Professor
Hanguo Wang
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Most Helpful Review
I had Prof Wang for 1A this fall, and overall it was a good experience. Wang is sometimes not the most clear at explaining the concepts, but that is because his main focus is on research and he doesn't teach at the lower level too frequently. That being said he is one of the most caring professors I have had. I went to most of his office hours and he had 2 hours of OH 2x a week, which is a lot more than most professors, and he was extremely helpful in office hours, as well as an overall funny guy to talk to. I would reccomend him to students willing to go to OH and put in the work.
I had Prof Wang for 1A this fall, and overall it was a good experience. Wang is sometimes not the most clear at explaining the concepts, but that is because his main focus is on research and he doesn't teach at the lower level too frequently. That being said he is one of the most caring professors I have had. I went to most of his office hours and he had 2 hours of OH 2x a week, which is a lot more than most professors, and he was extremely helpful in office hours, as well as an overall funny guy to talk to. I would reccomend him to students willing to go to OH and put in the work.
Most Helpful Review
I've purposely elected to write this review before grades are out. When I took this class (Spring 2007), it was Professor Wang's first time teaching a class in the US, ever. That said, it was a different experience than would be probable otherwise. The good: He tries really hard to teach the material. The professor went out of his way to put together demonstrations, powerpoints, and other materials for furthering students' understanding. For the part on interference, he even put together a macro'd Excel file and sent it to the students, allowing them to plug in various numbers and see how it affected a graph of the interference. Additionally, exams are graded on time, homework is fair in quantity and quality, and sample exams are given a week in advance (which for the two midterms, were extremely similar to the actual exams). The average in the class was very high (~80s) until the final, which was fairly difficult (albeit doable), and which was definitely a step above the midterms in terms of problem solving and theory. The bad: Having little experience teaching prior to this class often means that the professor is spends an inordinate amount of time on material which is less than useful; deriving equations, answering people's questions about simple material at great length (and wasting a lot of time doing so) which they honestly should just learn on their own, and discussing theory which is beyond the scope of the exams, which no one really understands. This time would be better spent doing a problem of medium difficulty and explaining the theory step by step. I am sure that having been his first time teaching, future quarters will be more effective. Additionally, I leave this class having learned a significant amount more than in my previous physics class (with a certain Astronomy professor), possibly due to the extensive amount of self-teaching I had to do.
I've purposely elected to write this review before grades are out. When I took this class (Spring 2007), it was Professor Wang's first time teaching a class in the US, ever. That said, it was a different experience than would be probable otherwise. The good: He tries really hard to teach the material. The professor went out of his way to put together demonstrations, powerpoints, and other materials for furthering students' understanding. For the part on interference, he even put together a macro'd Excel file and sent it to the students, allowing them to plug in various numbers and see how it affected a graph of the interference. Additionally, exams are graded on time, homework is fair in quantity and quality, and sample exams are given a week in advance (which for the two midterms, were extremely similar to the actual exams). The average in the class was very high (~80s) until the final, which was fairly difficult (albeit doable), and which was definitely a step above the midterms in terms of problem solving and theory. The bad: Having little experience teaching prior to this class often means that the professor is spends an inordinate amount of time on material which is less than useful; deriving equations, answering people's questions about simple material at great length (and wasting a lot of time doing so) which they honestly should just learn on their own, and discussing theory which is beyond the scope of the exams, which no one really understands. This time would be better spent doing a problem of medium difficulty and explaining the theory step by step. I am sure that having been his first time teaching, future quarters will be more effective. Additionally, I leave this class having learned a significant amount more than in my previous physics class (with a certain Astronomy professor), possibly due to the extensive amount of self-teaching I had to do.
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