Biomedical Engineering I · Biomedical Engineering
Weekly Timed Quizzes in class (12ish minutes, 3 in total, lowest dropped) Midterm (basically big quiz) You are at the mercy of Kam Leong and his TA on whatever fever dream they will cook up. May the odds be ever in your favor.
3 HWs, 1 midterm Very physics class coded, standard workload for a physics class.
Prof Leong is very funny and sweet outside of class -- however he is unfortunately a poor lecturer. He talks very softly and slowly and makes the exciting field of biomaterials dreary and gloomy. This year he also had a horrible TA, which only exacerbated these issues. He was not an approachable professor, and you will have to teach the material yourself. He will give quizzes every week on material he has not covered yet. The TA who wrote our other quizzes chose to take a question from 2 weeks ago from a separate class (BME Lab) when she seeded our cell plates incorrectly so she made a quiz question about that incident INSTEAD OF the readings the quiz was supposed to be about. The quizzes and midterm are open note (which in reality means you are screwed). Previous years had take-home assignments on the readings which I imagine were much more manageable than our quizzes. Our TA was not a real one and did not even realize she was responsible for writing the midterm. It was awful. On the bright side the curve saves. If you are not interested in biomaterials, this class will not change that. If you enjoy biomaterials, this class may change that. My most enjoyable moments in class were all outside of the classroom reading about the material on my own. My top 3 worst moments in the class all involve him and the TA. In future years when he has a TA who actually cares about students'…
Prof Nerurkar is one of the sweetest people you will ever meet. Do not let his tough exterior fool you if you actually get to know him he is such a caring and funny guy. Would highly recommend going to his office hours, the class is basically a physics class and follows the structure as such. If you struggled in physics or APMA, you'll likely struggle again here. However the material and exams are very fair (though the midterm is tough), and are open note. Prof Nerurkar's lectures are very structured and easy to follow. This class made me interested in biomechanics again.