Wallen, Patrick  

Wallen is amazing!!! Best professor ever. Hands down. Everyone shows up to class even if it's on a Friday at 4PM before a 3-day weekend because it's just that enjoyable. His handwriting on the board is a thing of beauty, his lectures are clear and relevant, and he keeps it entertaining without going off on tangents. He was very good at limiting questions by one student who raised his hand all the time, which kept the class from being annoying in that regard. Wallen's midterms are extraordinarily fair and relate perfectly to the lecture and homework content with no typos or errors within. Lastly, his syllabus is super clear and organized; I always know exactly what homework is due and when it is due. This class rocks!!! Now if you have read this whole post, I would now like to say that I have been LYING this whole time. Everything about that class was awful. Worst class imaginable. Everything is the exact opposite of what I just said. (That person who raises his hand all the time has asked a total of 135 questions at this point in the quarter; I have been keeping tally because it keeps me busy.)

I have had a fair share of bad professors at Cal Poly but this man tops them all. If you are thinking about taking him, wait a quarter; no words describe his incompetence . BTW I am an ME with a 3.5!

Wallen is straight up the worst professor I've ever had. His handwriting is illegible and he talks into the board but that doesn't matter anyway since he has no idea how to teach or control a class. I actually think I lost knowledge about circuits by taking his class. He didn't have a correct syllabus the entire quarter. His tests are riddled with errors and ask questions he never taught and never assigned as homework. The second midterm was so bad that as presented it was impossible to get above a 65. Do not take him is you care about your grades or your education.

WOW. WORST PROFESSOR I HAV EVER HAD IN MY ENTIRE FUCKING LIFE. This guy cannot teach anything for his life. He is an embarrassment to our school. Like everyone else said, his tests are nothing like anything presented to us in the past. Everyone failed the tests and I am not even sure if they will be curved. What a total joke. NEVER TAKE THIS GUY, he needs to get fired.

So so bad... I ended up with an A but I would not have been surprised if I ended up with a C just because the whole class is so poorly organized and structured that I don't think anyone really knew what grade they had at any point.. I consider myself a person who at least can take away something, as far as learning, from any type of teaching style, but then I had Wallen. Literally learned the whole class of YouTube or through the lab problems.. It's odd though because Wallen is a very smart guy... my opinion is he's just too over qualified for teaching this class and he just hasn't seen this introductory stuff until he took the classes ages ago. He's a sweet ol guy though and looks like the grandpa from UP... So I guess that's kinda cool...

So here I am again. I was the one who made the very first post about Wallen and gave him a 4.0 on Polyratings. If you read to the end of my post, you will realize that I was joking the whole time. I'm making this post to inform you all that the one student finished the quarter asking 169 questions. Amazing. Truly amazing. I spent all class every day laughing because of how hilarious the professor and that student were. Some classes are said to be jokes; this one was truly a joke. I don't believe anyone has mentioned the final exam yet: I got a 35% on the final (which is worth 40% of the overall grade), failed both midterms which combine for another 40% of my grade, and wound up with a B in the class. Everyone did THAT poorly on the exams. (By the way, they were mostly multiple choice). I did not understand any questions on that final. I consider myself lucky to have gotten as high as a 35%. This class gave me memories for a lifetime.

Horrible professor. His lectures were mumbled gibberish. His tests were nothing like the material he said they would cover. He didn't understand questions, and couldn't answer any that he did manage to understand. His phone went off (Ah ah ah ah stayin alive, stayin alive) at 4:45 every day. I got a 55% on the final and got an A in the class. How the fuck does that happen?? He should have a 0.00 but my friend thought it would be funny to post a sarcastic review giving him a 4.00.

I had Professor Wallen a year ago. Wow. All of these reviews are spot on. Every time I need to analyze a circuit now, or every time we do something EE related, I cannot help in any way because I lost all knowledge of EE when I took Wallen's class. My score on the MULTIPLE CHOICE final exam (which was worth 40% of the overall grade) was around a 45%, yet somehow I got a B in the class... I actually recommend taking his class just for pure entertainment purposes. If you actually need to learn the stuff, then that sucks for you.

