Worst professor I've ever had, took ENGR 110 and 111 with her, she's the most disorganized person, instead of helping you understand the material she will confuse you more with her explanations, HW graders take points off for insignificant things, exams are way harder than class examples or hw, it feels like she doesn't care about the class and you have to learn everything on your own. She sometimes even gives you formulas to solve problems and you have to check the formulas on the book because she makes so many mistakes during lecture.

The professor is so bad and disorganized you could write a sitcom about her and nobody would believe it. She did not follow the grade distribution she said she would in the syllabus so I and multiple others received grades lower than the ones we calculated following HER grade distribution. She never once answered a single email and never followed through on anything. Literally, emailing her was a meme in our groupme because she would never respond. Every concept is half taught and half explained so that questions all seem familiar but you were never really given the tools to actually solve anything. Grading is pretty harsh and there is never any feedback, we had a piazza but most questions went unanswered. I'm a cs major and would literally take another Eggert class over this, cause at least Eggert doesn't blatantly lie to you. Don't take this professor, this class had so much potential to be interesting but it was just awful.

Mel is not a great teacher and is a terrible communicator. Slow to grade, answer questions/emails, and cannot concisely convey material. Waste of a tech breadth unit - would not advise anyone to take this class again. Not worth the workload, especially as lectures are required for her annoying online polls.

Mel is a little disorganized like the other reviews say, but I feel that she is much better this summer quarter. Perhaps she's adapted more.

Lectures were pretty focused and homework is *mostly* straightforward. There are in class poll questions.

She taught the material fairly well and completely, and it is not hard to get an A if you listen in class (she covers all the material you need to know in her slides) and put in some work. 85% + was and A when I took it.

First off, don't expect lectures to be that helpful. Mel is super disorganized and not a great lecturer. Unfortunately, you still have to attend because she has online poll questions and only gives the passwords to do them in-class. Don't think about having a buddy text you the password because she might literally take attendance to ensure no one does that.

THAT BEING SAID... Mel is a VERY NICE professor. I went to her office hours after the midterm and raised some questions about problems that I'd gotten wrong. Mel was nice enough to give me 6 EXTRA POINTS (which saved my grade from a B+ to an A-) just because she felt that I'd been graded too harshly. That really tells you about someone's character. Mel is an amazing and friendly professor!

PRACTICAL TIPS: Focus on discussion sections, homework problems, and practice exams. Those are the things that'll help you do good on the midterm/final. There's a group project but it's pretty easy — don't stress too much about it. Overall, this course is relatively easy-to-moderate difficulty. If you need a small GPA boost, this will do the trick!

The class is terribly unorganized. The lectures are useless, but the material can be learned quite well by the textbook. Most importantly, there is 0 communication with the professor as she never responds to emails. The midterm wasn't terribly difficult, but it felt like she often gives some conflicting information about the material. In lecture half the class would fall asleep as well.

After having taken 110 and 111 with Mel, I can now conclude that Mel is a terrible professor, but a good person. Classes are alright, but she tends to go on long tangents and the important topics aren't often gone into with much depth. She uses UCLA's online poll for participation. Half the time, you can't even sign into it or get it to load, but she doesn't care.
The tests aren't that hard so you can definitely get a good grade in the class, but that requires her actually posting the grade. That brings me to the worst part of this class: the utter lack of communication. It was impossible to get any response from Mel in the last couple weeks of the quarter, which in itself was masked with uncertainty. I can understand struggles to adapt to an online format, but I will never understand why she signs every email with "Please let me know if you have any questions", if she refuses to respond to ANY emails. Moreover, she started having Q&A forums for the homework, but she would seldom respond before the homework's DUE DATE. What's the point in answering the questions that students had on the homework after it's due?

All things being said, the class isn't that bad, but I would never take a class with this professor again because it's very difficult to be in a class where there is little to no communication with the professor.

I actually really like Mel, despite what the other reviews say, I don't think she's that bad. She's a really cool human being, albeit a bit scatter-brained.

Tbh, I didn't attend a lot of the lectures, since she posted her lecture notes online. I just had a friend text me whenever there was an extra credit quiz. Sometimes when I attended lectures I would zone out/work on homework for other classes. Lecture is useful in that when she explains concepts, she does it well and she always takes the time to answer students' questions. She's not the most organized/systematic, but she covers everything and I do like the flow of lectures (this is an unpopular opinion fyi).

The homeworks are a good reflection of the midterm difficulty during my quarter. They were pretty reasonable and you were allowed to work on them with friends.

I remember the first midterm was super easy, but the second one was a bit tougher. The final was also much harder. I think you need >=85 overall to get an A in the class. Make sure you understand bonds well.

I thought the final project was pretty reasonable. Basically, all you had to do was apply the concepts from class. She gives out a sample paper. Make sure to start early though, since some parts are pretty time consuming.

The extra credit polls and discussion forum posts are actually pretty useful when it comes to boosting your grade.

Disclaimer: I took this class in Spring 2018, I heard she was super disorganized and unreasonable in terms of when she assigned homework, tests etc during Winter 2019. I also have a bunch of friends who don't like her teaching style so I may just be the exception. Also apparently the midterms/final were a lot harder that quarter??

If you've taken ENGR 110, this class isn't much different. Mel is clearly knowledgeable on the subject but her lecture style is somewhat disorganized and isn't helpful for people new to the subject. You'll likely learn more from TA slides so it's good to go to discussion.

Homeworks are pretty easy but shes not very organized with assigning them. We had weekly assignments for about 3 weeks and then nothing for the next 3 weeks. You basically just have to check CCLE every weekend to see if anything is posted.

Midterm (as far as I can tell) is a pot shot. The previous sample midterms she gave us were fairly straightforward, mostly questions similar to homework or discussion example problems. The actual midterm was WILDLY different. You could probably work your way through the questions and get some partial credit at least if you know the concepts well but it still sucked.

Final report is more work than the one for ENGR 110 since analyzing stocks and portfolio are a pain.

I took ENGR 111 with her. She gives easy homework assignments but the exams are not anywhere close to the homework. The midterm was relatively easy but the final was tough. I honestly never used the textbook. Take good notes and study the slides and you will be fine.