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Voelker, Kurt

Cumulative GPA: 2.20/4.00 with 35 evaluations
Presents Material Clearly: 2.14
Recognizes Student Difficulties: 2.17

Computer Science Department, Cal Poly, SLO
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CSC 231 Sophomore Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 9:59 am, Apr 1, 2013 Report Evaluation		Voelker is boring and useless. Classtime is much more effective if you start reading the book and working on the lab right away as opposed to listening to the one thing he's going to drone on about. Luckily, Matlab is pretty simple to figure out, the book is actually quite useful (buy it!) and your classmates will help you out if you get stuck. The midterms and final, while in theory testing you on what was covered in class, do so in a way that does not well represent the students' knowledge. Try to avoid making eye contact with Voelker during class or he will come over and distract you for ten to fifteen minutes. Overall, though, the class isn't terrible, and Voelker isn't a bad person, just a bad teacher. I feel a little sorry for the poor guy.

CSC 231 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 5:30 pm, Mar 26, 2013 Report Evaluation		Since the class is basically just MATLAB, Voelker assigns a couple problems every class and we work on them. Labs are worth 10%, and each midterm is 30%. He curves generously, though, and apparently everyone failed the second midterm so he decided to drop it completely and just make the final worth more. The reason he's a subpar professor is mainly because you'll come into class, and the lab will already be posted and people typing away. He doesn't actually address the class and teach the general concepts the lab is on until like 30 minutes into the class when everyone is already working on the lab. Maybe it's just a characteristic of programming in general, but you can't really get better without just practicing. So he will go over concepts and give examples on the board, and help students individually if you raise your hand, but it's difficult to do well if you're not naturally good at programming, without practicing. His midterms include written portions, but they are typically simple so you can definitely do well if you study/practice some problems, go to class, and ask for clarification if you don't understand problems in class. He doesn't return lab grades, though, so your only indicator of how well you're doing is the midterms you get back, which he takes a while to grade also. OVERALL he's not a terrible professor, but not the greatest, just kind of mediocre.

CSC 235 Sophomore Grade Earned: B Required (Support) 11:11 pm, Aug 21, 2012 Report Evaluation		Although he speaks in monotone, he is very intelligent and if you go to office hours he will help you so much even on his own time (not office hours). He will help you with every project and if the class is behind give you more time. The midterms were rough and I got C on both but did fairly well on final and homework. The midterms (2) and final were all worth 30% of grade each then homework 10%. So I still ended up with a better than okay grade. I liked him, he is a good teacher not the best but really cares about his students.

CSC 235 Freshman Grade Earned: B Required (Support) 7:35 pm, Mar 26, 2012 Report Evaluation		I had not done any sort of computer programming before this class and got a B+. It is difficult material but does not require a lot of out of class work. Usually, you finish the homework during the lab time. When the whole class was struggling, he would extend due dates which was helpful. The only down side was that he was not that helpful when you asked questions during lab. But he is approachable and very entertaining! I would take another class with him.

CSC 235 Freshman Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 5:05 pm, Mar 24, 2012 Report Evaluation		There's not a certain word I can use to describe Professor Voelker. He's just very...odd. He lectures about the program, but then when it's time to do the program, the lecture barely helps. He KNOWS that students struggle with programs, but just kind of pushes through anyway in order to cover all the materials in the quarter. Don't get me wrong, I liked this professor, but I just wish he stepped up and helped students out a little more. He's very nice and understanding, so if the whole class struggles with a program, he'd push the due date back a little. He curves his tests quite a lot. I'm glad I took this professor, because he showed understanding. He didn't make students feel stupid like some professors do.

CSC 231 Junior Grade Earned: B Required (Support) 9:29 am, Mar 21, 2012 Report Evaluation		Pf. Voelker is a very nerdy guy who tries to do his best to teach the material. This class is not difficult for the first few weeks, but then it becomes a bit more challenging. Reading the book is enough to pass the class, but to do well in it you need to spend some time programming. For his midterms Pf. Voelker likes to give his students written exams. Practice writing out your code by hand a few times to prepare you for the midterms. Overall I think Voelker did an Good Job and I would definitely recommend him over the other Pf. (Hutch.) Good luck!

