wow, this was such a valuable course. rob was just the best. - no one ever

I have waited all quarter to complete this evaluation. I have never taken a more pointless class in my life. The class was a huge waste of time and the instructor was the worst instructor I have ever had. It is really sad that a world class university has to resort to hiring Rob Silverstein to teach this class. My pet fish could have taught this class better. My pet fish died 7 years ago. It was abundantly clear amongst all of the students that the class was a huge joke. The lectures began to see very poor participation and attendance after the second week, and everyone would make jokes about how poorly run the class was. I also spent more time completing the assignments for this class than my other three classes combined! If I could compare the assignments to anything, I would say they were like a broken pencil; pointless. Unfortunately, UCLA chose to hire the most clueless and senile instructor who had no clue that what he was teaching had negative value. He also enjoyed tooting his own horn and spent a whole week bragging about his career. I would not wish this experience on my worst enemy. I would rather have a pineapple shoved up my anus while stabbing my eyes with thumbtacks than have to take this class again.

Silverstein is a pretty boring lecturer, but he was alright I guess and kind of fair. The other reviews do a decent job describing the 185EW class. The discussion section is its own class entirely which consists of writing 2 6-page essays. Make sure you go to class, ask questions, and participate in the group project. If you get on Silverstein's bad side it WILL reflect in your grade. Btw, the final exam has several questions asking about which of your teammembers caused the most trouble and were unproductive so think twice about slacking off and letting your team to do the work. I fucked off and even though I got an A on all the essays, the midterm, and final he gave me a B!!

Professor Silverstein is a very nice and knowledgeable professor. The class mainly focuses on systems engineering and the team project, while discussion sections focus on the ethics part of the class. I learned a lot from this class and it really opened my eyes about what engineering is really like. Much of the material covered in this class is stuff we've never seen before, so this class at least exposes us to it.

The class has two papers (one on Tragedy of the Commons and one on an ethical case study), one take-home midterm, one final, and one team project. The cool thing is that the final exam has 150 points worth of questions, but he only grades it out of 100 and allows you to answer 20 points more for extra credit. He also takes into account attendance when giving out the final grade.

As for discussion sections, the first hour is dedicated to essays/ethics material, while the other two hours are for working on your group project. The TAs grade kinda hard on the essays, so try hard on them. For the midterm, Silverstein is pretty lenient on grading it. Average was a 92%. Also note that the midterm was only 10% of our grade, compared to the essays, project, and final which are 30% each. For the project, make sure Silverstein likes your project idea because it seems like he grades easier on the ones he likes. He tends to like the ones that target senior citizens.

Overall, I would recommend this class. I ended up with an A in the class. It may seem like a lot of work, but in the end, you will have learned a lot.

Really, he's not that bad. He does lecture about his life, but it's alright. He mainly focuses on systems and inter-major collaborative projects. He did bring up the topic of different pay schedules (which was relevant and interesting to us), but didn't spend enough time on this. Overall, I actually really enjoyed this class - mainly because I was assigned a really good group. You have 2 papers, a midterm (it was a take home report), a final (very easy to pass, it has 120 points but he grades it out of 100), and a group project (including a report and two presentations). He mainly focuses on the group project - which is where we create a product. Try to talk to Silverstein about his opinion about your product. If he likes it, you'll have a much easier time in this class. Silverstein himself is a really nice guy and is very approachable and nice to talk to.

This course has a split personality-- the bad kind. Professor Silverstein lectures 4hr/wk about careers in engineering (mainly centering around his own star-studded career which will occupy 4-6 hours of class) while the TAs and Professor Browne cover the vast majority of the writing and ethics material in the 3hr Friday discussion. The result is an incredibly disorganized course that consumed a shocking amount of my time. I am a relatively high-scoring student and was able to get an A in the class without learning much beyond the case studies presented in discussion. Note that case studies and two eight page papers represent approximately 20% of this "Ethics and Writing" course's effort. The rest is consumed (as is your soul) by gadget project in which you and your randomly assigned team must create a business plan around a consumer gadget with minimal relevant in-class instruction. Success requires office hours (i.e. more time)!

In truth, Professor Silverstein needs his own class which should be incorporated in the management technical breadth. His portion of the course is an inadequate core curriculum for an "Ethics and Writing" class. However, his information is useful to any student looking into engineering careers(and looking for an EXTREMELY optimistic outlook thereof). If you want to learn the career material, take Engr98 and stop there.

As a final note, many friends asked me which class to take (183EW vs 185EW)and I hope I succeeded in sending them all toward 183EW because their time is valuable, as is yours. Case in point: Silverstein takes attendance daily. If the lectures were worth your time, wouldn't you attend voluntarily?