Bangs, Karen  

Amazing Professor! Though I took her for the one-unit intro class, she thoroughly explained Industrial Engineering and took us on awesome plant tours. She was incredibly kind and understanding to us all and I went into her office hours several times just to chat and discuss internship oppurtunities. I cannot wait to take her for IME 223!

I don't know if it's the class or her, but this class was indeed one of the biggest wastes of time I've ever been through. Except for the group project at the end, nothing relates to engineering. All of the assignments are stuff like summaries of company tours you take and an article you read (and learned nothing from). Some were pretty useful though, like making a resume (she had someone else come in to explain how to do that), when the engineering advisers came in to explain scheduling classes and such, and writing a 4 year plan (like we're graduating in four years anyway). It is only once a week so it's not toooooooo bad. The midterm/final are questions having to do with things to do in SLO along with stuff we learned from other people coming in and teaching us. In summary, she doesn't really teach anything because there is nothing to teach. (I guess?)

if you're taking her for 101, yes it can be a waste of time, but she really tries her best to make sure you have a clear understanding of what IME is about. she's the easiest teacher in the IME department so just take her

This teacher.... She had "coaches" (TA) who does all the grading. So apparently, if you become bad with the TA then you've just been screwed. This was a 1 unit class and it was for 3 DAMN HOURS. Mostly were all freshmen, so she teaches like we are all high school students. She raises her hands and everyone needed to be quiet... what?! then she lectures on and on and on and ON...... There were some interesting things such as going to field trips (YAY!) and learning about what industrial engineering is all about. You had to go on a trip and write an report of 1 page of what you've learned. ********** 1 page! if you go over you get deducted for going OVER a page! 0.o... anyway she brings some interesting people to talk about industrial stuff and group activities etc.. Overall DID NOT LEARN A DAMN THING for 1 unit class she takes super pride in it. wasting our precious time and money....... IF we had more field trips and guest speakers it would of been much better than her standing in class talking.

Overall, this was a useless class but an easy A. Karen doesn't actually teach, and it's all busy work. The guest speakers are cool though, and can give you a lot of insight into the industry world. Would have been better if it was only 1 hour.

Well, this class is so easy and Karen really doesn't help with anything. Older students called coaches are the ones actually grading everything and my coach really didn't look at any of my assignments. I made up a ice couple of paragraphs about tutoring for physics and got 100% on it. That being said, there's really no reason not to get an A in this class unless you totally bomb the final presentation which is the only thing Karen actually grades. It was the only thing in the whole class I did not get 100% on (I got an 85%), but I still ended up with a 97% in the class. Great GPA booster!

Karen is awesome! Best teacher I've had in college so far. She teaches things in a way that gets you to not only appreciate the material but remember it as well. Take her!!

I completely disagree with the person below me 100%

Karen was definitely not up to date on her IME knowledge. She confused herself so often in this class it wasn't even funny. She even told us that she "left the industry because she made a multi-million dollar mistake". Ouch.

Great teacher. The material is kind of boring but she presents it clearly and its easy to follow. The class has one midterm, a project and a final. Not to much homework. Occasional pop quiz which is easy if you do the reading and pay attention in class.

I took this a while ago, but I have had Bangs for a few other classes. I despise how she teaches (or lack thereof). She will go over other people's slides with only a moderate understanding of what the slides are talking about, she is very unclear with her assignments, and she doesn't seem to care about her students. This is rough to say because at times she is a pretty nice lady but as a professor I think that she is well below par. She will give tests that are unclear and students will miss a lot of points, but then she just curves the heck out of it. I took a test and didn't have a clue what's going on and still got a C. I highly recommend finding another teacher if possible.

