McDaniel, Cole  

This class is tough no matter who you have. Cole was alright but he seemed to teach like we already knew how to do the stuff. Plus side is i definately was failing going into the final and somehow i got a D. don\'t be affraid to take him cuz he does know his stuff well. the class is just hard in general(coming from a cm)

He is a great teacher who cares about his students. The other people who took this class didn't put in the work needed to do good. It is a very hard class but Cole is very helpful during lecture, activities, and office hours.

Cole is a great professor. He really cares about his students and presented the material in an effective manner. We definitely went through the material faster then all of the other classes, but the homework and labs allowed most of us to keep up. I don't really have that great of math chops and the way he taught helped me understand the concepts. Overall I would recommend taking him I didn't see anything negative about his teaching.

Prof. McDaniel has reminded me why I love cal poly so much. I visited his office hours multiple times, and he went above and beyond what a normal teacher would do in order to help me understand the material better, even if I missed the class when he taught the material. He made it very clear what would be on the tests and genuinely cares about his students. I would highly recommend him for any of the structures series !

Awesome professor, awesome class. This is a hard class in general, you have to put in a lot of work on your own time. He knows his shit and is willing to help you in or out of class. The exams are only 3/4 questions and he explains what concepts will be on them. The labs are really helpful and a fun way to understand the concepts. I definitely recommend him.

Cole is really chill. The first day I showed up to class, I though the class was gonna be hell because I didn't understand anything he was lecturing on. That being said, Cole isn't the best at teaching new concepts as thoroughly as he could. A lot of times he assumes we know things that require further clarification. Despite this, he is very helpful in office hours, he is an extremely understanding and nice person, and his tests are the fairest I have ever taken (not too hard, only 2 questions for midterms and 3 for the final exam). You are given the perfect amount of time to attempt and finish these problems and the material he tests on is always fair never any curveballs meaning if you pay attention and do the homework it shouldn't be too hard to get an A. If you can take him, I recommend it.

After taking Daniel-McCole-Cole-McDaniel, I wished I had used a priority to get around him. He's a great guy, very nice and funny, but not a good teacher. Honestly, take someone else. He starts you off easy, going over stuff we already know, and then he assigns what seems like light homework. What you don't know until weeks later when/if you get the homework back is that he takes off insane amount of points; the sad part is, the homework shouldve been the easy A part of this course. It only gets worse really. For the first midterm, the class average was a 60-something%, which he said was a little low in his opinion, but refused to curve it. Really?? I understand that he has to take points off if you screw up, but I'm used to a general grading scheme: McDaniel just arbitrarily takes off points inconsistent with how he grades the other tests. The lowest grade for that test was a 16%.. He will go over homework and tests with you, but he doesn't really show you how to improve or understand it. To make matters worse, the ARCE department backs him up, saying he's "been here for years and is VERY good.."I think that has to do with the fact that he teaches a lot of advanced classes, which is admirable, but he has clearly forgotten how to explain the basics and intermediate stuff to those just entering the subject. Great guy, but its not worth struggling for a D when people in Tarantinos and Lawsons classes are easily getting As and Bs.

While I did enjoy having Cole as a professor, but I wouldn't say he was a good professor. His classes are disorganized and he often seems unprepared. He struggles with clarity and being able to fully answer students' questions. He often seemed to contradict himself though sometimes his explanations were so confusing I'm not actually sure if he did. Cole's homeworks are difficult, but the exams aren't terribly difficult and he's a pretty fair grader for them.

His midterms are pretty straightforward. He tends to have it out of 30 points. He's a fair grader. He teaches pretty fast and if you don't pay attention, then you sometimes miss a good chunk. Awesome guy though.

Cole is kind of a weird professor. Nice guy, friendly. Can be a little intimidating to have an actual conversation with him if you don't understand something, but he is willing to explain and won't be aggressive or mean about it. However, his teaching style leaves much to be desired. 306 is a very straightforward class, and as such he covered the material that another professor took 9 weeks to cover in just 5 weeks. That meant less homework towards the end of the quarter, but it also meant that he taught us random conceptual things (found out later that they are more relevant to 412 and 483, so he was kind of giving us a head start which was nice). But there was little structure to these lessons, making them hard to follow connect to the rest of the material we had been taught. The fact that Cole covered the primary material in 5 weeks also meant that he rushed - both while writing/teaching but also when assigning homework - and it definitely leaves some students behind because the best time to learn something is while it's being taught, not in week 10 trying to catch up because he went too fast earlier. I firmly believe he is too smart to explain things to students, even at upper-division undergraduate level, because he consistently failed to realize that he hadn't provided us with the information needed to be successful in a certain type of problem. We would have to figure out what we don't know in order to be able to ask the question, so often we would do things incorrectly, not knowing that we were doing it wrong. (It doesn't help that there isn't a good textbook/book for this material out there). So, if you have Cole for 306, be ready to move quickly in lecture and in 353 (lab). Be ready for curveballs and varying grading on exams - on some tests he will be merciless with the point deductions, and on others he will be nicer, but you can't know what to expect. He doesn't give quizzes. The homework will take quite a while in the beginning and middle of the quarter but will be better at the end - be sure to pay attention to detail, especially with the large matrices! Cole's finals are always difficult, so prepare well. He is no nightmare like some in the ARCE department, but you gotta be on your toes. Good luck!

Sick ass teacher. Cole is the man. Tests are based on homework and he gives you a snapshot of what will be on the test before hand (no curveballs)

Cole is one of my favorite teachers in the department. He is supper knowledgeable especially concerning the topics of this class. This class is a little different from the rest of the classes in the structural analysis series. There is a lot less math in this class with about 50% of the class being about understanding topics and 50% about know how to do nodal analysis, dynamics analysis and then pushover analysis. I found the topics talking about the development of earthquake analysis extremely interesting. Cole taught it really well and was also supper great about answering my questions. He once went completely off his notes to teach the class based of a question i asked. Made the lecture supper engaging. Will admit some students didn't care so much for these off the cuff lectures, but I really enjoyed them. Would definitely recommend taking Cole.

i've had him too many times by now, so i'm used to his teaching. he covers material pretty quickly. he also doesn't really tell you what he wants on a lab/hw assignment but assumes you're going to put it so his grader marks us off on a lot of points if we miss something. He's super chill and helpful in office hours! 483 is his shit since he does a lot of EQ shaking. Cole loves his conceptual questions. Always 2 midterms out of 30 points with the first exam having a lot of conceptuals. know your conceptuals. Cole in two sentences: He wants you to know understand the process of how you get an answer via explanations. He loves deflected shapes/bending moment diagrams.

he sure does like his women, wet!!