Westmann, Russell  

Some say he was hard, but Russ is a good teacher, giving out verbatim copies of his lecture notes daily and showing examples similar to homework problems. However, the class is for greenhorn engineers with little experience in industry lingo and shorthand. I could understand or learn much of it quickly, but others stumbled. No surprises on tests, no stupid catch phrases, just good engineering knowledge served thrice weekly.

CE 204 isn't too difficult of a class. I'm not sure just how much he curves, since he sets his scale against all the classes he's had before, but I was surprised by my grade. Two midterms, one final. Pretty standard. Homework daily, collected the week after assigned. This is key since you have time to do well, and it's worth a decent 15%(I believe). He's pretty helpful in office hours, too. Overall, I'd say he's a good teacher. Sit up close since he mumbles slightly. His stories are interesting, too, and good to know that we will be using this stuff.

At the beginning of the quarter Westmann distributes notes he has used for the past couple of years. He uses this as an excuse to bumble through lectures, constantly making mistakes and using incorrect terminology. He does NOT give partial credit on homework or tests. He did not even grade his own exams. I failed this class because my grade in Westmann's lecture. Period. The common final was a breeze compared to the ridiculously specific and irrelevant exam questions given on his two midterms. Unfortunately, passing the final was not enough to convince Westmann to pass me.

Old guy, been teaching since 1960 I think. Seriously knows his stuff, knows problems students will have and can deal with them. Not great for big classes just because he is doesn't have a very loud voice. Boring lectures, but sometimes had interesting stories. He taught at Cal Tech and some other really good places. Good guy.

CE 204 is the hardest course I've taken so far. It's hard to pay attention for the whole 2 hour lecture (about half the class leaves by the 1st hour), and Westmann's voice didn't carry at all because of the enormous, un-amplified room. His grading policy is more fair than Kasper's from what I gather, but Westmann's midterms are tough. Don't get cocky if you do well on the first midterm, and stay on top of homework. It only gets harder! If I had to choose between Kasper and Westmann again, I would still choose Westmann.

Let's just put it this way. The average score for the CE 204 fall 2008 common final was much higher for students who took Dr. Westmann than any other professor. I'm talking an average score that was double digits higher. He isn't the best lecturer on the planet, but I guarantee you that Westmann will prepare you for the common final better than any other professor teaching the course.

DO NOT TAKE WESTMANN UNLESS YOU HAVE TO Wow he is terrible at lecturing. For someone with so much credentials and experience you would expect much better. Let me bullet point everything wrong with his class: -no partial credit on homework, dont even waste your time if you don't understand it completely otherwise you will get a terrible homework grade/ton of wasted time -boring as HELL, wow at first I thought it was going to be an interesting class because he has some morbid stories but that was only the first 2 lectures, I don't recall not becoming drowsy in any lecture afterwards -grades tough as hell on midterms: on midterm 2 my only mistake for one problem was writing down a 2 instead of a 4. How many points does that deduct? 50% of the points for the entire problem (midterm is only 3 problems) -so you did bad on the homework? want to see the solutions? most professors post them online? not this guy, he posts them outside his office and only posts recent ones -homework is ridiculously tedious, 4-6 problems per lecture meeting, 8-12 problems do every week. sounds easy? wait till you see how long the problems are -homework is from different books, he photocopies it for you (no solutions manual use possible) -doesn't refer to anything in the book, only his lecture notes which he suggests you buy (his notes are TERRIBLE, he doesn't even follow them half the time) -his notes are not in chronological order and he doesn't tell you what page he is lecturing, have fun spending 5 minutes in class every day looking for a certain example (which may not even be in his notes) You should get the point by now. I put in 50% of a saturday every weekend and time after the lecture to work on homework as well, so its not that I did not put effort into it, it is simply bad professor + weeder course = very rough time.

The lectures were slow and filled with war stories that had nothing to do with the topic we are on. The midterms usually contained material that wasn't covered in depth during class but the class average was around a 75/100 both times. Homework was graded with no partial credit. I failed the first midterm with a 45/100 and a 75/100 on the second so I spent the whole quarter thinking I was going to fail. The final is 50% of your grade and not written by him. I must have aced it because I got a B. The final was guessing since it was multiple choice. I think this is your only choice of teacher so take him. I got the most out of office hours and a friend who was retaking this class.

Apparently, Westmann worked in industry for a large number of years. This would be a good thing if he knew how to communicate to students (you know, the people who are still LEARNING the stuff). Unfortunately, he never really expanded upon the text, or the notes that he passed out at the beginning of class. Instead, our job as a class was to make sure that he wrote those notes on the board as they appeared in the notes he passed out (he kept score every time we found a mistake). He wants students to be able to do problems that are real world examples, but neglects to teach the basics first. Homework load was decent, tests were ridiculous in length, rarely dealt with material we covered, and when they did, featured material on homework that we hadn't even turned IN yet. I guess he's supposed to be helpful in office hours, but the man's just no good in the classroom. Bottom line: don't ever take this guy.