CSC 231 Junior Grade Earned: N/A Required (Support) 12:45 am, Mar 8, 2012 Report Evaluation		Voelker, he is very odd and funny so I like the guy! Haha. I would have to say that Kurt is a very smart guy when it comes to programming but he is not so great at presenting it to engineers. But I did see a very significant rise in his abilities to portray the material clearly in class as the year progressed (He is still learning MATLAB himself) and could tell that he REALLY cared about teaching us the material so that we could use it in future classes. But on the other hand he is not very lenient when it comes to grading... NNNOOOO partial credit! I mean you can do a problem 92.73% right and not get a single point for it, so that was a bummer but what are you going to do you know. But I can say that I know more about MATLAB than students with other professors. So what do you value more, learning or grades? If you care more about having knowledge take Voelker because I hear the other guy just doesn't care about his students.



CSC 310 Sophomore Grade Earned: A General Ed 11:44 am, Dec 5, 2011 Report Evaluation		This professor is just... weird. He tries to make very odd jokes and didn't really teach us anything. All we had to do for the class was about 10 labs in pretty simple HTML, with a tiny bit of Java. Everyone just brought their laptops to lecture and wrote up the code for an hour before we moved to the lab. I'd still take this class again for a very strange easy A.

CSC 231 Sophomore Grade Earned: N/A Required (Support) 1:08 am, Nov 14, 2011 Report Evaluation		kvoelker is horrible. He doesn't ever teach the material. The only way to learn anything is to read the book. The class is 2 hours and he spends the first hour sitting at his computer doing his own thing and the rest of the class works on their assignment. Then, the second half of class, he tries to figure out the problems that he assigned to us and doesn't have much success with it. His grading system is complete bull shit. There is no partial credit and he has zero leniency. On my first midterm I forgot a period on two problems and used parenthesis instead of brackets on another and it brought my grade down two letter grades. He's a horrible teacher, his hair is stupid, and hes awkward as hell. Avoid him if you can.

CSC 231 Sophomore Grade Earned: N/A Required (Support) 12:57 am, Nov 14, 2011 Report Evaluation		He is a teacher that doesnt teach. You do all your learning from the books. he assigns labs that are a pain in the ass. It took him a 2 hr class period to figure out one of the questions he assigned us for hw and Im sure he still didnt get the correct answer. His midterms are completely unfair, he has a grading system that makes no sense. It just seems like he is a noob at teaching and its unfair to the students. I wouldnt recommend him.

CSC 235 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 8:44 pm, Mar 28, 2011 Report Evaluation		Voelker was definitely an oddball. I had a hard time learning from him because he spent a majority of class time talking about how students in India were way smarter than us and how the world will need more mathematicians to be able to program. However, he's fairly helpful in office hours. If you give a reasonable effort in the class and look like you're paying attention, he'll give you a decent grade. I had a borderline A/B going into the final and finished with a solid A. Lecture's are pretty pointless but going to class will get you on his good side.

CSC 232 Sophomore Grade Earned: B Required (Support) 7:36 pm, Mar 21, 2011 Report Evaluation		The class consisted on 2 midterms and a final, each worth 30% of your grade. Captain Kurt is a major space cadet and would always get distracted with food during lecture and lab, because it was at noon. He also didn't seem to understand VBA very well (the excel coding you have to do). Still, you can do well in the class if you just use the internet, your neighbors, or your old labs to do well on the midterms and final. Its not too difficult to do well in the class. Kurts a good guy, just not a great teacher.

CSC 232 Sophomore Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 1:24 pm, Feb 1, 2011 Report Evaluation		Professor Voelker didn't require a textbook for his class which made things really difficult to learn. His labs weren't formatted for the new version of Excel which was frustrating. He was learning everything along with us since a lot changed between versions. He didn't give enough time on the midterms and there were 2.



