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Wood, Zoe

Cumulative GPA: 3.57/4.00 with 23 evaluations
Presents Material Clearly: 3.61
Recognizes Student Difficulties: 3.57

Computer Science Department, Cal Poly, SLO
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CSC 471 Junior Grade Earned: A Elective 12:38 am, Dec 29, 2012 Report Evaluation		Graphics is a rather interesting class to take. It can feel a bit overwhelming at times because you have to learn a lot of new syntax, but I'm glad I had it. Expect to be banging your head against the wall for at least the first half of the quarter saying, "I don't understand this. I don't understand this." Despite always finishing (and getting As on) the programs, I usually felt like I was somehow a step behind, which was a bit stressful. It took until the seventh or eighth week, and then, finally, everything clicked, and it is rewarding at the end of the class to realize you made some pretty cool graphical programs for the first time. Zoe is great—super nice and smart—and I wouldn't hesitate to take her for another class. She can be a bit frantic and rushed in class, but it's not that big of a deal, and she realizes when she doesn't cover a topic thoroughly enough. You'll be able to tell exactly what you should know for the two midterms, which makes them super easy. The most significant part of your grade, the open-ended final project, is a nice change of pace, and I think they're graded somewhat easily. If you're at all interested in taking 471, you should do it, just prepare for a learning crunch with some heady math and a lot of graphics-specific syntax.

CPE 471 Junior Grade Earned: A Elective 12:58 pm, Dec 16, 2012 Report Evaluation		Zoe is a boss. If it's been a while since you took linear algebra/trig be sure to brush up on vector and matrix basics. Also make sure you know the dot product by heart (Zoe's favorite thing ever and the answer to a lot of her questions). Start programs early and read the online documents for glm/GLUT/openGL to help you understand the basics of each library. The 2 midterms (no final) are nearly identical to the practice ones she gives you, so make sure you know them front and back! This is a generally enjoyable class and the concepts aren't too hard. The sooner you get comfortable with C++ syntax and the libraries mentioned above, the sooner you will be actually looking forward to going to class. Enjoy!

CSC 471 Junior Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 6:48 pm, Dec 12, 2012 Report Evaluation		Zoe's just awesome. Definitely take her classes whenever you can (which is probably all the time if you want to go into graphics). She's fantastic at presenting the material, and there are no surprises on the midterms. There are two relatively straightforward midterms, and NO FINAL. Instead, you present a final project of your choice to the class, worth 20%. For the midterms, she uploads what you should know, along with some practice questions which she reviews in class :). I recommend starting programs early, since you'll find tons of little bugs that are harder to notice in graphical applications without spending a lot of time messing around with your a.out file. She gets a little off track during lecture sometimes and sometimes goes overboard when she is asked a question (and rest assured, she answers them ALL, regardless of relevancy to the current context), so she is forced to rush some lecture material. Zoe puts a heavy emphasis on Learn By Doing, but she's more than willing to help you out over email or during office hours. Great class, would take again without a second thought.

CPE 471 Junior Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 3:53 pm, Sep 19, 2012 Report Evaluation		Zoe is one of my personal favorite professors. She comes into the class with a high spirit and is always willing to help students. As long as you put time and effort into your project, she will give you a fair grade and try to help you in any way she can. Don't be afraid to ask her for help. -IF66

CPE 123 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 12:45 am, May 15, 2012 Report Evaluation		One of my favorite professors at cal poly. Zoe teaches the computational art section for cpe/csc 123. Its a great class where you will learn the fundamentals of programming. There is a tiny bit of a an intro to object oriented programming when you are taught how to create a class. You will use Processing (you can google it and try it out) which is a simple language based off of java which is used to create shapes and eventually you'll get into animations. Its definitely a fun course where you'll meet some of your major peers. Some students have trouble at first but you just have to study a bit and you'll do well. As long as you don't wait till the last minute to do the projects, she is very helpful during office hours. The midterm was fair and so was the final. Overall a great professor.

