Dettmar, Christopher  

unclear labs, scattered lectures, never helps. very smart guy tho. just can't deliever info in a manner that a person without a phd can understand. i felt lost the whole entire quarter up until exam day (which i crammed on my own).

okay, here is my best attempt at an honest review of CHEM 124 with Dettmar. background info on myself: took basic Chem in sophomore year of high school, no particular interest in the subject(thought it was whatever), currently in contract with the CENG (so i need to do well in all my classes). class structure: 25% quiz/ 25% midterm/25% labs/ 25% final. labs twice a week/ quizzes once a week. the quizzes are short and based off the hw. DO THE HW. they are straight up replicates of hw problems. so they aren't THAT easy, and there is NO PARTIAL CREDIT. the labs had unclear directions, but is where MOST of your learning will come from because his lectures are trash. he lectures rapidly without letting you write down or even comprehend what's going on. and he doesn't post them online. Dettmar ASSUMED A LOT of his students. i felt that the kids that took AP CHEM thought this class was an easy A while i busted my ass and was still clueless. the labs demonstrate this a lot. like i'm just a freshman, i don't know resistors, voltages, rectifiers, EM spectra, etc. the TA's are bitches. harsh, heartless graders...unless you are there favorites. i would get F's and C's on labs while my friends got A's and B's. WE WOULD HAVE EXACT COPIES. stupid...the midterm is hella easy tho. like the class avg was an A-. in fact, up until the final, the class avg was an A- (even i had a B+). BUT DETTMAR DID NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT PREPARE US FOR THE 'COMMON FINAL' AT ALL. (common as in the chem professors got together and wrote questions together). THE FINAL AVG WAS A D- AND NO CURVE. NO CURVE. makes sense bc that dropped the class avg to a B-. but really? A- going into final and you get a D- on it. there were questions i've never seen in my entire life on that thing. OVERALL: you will struggle and hate this class if you never took AP CHEM. if you took AP CHEM, it'll be easy until the final.

Dettmar was a very nice and understanding teacher. Though the labs at the end were super rushed, I thought he was very knowledgable in the material when asked a question and he seemed to know what he was talking about. His explanations could be better but overall, I thought he was alright. The tests are very confusing but if you know what you're doing in the labs, you should be fine.

The class sets you up to do really well and if you keep up with the material you should do fine. Dettmar is a nice guy and definitely is one of the easier Chem teachers out there. I left the class feeling I didn't learn as much as other Chem students, but dettmar teaches what you need to know for his exam and his material. He doesn't prepare you for the final at all and the final is awful so be aware of that, but overall if you're taking a lot of classes and you need a Chem class that's not as difficult as others and has a super chill teacher, Dettmars the man.

Professor Dettmar is the man! He has really reasonable expectations for this class and curved all of the tests a decent amount. If you just read the book and look over your labs before each test there's no reason you can't get an A. The bad parts about this class was that it was at 8am and had a quiz just about every single session so you can't really afford to miss any classes. Professor Dettmar allowed me to turn in 2 labs a little late and was always willing to help his students. He even tried to move the final from 7am because so many students in our class had a statics final at 7pm the night before. Overall Professor Dettmar really cares about his students and I would take him again if I get the chance.

For his first quarter teaching here, this guy did a pretty good job. Granted, sometimes I think he needed to come to lectures a little more prepared, I liked his teaching style. The quizzes are open note, and he gives you half the points just for showing up. I was in his 8am class, and the people that complain about this guy are the ones that always leave early, sleep during class (I know it's early, but come on), and never do his handouts or even glance at the textbook if they are confused. If you give this class an honest effort, go to his office hours if you're stuck, you should have no problem. I think with a little more experience, Prof. Dettmar could be an amazing professor.

Dettmar is a homie. His lectures can be disorganized and filled with mistakes (same with his tests). If you take his class seriously, its not hard to do well. The base concepts are all you need to grasp, and as long as you use the professor and TAs as a resource when you find difficulty, Dettmar's is a very manageable class

Knows his stuff, cares that you are learning it and willing to answer questions. Can be a little scatterbrained ,but that's probably because he's still fairly new here. If you don't understand, don't leave class early and ask questions when during the workbook time and you should be fine. Quizzes are open note and super easy, midterm/final were more challenging but doable.

PROS: He's a very EASY GRADER and gives a lot of easy bonus points. The workload (homework) is very light and the workbook pages are graded fairly CONS: He's extremely disorganized and makes many mistakes. He gets very nervous in class which makes it difficult to follow along with notes. RECOMMENDATION: DO THE WORKBOOK PROBLEMS! ASK TA'S FOR HELP! Had I put more effort in the workbook, I could have done better on the midterms. Definitely make sure WITH THE TA'S that your workbook answers are correct!

Easy walk in the park for everything except the midterm and the final. STUDY FOR THE MIDTERM AND FINAL!!! Aside from those two tests, everything else is a walk in the park if you are in class taking notes. I do not suggest taking this guy if you want to really learn some chemistry. Good class to take if you need an easy class that you can pretty much get a B in automatically and an A if you put in slight effort.

