Kopecky, Alexandria  

I took AP Physics in high school and didn't pass the AP exam, so I thought taking Intro to Physics would be an easy A for me so I could get the GE out of the way. Unfortunately, I was wrong. The class was really hard, not because the material was difficult, but because Kopecky couldn't clearly explain the it. I had already learned all the material the year before, but when she explained it, it didn't make sense anymore. People would ask questions and she would second-guess herself, or not know the answer. If you have not taken Physics before, do not take Kopecky. If you have, then be sure to have your notes from last year.

She's really young. I took the most basic physics class, no math involved. Lecture could be confusing and mostly i didnt go. She collects and graded homework for credit. There were online quizzes for the reading and 2 midterms, a final and a term paper. Final was cumulative. She's not a great lecturer and sometimes gets confused or spends way to long explaining a problem and confuses the class. I went to her office hours a few times and she was much more helpful then. She's a really nice lady and I learned a lot more from office hours than in class.

People below gave very fair representations of her. There's no doubt that she struggles with lecturing. And this in addition to daily homework and quizzes can be extremely frustrating. However, by the end of the quarter you start to realize that the daily assignments forced you to keep pace with the material and reduced how much studying was necessary.

Had Kopecky for both Physics 141 and 132 classes. It was a joy watching her improve so much over the course of one quarter. Seeing as she works as a particle physicist on her free time, it makes a lot of sense why she wasn't all that great at teaching Mechanics (still inexcusable, but whatever). However her special background definitely played a positive role in 132. As for the class: Mastering Physics is sometimes a pain, but you get an entire week to finish an assignment, plus she is HUGE help when you need it!... (and Google is always your friend; Chegg hates kids). Kopecky as a lab professor is great because she always made it crystal clear what she expected in reports, is very fair with partial credit, and does a good job reexplaining concepts you might've missed in recitation. I felt that she was always comfortable with the topics in 132 (whereas opposed to 141, when she'd stumble over problems on the daily) and overall did a great job conveying the material timely, clearly and concisely. And on top of all this, her grading scheme (1/2 points given back for handing in midterm corrections) makes it impossible to do bad in her class. Going way back in reviews, other students projected that she'd get better as she gets more quarters under her belt; they were right. I'd definitely recommend her.

She speaks in a very low voice that you can only hear if you're sitting in the front of hhe class. She is very unclear when explaning things and seriously needs an atittude adjustment.I had previously taken a class similar to this so I was able to make out what she said by myself. Other kids however were unlucky and asked many questions she couldn't even answer.

She's so bad

Considering some of the other teachers I've had from the Cal Poly Physics Department, Professor Kopecky isn't actually bad at all. She's obviously a new teacher at the school, and I think she might even be new to teaching entirely. That being said, she did a pretty decent job for her first time teaching a course that has a lot of complex material to cover in a relatively short amount of time. In lecture she simply follows a set of slides likely used by all of the physics professors for this course, and she encourages students working out sample problems in class with each other. I think this was a good idea, but in practice it didn't really help too much with doing the homework. Her explanations in class when answering questions or clarifying an important point about a topic can be vague and hard to follow, but it's not like she isn't trying or doesn't know what she's talking about. In office hours she will gladly go in detail about anything you want help with and is very helpful. Kopecky is also great for labs since I'm pretty sure she shortened the labs the rest of the department uses for the course, so everyone always got to leave at least an hour earlier than usual. In conclusion, Professor Kopecky is a decent professor who you should give a shot if you don't have a chance at snagging one of the professors with a decent rating/reputation; she may be a new professor, but I think after a few quarters of experience she'll be a lot better. Another thing to note is that she doesn't do +/-'s for grades; according to PolyLearn I should have had a B+ but when submitting grades was just given a B.

I thought Kopecky was actually a good physics professor. Reading the other reviews I can see why some people might think she wasn't a good lecturer but since she's new to teaching as we got further in the quarter I thought she was getting better and making less mistakes. She's great help in office hours too and she's really nice and actually tries to help. Compared to other physics teachers from poly I've heard about or taken, she's actually above average. Physics is a tough subject to learn, and probably even tougher to teach, and Kopecky did an above decent job for her first quarter.

I don't see where all these negative reviews are coming from. She definitely knows her physics, someone mentioned on here that she worked at CERN, so I looked it up and it appears as though she did, and wrote quite a lot of articles about it. I have her for just the lab section of 133 and she is fantastic at explaining things. Unfortunately I sit in the back, so sometimes its a little hard to hear her and her voice isn't very loud. But her explanations are very clear and easy to follow. IMHO, she seems to explain things more clearly than Coroneus does, and he is a good professor (his polyrating speaks to that). Don't be afraid to take her class, there are far worse professors in the physics department. Dr. Kopecky deserves a much higher polyrating. In my physics experience here at poly, she is definitely on the upper side of professors. Also, if what she says goes right over your head, just ask and she'll explain it again.

She is dedicated to her students and her work, and you can definitely tell how much she tries. She had extended office hours and was available pretty much any time to respond to student questions/concerns, which is super important for a tough class like physics.

