Another Earth · Astronomy
5 HW assignments, midterm and a final, and a bunch of projects.
Homework every week/other week. 1 midterm, 1 final. You won't be able to see the final, I emailed three times and never got a response, even though he told us to email him to see the final.
He rocks!!! This class is so interesting, and it's accessible for non-science majors. I will say that it's challenging. There is quite a bit of math, but he's pretty good at walking you through it. Exams are open-note but require review. He does a lot of projects/presentations, which allows those of us non science majors to pad our grades a bit. One of the best classes I've taken at Columbia; he's such an expert in the field and it was amazing to learn from him.
I went in thinking this would be an easy class as per the reviews. They were kind of right. Prof Luber is an engaging person. Terrible teacher. He constantly tells students to email and ask for help with any questions, yet refuses to respond. Every email I sent to him, I had to follow up with twice to get a response. I vividly remember when we got our midterm back, he told us that we had a higher average than what he hoped for (he wanted an average of 60% and we got 70%), but atleast he "did his job" because no one got 100%. He took off points like a madman, weighing questions where each was ~15 points and taking off 8 each time you made a mistake. Prof Luber is a great lecturer and he wants you to do well, but he also prides himself in making sure no one calls the class "simple". I had fun in the class, though. So take it if you just want to learn about Another Earth.
5 psets, 3 projects, open note midterm and final
Examinations - 50% Midterm Examination - 20% Final Examination - 30% Homeworks - 25% In-Class Participation - 25% Quizzes - 10.5% Group Work - 10.5% Attendance - 4% Midterm and final are really difficult. I did well on them because I love astronomy (took the class for fun) and it wasn't hard for me to study/remember material. But a lot of my friends in the class struggled and did bad on the exams. HW, quizzes, and Psets are all easy to ace. Avg midterm score was 75, I think, and we never got back our final scores (but I am 80% sure he just gave full points to everyone on the final - it just said "complete" on canvas and my grade in SSOL was really good). He also gave corrections on the midterm for 33% of the points back. TLDR: Exams are hard and you have to do well on them bc they're worth a lot, but if you're interested in the material and put in the time to study really well you'll be fine.
Going into the class, I was a bit concerned about the reviews on here. However, I think Professor Kipping has improved his pedagogical techniques a bit based on these reviews, and having taken the course now I found it to be fair. He hosts plenty of office hours, and I think the grading distributions are reasonable. He's a great professor and very passionate. He's very willing to help too. The content in the class is very very interesting, and it really changed my perspective of the world and our universe. However, even though it says it is an intro course, I don't think it's. There's much more work than an average intro class, and the homework he assigns can be very confusing (although I personally found it to be fair, but still difficult). Also, I had to learn a lot of the concepts online in addition to his lectures, but that was difficult because most of the concepts he teaches in class are very obscure and not easily searchable. You need to know A LOT of content. (The class itself filled up 60+ pages of my notebook.) I personally find the way extra credit is rewarded very unfair. He has this thing called ExoCup, in which each team gets assigned an exoplanet and they basically have to make a presentation about how their planet is better than others and this goes on for like 20 rounds. The class votes and the winning team gets to advance and gets extra credit. At some point,…
Professor Luber is genuinely such an amazing dude. He really loves what he teaches, and is so very nice and sweet. The course is not 100% astronomy or space stuff though, so be forewarned. About half of it is, but the other half is human intelligence, evolution of life, climate change, and other stuff. But honestly Professor Luber made the lectures engaging and is such a sweet person. 100% would recommend him - I will never forget him. He's also super friendly to talk to after class, he even gave me career advice and wanted to get to know me better.
total of 6 psets, in class weekly quizzes (open note), and midterm/final (you get a cheatsheet for both). Also some EC.
I encourage you to not take this class. Going in I knew nothing about astronomy but I took it because I thought that it would be bearable given that Columbia has it for a course designed for non science majors. However this is not the case. While the professor says that this class is intro level and no textbook is needed, that is not true. The first couple of lectures seem fine and interesting. But as you continue with the class, it gets more confusing as he adds in levels of math and Newton's Law. If you are an astronomy/astrophysics major and you would love a challenge then by all means take this class, if not then stay away from it.