Griffin, Lanny  

Dr. Griffin conveys material mainly through lecture. The book just goes into greater depth than the lectures but all test questions come from the lecture material. The homework is light, about 8 assignments per term. Reading can be skimmed as the chapters are long and contain more information than is necessary unless you are a materials engineer. Dr. Griffin's tests focus on math oriented problems, about 70%, the rest are short answer. His tests can be challenging but he curves heavily, low 70s for an A in one particular case.

It's not his fault that he only has time to lecture on a quarter of the material covered in the chapters, but he puts miniscule details from the reading in the tests. When he didn't put me to sleep, he confused me. You'll have to work your but off for an A and I should've had one but if you want a better grade and a better understanding of the material take someone else.

Griffin is very underated. The reason people dont do as well is because most of the people in the class are not MATE Engineers and do not care too much about the subject. If you take the class seriously, it really is not that much work. All you need to do is go over his homework solutions and notes. His tests are straight from that material.

Griffin is an okay professor. He is boring during lectures but very easily approachable when it comes to questions. Basically, his midterms consist of material from lecture and HW (sometimes he'll throw in something from the reading from the chapters). Midterms are pretty straight forward if you come to class and do the HW. There is no reason for not getting a good grade unless you slack off. Also, he throws in a great curve.

Professor Griffin taught this class very well considering the amount of crap we had to cover. His tests were almost exactly if not the same as the hw he assigned. he did what ever he could to help us out. In my class, he let us drop our worse test and also gave us the option of not taking the final if we were happy with our current grade. Hw is not collected but he posts solutions online. Overall, very straight forward and a good professor.

I think griffin is a great professor. He is very fair and generous. He let us drop one test and we didnt have to take the final if we were happy with our grade. He even curves most of the tests if people do bad. Except for random tangents that he likes to go off on he is a great professor. Take him if you can.

Mate 210 is an easy class and griffin knows it. Its simple and the material, to be honest is really boring. BUT Griffin does an exceptional job of teaching it and somehow makes class not bad at all. Unlike most prof's who would let their ego's make an easy class difficult by nitpicking, griffin realizes its an easy course and teaches it for what it is. But he makes it fun - he's got a great sense of humor and he REALLY knows what he's talking about. You can tell he's a good teacher and I bet he's great in upper division courses. It seemed like he knew the answer to every random question thrown at him. A great professor whom I highly recommend for mate 210 and anything else he teaches.

This class is a lot of work. Griffin is more customed to teaching much higher levels than the scope of the class. And he would touch on a subject and then say that it was beyond the scope of the class, and then switch subjects. His lectures are not particulary organized. He does try to help students in class when they don't understand the material, which is often. He says what is going to be on the test and it comes strait from the examples in class and HW with a little twist. That little twist often times makes the problem seem impossible. He is a very fair grader. Of the 5 tests he will drop the lowest score and you don't have to take the final if you are happy with your grade. I probably wouldn't take another one of his classes.

This class was interesting. The first day of class, he walked in and apologized to all of us students for being there saying that this would be probabally be the first and last time we would ever see this material unless we were going into materials engineering. So, for that reason, he didn't make this class that hard. 5 tests where you can drop your lowest test and an optional final. So, work hard and get A's on the first 4 tests and you can end this class almost 2 weeks early. He has an interesting sense of humor that made the class bearable. So, he's a great proffesor to take this class with.

Dr. Griffin gave two of the weekly lectures in ENGR 213 (see Dr. Dan Walsh). He seemed to be the only one who recognised how worthless the class was, as he told us straight off that the entire PowerPoint presentation could be found online. He then shouted down the hall at somebody leaving the class after about five minutes. He kept the class entertained, but near the end he introduced some random concept alien to most of the students there and refused to explain it. It showed up on the test later, of course.

Go to class take the quiz stay through lecture get a few extra credit points and class is over. That's what you do during every lecture. There is no reason why you should get an A in this class. If you have a B just do the extra credit and that should do it.

Griffin is a very funny guy and professor. He gives weekly quizzes, but I kid not you, basically gives you the answer for most of the questions. Should be an easy A, even if you don't go to class. Just do the HW, and the quizzes an you'll be fine.

