He is a fun teacher but doesn't have a focus on his lecture.
He does not accept any late homework even if you have appropriate excuses. He forces students to engage in class and no one responds, which is super awkward. He only spends time on the easy parts of the course but doesn't teach well on the hard parts.
I took his math111 series throughout my third year in UCSB. Even though the course material is really hard and tedious, he tried his best to make it funny and easy to understand. He is a really fantastic and friendly prof. Moreover, there would be some big curve (upward curve) for the students so that we could get good grade. He is really good!!!!
If you want to truely learn and grasp Abstract Algebra, stay away from this professor.
This is a COOP class so make friends. All HW and even the final can be done with friends so make some. Also, go to his OH he will help you after the 20 other ppl in line.
Investigation heavy course but all work can be submitted as groups making this a COOP class (minus tests). Go to his OH, he will help you a lot.
Study with him. You can learn a lot. And his exam is doable.
He is a fair and very good professor. I like to study with him.
Nathan is a very nice and caring Professor but should not be a teacher. Although he does want his students to do well, he is not a strong/clear lecturer. I ended up having to teach most of the material to myself. Exams include abstract concepts/rules that he expects you to know just because he knows them.
Schley is a great person. He's kind, nice, and really wants his students to succeed. However, he is not a good teacher. He is horrible at lecturing. He tests his students on topics that he never really taught before. Most of the time, I would have to teach myself all the topics.
One of the worst professors I've ever had. He covers basic topics during lectures and then tests us on extremely abstract, conceptual concepts that we never learned. No practice midterms, pretty much need to teach all of the the material to yourself in order to do well. Would not recommend!
Absolute worst professor ever, lectures are completely useless, nothing on the homework is covered by lectures, no practice tests for exams, DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS
Hands down the worst professor Ive ever had. Super nice guy but an awful teacher. He explains nothing and assumes you know everything.
He's nice but that's about it. Not good at explaining things and is VERY conceptual, so if that's not ur way of understanding things I would avoid this prof. Oftentimes he will subtly go over new material in lecture and expect us to catch on without clearly indicating new rules or equations. No practice midterm before this first midterm too. Ugh
This class was mainly based off of group work. A lot of the students felt like they lacked direction from him. Lectures were minimal, and he is not very good at explaining things. He tries to help but often leaves people more confused. Workload is heavy for the quality of teaching. Makes an otherwise fun and interesting class difficult.
This class is designed for people who are interested in getting a minor in high school math teaching. Personally, I didn't find the teaching style to be that impressive since the majority of the time was done via student group collaborations. This class is an easy A class if you want to raise your GPA. Anyone can teach better than him.
Nathan is a really kind, caring professor who is really passionate about teaching. His class was heavily based on investigation and working with others instead of having a traditional lecture approach. He is really fair in grading, and is really the most real and understanding professor I've ever had at UCSB.
Great professor. Didn't lecture too much and gave enough time for investigations. Really eye opening class.
Last minute he changed the grade percentage which affected my overall grade, gave us a written final and oral final. I do not recommend this guy. If there is an option "0" I will have no hesitation of giving that.
He didn't curve the class but offered extra credit pretty generously. The final was difficult considering it was 70% on material that he rushed to teach on week 9. Still, he's very friendly when answering questions. 6A is difficult but made the experience *mostly* pain free. Good luck!
He's a really sweet guy. Lectures were kinda disorganized with many mistakes in the slides--something he chalked up to lack of prep time. Tests were straightforward though and not a problem. CLAS with Ziqi was fantastic. Homework was very reasonable. Overall a fine class but lectures were the weakest point. 20% HW, 10 quizzes, 30 midterm, 40 final
Schley is a super nice and understanding guy. As a teacher, he is very intuitive and tries really hard although sometimes his lectures are a bit unorganized. His tests are pretty straightforward w/o weird curveballs.
He may be smart and excellent at math, but he's not a very good professor and makes it a lot harder than it should be esp on exam. Take a different professor if you can
Hes extremely intelligent and jovial. He teaches math from the I side out, not by rote.