CPE 471 Senior Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 10:43 pm, Apr 5, 2010 Report Evaluation		Dr. Wood\'s intro to graphics class is the most fun programming class I\'ve ever taken at Poly. From what I\'ve heard, she also teaches her students the best content related to OpenGL compared to the other professors who teach 471. They say the other teacher\'s projects are “cool, but not as cool as Zoe\'s”. By the time the class is over, you\'ll be able to make basic 3D worlds and even simple games. Want to know how to implement strafing controls for the camera or render very high quality models/3D meshes? She\'ll teach you these things! Unfortunately, while the programming is definitely the fun part of the class, the lecture portions can be a little boring. During lecture, basically everything covered is about the math concepts going on behind the OpenGL code (these concepts can also be applied to Microsoft\'s Direct3D), which is definitely useful to know, but can be somewhat of a drag at times. The tests follow suit – they\'re more like written math tests than programming tests. From what I can remember on the 1st midterm out of 2 (not including the final which is similar) there was only one short question which required you to write a brief segment of code, which to me seemed very different compared to the past CPE/CSC tests that I\'ve had. Finally, there\'s technically no final exam – instead everyone submits a final project, of which is very open ended. You\'re allowed to decide what you want your final project to be of – a game, a simulation, whatever, and if she approves of it, you can go all-out with your program, which I found to be very fun. On our scheduled final meeting time instead of taking a test everyone took turns presenting their program, which is on the more entertaining side. Note that this presentation, while very casual, is how she grades you on this project, so coming in during the final exam period is required. Believe me, the class is awesome! Also worth noting is the fact that she\'s very flexible with lab demos in the computer lab, unlike other teachers I\'ve had in the past. Near the end of the quarter she doesn\'t have any due dates for the last few labs and you can demo them on your time, as long as they\'re completed before Dead Week ends. My only minor criticism of Wood was that she always seemed to be in a rush and sometimes really stressed out (she has to drive up from Santa Barbara each day, which can explain a few things), but what programmer isn\'t? Also, it seemed most students including myself didn\'t feel that everything about OpenGL truly connected until project 4, the one where you create your first 3D world, so be patient if some things are still a little mysterious until then. If you\'re not afraid of a little math, with very fun programming outside of class, take Dr. Wood! I\'m taking her 476 class next quarter, the game programming class, which unfortunately won\'t be offered after Spring of 2010, but I haven\'t felt this excited about a programming class until now!

CPE 471 Junior Grade Earned: A Elective 5:37 pm, Mar 21, 2010 Report Evaluation		We had 4 programs due throughout the quarter (5 if you include the final project). She takes literally the entire quarter to grade them, and then just gives you a number for a score, with NO explanation for your score. I got 90 on two, and 100 on the other two, but I would of course like an explanation for the scores, especially since each one was 10% of our grade. The midterms were easy, I did very well on them. The class material is very easy, almost too easy for about 80% of the material, and she\'d go over the easy stuff VERY slowly (expect to relearn matrix multiplication for 3 days). She rarely responds to emails, I emailed her once asking for help on a program and got a response 2 days later (after the due date) that was only one sentence long. She does give two late days, and that is very handy. My friend had the same experience with her. The one email of mine she did respond to had a cryptic one sentence answer. For one program, she gave out source code that was broken (not on purpose) and just casually mentioned how to fix it, as opposed to fixing it herself and reposting. I liked her in general, but these complaints really brought down the experience.



CPE 101 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 9:37 pm, Mar 19, 2009 Report Evaluation		Prof. Wood is awesome. She is nice, approachable and most importantly knows how to teach. There were originally 6 programs and 9 labs in the class, but she ended up cutting it back to 5 and 8, respectively. The one midterm wasn't to bad, but the final (at least the written portion of it) was killer. The class has a bit of a learning curve, but if you have decent experience with programing you should do pretty well. All in all a great teacher, definitely take her!