Take this dude, totally understands that this 2 unit course is probably the least of your worries, show up to the 2 hour lecture and do the homework on time, easiest A of my life. Optional final for people who didn't do homework or did poorly on the quizzes(which have either obvious answers or he will straight up give you the answer). To reiterate, take this professor.

People really like this professor because he makes the class super easy and is quirky, but he has to be one of the worst lecturers at Cal Poly. Can't focus on a topic, moves through the slides too quick, lectures have no structure. I'm still not sure what I was supposed to be learning in this class. To make up for this, he literally gives you the answers to quizzes and makes the hw and tests as simple as possible. If he actually asked real questions on his quizzes and tests, I'm positive nobody would be passing this class because he is so awful at conveying information. He'll also make you get one of those iClickers for quizzes and in-class participation. The in-class participation counts for literally nothing on your grade, yet every lecture he gets pissed and openly judges you for leaving. You'll pass this class easily, but if you're like me you'll hate every second of it.

if you dont get an A in this class youre doing something wrong all you have to do is show up and he gives you an A

Really funny. New his stuff. Easy class so easy A.

Lanny Griffin is one quirky guy. His lectures are interesting but only if you sit up front because he doesnt project very much. His jokes and comments fall on the first two or three rows only. However, that being said if i had to take this class again i\'d still take him. He\'s a really easy grader and that more than made up for the awkward lectures. Our class grade was 70% weekly online quizzes, 20% in class participation (aka attendance) and 10% optional final. He drops hints (and often straight up answers) about quiz questions all the time during his lecture and if you pay attention at all you\'ll be fine. I started with a D bc his teaching style took some getting used to but by the end of the quarter I had an A. Bottom line, he\'s kind of awkward but sit up front and you\'ll be fine. As the quarter goes on he gets kinder about grades so just pay attention and do the quizzes.

This guy is really smart and really nice but is lousy at teaching 150+ student classes of bio engineering. The book is terrible and so are his lectures. If you're an engineer (besides a bio-engineer, ironically), you have to take this class. Sorry Lanny, you're super at Materials Engineering, but bad at BioEngineering!

For Engr 213 Griffin drops the ball. He is completely uncapable of teaching 150+ students. The 2 hours a week you have to spend in the class consist of him speeding through slides, so you can't take notes, and the rest of the class just ignoring him. Even if you did take notes it didn't matter. The homework from the book has almost nothing to do with the lectures and the quizzes he gives have nothing to do with anything from his lecture or the book. For most of the quarter all he did was tell us the answers to the quiz for the next week so that everyone that left early would get screwed. I guess he found this amusing. To top it all off his graders lost most of our course work, so that was a real joy. All in all Griffin might be a great teacher if the class was smaller, but when the class is over 150 people, its incredibly boring and a waste of your time.

Griffin is the guy to take for this waste of time they call ENGR 213.

To sum up this class: 50% homework, 40% quizzes, 10% final. Everyday of class (which meets once a week) you have homework due based on readings he posts on blackboard the week before, then there is quiz based directly off his lecture/powerpoint from the week before. No tricks. At the beginning of each lecture/powerpoint there is a slide of "Learning Objectives" which are basically the quiz questions--write those down, answer them, and memorize them for the quiz. I'm going to tell you right now that this class is boring if you're not into fake hearts and prostectics and what not. But if you have nothing better to do, you should always stay because he thinks it's unfair that people leave and other stay and he ALWAYS ends up giving away word for word answers to the next week's quiz. If anything, download all his lectures online, study the learning objectives and then come to class and take the quiz and leave. He doesn't take attendance... I don't think. It's all up to you if you want to stick around and "learn" or maybe get hints on quiz questions. I personally did the homework and studied for the quiz 2 hours before each lecture, and then played monopoly on my phone for an hour in class everyday and still got an A. For BIO 213, on the other hand, you have to do some reading and definitely take notes because all those tests are based 90% on lecture, which I learned the hard way...

Dr. Griffin is a decent at lecturing. To get a breakdown of how to do well in the class see the below post. He will let you out of class early everytime. Overall, the course(ENGR/BRAE 213) is a waste of time with no real application, but they(the school) makes you take it. Very easy class.

all u have to do is study what's on the objective slide, which tells u what's on next week's quiz. He'll also hint u what is on the quiz. Very easy class, very easy to get an A. And if you don't want to study, just cheat by bringing a note card because there's like 100 people in the class and they don't check for cheaters (he he he). This class is boring though, but u do get out early, sometimes a half hour to a full hour early, pretty tight. So it was boring but chill.