Professor Dettmar is very knowledgeable in Chemistry, however he is very ineffective in communicating it. If it weren't for the 40% curves on the tests, I would have failed. If you want a good grade, take this class, but if you actually want to learn chemistry, I would advise against taking his class.

Dettmar is a really nice guy who knows a lot about chemistry. However, his immense knowledge prevents him from realizing that it isn't that easy. When he explains things, he often trails off, mumbles to himself, backtracks, and then goes off on a tangent. I ended up just teaching myself chemistry through Khanacademy, MIT lectures, etc. For the labs he gives us, he doesn't really explain them. He just gives them to us without doing any practice problems as examples first. It was really frustrating being in his class.

You could tell he was very knowledgable in Chemistry and he was trying really hard, but his class for me was miserable. I felt lost in every single one of his lectures and he didn't know how to explain anything effectively because he is so new to teaching. He was really scatterbrained and didn't really know how to focus his lectures. His tests had a huge curve on them, which helped me not completely fail, but I learned close to nothing in that class. Going into each test and quiz, i felt like i had no idea what was going on. If you don't comprehend Chemistry concepts very well, avoid him at all costs.

He claims his tests are hard, but compared to other professors' exams his tests are easy. The only reason people do poorly on the exams is because he does not teach the material and then tests students on things that they have never seen before. He then proceeds to tell the class after passing back the midterms that he is happy that many people did poorly because "he expected them to miss those problems". Absolutely atrocious. His lecture style is sloppy, scatter brained, painfully awkward and difficult to follow. He is a very intelligent person who couldn't communicate a simple concept to save his life.

He's an absolute mess, he hardly ever teaches anything that's relevant to what we should actually be doing, and the only reason I'm not completely lost in this class is because of the TAs.

Lecture consists of him reading powerpoint slides with definitions more quickly than you can physically write down the information. Labs are graded harshly (and inconsistently - my lab partner would get points where i'd have points marked off). He will assign homework he never explained. Oh and the midterm and final are impossible.

DO NOT TAKE CHEM WITH HIM IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND HOW TO DO CHEM. He is a very young nervous guy who seems to feel uncomfortable in front of the class. Every time you ask a question he won't listen and then will just say some stuff he just did from the lecture leaving you even more confused. He makes a LOT of mistakes in the workbook he assigns, and also doesn't give accurate data when explaining things. I have never been more confused in a class.

Dr. Dettmar is new here and is definitely still learning. His lectures are sporadic and tests often contain errors. The class is pretty fair overall, but if you are truly looking to gain chemistry knowledge, I may look elsewhere. Overall, Dr. Dettmar is nice guy with the potential to be an above average professor, with a little work.

Honestly Dr. Dettmar was a really good professor and I was glad that I took him for Chem 128. He does a group "test" before the midterm and the final that's worth only 20% of your test grade but its an easy way to know what to study for the rest of the test. His grading methods are fair and easy to understand and he's not the type to care about sig figs or other useless details. Highly recommend taking this class.

Dr. Dettmar was a great professor for 128! I was in a lecture/lab MWF. His lectures are straightforward and his homework quizzes are online and they come straight from the homework workbooks he assigns, so those are easy points for your grade as long as you know how to do each problem on the homework (you can go to his office hours in advance; he's very helpful for both homework questions and lab!). His labs are due two days after the last part of the lab was finished, so he gives ample time to complete them. The midterm was very fair but the final was hard, but he ended up curving it so most people did okay! Quizzes, labs, midterm, and final are all worth 25% of your grade. He isn't a harsh grader and I feel that he gave partial credit on the labs and midterm wherever he could. I would recommend taking him for 128 or any other class.

Dettmar could not explain anything clearly for the life of him. There were often mistakes in his lectures and a couple times he explicitly told our class, "I don't really understand this concept but I expect you to know it for the final". However I thought he was a fair grader for both the midterm and the labs. There was only one midterm for the class which wasn't too difficult but the final was much harder than anything we had gone over in class. I wish I could say better things about him but even when i went to his office to talk about my final grade he turned me away saying that he was just as excited for spring break as I was and wouldn't talk to me. The only reason I did okay was because I had a good study group and we were able to teach ourselves everything.

Daddy Dettmar is a sweetheart!! He was a little nervous when presenting information, but overall just a sweetie!! Highly recommend

Honestly not the greatest professor but his class is extremely passable. All his quizzes are open notes aka if you do the homework he assigns and make sure your work/answers are correct you can get 100% on most of them because all the problems are from the homework. And then the final and the midterm are both 25% of your grade but 15% of that 25% is a group midterm that you literally take with 7 other people so it really boosts your grade. Basically you'll pass if you do everything you're suppose to.

What the guy/gal below said. Amen. I too took this class and have long since graduated from Poly, but I was cruising Poly Ratings for a kick and thought that I should pipe in and let you know how much of a joke this prof is.