Vilchiz, Victor  

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Because I am writing this while taking the course, I have not received a grade yet, so the grade I entered is what I expect. I will post again just to let everyone know what I actually got. BTW, if you have a ridiculously short attention span or you're in a rush, just scroll to the bottom for a two-line summary. I purposely wanted to be the first one to rate Vilchiz because I want to "set the mood" for the rest of this page. I would like to point out that immature things such as flaming, poor grammar, and such do not belong here, because it only makes the person posting it look unintelligent. That being said, let's get to the point. Professor Vilchiz is not the man you want to take for Chem 124. I would assume that his performance as a teacher in this class carries over to his other classes (they were Chem 111 and 127 this quarter), however I won't say anything specific about them. He is utterly incapable of presenting material effectively, and the only reason I did not give him an "F" in that category is that I occasionally gleaned something useful out of his "lectures"--which I put in quotes because it's more like babbling most of the time--that proved useful on a quiz or test down the line. If you are a person who excels at teaching yourself from a textbook, you could do well in this class. If you are not, I would suggest signing up for the corresponding "SI", or "Supplemental Instruction", which my friend Andrew will most likely explain when he posts on this page. Another problem is his quizzes. Often the multiple-choice questions will have no right answer, so you must simply show your work and circle the number you got. He generally realizes his errors after the fact, or students point them out in his office hours or in class. However, that is a minor problem compared with the next one: that half of the material on the quiz usually generates a reaction from the reader of "What the *!&^@?"--in other words, he doesn't cover the material and yet expects you to know it. I admit I may exaggerate a little--it's generally not half the quiz--but it's enough questions to turn a possible B into a failure. Time is a major problem, as well. First, the time he gives for quizzes and tests is far too short for any reasonable person to finish. Second, his time-management skills are below-average, to say the least. He quickly falls behind the other professors teaching the same class, and even wastes time during class itself. He himself doesn't waste the time directly, by telling long-winded pointless stories or the like (personally, I don't think he's creative enough to do so), but he just doesn't get things done efficiently. Another item to be aware of is that you are seated in a lab with a partner in front of a Macintosh computer running MacOS 9 (I beleive). Needless to say, if you are not a Mac-person, this is bad. You primarily use Excel and MS-IE, as well as LoggerPro, which is a temperature-reading apparatus connected to the bunsen next to you, so it's not too bad. Overall, Vilchiz simply does not live up to Cal Poly standards, and I'm beginning to wonder whether he got the position through some kind of loophole or freak accident. Try your best not to get Vilchiz; if you do, don't dispair--simply sign up for the SI and find a student or two who has suffered through his class before to help you out. Again, try hard not to get Vilchiz. If you do, don't go step in front of a bus, but do get some help--former students, the SI, etc.

Chem 124, no matter who you have, is hard. The material comes fast and you are tested all the time on it. My section was especially bad cause we met Monday (lecture and Lab), Tuesday (lecture) and Wednesday (lecture and lab) and we were quizzed every Wednesday on the material that was covered Monday and Tuesday. Every 2 weeks you have a "midterm". Vilchiz is a cool guy and can relate to students, but this is about all he is good at. Cons: Vilchiz has horrible class management; he would often spend 25 minutes handing out papers instead of lecturing. But his lectures are horrible anyway. He uses a power point presentations that takes graphics straight from the book. The problem is he moves so quickly (cause all he has to do is click and the slide moves) that I was unable to take effective notes. He does not explain things very well as a result, I was often left extremely confused and asking my work shop teacher for help. He would never explain the labs, and expected us to enter the class room with knowledge of how to use the equipment in the lab. So I would have to get the TA to explain how to use the equipment and basically explain what the hell we were supposed to do. So labs that should have take about 30 minutes took about 3 times that. His quizzes are poorly written. They are sometimes too long for the time allotted and the M.C. question don't have the correct answer as a possibility and don't have the option of "none of the above". In office hours he isn't good either. He seems to take our inability to understand the concepts as an insult instead of explaining it another way. Not very helpful. Pros: He doesn

The beginning of the clas is cake, but then when stuff gets hard you get screwed. The quizzes model the homework exactly, in that they are filled with mistakes, that make the problems impossible to solve. There have been many multiple choice questions in which I had to write I decline to choose an answer as none of the answers are correct.