Easy teacher, only stayed for two class days and still got an A, just do all the work and read his lectures to study for quiz

This class turned out to be a big joke. What a waste of my time. Prof Griffin hardly does any actual teaching in this class.

Griffin is an easy teacher. Just make sure to focus on the lectures, and do well on the quizzes and the homeworks. If you have an A going into the final, you won't have to take it, which is always good.

Lanny was pretty quirky in my opinion. Strange guy...but anyways, his class was pretty easy. You have one weekly homework assignment, and a quiz once a week in class. Both were exceptionally easy, and the big bonus about Griffin is that if you're happy with your grade going into the final, you don't have to take it - you'll get the grade you have going in. Me, I had a rock solid 99, so after the BIO final was over, I checked out. The subject material in ENGR213 was definitely better than BIO, but still pretty dry and boring. Take Griffin if he's on the list, you probably won't get much better than him.

To describe Lanny in two words: fucking awesome. I had no idea what to expect going into his class, but I came out with a profound interest in the Biomedical field. The class was extremely fun, and I always looked forward to it. His class is absolutely perfect, in the sense that he understands it\'s kind of a bs course that Poly makes students take, and as such, he relieves a lot of the pressure associated with normal classes. His quizzes (both in-class and Blackboard) are more than fair. I\'m not sure how one can do bad in this class. You would literally have to do nothing in order to get a bad grade. Regardless, take this course with Lanny; he makes it interesting as hell, you\'ll learn while having fun, and you\'ll end up with an awesome grade.

The material was much more interesting than I thought it was going to be. The class overall is extremely easy. All we had was online quizzes based on the lecture and he would post the lectures online. Easy A.

This is a BS class, and he lets you know it on the first day of class. "If you humor us, we'll humor you." This class was taught by both Griffin and Walsh, who did different lectures. I felt like Griffin was a better teacher than Walsh, and he actually gave a crap about his students. The class is pretty easy as long as you don't do terrible on the quizzes or the homework. There will be a large curve at the end, so don't panic if your grade is low in the last few weeks of class.

This class was a complete joke. You sit in a two hour lecture, in which you understand nothing. The class consist of two teachers switching off randomly, and you are quizzed every week. They do not teach the materials well at all, they go through the 100 slides per lecture so fast you don't have time to fully understand it. I got screwed over at the end of the year because they missed one of my quiz scores and they didn't post it until the end of the year, and I emailed the grader and the teacher a total of 7 times, no response, nothing. And I just had to end up getting a Grade without a quiz score that I took. I honestly hated going to this class every week. I learned absolutely nothing, every quiz you saw people pulling out their phones and notes to answer (it was a closed notes quiz). If possible, try to avoid this class.

As mentioned before, this class is BS and Lanny knows it so he does his best to make it as painless as possible. There are easy online homeworks every week or so and an iClicker quiz at the beginning of each class based on the homework. The lecture is awfully dry, so lots of people would leave right after the quiz. Those of us that didn't got rewarded at the end of the quarter; Lanny went over the answers to the final quiz. Take Lanny if possible, he's a cool guy who gets that he's teaching fluff.

Just an overall good guy. Always has to drop in a "redneck" crack here and there. Good about answering questions in the lab because some of the question required the MATE 210 lec which was concurrent with MATE 215. Easy class, easy A. The only thing to watch out for is the final is harder than expected but is curved really heavy. Whatever you do, "Dont be a redneck."

BMED 310 course was poorly designed. The course goes very quickly through VBA and MATLAB so you don't learn anything useful about either program. I would avoid this class if possible.

Where to begin. As a whole, our entire class was lost. He didn't understand student difficulties and just assumed we were all geniuses. The homework wasn't explained and most people just copied the solutions manual. Midterm and Final were very unfair. As a person he is a nice guy. A bit funky which I liked, but his class was disorganized and underwhelming. Was expecting a great initial BMED class (biomechanics) but instead learned very little.

