MacCarley, Arthur  

CPE 100 is a worthless course. I can somewhat understand confused freshmen coming into this course not knowing fully what a Computer Engineer does, but as a transfer student this was the biggest waste of my time. If you don't want to go to class, get a friend to sign you off.

Well, EE 111 is a fairly useless class to begin with, so i'll try and be fair to MacCarley. He relies heavily on the online blackboard. Be sure to check it every week. (I didn't and thats why I have a C). He posts Hwk assignments without announcing them. His TA graded them very harshly. Most people got 2/3 or 1/3 on the assignments, which are a good portion of your grade. The final was fairly easy.

This was probably the most pointless class of my entire life. I don't even know how I got a B. I should have gotten an A. I think it was because when he collected homework he would have us pass it to the sides and when he returned it he would pass it around the 250 people in the lecture. 3/5 times I didnt even get my essays back which were graded by a TA who probably didnt even know what was going on. Intro to electrical engineering is a dumb class, half the quarter we learned stuff that wasnt even related to engineering.

Don\'t be fooled. EE 111 is a pointless class in which you will learn little if anything about electrical engineering. It is more an \"Intro to College\" class with information that most people have already heard multiple times in SOAR, WOW Week, etc, etc. I\'m not the type of student that usually says this, but the homework was useless and boring. Some may say \"the structure of the class shouldn\'t be blamed on the instructor.\" Well, it should be when he created the course and is in a position to change it yet doesn\'t even though by the end of the quarter only about 20% of the people taking the class showed up to the lecture.

ee111 is a pointless class, its hard to say weather hes a good teacher or not because you literally do not learn a thing in the class.

MacCarley is a really smart guy who thinks that everyone should be as smart as him. Im a second year but I switched to EE and it seemed to me like he was way technical for the first EE lab. The labs were easy and he grades well. Overall not a bad dude

Let me be 100% honest here: this was the very first time this professor was teaching the intro to EE lab (EE151) and he is normally used to teaching upper division/grad students. For an intro class, he made his lectures wayyyyy too technical for our understanding, but the labs themselves were fun. MacCarley is a very lenient and fair grader, and on top of that, he lets us skip certain sections of a lab if he feels like it. Take this class with him for just the "doing" experience, but his lectures will do you no good.

I had Professor MacCarley for EE 151, which is the lab portion to the first introductory course to Electrical Engineering. He spent the first hour of the lab explaining the experiment, the equipment we will be using, how to use the equipment, etc. The problem was, not all of this lecture time was necessary. I think the key reason he lectured so much is because he was not sure what we were learning in EE 111 (the lecture section of this course, taught by another professor) so he tried to cover a lot more than I think should have been covered. Like the previous evaluator, a lot of the information he presents is very technical. But you should pay attention when he demonstrates how to set up the experiment and how to use the equipment (which isn't the easiest to use). In the lab, he's very helpful. The weekly labs dive right into the material. There is no "getting your feet wet" assignment, the labs assume that you have basic knowledge of circuits. The lab instructions are not always very clear, so asking Professor MacCarley for assistance was almost necessary to complete the assignment. MacCarley helps you in a very efficient manner, first by kind of giving you a hint, but if you're still struggling, he'll pretty much guide you through it. Another good thing about the labs is that if you finish early, you can leave whenever you want. He's a very fair and lenient grader and a nice guy. I learned a fair amount of information in 151, but a lot of the material seemed over my head. But I do not fault the professor for this, as some of my friends who had other professors shared the same views. He also, as the previous evaluator mentioned, skips some sections of the lab that other classes may have to complete. I'd recommend taking MacCarley for EE 151.

take maccarley .. the lab is very technical but he tries not to make it too bad. his grading is very fair

He's a lot easier than the other EE151 professors, or so I've heard. Unlike Arakaki, it's not beyond him to cut out half of the lab or so. He was only there for like half of the class meetings so we had subs all the time. Not a hard class with him teaching it so dont sweat it. Oh, his final's a beotch but he must grade it pretty leniently since I still got an A.

This guy was smart. The lab was two or three hours long, he spent the first hour or so going over the theory behind whatever lab we were doing at length. The labs were pretty simple for the most part, and if you needed help you could always just ask him or anyone else around you. By the end of the lab period he would pretty much walk you through the lab if you hadn't finished it. The lab reports were cake also, he graded the first two for my class and the rest he didn't grade on time so he graded in such a hurry at the end of the quarter that the grades were all fantastic because he didn't check anything thoroughly. His final was just a demo of using the stuff we used in lab, like the oscilloscope and the function generator and building a simple circuit. Easy class, nice intro, good teacher.

