Cardinal, Trevor  

This guy sucked. He wrote exactly what he said on the board word for word. He had such weak arms that you couldn't see his writing in chalk. Always tried to act like a hardass, but you could easily see that he was just insecure about being walked all over. Treats you like a kid. Repeats everything over and over. Oh, and his wife sucks too (She's not on polyratings yet so I'm writing that here).

Taking this instructor is like being in a Twilight Zone episode. You just can

This class doesn't exist

T-Card is a fantastic professor. He is very challenging and does not accept b.s. answers. Some people like to coast through college but if you actually like to be challenged and learn something (perhaps even get your moneys worth) then T-Card is the right professor for you. He is very engaging and helpful during office hours. Don't be fooled by the comment below, Dr. Cardinal is an amazing professor and you will learn a lot from any course you take with him. (Dr. Cardinal doesn't even teach Bio 111.....it's people like the person below me that ruins the purpose of polyratings and make amazing professors look bad.) Overall, if you want a professor that is challenging, thought-provoking, intelligent, helpful in office hours, and a former Cal Poly student himself, I would go with T-Card any day.

I felt like I was back in high school in this class, the material wasn\'t entirely confusing. This guy goes out of his way to call you out in class, and just make things confusing by doing diagrams in barely able to see marker and making ridiculous subjective test questions. Overall lame lame class, unfortunately for BMED students it\'s a must. What made it even worse is the attitude you get from this guy and the pretentious kind of demeanor he has with his students, definitely not an engineering class but basically it\'s a follow up to Physiology 331/332, I don\'t know why the students just aren\'t required to take an additional physiology class with professors who don\'t waste your time with useless in-class activities and with a guy who clearly rather be doing research then teaching students. He could easily make the notes/diagrams into a neat PPT to put online for reference, but that would be to much I guess for the students, ugh, frustrating and terrible class compared to the rest of the major.

Trevor Cardinal. Where shall I begin? He is good and bad in so many different ways: good first. He is so knowledgeable about physiology. He won't give you an answer to a question that he is not sure about, if he doesn't know, he'll say so. He is married to the most bad ass instructor in the world so that increases his cool points. He thinks hard about how to answer your question. He is very proper and professional. Now the bad. He is arrogant in the sense that he makes you feel like his subordinate (which I guess you are but nobody should make you feel like that). He does not give praise, only criticizes. I felt like I was walking on egg shells the entire time I was in his lecture. I became afraid to ask him questions because I didn't know which questions would illicit an unnecessarily nasty response from him. He needs to be humbled and is lacking humility but is so incredibly intelligent and passionate about physiology that it almost makes up for it (key word almost).

He's very intelligent and knows physiology very well. However, he's very arrogant at the same time and definitely not approachable for questions. I would recommend taking this class with someone else.

Trevor knows physiology very well, but he is also a pretentious PRICK. No reason to be dick all the time Trevor. Get over your self.

One of the best professors at Cal Poly. Course is well organized and will serve as a foundation for future understanding of human anatomy and physiology. Is it hard? Yes, but not impossible, not if you actually study the material and ask questions. Dr. Cardinal is easily approachable for real questions, he does like it when you waste his time (who does?) ie. read the syllabus and you won't feel like an idiot. Overall great course from an instructor that actually cares about student success.

In summary, as a grad student. He is a bad professor. He cares more about his personal life than his students (as evidence in his tardiness, disorganization, lack of effort on labs, powerpoints, case studies, etc...). He cancels office hours frequently, and he assigns a bunch of group lab work on top of homework grading everything harshly (and he doesn't curve). It is possible to do well if you have time (more than the 8-10) and go to his office hours (which you will often leave without having had a chance to speak to him). However, in the end you are better off with somebody who cares more about your future than his own plans.

Dr. Cardinal is very intelligent and passionate regarding physiology, but lacks the empathy that professors should have when teaching. He answers questions with utmost consideration and wants everyone to learn as much as possible. He is a prick however regarding treating students fairly and respectfully and would rather be uptight and anal about everything instead of sympathetic towards irrelevant things. The class is great, but hopefully he has a wake up call and starts caring about his students more.