Let's start off with the only thing I liked about him as a professor. His personality. Okay now for the rest. His lectures lack structure, organization, and often he goes off on these 20+ minute tangents on material that doesn't even relate to what we're supposed to be learning. Sure I'll give it to the guy, his is extremely intelligent. Like some of the things he talks about are way over our heads, which is cool as it's nice to know that he is definitely knowledgeable on the subject. However, it also sucks because he has all this great knowledge of Biomaterials and yet he literally has no idea how to teach this material to his students. I have never had a professor that lacked so much structure and understanding of students' difficulties in lecture. I am probably going to do well in the class, but not with the help of the professor. It's an easy class honestly, but Griffin makes it so much harder than it needs to be. And then when the average on the midterm is low, he has the audacity to blame us and say "I showed this to another colleague and he said it was one of the easiest exams he'd ever seen!" Um if the average on your midterm is a flat 60 it's not just the students' faults, some of the blame should be taken upon the professor. He doesn't understand this. He also likes to randomly pick on people in class and just further waste time, which was both uncomfortable and also made me feel like "Why am I paying to take a professor like this?" Overall one of the worst professors I've had at Poly, avoid him at all costs for this class. TAKE CARDINAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Very smart and nice guy. Absolute horrible lecturer. For the first midterm the average was around 50-60% (almost none of which was from lecture). He then told the class that he didn't understand why they did so bad and that it was an easy test. Didn't end up curving it either. At the end of the day his lectures are basically useless and you are better off just reading the book he chose to use for the class, which he points out has tons of errors. He also picks on students to answer questions that he knows they do not know which can be incredibly frustrating. At the end of the day if he is the only option for lecture just wait for a different quarter

BOYCOTT!!!

This guy is really smart but he really couldn't understand questions students were asking. And not very helpful in office hours tbh.

Things I did not like about the course: Lacks structure Does not follow syllabus Ambiguity regarding the final group project Tests are pretty hard (Although he does allow double sided cheat sheets) Things I liked about the course: Material is actually related to real life engineering design issues I would suggest taking someone else for this course, unless you enjoy a heavy CE course. Taking him won't kill you, just ask questions.

This class was super hard, but he's a good teacher. Super nice guy but office hours were a waste of time. I swear whenever I asked a question he answered everything except for what I asked...

This an elective class recommended for anyone who is really interested in the biomedical field. He spent a great deal of effort in making sure all of the class material was online as a supplement to lecture coverage. This as abig help since in this course there is was too much material to cover but it is presented for the student to seek out. We had several guest speakers that gave a nice industrial and practical view of the subjects. There is an additional emphasis on mathematical viewpoints since he really likes that sort of material. Griffin does have an odd sense of humor so don't be alarmed.

Griffin seemed to be very smart and knowledgable about the topic which is always good. However, he seems to like to sort of hold that over your head and taunt you with it. The entire class would ask him to repeat something or clarify his expectations and you would recieve about four different conflicting versions. He then would get flustered and irritated and would simply say that it was a graduate class and you should just know these things. When someone asked him to hold an extra office hour before the midterm he complained bitterly. He finally relented only after stating that since he was offering an extra hour he would not be available for one of his other office hours. Considering he only offered two hours to begin with, it was more than a little annoying. Overall this class could have been really good. It was just too bad that the professor didn't try a little harder when it came to making sure his students understood the material. There was one midterm (~30%), one term paper (~35%) and then the final.

This class was frustrating often, but I think that was partly because the material covered is so broad that its hard to break down into only a few structured formulas and concepts. Dr. Griffin lectures 95% off powerpoint slides. The good part is that he makes the slides available online, the bad part is that sometimes the lectures move really fast. I had to look online for added info to fill in gaps. There are guest lecturers, which is cool. The book works better than valium, and barely any of it is on the exams. Overall, the class is worth taking and Dr. Griffin makes it interesting and knows the material really well.

Worked off powerpoint slides, pretty boring class and lecture. The book was mandatory but not really necessary. Some homework was collected but not fully explained (some not explained at all) when people had problems. He assumed we all had prior background knowledge in materials engineering, electrical engineering, anatomy and physiology, and biology. Griffin could be somewhat flakey too, not posting things that students asked for, posting homework late and due just before thanksgiving (he posted a study guide for an EE problem the nite before the final), asking random questions on exams that had hardly been covered in class, etc. On the plus side he gives pretty good partial credit so you shouldnt get a terrible grade. Overall, I didnt learn much about biomaterials and was rather dissappointed with content and class charisma.