Okay..where should I start? I will put his materials into categories Quizzes: Hard, contain questions that weren't presented in class. Not Enough time to finish. I think I have a D average on the quizzes. Midterms: The First one I got a perfect 100 on it (comes directly from the homework) However, the 2nd I got a 54 percent but then redo it to a 75 percent (he lets us correct the problems you got wrong and you can get half credit if you got it right on the redo version) The third midterm.....I think I got an 82%, didn't have enough time to finish the last page... Final Exam: Honestly, the materials on the exam mostly have nothing to do with what you did in the class the entire quarter. I got a 40/60 on the Final Exam I ended up with a low B, not B- so about a 83%. Note: I worked my A** off and got a B, so you decide yourself whether to take him or not.

This is a follow up from the last posting- I forgot to tell ya all that the homework assignments might be your only hope of bring your grade up from where it is at right now. Also, he doesn't expect a lot outta of your labs, which is a good thing.

Sorry about the delay. I am the same guy who did the first posting (the really long one). Anyways, I did end up with an "A" afterall. I studied with people from class that were in my hall and that helped a lot. Also, I attended some of the final-review sessions, which helped as well. Do these things, and you will get a decent grade.

If you have to take Chem 124, or any chemistry class for that matter, DO NOT TAKE VILCHIZ. I took him my first quarter at Poly and was completely lost. The moment I entered the class, I knew something was going to happen. The first day I learned that he was new to teaching at Poly, just made the situation worse and being a stupid freshman as I was, I didn't think to drop him and add some other scholarly professor that knew what they were talking about. To lead you through the horrific experience of which I had to experience: Whenever we would do labs, Vilchiz never explained what exactly it was that we were doing or what he were to prove. On numerous occassions I would ask questions and the responses he gave only made the lab more confusing. He never answered any of my questions which in turn made me less confident in him as an instructor of "higher learning". Another aspect that got me and several of my friends mad was how he expected us to know all this material the first day when the last time we all took a chemistry class was about 3 years ago. He never explained problems we had on the quizzes or tests. What he actually did was write down the solution to the question quickly in order to show off his ability to do the problem better then we could. When we would ask him as to how he did the problem, he only made us feel stupid and would say something to the effect "Well, you should know this". Then "WHY ARE WE ASKING THE QUESTION??!!!!" He obviously didn't understand the concept that he is paid to teach material and help the students learn. Isn't that the entire point of being an instructor? Not on his account. Now about the lectures. Whenever he gave lectures, more like babbling, he read word for word from a PowerPoint presentation that was premade(by the company that made the book) and required no instructor to give. What got me was whenever a student would ask a question pertaining to the lecture, Vilchiz would flip through the Chemistry book in order to find the answer. If he didn't find it fast enough, he would beat around the bush and never actually answer the question. Only once in a great while did he actually know the answer. To sum the lecture part up, he never actually gave a lecture but rather talked for a long time about nothing. Now, about the quizzes and tests. This had to be the biggest problem of the entire course. On every quiz, there were questions of which there was no answer. I remember clearly on one quiz, he told us not to do 4 of the 15 questions. Almost a third of the quiz could not be answered. Although this fell into my favor and the favor of every else, I found it to be negligence and poor preparing on Vilchiz's account. If he wrote the exam and didn't know that there were questions that could not be answered, I find it hard to believe he knew what the test was actually on. The tests were not as bad as the quizzes but almost all the problems on the test were of the exact nature of the quizzes. The only problem was when you would ask him about the quiz questions before the test, he did that same old thing he always does: never answer the question but instead go around the entire question and back again with no answer or solution. Another aspect of which several of us got upset about was when we would ask him what we need to review in order to be prepared for an exam, he would tell us what we supposedly needed to review. If we asked him if a certain area was NOT going to be on the test, he would tell us. The only problem about these two was: on the material he told us to review, only a part of it was on the exam and the other part was the areas of which he told us we did not need to review. Needless to say, a good portion of us were mad. When we confronted him about it, all he said was "I told you that would be on the exam" when he never told us it would be. Lastly comes the homework. The homework did help somewhat if you knew what you were doing. But as always, if you asked him how to do it, he wouldn't know how to or would outright tell you "it is in the text" or "you should know this". Again I ask, why would we be asking if we didn't know how to do it. I gave Vilchiz an overall D because he did sometimes present material that was useful but most of the learning I got was out of the textbook. If you are great at learning from a textbook, you should have no problem with this class. But if you are not, try as hard as you can to get someone else. If you can't, I would wait till the next quarter or the next year for that matter to get some other instructor. Oh. I also wanted to comment on Vilchiz's degrees. He told us he got a B.S. in Chemistry at Poly and a PhD at USC. I found it troubling to find out he has a degree from here and from USC and doesn't know his material at all. Good luck on getting someone that will care about you, your grade, and what you learn.