Trevor knows the course material and frequently reads studies to make sure he is giving you the most updated information. However, this class has so much BUSY WORK that did not supplement my knowledge of physiology very much. For example, we spent 3 lab periods (9 hours total) going over english assignments and resources because he basically told us none of us knew how to properly write a lab report. While that may be true according to his standards, I feel as if my time and money had been completely wasted because that time could have been spent doing actual physiology labs. The physiology labs themselves are very basic, boring, and inconclusive (when it comes to data analysis) in comparison to other BMED classes like 410, 420, 440, and 425. You will also have a ton of work due during dead week and finals week; try to take another professor if you can.

Trevor Cardinal is literally not as bad as people make him seem. He is very approachable and you can ask questions, but you need to know what to ask. If you ask a general question he won't help much. If you have a direct question (ie. specific step in a mechanism), he will be very useful to you. I will admit he is kinda condescending, but it's just the way he is. Now about the class: The class is well structured and I appreciate that he typically posts his lectures online after we finish. His midterm and final are fair if you literally memorize the notes and understand the case studies, so give yourself a week to review and study everything. He is super picky with your lab reports, but in the long run it makes writing lab reports easier for other classes (Looking at you BMED 420). It is a high workload, so please make sure you take the course with less demanding classes.

Dr. Cardinal makes the class straightforward. He posts PowerPoints with annotations from class and is willing to help go through processes and clarify points of confusion during office hours (but make sure you aren’t asking him about questions you could easily google such as “what is the definition of x”). This class is time-consuming but very informative. There are many participation assignments (which are easy to forget) and tough lab reports. Dr. Cardinal is picky with formatting (feel free to double check your formatting during office hours, it’ll save you lost points). There is lots of data analysis and figure generation which can get tedious. He clearly outlines his expectations and gives easier reports for students to start understanding his expectations in the beginning. If you understand the base concepts and can remember the basic cascades and where they’re applied, the midterm and final are straightforward. There is a bit of a learning curve with the style of problem-solving applied to experiment design but Dr. Cardinal gives enough case studies and examples for you to overcome this before the midterm. Overall good instructor and great class.

I think the highlight of this class was the practice writing professional and clear scientific lab reports. It's hard (and it's graded pretty harshly), and it takes absolutely forever to do well, but my writing ability has increased significantly. As noted previously, ask questions in OH, that'll accelerate your improvement and save you points. The lab itself has some interesting parts, like how the class does glucose tolerance tests, EMGs, and ECGs with different experimental conditions. Also, every 3rd lab is picked from student suggestions, which is kinda cool. Sometimes the data is inconclusive, but that's the way it often is in research, and it really doesn't matter because you write a report either way. As for the lecture, it's a lot of different biochemical cascades (with case studies on related diseases) that aren't difficult, plus some useful instruction on experimental design. Memorize the cascades and understand the case studies and experimental design and you'll do fine on the midterm and final.

T-Card knows his stuff, and you can tell he puts a lot of time into his lectures. He may not be the best at recognizing when students are having trouble, but he teaches the class in a way that encourages student engagement, i personally enjoyed the class and the lab was SWEET! overall T-Card is the man

I wouldn't say he sucks, but just that he's an average physiology teacher. Considering his PhD was in physiology and not engineering, I'm not really sure how he got hired with the BMED department. Just one more professor in the department that really isn't capable of much more than teaching one class competently. If they really want us to learn biology and physiology, there are whole departments with excellent professors dedicated to those topics. Just make those classes mandatory.

I graduated Poly last year, and took Trevor's class last year. What can I say- Trevor is a boss! A lot of my classmates bitched/complained about this class. Dude this is college- grab a book and read dumbass! Trevor's expectations are high, but that's how it should be. I learned a lot from this class. He's very approachable, and genuinely cares about his students. Trevor is the man!

Very straightforward class. Interesting, relevant guest lectures. Make sure to go over the slides and learning objectives before exams.