CPE 101 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 4:10 pm, Jan 10, 2007 Report Evaluation		Zoe seems like she'd be a great teacher for upper-level classes teaching subjects she cares about. But our 101 class seemed to bore her, and perhaps she could have spent some more time thinking about how to convey concepts to us.

CPE 101 Freshman Grade Earned: D Required (Major) 12:02 am, Dec 22, 2006 Report Evaluation		Ms. Wood could not convey the information clearly during ANY of the classes that she held this quarter. What's so frustrating is the fact that she clearly knows what she is talking about, she just gets sidetracked way too easily, and never teaches you what you need to know for labs and programs when you need to know them to complete the assignments. I'm sure she's an amazing upper division course teacher, I just think she was bitter she had to teach 101 this quarter, because she kept referencing code and other material that we would never get to in 101, but that she told us we would understand in our 3rd and 4th year. Hate to break it to you Ms. Wood, but that information is useless to us right now, how about teaching us the information?

CSC 101 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 12:23 pm, Dec 21, 2006 Report Evaluation		What a way to start the year! Professor Wood was able to make what would normally be a boring computer class pretty interesting! She

CSC 0 Junior Grade Earned: C General Ed 9:21 pm, May 15, 2006 Report Evaluation		She is so tremendously beautiful that she makes my heart melt in her presence. If only she weren't married. Tear. We would do graphics happily forever.

CSC 471 Senior Grade Earned: B Elective 12:21 pm, Nov 21, 2004 Report Evaluation		Taking Zoe's intro to graphics class was one of my best experiences at this school for several reasons. First, she is a great professer who is enthusiastic about what she teaches. Second, she teaches the class in OpenGL instead of Java3D (which all the other 471 profs use). Third, by the end of class you will be able to create something that is actually impressive. Overall, I highly recommend taking Z. Wood for 471 (or any other class for that matter).



CSC 471 5th Year Senior Grade Earned: A Elective 1:09 am, Sep 23, 2004 Report Evaluation		This was the best professor I have had at Cal Poly over more than half a decade. She is very enthusiastic about the material, patient when approached with problems, and grades fairly (with appropriate partial credit). Her CSC-471 OpenGL graphics class was a very rewarding course that held the perfect balance of workload, homework, and test difficulty. If you have any interest in the development of games or graphics, you are a fool if you don't take this course and this professor. It is safe to say this course has changed my life. Prior to taking the course, I cared very little about learning programming (thanks Cal Poly for making my courses teach me stupid sorting routines in C and unix for year after year). Now, after Dr. Wood's CSC-471 course, I can't get enough of programming. I have spent the last 6 months programming games in the spare time I used to spend playing them. I spent much of that time on my own learning DirectX (DirectX uses the same concepts taught by Dr. Wood in OpenGL) and producing a game. A recent demo of the game caught the eye of some fellow programmers and artists online, and now there are 8 of us working on the game, and hope to market it in the next year or two. All using the concepts Dr. Wood taught so elegantly in CSC-471.

CSC 471 Senior Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 11:20 am, Jun 21, 2004 Report Evaluation		Wow, Zoe" is an awesome teacher, I wish all my teachers were as kind and ethusiastic as she was. I learned everything about graphics that I initially wanted, and more. Take her and nobody else for graphics. You might have to wait until winter quarter because she is having a baby and is adopting a new pet bunny, which my dog will proceed to eat alive.

CSC 471 5th Year Senior Grade Earned: A Elective 8:39 pm, Jun 16, 2004 Report Evaluation		Dr. Wood is cute, nice, passionate, and very knowlegeble with graphic. She loves to teach and her students. She understands student's needs and she is very approchable. Take her and no one else for graphic. I have no interest in graphic at all and she makes it interesting for a guy like me. Love her =)

CSC 471 Freshman Grade Earned: A Elective 5:47 pm, Mar 11, 2004 Report Evaluation		i especially like the lectures on lomography.