He's a good guy and makes an effort. He's really good in his office hour. His tests though are a lot harder that the homework he assigns. Also, his mid terms take too long to do. This class should be 3 units.

His test sare a lot harder that what he goes over in class and they are way too long. He thinks because he understands this stuff it will be that obvious to everyone. He's a good guy though and really tries hard. He want his students to do well. If you can wait to take it with someone else, do so.

I rec

I really liked professor Westmann. He is an older professor with a lot of real life experience that makes class more interesting. His tests are straightforeward but tricky. You can tell he really cares about how well his students are learning and puts a lot of the responsibility on himself. He does mumble some, and talks into the board occasionally but he is not too hard to understand. He does not to very many examples, but focuses more on the principals of the methods we learn in class. I would definately recommend him.

Awesome. Admittedly, Westmann mumbles a lot and puts the class to sleep, but he's extremely nice, organized, and helpful. He gives out copies of his lecture notes, which are also very organized and helpful. The first midterm was fairly easy (but I lost so many points because of his harsh grading). The second midterm was rough. However, he did an awesome job of preparing us for the final. The guy knows his crap and used to teach at Cal Tech. Go figure. If you want to learn something, Westmann is the man.

Professor Westmann is a quiet speaker. He always starts the class with, "Alright, can I get everyone's attention." However, his quiet voice does not carry far. He gets insulted if students continue to talk not realizing no ones heard him and perhaps he should speak up. Many times he'll be writing on the board while talking. He does not turn to direct his voice to the students. He continues to speak into the board, therefore drowning out whatever he said. Westmann feels that he is so good that he does not need his notes. He constantly makes mistakes when writing on the board entirely due to his ego, thinking that he can remember it. That being said, what he writes on the board is incomplete most times. He'll start writing something down but then realize he doesn't remember the rest and tells the students that he'll come back to it. Later when he figures out what was missing, he interject the current topic and insert the missing pieces. In addition to his terrible memory, his notes he recommends you purchase is not worth it. They'll actually waste your time during lecture. They are so poorly organized and out of order from what he teaches in lecture, you'll miss a lot of what he's saying. There are fragments of each topic all over the place it's impossible to find anything. He is a harsh grader on his midterms. In addition, there is usually three problems total. Harsh grading plus minimal problems equals low class averages. In general, the new final exam format is absurd. Before the exam (20 multiple choice questions) began, we were all informed that no partial credit would be given. This exam had choices A-V for most problems including "none of the above." However, we were then informed that no credit would be given if there was no work on the page to support your answer. I felt this was extremely unfair on the CE departments part. Students will not get partial credit, but they wont get credit at all if no work is show? That seems unfair to me if they are insisting on a multiple choice exam format. Overall, Westmann sucks and the CE department can go to hell.

Review below nailed it. Westmann is simply sub par at presenting the course material. This class was also the first time I have really had a problem with the teacher speaking softly AND into the board. Made it very difficult to understand what he was being said. However, maybe this wasn't such a bad thing, because when I actually could understand him it was quite underwhelming. We reviewed CE 204 for the first two weeks and if I didn't have a firm grasp on the material beforehand then I would have been completely lost in Westmann's convoluted and disorganized explanations. The sad thing is, CE 207 is really a plug-and-chug joke class once you sit down and look at the material on your own. His exams are difficult, but only because each problem has a small trick to figure out. Once you figure out the trick, you're golden. If you don't, you're screwed. Also, although it is not Westmann's fault, the CE 207 final was absolutely ridiculous. Multiple choice format with 20+ answers for each question (including none of the above, problem cannot be solved, etc.) and NO partial credit. On top of that, the exam was 20 questions long; questions that we were told would be shorter due to the sheer number of them but were not. The Civil Engineering department needs to get their stuff together. If the M.E. department has minimal issues with the Statics & Dynamics finals, I don't see why the C.E. department doesn't follow suit with a similar format for their 204 & 207 finals.

Took him for both 204 and 207. Westmann is a great teacher. He always has stories about his experiences in the industry and relates it back to the class. You can purchase his class notes(which helps a lot) so you dont need to write down notes in class. Midterms are reasonable and he always gives practice midterms ahead of time. One drawback is that he assigns random problems from other books, so if you are one of those people that need solution manuals for your classes, you may be out of luck. He is really helpful during office hours and he does care about his students.

