone elses. Other than that be prepared to get wrecked on all the quizes and then ride a nice curve because everyone fails them. However, I will say this. Murphy knows CE and if you really pay attention you'll learn the material well and kill the final. I am currently in 207 and the guy teaching me Guyader has no idea whats going on, its safe to say I already miss murphy.

Mr. Murphy was new to teaching this quarter, and dove head-first into the CE 204/207 \"standardization\" nightmare. As a new teacher he has things to learn. But he is quite smart and an incredibly nice guy. He really, really wants to help you do well. That said keep in mind that this class is run poorly. Multiple choice tests, and final averages well within the failing range. Chris Murphy did all he could to make things more fair. He wrote the second exam ahead of time, knowing full well that other lazy teachers would do not bother to change an exam that had already been written. He even incorporated student suggestions and expanded the number of questions on the test. He is a laid-back guy, but pushes through hard material doing everything he can to help you visualize big pictures. If sign conventions are your thing, maybe try someone else. But if you have any desire to actually know what you are talking about, Mr. Murphy is a good choice. Bottom line: hard class, stupid cirriculum, good professor.

Murphy is a great guy and a solid teacher. He presented everything I needed to do well in his class. I may have failed to put in sufficient time to do well in the course, but I loved the class regardless, learned a lot and would take Murphy again without hesitation. Take him for any class if you can. And fyi, he prides himself on his CE 207 sections always doing the best on the final every quarter, but I think he deserves to brag because he really prepares you well for it. Just don't let it get to his head.

Murphy is a boss. He presents the material very clearly, and is really good at the dip snap. Likes to talk shit in a funny way and has good rapport with students while still commanding respect. Really helpful in office hours as well. I'd absolutely recommend him as a teacher.

You'll be prepared come the final. But you will probably get wrecked by the quizzes and midterm along the way. At least he knows his shit and wants his class to have the highest scores on the common final.

Murph Dog is great at teaching the material. You will know everything you need to know for the final and he takes pride in having the highest final grade. The pop quizzes are tough but you can do well on them if you keep up with his lectures. I wish I could take him again.

Murphy is an amazing teacher. This class is important for me for future ME classes so I needed to get the material down. And I did thanks to Murphy. He is a dick sometimes but it's usually in good fun. His lectures were near flawless. The only problem I had was that he was sometimes unfair when grading and wouldn't give points back usually. His test had so many mistakes that nobody could finish or understand what was going on. His class was broken into the final, a midterm, 6 quizzes and homework. Homework is graded by completion. He prepared us very well for the final.A

Chris understands how to relate the information in the course to real world situations and explains when a concept is used to develop skills and when it can really be applied in a situation. He is fair and clear in his grading. While the pop-quizzes were not a fan favorite amongst the class, they kept you on your toes and on top of your work. Take any course you can from him because he will almost always be your best option.

This fcker, doesn't know the first thing about teaching statics. All he did for the first 40 minutes was talk about the leisure pool. Then for the last 10 minutes he would do half an example. Avoid him for statics if you want to learn anything

I'll give you guys one pro and one con about this broskie. Pro: Lots of fun in class. Con: crete.

Murphy is a boss. He makes lecture relatively interesting and the labs are fun. Don't expect him to hold your hand through the labs; he wants you to "learn by doing" which was nice in my opinion. Really chill class, but I still learned more in this 2 unit class than I did in some of my 4 unit classes. Take him for 259 if you can. And here's a joke, for those of you who check polyratings religiously: Pervious concrete is on a plane with the President and a duck. The plane is about to crash and there’s only one parachute left. The duck says, “Hey, I don’t need it, I have wings,” and flies away. The pervious concrete says, “Please, Mr. President, you take it. I don’t fear death, I’ve lived a holy life.”

Professor Murphy has a great attitude and knows how to relate and talk to the students. However, for concrete, he presented the information in an unclear format. His examples were messy on the board and they were hard to follow. He did not know what he really wanted for the project he assigned, which made it more difficult and longer. It was his first time teaching the course so he could probably do better. One thing that bothered me was I had to run an errand (accidently took my friends key) before class started. I was there early an ran out and saw him on the way to my car. He asked where I was running and I told him I'd be back and had to go do something. Well, I get back 30 minutes later and apparently they had just finished a quiz. I explain to him after class the situation, and simply ask to make up the quiz sometime (maybe office hours?) He completely denies me. The principle here is that he did not mention a quiz when I saw him before class and that he did not care about my grade or my understanding of the material. I had an F going into the final. But I studied my ass off and felt I had done well on the final. I get an F on the final and end up with a D+ in the class. So he does not care about grades but gives you a better real life experience of dealing with problems. Be careful with Murphy.

Professor Murphy seems to have a great understanding of the topics he lectures on. I have taken two classes with him and what he lacks is the ability to convey this knowledge to the students he teaches. His lectures are very scattered and hard to follow. It almost seems as though he doesn't really know where he is going next. Many of the notes were just copied straight out of the book and scribbled in the top corner of the board. He also likes to distract students from his poor lecturing with dumb jokes or quick shots at students he knows right in the middle of class. Some were entertaining, but very unprofessional. Both of his classes had a sizable curve to them so don't worry too much about doing poorly on quizzes/midterms. Though, it is hard to be motivated when you study hard and get a 60% on everything. Overall, Murphy really knows the material well but struggles making his classes clear and straight forward. Re-write your notes, read the book, do the hw, and spend a good amount of time outside of class to really understand the material.