CSC 232 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 9:05 pm, Dec 9, 2010 Report Evaluation		i have no idea how i pulled an A- in this class. i got a C and a B on his midterms but somehow pulled an A-. voelker is a terrible \"teacher\" but a really nice guy. he truly cares and is a really smart professor but cannont relay the material at all. the only thing that saved me was the open notes, open internet and almost open neighbor tests. if i didn\'t have either of those i would have failed

CSC 235 Sophomore Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 1:10 pm, Nov 29, 2010 Report Evaluation		This guy is hilarious. He is extremely helpful and funny. It is a pretty easy class and if you give any effort he will make sure you pass. Great teacher.

CSC 234 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 1:30 pm, Nov 17, 2010 Report Evaluation		Voelker was an odd teacher. On the first day of class we had a professor swap and I was pretty annoyed to find out that I was going to have him instead of the teacher I had signed up for. However, he really grew on me. He was a little hazy on teaching the material, but if you asked him specifically what he meant he was very happy to go over it again. Although he\'s very awkward in a social sense, he got us through the course with little difficulty along the way.

CSC 235 Sophomore Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 7:16 pm, Nov 14, 2010 Report Evaluation		I took 235 and 236 with him. He\'s a funny guy and kind of rambles on a bit but i really enjoyed his class. His labs were very fair and he was more than willing to help you out a lot if you asked for it. also, he doesn\'t mind people helping each other out. this is very different than other computer science classes i have taken where it is often forbidden or limited to one partner. He also is pretty fair in his grading of the labs. in many csc classes you have to have your lab working perfectly to even turn it in. voelker will give yours a look over and make sure it\'s generally working and move on. a lot of the stuff you do is manipulation of output which isn\'t terribly important in the long run but good for becoming more a more comfortable programmer. i would definitely recommend taking him. He\'s not the best teacher but he\'s pretty good he\'s not too difficult (though, the material is difficult for many. a lot of people just don\'t really get programming), and chances are you\'ll learn a lot. and plus, he\'s a really nice, quirky guy.

CSC 232 Freshman Grade Earned: A General Ed 1:03 am, May 26, 2010 Report Evaluation		Though he didn\'t spend much time teaching it was his first time teaching this class so I\'m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He seems like a great teacher otherwise and once you get to know him he has some great thoughts about the future of programming. I believe he understands what it means to teach and what engineering students need to know. If your looking to learn programming, go buy a book and learn it your self. Good Luck, and Have fun!

CSC 235 Freshman Grade Earned: B Required (Support) 2:17 pm, Apr 2, 2010 Report Evaluation		Nice guy, but terrible teacher. He tells you what he wants, and not how to do it, while introducing a single concept which will help you get there, but not how to apply it, along with COMPLETELY leaving out several crucial components to the project. His office hours are your best bet for help, but he still is vague and your lucky if he even sees you. I don\'t know of any other teachers who do 235, so if you have to take it, and you get Voelker, good luck...



CSC 235 Junior Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 3:41 pm, Mar 24, 2010 Report Evaluation		Lecture is pretty irrelevant to lab. He usually talks about the labs for like 5 mins each time so sometimes it is helpful. I have never programmed before and am not very good at it and I still pulled off an A-. All you have to do is put forth the effort, ask a lot of questions and be very good with google. If you go to office hours and look really lost he will sometimes tell you how to do the programs. Oh, and he put massive curves on the tests too :)

CSC 235 Freshman Grade Earned: C Required (Major) 12:35 am, Mar 24, 2010 Report Evaluation		He can be a cool professor at times, but he makes no sense. His lectures do not really help with the labs. His office hours do not help. He leaves and doesnt even help you. His lectures are confusing. He is just a weird professor.

CSC 310 Junior Grade Earned: A General Ed 12:10 am, Jan 29, 2010 Report Evaluation		Professor Voelker is awesome! I definitely recommend taking this class for your GE F. He is a funny guy and truly wants each student to not only do well in his class, but enjoy it at the same time. You will learn the basics of HTML and web page design with a bit of computer history mixed in. An easy A if you do the work.