Westmann is a great guy, very smart, BUT his technology dates back before computers. The class should have been an easy to learn 1 hr Matlab session. Instead Westmann dragged out every lab to the full 3 hours and I still didn't learn anything. On top of the lab were two weekly hw assignments that regularly took 5+ hours. Learn from my mistake and take someone else.

Expected this course to be hard, but it was nothing like it. Westmann prints and hands out all his lecture notes so you don't really have to pay attention to his actual lecture (he also goes over what he says in lecture on lab anyways). HW due every week, which isn't that hard if you actually just look at your lab and his notes, weekly quizess, 2 midterms and a final . You might get the impression that this is strictly a hard coding class during the beginning of the quarter, but it's not. Overall, a great teacher for the class, conveys material very well, fair midterms and finals.

he rally knows his stuff. always has intgeresting stories about his experience. labs can be boring but i learned a lot.

hit me with a paren

So when the class starts out, you think it's all MATLAB. MATLAB is all he talks about and all we do in lab. The tests and quizzes however, are much harder than expected and more likely than not, have nothing to do with MATLAB. Read through his class notes and make sure you understand all the analysis that he does. The first few quizzes and first midterm aren't that bad. I wish I could say the same for the rest of the class. The second midterm had an average of 39% and the quizzes got much harder. He curves the grades based on how the class compares to the average score of past 251 classes. He's an older man, so your grades may very be compared to classes from the early 90s. He had stories for everything, that are interesting but usually off topic. He doesn't post homework solutions online, he hangs them outside his office which is annoying. The homework takes HOURS and is harder than anything you'll do on any test or quiz. Your test scores basically come down to if you put the right stuff from his notes on to your note sheet or not. I would not recommend him, although it is possible to do decent in his class.

This class depressed me. It was boring and early and long. Expect most of your Wednesday to be taken up by programming in MatLab. Lab was helpful to an extent, and would be better if he knew how to use computers. Expect to be there the full 3 hours because he doesn't want to waste your tuition money by letting you out early. The class really isn't about MatLab, but has a lot of MatLab in it. It's about how things work, like derivatives, integrals, curve fit, etc. Westmann follows his lecture notes spot on. Homework sucked. The tests don't have much programming in it and there is little partial credit. Westmann expects you to know material from other classes (Materials, Calculus). Nothing is posted online. For tests, just hope you didn't fail as much as everyone else did. I dunno how he curves grades, but just do better than the average and you'll be fine.

I would most definitely take this professor again. I liked that he gave us our own copy of his lecture notes. It is true that his lecture was verbatim from the notes, but that was fine for me. The homework was average (one problem per hour of lecture) and went along with his lectures well. His tests were more than fair, but were not easy. I did spend the entire time taking the tests but didn

I would definitely recommend Westmann. His midterms can be kind of hard but there is nothing on them that he had not prepared us for. As far as I know he does curve the class. He assigns homework and he usually makes it due the next Friday. So all of the homework assigned in Week 5 would be due the Friday of week 6.

You will definitly be putting in some hours if you want to do well in this class. I spent many hours doing the weekly homework and studied pretty hard for his tests. I never did really all that great on the tests because he puts 3 lenghtly problems into a 50 minute test. But as long as you do well on the final he will give you a deserving grade, so I'm sure thats how I pulled off a B. Good teacher, but you definitly gotta work for it.

Nice guy, but mumbles and needs to go slower. If your concentrating in structures..he's the man, if you hade structures don't take him..take Goel.

I took Westmann during the summer quarter and we had only 9 students in the class. In a way it was nice to have such individual attention, however, our homework and tests were graded pretty hard. I felt like I put in a hell of a lot of work for a C. I would recommend all future Westmann students to brush up on your statics before taking his class. The first midterm focuses on statics. Make sure you visit his office regularly. He's pretty good at answering questions regarding homework. Good Luck!

Westmann is an excellent professor. He gave us a copy of his lecture notes and copied out homework problems from the book, so no one had to buy one. I noticed that he put a lot of effort into teaching this class with tons of handouts, long office hours, and fast grading. His tests really challenged my knowledge of analysis. They were very hard, but they were fair. He usually had our tests back the next day of class with copies of the solutions. He taught me some fast ways to analyze structures and some good problem solving principles. If you want to learn structures, take him. By the way, I was taking LoCascio at the same time, and Westmann's class was much harder. He is an older dude, but he really knows his stuff!

so, considering that originally Prof. Moazzami was teaching the class and then had to leave for some unforeseen event, Westmann wasn't that bad. He was really nice to everyone and graded easy. I was behind(actually, didn't do anything) all quarter with the steel project, put it together the last two days and received 40/40. He is a nice guy and just expects you to ask questions and keep on top of it. His practical experience seemed to be helpful in the class. I would suggest him for this class, however I have heard nothing but nightmares in all other classes he has teached.