The content of this class was pretty simple by she managed to complicate it so there was a lot of confusion between students. She is no the greatest professor; she also appeared lazy when it came to graded and lecturing. She lectures by repeating what's written on the slides and occasionally doing an example. Most of the time you put into the class is ether for your group project or a lot of busy work. The pre-labs and case studies were almost useless. The labs themselves ranged from "time for working on your project" to rarely something educational to mass confusion from lack of instruction. Another thing, she always has a couple of TAs whom she expects to "teach" us some of the lab material. My experience with them was negative, seeing that they graded our lab stuff and group weekly progress reports (sometimes harshly thinking they know what they're doing). I heard this class used to be a better experience...when someone else was teaching it.

Definition of IRONY! Karen teaches a process improvement class, however her process of teaching has so much Muda its ridiculous. Good luck trying to figure out what the heck you have to do for homework each night. Her class mostly consists of busy work, if you can find it on her cluttered Polylearn. Midterm has many subjective questions which can be argued. Term project has a lot of work associated with it, but has a low point value for the class. With that said Karen is super nice and will help you with anything you need and give you very valuable advice.

Waste of time. She doesn't really teach, instead posts up videos on polylearn for students to watch. Coaches end up taking over the lab and teaching the students. Lots of work for unnecessary reasons...and her sass is unbearable...

Total waste of time, thoroughly disappointed with the presentation of what could be useful information.

You will find yourself roaming the pastures surrounding Cal Poly for bulls. You will then follow them around, scooping up their sh*t. Once you have collected enough bullsh*t, you can smear it all over pieces of paper and hand it in and receive credit. Repeat this process a few hundred times.

This class has the potential to be great because of the skills and information that you're supposed to learn according to the course description. Karen Bangs straight up sucks at teaching. You'll find yourself annoyed af because she'll assign a bunch of boring/tedious busywork. She has literally only lectured 3 times the entire quarter. There is something due everyday of lecture and it's usually more than one thing. I don't mind doing hw if i feel like i'm learning the material but in her class that is not the case. /tldr; Karen Bangs is terrible but IME 223 can be great if a good professor would teach it

Karen is a really nice person, and very helpful if you need help on anything. However, when it comes to actually teaching, she sucks. A lot. Over half the time in lecture you just sit there and don't really learn anything, or you learn 30 minutes of material in 90. For a class about reducing waste, it's ironic that it wastes so much time. Most of the course is weighted in the midterm and final, and the term-long project. The project isn't bad, but I love how she taught us about work sampling for our project, a process that takes 2-3 weeks minimum, barely 2 weeks from the due date. That should sum up how organized she is. Due dates all over the place, random shit due at the beginning of the week, and absurdly long videos to teach you material you need to watch for quizzes. She tries to use the "Flipped Classroom" method (where you learn about things BEFORE coming to class, then practice or discuss in class), which is useful in classes like dynamics where you have zero time to learn anything, but seems wasteful in this one, because she could just lecture the info in class instead of wasting time like she currently does. This method also causes you to have obscene amounts of what is honestly busywork, because it teaches you jack shit. The lab is whatever, you can just use the time for your project, but my biggest issue are the questions on the quizzes/tests. She has True/False questions often, which are great if you didn't realize there was a quiz (which I wouldn't blame you for not knowing) but some of the questions are so poorly worded that she doesn't get the intent of what she's asking you for across, and instead asks you something that common sense and reasoning could logically give you the wrong answer. For example, on of her midterm questions asked to compare the "basic information" of two types of data sheets (which share SOME similarities), but good fucking luck figuring out what information is "basic" and what isn't. Overall, the total workload of actual learning that you do is pretty fair for a 4 unit class, but with Karen's wasted time, useless homework, and confusing instructions, you're in for a bad time. At least she puts all the test info on polylearn, so all of the answers are online SOMEWHERE. None of the questions were stuff we hadn't seen before.

Absolutely horrible. Avoid Bangs for 239 at all costs. This was her first time teaching the class, and it showed. She even told us the first lecture that accounting is not her best subject... I really don't even know why she teaches this class. I learned more from YouTube than attending her lectures. She's extremely lazy, she picks her favorites, she's a bias grader, and just overall is a terrible lecturer. She doesn't even grade her own project papers.. she has her TA douche Phil grade them...