This guy has a very condescending attitude. He speaks in a very low, soft voice. Several students asked him to speak up, but he just looked at them and kept on speaking softly. Also, if you asked a question and it was minutely wrong, he had a tendency to make you feel stupid. I doubt he did it on purpose, but it happened nonetheless. Let's just say that while Dr. MacCarley may have excelled in academics while in college, he failed miserably at learning people skills. Having said that, the man does know his microcontrollers.

Cal Poly must-not have!

It's been a long time since I took CPE 336 (Winter 2002), even though I didn't get a great gade in the class I thought Dr. Maccarley deserved a good word because he's been a wonderful advisor throughout my undergraduate and graduate career. He has high expectations, but he's always willing to answer questions in his office hours and he definitely knows his stuff.

This is me going into my final and I have not been graded yet. MacCarley failed me as a lecture teacher. Supposedly he has taught 409 a long time ago but it doesn't seem like he knows it. Comparison: Prodanov has a set of 25 Lecture videos he covers throughout the quarter. At most MacCarley covered the first 10 videos (the last thing we covered was Buck and Boost converters). Additionally the way he presents materials is bad. He scrolls through his power point presentations and glosses over everything. To make things short, don't take this guy, take Prodanov. If you have to take this guy, get Prodanov's notes and video lectures. Good luck.

This man exhibited so much self-loathing that we as students could not help but join in. He enters the class room looking like he's in pain (which sucks if he is), and rambles on inefficiently with slides that often contain issues and are barely relevant to the course. He has big shoes to fill but is FAR too honest about his inadequacies to be seen as a good professor. Fuck'im

fuck this stupid piece of shit professor

I will tell you upfront, MacCarley is NOT an easy teacher that will settle for partial knowledge of a subject. He will test your comprehension and make sure that you know the material for a good grade in the class. Many people don't like this approach to teaching but I can tell you for a fact that I learned more from this teacher than I have learned from almost any other teacher. He expects a lot and if you go into his class with this mindset, and work your butt off you will get a good grade. I have had him for 302 and 432 and will be taking a graduate level class from him in the fall. I highly recommend this teacher if you want to become a better engineer

MacCarley is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, he does care about his students and the topic of controls. On the other hand, however, his lectures can be very boring as he typically simply followed through his notes (which are all online) for the entire hour. Homework was due every Monday at the start of class, then the rest of the lecture he would go over it, even if no one had any questions about it; this was almost always a waste of time. The homework was typically quite difficult and it was rare to see someone get 100% on one. There was one midterm and one final. These were challenging but fair. At times it may seem like you're not doing well in his class but there was a significant curve at the end to insure a fair distribution of grades. The high score on the first exam was an 80%, and the average was only 17/40 if I recall correctly. The topic itself is somewhat interesting (if you enjoy controls, that is) and the lab helps tie the material together. Although I said his lectures can drag on at times, I DID learn the material well. He definitely gave me better insight into classical control systems. All in all, if you're interested in controls, then his classes are worth taking.

The labs were really instructive and helped to clarify many concepts which were still fuzzy from EE-302. The lab manual was very well written, and he wrote a very helpful preliminary guide, which gave some background for the lab. Unfortunately, MacCarley was just ridiculously picky - just unacceptably picky about the lab reports. The most absolutely trivial of errors earned 10% off of the lab report grade. No matter how much time my group invested in the lab reports, we always got badly knocked for something stupid. The Lecture was good - very mathematical, arguably a touch too detailed, but overall good. He talked a lot about practical considerations when implementing control systems, and he never glazed over anything. Also, if anything didn't make sense in lecture, he posted his very detailed lecture notes online for you to review as necessary. The first exam was about right in terms of difficulty, but the material on the final was easily twice as difficult as anything that was touched on in either homework, lecture, or lab. Overall - very good class. Take 432 if you are interested in controls.

I really want to like this guy as a teacher. He's very smart, a master of the material, and passionate about teaching. He's extremely handy in office hours and lab because he can really convey the lessons of his vast practical experience when he's not bound by time limitations. But as a lecture teacher, he did not impress me. Instead of writing things on the board or taking notes on his computer, Dr. MacCarley more or less scrolled through his lecture notes and talked about general aspects of the material we were trying to cover. The problem with his lecture style is very similar to a trap I fall into when studying for exams in general: I catch myself only reading through the notes but not actually executing any examples, and as a result I suffer. This lecture was the same way: MacCarley told us what to do, but his ability to SHOW us what to do was poor. The result was a very disengaging lecture that really made it hard to learn the material. It didn't help that his overly bulky lecture notes were populated with errors and he didn't so much as post homework for the last two topics we were expected to know for the final. Dr. MacCarley really would be a good professor if he would take a more organized and engaging approach to his lecture, because he's excellent in lab. I feel bad rating such a nice guy so poorly, but if I didn't, I wouldn't be being honest.

