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Alexander, Dekhtyar

Cumulative GPA: 3.27/4.00 with 11 evaluations
Presents Material Clearly: 3.18
Recognizes Student Difficulties: 3.00

Computer Science Department, Cal Poly, SLO
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CSC 365 Junior Grade Earned: B Elective 2:23 pm, Apr 5, 2013 Report Evaluation		This class is a whole bunch of busy work. There are labs every week which can take you many hours to do. They are not necessarily hard to do but they are very time consuming. I personally found most of the lectures relatively boring as I took database in high school. The midterm was somewhat difficult but doable. I advice is to study the relational algebra because he really likes that stuff. Final was basically the midterm but with different questions and one super long question that had multiple queries. Dekhtyar is a cool teacher but this class was just a whole bunch of busy work.

CSC 365 Senior Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 4:55 pm, Apr 4, 2013 Report Evaluation		Yeah, Alex is awesome. I had this guy for 101 4 years ago and he hasn't changed a bit. Like most of use, he is lazy and has better stuff to do. This means that you won't know if your labs are 100% correct till week 7 and that isn't good news cause you need to build off them for the rest of the labs. Yet, this class is very easy to pick up. SQL is also an essential when it comes to how data is stored. You will learn a lot in this class. I cannot stress the importance of this class. As to difficulty, it's tedious, not hard. The tedious curve starts hard, curves down then up to create a U shape. The reason it get's hard at the end again is because of java/SQL integration called JDBC. But you won't have to worry about that till the end and he explains the integration well enough for it to work (oh and there is a GUI too). The Midterm and Final will have tons of code to write by hand so make sure to stretch your hand once in a while. Overall, great class. Glad I took it. -IF66

CSC 466 Senior Grade Earned: A Elective 12:04 am, Dec 7, 2012 Report Evaluation		This class consisted of a series of programs and two large group projects. The labs are all about implementing different data mining algorithms. One of the projects is a design project where you have to create a system that uses data mining. The second one basically consists of finding something interesting in a data set using data mining and reporting on it. The programs could be time consuming, but they're basically just implementing pseudocode of the algorithms talked about during lecture. The second project that used data mining to determine stuff about data was interesting and relevant to the course. I felt the design project was more based on how creatively you could use data and didn't contribute as much to the course. No exams, but you do have two presentations - one on your initial idea for the design project and a final presentation on the design project.

CSC 101 Freshman Grade Earned: C Required (Major) 4:06 pm, May 19, 2012 Report Evaluation		Dekhtyar assigned a lot of long programs that took a long time to understand what he wanted, but throughout it all, I felt like he was an excellent professor. His lectures were always very clear, and I liked how he printed us lecture notes every day to show us the topics he was going to cover. He must have killed so many trees printing us all of that stuff, but it helped A LOT, referring back to it and etc. Although I barely passed, he was still pretty awesome to have as my first intro to C. He really does care!!! And now that I'm finishing up my 102 course, looking back, Dekhtyar really prepared me for all this with his lengthy programs.

CSC 570 Graduate Student Grade Earned: N/A Elective 1:34 am, Dec 9, 2011 Report Evaluation		Alex is a very thorough and intelligent professor. He knows his material well. This course however, while appearing to be very structured and organized, lacked the structure necessary to facilitate learning. Our grade was based on two group projects and there were disparate lectures on various algorithms and their applications to bioinformatics, on which no follow-up had occurred (i.e. quiz, exam, assignment). Here are my recommendations for improvements for next time: -Assign a project manager. If a project is to be successful, each team should have a manager. Probably choosing someone that has a vested interest in the project (if it's someone's thesis) or if someone expresses interest in managing the project. Or Dekhtyar could have been the project manager. Without a clear person that is accountable for the project's success, it is unlikely to have as thoughtful of a project as one would like. This was a point of frustration for me, and I can leave it to the reader to decide whether it was because I am too intolerant of the "graduate-style classroom". Suggestions for improvement: -Create some milestones throughout the quarter. Not just "what's the team organization". Actual milestones. Everyone just twiddles their thumbs until the last couple weeks where people scramble to get the project done. This is not a description of my experience only. Other groups have a shared sentiment. -I took this course because I wanted to learn more about algorithms. I understand that this is a graduate course; but is it unreasonable to expect to solve problems using the said algorithms. is it unreasonable to have a handful of assignments where these algorithms are implemented?

CPE 101 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 10:15 pm, Mar 28, 2011 Report Evaluation		As opposed to the reviewer beneath me, I never noticed Dekhtyar stutter. I knew how to program going in to the class and didn't find it too difficult but Dekhtyar made it enjoyable.

CPE 101 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 1:42 am, Mar 22, 2011 Report Evaluation		DURRRRR, that's what you will hear from dekhtyar about 50% of the time. He tends to stutter a LOT during class. I found it funny sometimes how much he did it. CPE 101 is an easy class if you have prior programming knowledge as there is a lot of work in dekhtyar's class and if you don't know how to program well you are pretty much screwed. Some programs too a while, while the others took less than 2 hours. Dekhtyar know's his stuff when it comes to C but he needs to refocus his class on the important stuff, such as not spending a week on what an if statement is and focus on more important things such as structs or file i/o. I understand that it was an intro class but really a whole week on an if statement? too much in my opinion. Overall dekhtyar's class was relatively easy but his lectures were pretty damn boring...



CPE 101 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 1:29 am, Mar 22, 2011 Report Evaluation		Okay CPE 101 teacher, goes over content thoroughly but some content just gets explained in wayyyy too much detail. For example, we spent a whole day on what an int is in C, not needed imho. That aside, this guy is NO HELP in lab whatsoever. I came up to him once, asking for a little help in debugging and he just told me to go look it over again. Wtheck man? Other than that, he's a cool guy outside of class, has awkward stutters, and a cool Russian accent.

CPE 101 Freshman Grade Earned: C Required (Major) 7:00 pm, May 23, 2010 Report Evaluation		Alex is a teacher that is hard, but you thank him for it later. He assigned a lot of work and he is not easy. He does cover a lot of material and he loves to teach. I only had to read the book once because he explains everything in the lectures. The homework does take the maximum amount of time assigned and it gets easier when you have a partner or a group of them. Just watch out for his BO cause he stinks and that\'s why most people don\'t ask him for help during lab.

CPE 101 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 12:09 am, Feb 23, 2010 Report Evaluation		Dekhtyar definitely assigns a load of work, but I feel like most programming classes assign about the same (as observed of my friends who had other teachers). If you pay attention to his lectures in class and read the note handouts, you don\'t even have to read the book. His midterms were easy enough, I took one thinking it was a quiz and aced it. His PPM programs can kick your butt if you don\'t really understand them, but Dekhtyar is a nice patient guy if you can be nice and patient with him. If anything proves he\'s a good teacher it\'s how easy the final was (all CPE101 students took the same one regardless of their prof), and I\'m not a gifted programmer.

CPE 101 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 2:00 am, Dec 21, 2008 Report Evaluation		Pretty good professor, prepared us well for the final exam and got through most all of the course material. Even helped me resolve a few "mistakes" I made in the quarter that would have doomed me to failing the class otherwise. I don't know if I would take Dekhtyar again as his humor can be dry and he can come off as a bit rash sometimes in dealing with students, but he was very understanding with me. He can also tend to rant about the results of midterms. It probably helped that I had some programming background going into this course as well. Dekhtyar is not a bad teacher if you're completely new to programming, but there are probably better teachers out there.

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