CSC 471 Senior Grade Earned: A Elective 1:54 pm, Mar 3, 2004 Report Evaluation		We are lucky to have a new professor like Dr. Wood arrive on the faculty. Her 471 class was one of the best classes I've had here at Cal Poly, but maybe that's just because I like graphics so much! At first she experimented with PowerPoint slides and when she realized that she was going too fast, she slowed her lectures down on the chalkboard. The lecture pace was fine, although you can't satisfy everyone. The labs worked to prepare us for the programs we were assigned, which were a bit time-consuming given the time allotted for the class. She is extremely approachable and her office hours are valuable. Which is why I always see alot of people waiting outside her door. A word of warning though, if you haven't learned C++ or even C (i.e., Java is your only language, like was my situation) you'll have some extra work ahead of you to learn the language <i>as well as</i> OpenGL. I did fine, so if you've got the motivation, you will too.

CSC 471 Senior Grade Earned: A Elective 9:43 am, Mar 3, 2004 Report Evaluation		Dr. Wood is definitely an awesome professor, take her if you are even slightly interested in graphics. Even if you aren't much interested in graphics, this class could easily change your mind. Even though she is new, she makes the material very interesting, and presents it clearly and effectively. Homework isn't very difficult, but requires time. The final project is fun, but requires 2 weeks of intense work (if you want the best grade possible), so if you can start early, do so. One last thing... if you have a choice between her and someone who teaches in Java3D, take her because she teaches in OpenGL. I have experience in both, and I am VERY grateful she taught in OpenGL... it has more industry applicability. Java3D is too slow and too simplified.



CSC 471 Senior Grade Earned: D Required (Major) 1:33 am, Feb 25, 2004 Moderated Comment		she is a horrible teacher never take here,

CSC 471 Sophomore Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 6:24 pm, Feb 12, 2004 Report Evaluation		Dr. Wood is an awesome professor. I would highly recommend her in all regards. She is very knowledgeable in various computer graphics topics and you will definitely learn a lot from her class (even if you already know a lot about computer graphics). I believe she is the only professor who teaches this class using OpenGL and C/C++. Since I am a big C++ fan, this was quite an enjoyable experience. OpenGL is much more important to learn than Java3D (which the other professors of 471 use) from an industry standpoint. If you want to take the computer graphics tech electives or if you just want to learn how to program 3D graphics, make sure you take this class with Dr. Wood.

CPE 471 Senior Grade Earned: B Elective 10:17 am, Feb 4, 2004 Report Evaluation		Dr. Wood was a great professor. This was my first class into Computer Graphics and she made it a wonderful experience. She is a new professor, so she may go a tad bit fast during the lectures especially when she uses power point, but if you ask her to slow down the pace after class she is willing to do so, and is very receptive about the students needs. She is extremely helpful during office hours and will answer any of questions you have. There was four major programs in the class and 2 midterms. Instead of a final, there was a final program that required us to integrated what we had learned all quarter. All in all Dr. Wood is a fantastic teacher. One of the few good teachers at Poly.

CSC 471 5th Year Senior Grade Earned: B Elective 12:43 am, Jan 29, 2004 Report Evaluation		Dr. Wood is an awesome professor who teaches very clearly with lots of mathematical support behind every concept she teaches. She is also very caring about students need to understand the material well. Very helpful with email and during the office hours. Take her if you wanna take a graphics class.

CSC 471 Senior Grade Earned: A Elective 8:25 pm, Dec 30, 2003 Report Evaluation		Dr. Wood was a great teacher who I would recommend to anyone planning to take a graphics course. She taught everything in OpenGL instead of Java3D, and was pretty clear in lecture and lab. The programs assigned were a lot of work, but most of the required labs were actually useful in showing how the programs could be done. She was great in office hours, willing to spend as much time as needed. She is a new teacher and it shows (she somtimes goes really fast in lecture, especially if she's using powerpoint) but she was great about getting student feedback and then actually changing how she taught based on that feedback.

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