I have a suggestion - if you want to take a class, and it is taught by MacCarley, don't. Cliff notes explanation: you will undertake an insurmountable amount of self study, and the reference material won't get you very far. Here's an extended laundry list why. 1. There is no syllabus. This is not in itself a bad thing, except that it foreshadows the class as a whole - obscure. He suggests reading the material prior to class to aid in following lecture, but gives no indication of what material exactly is to be read, and when. Where should I turn to in the book for further explanation (not that it would help anyway, see item 5)? I am left to flip through pages to intuit what is relevant. 2. 75% of the grade was the final. And 25% was the midterm. This kind of structure is simply not helpful for the majority of students who are trying to learn material. He mentioned "Consider the midterm a practice for the final." This should be the role of homework - practicing the material without such a hefty penalty for mistakes, and provides a little buffer for a botched test. 3. What is the grading policy? It is not mentioned. I heard that a 75% is an A, plus there is a significant curve. I believe it to be true - I got a flat 70% on the midterm and I know I bombed the final yet still eked out a B. I should have failed if a normal grading scheme had been utilized. If a 75% is considered to be a good grade, and most "average" students will be well below that, I conclude that MacCarley simply is not teaching the material well, and therefore has to adjust the grading scale to make up for it. 4. His lecture is not particularly enlightening. Actually, they are actually not even helpful. I believe the reason why is threefold. i) A general lack of ability to teach the material to those who don't already know it. ii) He peppers his speech with "I won't bore you with the details", "you already know how to do this", "this is easy and/or obvious," "I am going to skip over this unless someone needs clarification" etc. He is biasing his statements such that any student who has a question is implied to be stupid. I am not saying he is doing it intentionally or out of malice, but it definitely degrades the learning environment. iii) A student who is willing to admit stupidity won't get his/her questioned answered anyway. Yes, MacCarley answers the question; no, the student still has no clue what is going on because we come full circle to item i) 5. The book is worthless. The lecture notes are worthless. Attending class is worthless. I spent hours going back and forth between the notes and the book, trying to connect the dots. Nothing is explained well. I could do the same thing without paying a thousand dollars in tuition, and instead buy a book that actually has a good reputation on Amazon. Maybe I'm dense - but I got a B right? 6. He is not present. During lab he would take lengthy personal calls and leave for extended periods of time. One time he returned back with what appeared to be a bag of groceries. Which was comical, but not pedagogically instructive. He would pay more attention to his computer than interact with the students. For the lab final, he only appeared at the end to say "times up" and collect the papers; for the lecture final he bailed entirely and the TA proctored the exam. This provides me with the impression he is not very invested in the class. 7. No tact When one group was demoing their final project, with the whole class watching, MacCarley matter-of-factly proclaimed "you're algorithm has the sophistication of a toilet flusher." I don't think the team appreciated the comment, considering the amount of effort this class requires. In my opinion, a more appropriate response would have been to take a more inquisitive look into what the team was trying to accomplish and provide constructive criticism and productive feedback. Last comments: As an elective, I freely chose this class. I have high interests in control systems, and digital control systems in particular. I had high hopes in learning some valuable things here, but unfortunately I got next to nothing out of it. This class was nearly an entire waste of time - I am confident that with the right book I could have learned more on my own. So, for these reasons, even if you are extremely interested in EE432 like I was, I strongly suggest taking a different class.

This was supposed to be a class about alternative energy vehicles. We're half way through the class now, took his bullshit midterm, working on his bullshit project. I've learned about 5 different types of fuels and how an engine works. About 2 days of material... over 7 weeks Notes on MacCarley - doesn't review lecture slides before class - bumbles away about 20% of every class on bullshit in his life we dont give a shit about - doesnt prepare you or give you any indication of what will be on a test Straight up, he's knowledgable about the subject but I haven't seen a teacher who gives as few fucks since middle school. Maybe its because he's too busy as department head? Either way. This dude is not a teacher. He's a researcher. expect to be doing a lot of research yourself because dis mothafucka doesnt teach

Professor MacCarley was a passionate, well-prepared, very knowledgeable, and kind professor. Before I took this course, I read his PolyRating and was really nervous. I honestly don't understand why he has such a rough score on here. He was so nice and the course was very straightforward. If you are looking at the rest of the ratings and are worried about taking him, I would encourage you to take him. Especially if it is a tech elective!