CSC 310 Senior Grade Earned: A General Ed 9:23 pm, Dec 26, 2009 Report Evaluation		Professor Voelker was an excellent instructor, as he delivered/presented the course material coherently and clearly and his willingness to assist students did not go un-noticed. He stayed after class ended (at 6:00pm) to help students -- so there would often be several of us who would stay to finish up the labs.... He would ensure all students had their lab questions answered before he left - and I greatly appreciated that. He was also knowledgeable of the subject, answered emails promptly, and did not overload students will nonsense work. Definitely take him for CSC 310 - Computers for Poets, and be prepared to learn about HTML and webpages... Really, not that frightening! He walks students through the HTML process... and in the end, the subject matter IS useful!

CSC 302 Junior Grade Earned: N/A General Ed 10:10 pm, May 6, 2009 Report Evaluation		Voelker is the man!! He is definately a paranoid hippy but he is pretty entertaining. The whole class is watching YouTube videos about how we are being spied on by the government. No book and no homework really. Just two easy midterms, making a group movie, and a kind of annoying paper. Take him for an easy A!!!!

CSC 235 Junior Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 11:53 am, Mar 17, 2009 Report Evaluation		This class is a waste of time, Voelker babbles on about nothingness and I learned absolutely nothing from this class. The first day of class he drew a picture of a computer on the board and began to ramble on about "how a computer works," he also spent at least 2 hours lecturing about how binary number counting works (something you don't need to know at all). The assigns programs sporadically and always pushes back the due dates, if you ask him long enough in lecture he will basically give you the entire program. This class was a waste of time and should not be required for stats or math majors, C++ is from the 80's anyways, who uses it nowadays?!? Voelker is the most boring, dumbest, and laziest professor I've had in my life!



CSC 302 Junior Grade Earned: Credit General Ed 1:28 pm, Feb 3, 2009 Report Evaluation		I completely agree with the post about Voelker being a paranoid ex-hippie. I read that before I registered for his class and on the first day it is absolutely obvious he is totally tweaked in the head. The whole class is pretty much him discussing national survaliance and how freaked out he is that he is being watched (and we should too apparently). At the end of the day he isn't a bad teacher and he is actually really entertaining. Its occasionally difficult to listen to him with out laughing your ass off because he says the funniest, most parinoid shit. Assigns about 1 single-spaced page of writing per week. Not hard, annoying yes, but if you can bullshit, ur golden. PS you will actually learn some interesting stuff

CSC 310 Senior Grade Earned: A General Ed 12:27 pm, Dec 18, 2008 Report Evaluation		I thoroughly enjoyed this class. I wanted to learn some basic HTML code and how to set up a website and Voelker showed us how. I'm not sure what the person below me is talking about. He was a bit of a loon but I would take another class from him. He laid everything out very clearly and the class was a piece of cake. Take it if you can, it's an easy area F and he teaches you things that you can use in the future.

CSC 310 Junior Grade Earned: N/A General Ed 8:38 pm, Nov 2, 2008 Report Evaluation		This teacher is absolutely horrible. I wanted to take CSC 310 as a GE: F course because I knew it would be easy. I read the other reviews about Voelker and thought he wouldn't be so bad because people described him as a hippie and laid back. NEVER take one of his classes!!! Homework: it's basically like middle school history hw, where the answers are copied straight from the book. Easy stuff, but even though you copy the right answer down, he will still mark you down some how. Lecture: Summarizes what the book says at the end of each chapter. Talks about random stuff. Acts like every student in the class is mental challenged. Is really awkward. He thinks he is being cool and funny, but he isn't. Lab: There is a lab portion in which you work on basic HTML. He thinks he knows everything about HTML, but he doesn't. One time I got marked down on my coding because I put a space in an image I had saved. He said that you cannot put a space in anything in coding. WRONG! I asked tons of csc majors and other people I know who do coding for a living and they all said he is wrong. He thinks he is right all the time so you can never go in and ask him to reevaluate anything. Midterm: Midterms are easy. Exact same questions from the homework. Lab midterm is easy as well. Overall, NEVER EVER take Voelker. I'm being completely honest. The class is super easy, but you will get random points taken off for no reason. Cannot discuss anything to him because he thinks he is right all the time. Mocks people in front of the class. Basically comes off that everyone in the class is mentally challenged. He should never be a teacher. Hope this helps you out. Wish other people were more honest before I signed up for his class.