Kopecky is one of the best profs I've ever had, hands down, and anyone who says otherwise kinda phy-sucks. I don't know what the bitterballs below are talking about, but i'm guessing that they were just ridiculously lazy and never bothered to actualy do the reading or the homework. She always took the time to explain things really clearly and asked us if we ever had questions. i like how she was really smart but never rubbed it in our faces. she was soooo nice and it was clear really soon after i started this class that she loves to teach and she wants us all to succeed. As for the turds below who complained about kopecky, The only thing i can think of is that they were angry they weren't getting an A for doing nothing. She makes material accessible and always took the time to explain the topics in a clear and understandable way. She is way smart and realllllly sweet. She obviously loves teaching and is a great teacher! Anyone who took 30 seconds to send her an email knows just how accommodating she is and how easy it was to ask her for help. She would go out of her way to find a way to help, meeting during office hours or even non office hours. Anyone who says they learned more about physics from Yahoo or Smash Bros. should be roundly ignored, as they were obviously going to waste their time rather than expand their minds anyway.

She gives lectures equivalent to the difficulty of a basic high school physics class, yet assigns impossible homework problems that aren't explained by herself nor the book... She pretty much sends you downstream without a paddle. If you have her, get ready to teach yourself ALL of the material, because she will not actually teach you anything necessary for homework or tests. Homework is due every week online and a lot of the assigned problems are so void of variables and numbers that you will spend hours trying various approaches to each problem and earn no points after answering the problem wrong too many times. She seems to be a new professor, and I'll give her some slack because of that, but she needs to improve her methods of teaching. If she spent more time teaching how to solve physics problems than teaching basic theory, then her class MIGHT be SOMEWHAT better.

She was soooooooo bad. All of our lectures consisted of asking her questions over our impossible homework that she can't explain or understand. I reiterate: She was soooooooooo bad.

She's not as bad as the reviews below would have you believe. She is new to teaching and therefore will get sidetracked sometimes in lecture. Her lectures are mostly example problems and questions she makes up. However, if you ask her about the homework, she will set up the problem in class and help you get started in it. Her homework is on Mastering Physics and can be difficult and her exams are on par with the homework. She gives take home quizzes, which are easy. Shes really nice, helpful, and willing to take any questions. Overall, shes an above average teacher and I would take her again.

Having taken only regular physics freshman year of highschool, the professor was in no way helpful. Lecture consisted of her giving us an equation and then asking the class how to apply it to a problem most had never seen before (unless you took AP physics). Generally, there would be a long period of silence because no one was quite sure how to go about it, since we were literally just introduced to the concept. I think a possible improvement to her lectures could have been to have anyone put an example on the board and then immediately write out how to solve it from the solutions manual. Kopecky specialized in particle physics ... not sure why she is teaching Newtonian physics. Looking back on the quarter, I probably should have skipped class and just self-studied or crashed another teacher's lectures. I would recommend not taking Kopecky until she has a few more years under her belt and has solidified a lecture style more suited to a lower level physics class at poly.

Pros: She's a nice Lady Cons: She is possibly the worst teacher at Cal Poly when it comes to actually teaching. She'll give us a problem on the board that we haven't even learned how to solve yet, and immediately ask us what the next step is. After a long minute pause she will try to give us hints that still do not help us at all. She'll take a whole 50 minutes to solve one problem, yet no one still knows how to do it. By the 3rd week of the quarter, less than half the class showed up because her lectures were that bad. The problems she gives on the midterms and final are so ridiculously hard that no matter how much you think you know the course material, you will fail miserably. I 100% recommend you take someone else if you want to actually learn Physics and do well on the tests.

Okay, seriously people? She's not that bad. She's a nice lady who's very willing to help if you ask for it. Sure, she can be really confusing sometimes and sure her lectures aren't the best, but her midterms and final were all very reasonable (not to mention, easy-medium difficulty level). This is coming from someone who's never taken Physics before. However, I do have to admit that the hand-in assignments she gave us were not useful and somewhat difficult to finish. As the quarter went on, her teaching improved noticeably, and actually got very impressive and skilled for the last few weeks. For a particle physicist working at CERN, I think she did a pretty decent job teaching Mechanics. Give her some time and she'll be a great professor. For the crap of a physics department we have here at Poly, Kopecky is nowhere near the worst you'll see. She's actually an average professor, if not a bit above average. And if you insist that she is, well, godspeed to you and the rest of your time here.

You will learn more about Physics playing Super Smash Bros. for an hour than you will going to one of her lectures.

the post below me made me laugh til I realized it was true. She spent more time relaying incorrect calculations (Like multiplication errors that she did on her own time) and fixing her drawings than she did teaching relevant information. Yahoo answers taught me more about my homework than she did

She is a very nice professor and she does TRY to show you what shes saying, but it is very tough to learn from her unless you have physics experience. The lectures weren't thorough and majority of the time you ended up teaching yourself physics.

Rocking points: - super laid back - very responsive to emails and accommodating to meet to go over stuff around my schedule - she's got a cool background in particle physics, she'll talk about it if you ask - grading seemed fair - homework is not my favorite but it forced me to keep pace with the course so i didn't have to cram right before the final I wish I'd known: - sit in the front row for best sound quality - you will work, but you will also learn a lot I felt kinda bad looking at some of the other reviews. Until I read the one about the person who failed the AP physics exam, yet expected class to be an "easy A". Why would a college course possibly be EASIER than the material you failed to master in high school?! You didn't know it then, obviously you have to put some work in to LEARN it now. Anyway, I would say that this class was more challenging than some other intro science courses, but physics has always been more challenging for me, I think it's the nature of the beast.

Business majors: A degree for the intellectually impaired, HA HA.