MacCarley's biggest problem with teaching is that he blatantly ignores students who are struggling and is very much focused on the more advacnced students. He is great in his office hour; if you have him go to his office hours ( when he shows for them ) and he will breaks things down to your level. But the lecture was always over the class's head aside from like 3 students - it was insulting. His focus is not on classes. I think he does research and he owns his own business: he seems more interested in both of those entities than his class. For the last 3 weeks of our class he was rarely around for questions or lecture -we had sub's. I think if he was more interested in the dynamics of the class, he would be an outstanding teacher. He very much knows the material!

This guy is such a dick, I will never take another class with him again!

This was the final required lab for EE and was a large amount of work. It did not help that this professor has no ability to be clear on what he expects and is also useless in office hours. He decided to change the lab which is basically a quarter long project and this really screwed the class. In the past it had been a different project so being that this was the first quarter trying it, there were way too many problems. He even said at the beginning of the quarter that he didn't know if the project would actually work. I'm not a try hard student, in fact, some would say I slack off and have done so for the past 4 years. This class, however, was over 20 hours a week easy which is ridiculous even for EE standards. This project could literally be a senior project with a group of 5 people spread over a year, instead, it was done with 2 people in a quarter. I pray this man has another breakdown and leaves the school for a few years cuz this class is ridiculous when taught by him. I have never disliked a class more than this and I exclusively blame him and his inability to help students, be clear, and actually answer questions. Also, design reviews are a waste of time. Literally, take any other teacher for 449, I don't care who they are or what time it is, take them.

This guy is by far the worst lab instructor I've ever had, and I've had Agbo before. Avoid this lab at all costs. I was one of the unfortunate few to take this lab while Prodanov, the great one, was on sabbatical. During this time, MacCarley decided to create a brand new project that had never been tested, assuming it would all work just fine by the end of the quarter. Just about every week he has a "design review" where he evaluates the work you should have been doing the week leading up to lab; however, he neglects to tell you what should be done until a day or two before. During design review days, you spend the entire 3 hours of lab watching other students present basically the same circuit you've attempted to design, leaving you no time to actually work within the lab period and ask MacCarley for help. My lab partner and I have easily spent 20+ hours out of lab each week trying to catch up to his unreasonable deliverable deadlines and troubleshooting a system that physically cannot work to the specifications required. This is a 1 unit lab...if you get stuck in MacCarley's lab section, switch as quickly as you can.

This professor is by far the worst teacher to take at Cal Poly as an EE. Not because of the material, but his personality. It's pathetic and should be under control. He decided to change Dr. Prodanov's Lab for this course but FAILED. Last quarter only a few groups were able to get something running, but not even fully working. He likes to boast about how knowledgeable he is and picks on students who are struggling. He makes students feel like crap and is not considerate of the amount of stress imposes on these students. I have reported him to the administration, but no actions have been taken in telling this guy to leave the school. He is not a benefit to the Cal Poly community unless they are manipulating him for something else that isn't directed towards the students. I don't understand why this guy came back to Cal Poly, he should have stayed away after his mental breakdown (from what I hear), it seems that he is not over and should get a hold of his life.

Just don't take him, it is horrible. He has no idea how to teach lab. You waste a lot of lab time giving dumb presentations and not actually working on the circuits in lab. So this results in you having to spend countless hours outside of lab trying to get the circuit to work. I doubt he could actually build the circuit to the specs he requires. He also picks favorites so if you are unlucky and get stuck with him be sure to do something within the first few weeks to make him like you. If he like you he will give you a better grade, if not you are screwed the whole quarter. There were times in lab he literally just avoided the the groups he did not like. For a full three hours he would walk around and check in on groups he like, ask them how it is going etc., and just completely ignored the rest of the groups.

this guy is a legend

If you are interested in Solar Energy and willing to put in some work and research of your own, this class is interesting. The lectures at times seem disorganized and repetitive, however if you come in with zero knowledge about how Solar Photovoltaic Systems work you get to learn a lot. Sometimes the professor is unclear about when homework assignments are due. The exams are pretty difficult compared to the lectures and labs. If you do not have a genuine interest in renewables and solar you will not enjoy this class. This class also has a mandatory one day field trip on a Saturday, so be prepared to keep a weekend free for that. Manual labor is also involved including lifting solar panels and being on top of roofs.

Prof cried today.... What a weirdo hahahah get a grip of your life.