Where to even begin.. All of the previous reviews were dead on, yet way too generous with their overall rating. He has ZERO ability to teach. His lectures are all copied material from other universities and his homework assignments are from other Poly professors. His attempt at teaching was covering the SAME problem the entire 10 weeks - and at the end of the 10 weeks no one had any clue how to do the problem yet. It's mind boggling how terrible he is. How did he get through the interview? How did Cal Poly not research this guy even an ounce to learn he's worthless? Oh and when the DEPARTMENT CHAIR comes to teach for a day because you're that terrible at life, it's time to give up teaching. Unfortunately the department did not listen to the students when almost EVERY student complained, and half of the class dropped out and the remaining 5 students or so actually showed up for class.... He's still teaching the ME courses. The class literally became a joke and people asked ridiculous questions just for the humor. Be warned, you will learn nothing, and you will suffer the rest of your academic career if you actually have to use any of the material later on. To the fellow EE335 students who braved the circus together, see you all in EE402 when we all get our buttocks handed to us on a shiny silver platter courtesy of Arakaki.

Professor Wallen seems to really want to make an impact and prepare us for our careers, which is respectable, but he fails horribly at that. Everything was written illegibly and– a good chunk of the time– flat out incorrectly. I stopped trusting anything that was written on the board about half way through the quarter. Example problems were done incompletely and with many errors. Lectures were completely disorganized and went way, way too slow. He would often fumble with technology or the book for a long time and then not even teach us anything productive. Expectations for the tests were often NOT conveyed accurately (this was consensus among a strong majority of the class). 95% of what I learned came from other students or the internet. Any time someone asked a question during class, he would not understand or his answer would not answer the question in any way. I believe that the department hired him because he has great accomplishments in the industrial electronics field, and it's unfortunate because he seems to really care, but he is without a doubt the most ineffective professor I've had.

Patrick Wallen is the single worst professor I've ever had...period. I've had bad professors, and then really bad professors, but Wallen stands out in a class of his own. All in all, he is a fairly nice guy, but his teaching is more than atrocious. The department chair had to guest teach a class because students were complaining so much. At the end of it, all I got from the chair was basically an apology for how bad Wallen was. I can't even describe how bad his lectures were; the times I attended, my mouth was open in astonishment, thinking "is this real, or am I dreaming?". The entire course I don't think he completed a single problem correctly on the board (I'm serious). Many times he would just go on tangents about things completely unrelated to the course material. Students would actually beg him to start actually working out problems. When he finally lectured on topic, he would start a problem nervously, then not even complete it, leaving students completely confused and even angry. Students would openly challenge him on a daily basis, and he would just shrink back giving non-answers. The result was apathy and extremely low attendance. On two occasions he even gave extra credit to those who simply showed up to class. Words can't explain how bad his lectures are. You simply must experience it for yourself, which I HIGHLY discourage. How can the EE department, in good conscience, retain this man as a professor??? I gave him an 'F' on everything, but I would have given him a 'Z' if that were an option. I hope I got my point across with that last sentence.

The previous review pretty much sums up the issue. I feel like having Professor Wallen continue to teach in the department shows a much deeper underlying issue with the department. Firstly, no one really wants to teach because all the professors get paid shit (for a California wage). Hence the turnover rate is high for most professors and the department gets desperate for lecturers. Then they hire part timers who have ZERO teaching experience to teach the MOST IMPORTANT EE CLASSES IN THE WHOLE CURRICULUM, because logic, right? Wallen was by far the worst. You could skip a week of class, come back, and not miss a thing. It was the worst. Thankfully, because our class complained so much to Derrickson, he's now only teaching labs, which in all honesty, are pretty freaking easy with Wallen.

Patrick Wallen seemed to have a difficult time understanding the questions I asked him and an even more difficult time answering them when I went to office hours. As the quarter went on, I started going to Gary Perks (my lecturer) for help on the pre-labs. It took Wallen four weeks to return our very first lab which is a long time to get feedback on how we're doing. Fortunately, he had very generous grading system for the lab. I'd say that this generous grading system is a good enough reason to take him for lab but I couldn't imagine how it would be to have him as a lecturer.