
Professor
Gilles Peltzer
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2022 - I am going to be honest, I hated this class. For a GE, this class was incredibly tedious and advanced. I am not a STEM major, so maybe that is why this class seemed extra difficult. The lectures were incredibly boring and we rarely finished the slides in class. I will say professor Peltzer is a very sweet looking professor. He clearly knows a lot about earthquakes. However, he is one of those professors that knows so much about his content, that it seems he expects we are just as familiar with the material. Most of which I will bet we have never seen before in school. The slides are posted, but there is no audio/video option I am aware of. That can be troubling since some of his slides are just abstract pictures. The grade breakdown included 1 midterm, 1 final, 7ish labs, 7ish reflections, and an extra credit assignment I believe. The tests were largely memorization based and often queried about random one-off facts that seemed irrelevant. I did finish with an A, but that is only because I am a decent test taker. If you struggle on tests, it will be difficult to feel successful in this class. Definitely not an easy GE.
Spring 2022 - I am going to be honest, I hated this class. For a GE, this class was incredibly tedious and advanced. I am not a STEM major, so maybe that is why this class seemed extra difficult. The lectures were incredibly boring and we rarely finished the slides in class. I will say professor Peltzer is a very sweet looking professor. He clearly knows a lot about earthquakes. However, he is one of those professors that knows so much about his content, that it seems he expects we are just as familiar with the material. Most of which I will bet we have never seen before in school. The slides are posted, but there is no audio/video option I am aware of. That can be troubling since some of his slides are just abstract pictures. The grade breakdown included 1 midterm, 1 final, 7ish labs, 7ish reflections, and an extra credit assignment I believe. The tests were largely memorization based and often queried about random one-off facts that seemed irrelevant. I did finish with an A, but that is only because I am a decent test taker. If you struggle on tests, it will be difficult to feel successful in this class. Definitely not an easy GE.
AD
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - I agree with everything said by the other person who took this course the same quarter as I did. Prof's great, TA gives detailed feedback, grading's lax especially with the extremely clear and detailed instructions given for labs -- you couldn't get lost if you tried (I'm a non-EPSS major with 0 programming and little math background) and overall I feel like I learned something useful and practical from this course. I enjoyed being able to complete tasks and basic analyses with the program (SNAP) at the end of it all, it is fulfilling to reach concrete checkpoints like that. I would recommend this class if you have at least some interest in GIS, remote sensing and stuff like that. I myself wasn't particularly interested in the content and only took the course because it seemed useful, and I still came out with a lot. I'm sure you'll get much more out of it if you actually interacted with the prof, he's definitely passionate, extremely knowledgable and happy to help. BTW I took the course completely asynchronously and everything worked out just fine. Labs and HW just need to be done by the due date and a 2-day period was given for the final. It sometimes took me a long time to do the labs but luckily late work is accepted, just with a penalty by day. Text me ********** for the textbook.
Fall 2020 - I agree with everything said by the other person who took this course the same quarter as I did. Prof's great, TA gives detailed feedback, grading's lax especially with the extremely clear and detailed instructions given for labs -- you couldn't get lost if you tried (I'm a non-EPSS major with 0 programming and little math background) and overall I feel like I learned something useful and practical from this course. I enjoyed being able to complete tasks and basic analyses with the program (SNAP) at the end of it all, it is fulfilling to reach concrete checkpoints like that. I would recommend this class if you have at least some interest in GIS, remote sensing and stuff like that. I myself wasn't particularly interested in the content and only took the course because it seemed useful, and I still came out with a lot. I'm sure you'll get much more out of it if you actually interacted with the prof, he's definitely passionate, extremely knowledgable and happy to help. BTW I took the course completely asynchronously and everything worked out just fine. Labs and HW just need to be done by the due date and a 2-day period was given for the final. It sometimes took me a long time to do the labs but luckily late work is accepted, just with a penalty by day. Text me ********** for the textbook.