Patterson, William  

I dropped off ME 211 early in the quarter. The professor said he had not taught the class in the past 4 years and it showed. He came to class completely unprepared with a know-it-all attitude and his explanations were hard to follow. On the last day of class I went to, he solved problems on the board that led to wrong answers, and told us that he didn't know what was wrong; yet, we should re-do the problems and find out how to do it. How am I suppose to learn something from bad examples? Not even he knows how to solve the material!! Don't take him...

He makes an otherwise difficult class easy to follow. Quite a character as well

This guy could not explain how to turn on a light if his life dependedn on it. He is even worse at explaining the course material. Some examples he started he could not even finish because he did not know how. His only explanation was that he has not taught this course in years. Well maybe there is a reason he has not been teaching this course. I would encourage you to take a different teacher!

Patty cake, is a good teacher and cool guy to talk to. He made a somewhat difficult class easy to understand. If you want to get on his good side talk to him about bikes, he love them.

I thought Patterson was a great professor. The only prof I've ever had where you get actual war stories - he was a helicoter pilot in Vietnam. I found his grading simple and fair. If you do the homework and keep up with class you should do fine. Just do as he says and develope a mantra and you will have no problem with statics or dynamics (I had him for both and got A's). The trick is that these classes are really easy, you just have to not think and you will do the problems correctly.

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

It becomes more and more obvious as the quarter progresses that Mr. Patterson really doesn't have any passion for teaching or desire to see his students learn. Simply put: he doesn't care about ME 326 and he doesn't care about you. The only thing he seems to care about is the bicycle class and a helicopter class he used to teach (he will bore you with stories about them when he should be teaching dynamics). He assigns HW that is worth very few points and gives weekly quzzes worth 25 pts each (they're pretty hard). Every quiz or midterm problem is worth 25 pts but you'll get totally screwed on partial credit. I got 15/25 because I left out a negative sign!!! When I asked him about it he told me,"consider this a learning experience." Halfway thru the quarter most of the class had 0 points. The computer portion of the class is worthless, he encouraged us to "hack" to get a solution and when the 2 people who had used the program (matlab) before got an answer he told them to show everyone how because he didn't know. Then he gives you a 50 pt in class test on it! The only upside is final grading: 50% of points passes, 75% of points is an A. It is a shame because Patterson could be a good teacher if he cared, the few lectures he came prepared to were okay. But when he doesn't understand students questions he will try to make them look dumb. I wouldn't recomend him: you may get a passing grade but you won't learn much.