CSC 310 Senior Grade Earned: N/A General Ed 10:45 pm, Oct 27, 2008 Report Evaluation		He really is just a bad teacher. He's a nice man, but as an educator he fails. Be prepared to sit through the most boring lecture in the universe, go to a lab that he doesn't explain, bug the nerdy kid sitting near you for help because God forbid the actual teacher answer any of your questions, and then walk out of the two hour class from hell with a head hung low with mild depression. or maybe thats just me... The up side is his test are relatively easy, pretty much just questions directly lifted from the homeworks, so buy some flash cards and you're set. So good luck if this is your only available option for an area F! You'll probably recieve and A or a B, but is it really worth a quarter of suicidal thoughts?

CSC 302 Senior Grade Earned: Withdrawn General Ed 12:19 am, Feb 21, 2008 Report Evaluation		Voelker is a paranoid ex-hippie (who clearly wrote the entry below this one.) I dropped the class on day three out of frustration with this dolt of a teacher. So much for getting a quality education here at Poly.

CSC 302 Junior Grade Earned: A General Ed 12:22 pm, Feb 14, 2008 Report Evaluation		The two previous negative ratings obviously only reveal those particular students' immaturity. To write something so adolescent and unconstructive is ineffective at best. I guess every class has it's share of negative people, so whatever. What I like about Professor Voelker is his fairness and explicit expectations of us students. If you do the work, study and get involved you will do well AND enjoy the course material. I learned loads of incredible stuff and it was VERY interesting. I looked forward to class and I liked the material he presented. If you want an easy A, this is it!



CSC 302 Sophomore Grade Earned: A General Ed 12:29 am, Feb 7, 2008 Report Evaluation		Voelker is a nice guy. He is two page paper happy. "Just right up two pages on this and on that." BS stuff really, most of it I just pulled out of my ass and he loved it. Easy grader. Lectures were BORING. We sat there as he tried to get the class to converse, while not going over much material at all. He didn't even give us a 10 minute break. We just sat twiddling our thumbs while he extended what could be a 20 minute lecture into two hours. It was a lot of work for such a BS class, but it was easy. I think I cracked open the book three times or so and got an A.

CSC 235 Junior Grade Earned: Credit Required (Major) 11:40 am, Feb 6, 2008 Report Evaluation		He does not accommodate to students who have not had any computer programing experience in the past. The class was completely divided between those who have had a previous class, and those who were new to the whole thing. Considering how the class doesn't have any prerequisites I thought this was completely unfair on his part. He is not helpful to ask for help, the book does not relate to his lectures or assignments at all (waste of money, don't buy), and his instructions are completely vague. He fails as a teacher.

CSC 310 Senior Grade Earned: A General Ed 6:44 pm, Dec 11, 2007 Report Evaluation		Professor Voelker is awesome! I was nervous about taking this class because I knew we had to build websites and I have never really had any computer skills. But Professor Voelker explains everything really clearly and is there to help you whenever you need it, and he is hilarious! He made what could have been a boring class and subject and made it my favorite class to come to - and I'm a Rec major! They majority of the class was concentrated on building two major websites- and he was totally helpful and understanding because some of the computers were having problems. Anyway, I would definitely recommend him to anyone, and I recommend taking Computers for Poets for an Area F GE- don't let the name scare you away- there is no poetry in it!

CSC 302 Junior Grade Earned: B General Ed 8:42 am, May 1, 2007 Report Evaluation		Some of the topic information is quite boring, but he "wakes" you up by striking conversation with you and your classmates. There will be a couple presentations, which I HATE!!! I would rather get a root canal than perform a presentation, so that is my biggest warning for this class to others who feel the same way. However, it is an easy A, I got a B+ because I refused to do one of the presentations. He tells you what is going to be on the test and most of it is interesting so it is easy to remember and write about. There are a few essay questions and then there are mulitple choice questions. We had only one exam and he made a paper we were already suppose to write the final exam!! SoOOOOO cool. At first there were a lot of essays, but then he got tired of grading all of them so he cut it out. I would definitely recommend this instructor. The class I took completed the F GE area.

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