It was an easy class with not a lot of outside work. One midterm and one final, and you can retake either one or both if you want. She was a very average teacher. She uses a flipped classroom teaching method where students watch videos and read outside of class then do worksheets during class. Cool concept and works for some, but I prefer traditional lecture. She gets a little lazy with it too and I feel it wasnt the best set up.

Karen gave us a bad grade on our presentation, even though the guy from the company that we worked for loved it. She said that she didn\'t understand it and \"we should have included more pictures or something\". Don\'t take her if you can avoid it, her power-points will drain the life out of you.

Ms. Bangs is a great teacher. She has lots of industry experience and knowledge in engineering economics. Homework and tests are graded very fairly. She is very helpful during office hours and makes an extra effort to ensure that students understand the intricacies of the quarter project. I would not hesitate to take her again.

Karen is a cool professor, and you will start off the quarter with a light and easy homework load. However, once the quarter progresses, the lectures become very dry, with little substance that pertains to the homework, and thus the homework becomes more difficult. The term project will also begin the same way, relatively easy, and then she will expect more and more as the quarter goes on, so do not fall behind! The midterm wasn't too bad, but she didn't like that a lot of people did well, so she curved UP! WHO DOES THAT?? And apparently a student complained that we didn't have enough quizzes, so lately we have been quizzed every day we have lecture! She is a cool professor, but on her off days class will be no fun..

I enjoyed Bang's class. As long as you keep up with the work, you will do fine. Homework was straight forward, the midterm was okay. Topics in this class build off one another so make sure you understand the basics in the beginning. Quizzes weren't too bad as long as you read ahead or have common sense. Karen gets to know everyone's names and her industry experience really helps. We had a couple of guest speakers. There is a group project at the end that was really confusing at first, but as the quarter goes along, you understand it better. I would recommend her for this class.

She is a wonderful teacher. If you are willing to participate and complete the work, she is a great teacher to have. She is very casual, friendly and fair. She is also incredibly helpful in office hours. She offers several extra credit opportunities, and the class is comprised of: quizzes/ HW (20%), Midterm (30%), Term Project (20%) and a final (30%). Overall if you have to take IME 314, take Bangs.

Honestly,just wait one more quarter and avoid Bangs at all costs. Didnt learn a thing, have absolutely no idea what my grade is going into the final......... oh and another thing: she really has a knack for zipping through powerpoints and going "im not going over this, but you're responsible!" k.....she also really likes "workshops" which is her way of making students teach each other for 1.5 hours twice a week so she can sit on her laptop doing whatever the fuck she is doing, which I know isnt grading our shit because she had a grader do that who took off points if you were 100% correct in every fucking answer. She's clearly bitter about her past experience with her job and she shows it. AVOID AVOID AVOID.

Jesus.. what can i say? The class is so unorganized and filled with trivial time consuming work. Karen uploads a shit ton of videos to her clustered polylearn as her way of teaching, since she is too lazy to do it herself. c'mon IE department you guys gotta 86 her

Avoid her if you can... she is too lazy to actually teach and does flipped mode classrooms. When she does teach its a pretty terrible attempt, wait a quarter and go abroad or something, its not worth the frustration.

Honestly, I don't understand why a lot of people dislike her. Her midterm/final are quite difficult and tricky. She presented the material quite fine, and honestly, it wasn't that hard. It's probably cause of the busy work, but it doesn't eat more than an hour of your life. The only downside with her class is how, in my opinion, difficult it is to get a A. The average for the midterm and final usually sit around a C, if not a B-. This is enough to bring down your chances of getting an A, let alone an A-. TL;DR: it's an exponential amount of work if you want to get higher than a B. But the B is easy to get.