You are probably asking yourself, how did I get an A in this class! Well, I am young and female, Vilchiz decided he wanted to be my friend... Oh my goodness, Dr. Vilchiz was the most incomprehesible teacher I have ever had. Every day at class, he would take the power point presentation straight from the supplementary cd and show it to us. When that was over, he was done teaching. If you didn't understand him or had any questions, he would make fun of you and laugh in your face. The labs, or "lavs" as he would pronounce them were insane and he would never explain jack before we started them. We worked blindly from some lame online lab manual with no clue what we were trying to find and what the concept was behind it. I studied SO hard for this class. Read the entire book and you should be ok. I honestly have no idea how I ended up with an A in this class. Sometimes it just pays to be female I guess.

Okay, Vilchiz is a decently nice person, but a shitty professor. He can't explain anything worth shit, either in class or office hours. I still don't understand the damn purple mule. I learned-literally- 95% of the material straight out of the book. I'd leave his lecture thinking wtf, and after reading the book there was a big ooooh. His quizzes and tests are pretty fair, and the curve is decent, but you have to learn everything on your own. He tells you his specialty is polymers, but he couldnt even help me with teh hw on that topic without checking the book for the answer first. The final- class average was 26/47- was completely unfair, it wasn't like any of the other tests or quizzes, and there was no way to prepare for it. Anyways, there are worse professors, but this guy is to be avoided if possible. If you do get stuck with him, get a smart lab partner and do the reading. Oh yeah, and work your ass off.

Professor Vilchiz is perhas one of the worst of the horrible Chem teachers at Poly. As said in previous reviews, he only teaches with the power point that you can look at when ever you want to on the CD that comes with the book. He does not explain what is going to be on the tests and quizes and then does not curve them at all when the average is usually somewhere around 50%. He does how ever curves the final grade by about 5-7% which helps a lot because you will probably be failing a lot of tests or quizes. The final was pretty ridiculous and the class average was only a 52%. I konw that Chem 124 is a hard course but Vilchiz also teaches it horribly. He once told me that he doesn't bother to read his Polyratings because they "are not true" and "are from students that he didn't even have". Well I'm telling you that everything that has been said about this guy is true. Stay away from him. If you can take a teacher like Neff, even tho she's not even that great. Just don't take chemistry at all at Poly if you can.

Vilchiz is a pretty cool guy. If you need help he's definitely there for you. His lectures are straight off of power point with the exception of some demos and tangent material. I didn't have powerpoint outside of class so i had to pay close attention in class and I think that that mentality allowed me to get more than others during lecture. He has practice quizzes and exams on-line which were VERY helpful. Study them and the ones from the previous quiz... the quizzes focus on the weeks lessons, but also contain material from last week. Expect to read a good portion of the textbook for an A. I think the most important thing is that Vilchiz is very fair and generous with his grading, what with the curve and all. I'd take him again if I had to.

THis class is hell! He is a good person.. It is just that he can't teach.. and he just reads the powerpoint presentations.. He quizes are mostly annoying with things that he doesn't quite go over too well... He gets better as the qtr goes... but still sucks as ever!

Not nearly as bad as everyone makes him out to be. These ratings almost scared me out of taking him but now that I have finished his class I tried to get him for 125. His tests and quizzes aren't really that bad. If you just do the problems in the back of the chapter you should be fine. Another plus is with the studio chem I don't think we ever stayed more than an hour and half in a two and a half hour class. Ask any of your friends, that is a blessing in chemistry.

I wouldnt listen to what everyone rights. Vilchiz is one of the best teachers I have had. He is always willing to take time to help you with any problem until you understand it. You have to read the book though. He doesn't go to in depth on the material in class. His practice quizzes/exams on the internet are EXACTLY like the ones in class. Just do those and goto his office with and questions about the problems and you'll do fine.

Vilchiz is simply a horrible professor. He doesn't explain the material clearly in his lectures and his labs are even worse. He expects you to completely understand the purpose and procedure of the lab based on his maze-like website. However, the online lab descriptions are often vague and don't outline the procedure. That means that almost everyone is unproductive, asking others what to do. He runs the class very poorly and isn't interested in helping students.

Vilchiz wasn't sucessful at presenting the material. His tests and quizes were hard. He would help you if you asked for it personally but his lectures were almost incomprehensible. Take another professor. All of his class is spent doing a lab in which he gives us little or no directions. He confuses learn by doing with learning from the textbook, which accounts for all of the 124 material I learned. The lab asistants were better at teaching the material and they had only taken 124 last quater. I hear he might be leaving next year (fired), so maybe nobody will have to take him.