Great class though she was a solid teacher, didn\'t have any issues with the class. There\'s plenty of homework and projects, but they are all super easy. As long as you do your work, you get a good grade.

Class is a joke. Super boring and super easy. Had a 97 going into the final. Somehow got a B+. Was pretty annoyed because I thought it was impossible to get anything below an A, but everyone I talked to seemed to get a B+. You feel like your in middle school. Powerpoints that put you to sleep, random pop quizzes, and random assignments/projects. Two group projects and a midterm and final. Pretty much a waste of your time but easy.

"Introduction to Human Factors Engineering" should be renamed "Introduction to Introduction to Human Factors, with Karen's vacation stories." I really do feel bad saying this, but IME 319 taught by Karen Bangs was by far the worst class I've ever had the misfortune of suffering through. The concept of human factors engineering is so incredibly universal and all-encompassing and relevant to everything in the world, that it deserves so much more than than Karen's course even pretends to offer. she never goes in-depth into any subject, and instead expects you to learn endless contrived minutia about the classification of the study of human factors. things that "human factors engineers" take into account and think about when designing interfaces and displays, but never how one would actually implement anything. despite this critical piece of the course omitted, there is a project where you are expected to do just that. if you are going to take the course, be prepared to memorize the chapter titles, 30% of your grade will depend in simply knowing what "human factors engineering principles" to relate to whatever you're talking about. also be prepared to be subjected to at least 2 assignments designed specifically to attempt to validate the course and not to actually teach you anything. (examples: look up three human factors engineering job listings and write about them and what human factors engineering principles will need to be applied (oh, there's that again!), or look up an article about human factors engineering and write some useless gibberish about it. relate it to the topics you'll be studying in the course. again!) The course also seems to be designed to waste lecture time as much as possible, probably to make up for the general lack of content. the first 10 minutes of every class are wasted on "class examples" (can you think of a product or process that involves human factors? can you NOT? is there anything even remotely challenging in that assignment?), and there are two group presentations, each taking up an entire week of lecture for every group to present. there is also an excessive amount group work outside of class (you are required to have a non-working, "fun" meeting where you get to know your fellow group members, and write about it. and apply HFE principles). would like to continue to warn everyone away from this class as much as i can, but i've already had so much of my life wasted away by IME 319, i need to go study for a class that actually matters.

During this entire quarter all I could think about was how this professor reminded me of that small little dog that runs through the back of scene 23 in The Incredibles by Pixar. Seriously, if you look it up you will only be able to see it...

This was one of the best classes I have had at Cal Poly. I am a BMED, so my IME experience is not gigantic. However, Professor Bangs made this class very, very interesting to someone a little on the outside. We had very dynamic guest speakers for 8 of the 10 weeks of class. Class was once a week, where we would turn in a short prep assignment (typically took about an hour weekly), listen to a speaker, leave, and do an online feedback assignment (took 30 mins). No tests. Professor Bangs really kept the class moving, and everyone was attentive and interested.

Karen was an ok teacher. I didn't really like her lecturing style and she does WAY too much group work during class time. The midterm was fair, and she made the final optional which was WAY cool. But don't get excited, she said that was a once a lifetime deal. Too bad. But she's better than taking Seiffodini, who teaches 430 from time to time.

Karen is an ok lecturer, but you will likely spend alot of time just sitting around bored because she spends too much time doing in class assignments. Also, her tests are super long and require super human speed to finish on time. Also, you will have wrist problems when you finish the tests. Overall, she is a relativly easy teacher, but going to class is like hitting yourself in the face with a dead fish.

Unlike previous classes with Karen, this one does not contain heaps of busywork and tedious assignments with little point value. There is not much actual content in the curriculum of this class, so it is neither rushed nor difficult to learn in 10 weeks. The midterm is easy, the project is as hard as you make it, and the final is pretty much the exact same as the midterm except it contains two extra topics. Student presentations make up the bulk of class time, Karen actually spends very little time lecturing.