Well it looks like there isn't much new to post on this teacher. Basically he took everything directly from the book with little to no explanation and skipped large portions of text so that it made even less sense. He says that he will post review questions, which is a joke, he posted for exactly two quizes out of about ten and didn't even bother to update the "study checklist" for some of the tests, which is just a list of equations that you should know. The key to passing his class (which probably doesn't matter since he's leaving apparently) is to ignore everything he says and just read out of the book. Overall, he was much more concerned about what he wasn't required to do than about what he should do to be a good teacher/professor/"guide".

I felt that Dr. Vilchiz was overall an o.k. Chem professor. Although he sometimes does not present the material very clearly, he is always ready to slow down and go over it again. It is up to the students to slow down the lecture if he is going to fast by asking questions. As far as his grading policy...if you show that you are putting forth the effort to try and understand the material, he will benefit you in the final outcome. He is always willing to make extra office hours to make sure his students understand the material. I would recommend him.

This class is a hard class, but so is any chem class. The main thing that makes it hard is there is alot of material to be covered. Dr. V, has tons of office hours and is willing to help anyone who comes. The problem is it is always the same students every time. He tried to do a review session where we could ask quesions but the problem was no one would ever show up it would only be about 2 or 3 people so it was not worth the time so we never had them agian. This is the only teacher the i know that will do tons of office hours to help the students if they want it, but you have to be willing to put in the time and effort, to get the grade you want.

Dr. Vilchiz is a fun person to be around and he has a great personnality. As far as his teaching goes, that's another story. Chemistry itself is a hard subject to teach, but all of his lectures basically come staight out of the book. He doesn't find ways to actually relate the material very well, so it is very difficult to understand. Almost all of the course material I learned on my own studying by myself and spending a lot of time in office hours. The benefit of Dr. Vilchiz is that your final grade usually will be based on effort. Even if you have a D, but showed that you are trying and spend time in his office hours, he will most likely give you a C. I wouldn't recommend him, but if you've got him, it's not the end of the world; just expect to spend a lot of time in office hours.

Chem 128 is very hard, in this class we had quizs, exams and the final, and hw but it was not required opr graded. The quizs were either easy or hard, depending on if you did the hw he gave out. If you did it you would do fine on the quizs. The exams are difficult but they are fair. He has tons of office hours, if you have questions on old quizs, exams or material coevered in class he will help you with it. Before our final he had 18 hours of office hours, i have never known a teacher to have that many. some of the lectures get confusing but if you have a question you can ask it and he will answer it for you in class. to keep from getting confused and falling behind in the class i recomend reading the section that you are going to cover in class ahead of time that way it is not all new material when you hear it in lecture. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY GO TO OFFICE HOURS, IT REALLY HELPS, BUT ONLY A FEW PEOPLE TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THEM

Well, i just heard that vilchiz is not coming back next year, which is probably a good thing for students in the future. He is a great guy and all, but doesn't belong teaching college level chemistry. I took 127 and 128 with schoonover and always left the lectures with a good understanding of the material. Ive always been chemistry litterate, and everything stuck pretty well. When i leave vilchiz's lecture i dont know what the hell i just spent the last hour listening to. His Lectures are full of reading definitions from the book and relating it to something by stating "this obviously effects the blah blah blah"...No its not obvious. I haven't finished this course yet, but it looks like ill get a decent grade, even though i dont know what the hell is going on. regardless i will probably end up taking the class again (i cant go on without getting this shit down,) It just sucks i had to waste so much money to take units from a shitty teacher. Vilchiz if you read these, go teach highschool or something.

Vilchiz blows. He'll just write stuff down (at a fast pace, by the way), but doesn't really explain what the hell he's doing. After every class, I always hear people asking each other, "do you understand this stuff?" Oh, and he puts all kinds of trick questions on the quizzes and tests. Bastard. Vilchiz, learn how to fucking teach, bro.

doesn't seem to take teaching seriosly, is a horrible teacher, and thank God he is leaving after this quarter!!!

Ok, Vilchiz is a nice guy and everything, but there are a lot fo problems. 1. I understand that english is his second language and everything, so I give the guy credit. HOWEVER, it doesnt change the fact that you can't understand a lot of what he says and writes...making it really frustrating to take notes. 2. Speaking during a lecture is a virtue. Vilchiz doesnt understand this. There were so many times were he would write shit down for about 15 minutes without saying a word. Ummmm, kinda hard to understand what the hell we are doing when you don't speak. 3. Explanations outside of what the book says would be nice.......Vilchiz doesnt give that too you. So anyway, the class sucked, vilchiz isnt that great of teacher........amen

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