Professor
Dante Simonetti
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - This is a time-consuming class. It was taught by Simonetti and Sam (Srivastava), but is clearly led by Simonetti. He's a tough grader! Very detail-oriented and will literally "grill" students on past material they should know. But in all honesty, you can tell he's a practiced, experienced engineer who is pushing you to really try. --- Organization-wise, for COVID, there are 4 labs where you will be provided with data excel sheets from the TA. You will also be provided with a word-document having you roleplay some scenario that involves the data ("you are an engineer hired to perform an analysis of a distillation column..."). I believe the difficulty of the course stems from its open-endedness. You have the lab manual from previous years, the word doc, and an excel sheet. With those three files, you are to generate a very professional, specific, focused, high-quality report to the best of your ability. Overall, it's a lot like the last ChemE lab, but with more focus on report quality. I honestly felt like the workload is way more, however, since we have way more time to work (there's rarely lectures and lab is not really mandatory...) but I still felt MORE stressed for this class--this might likely be due to the material, which is very 101C and 103 oriented, both of which I'm fairly shaky in. --- I ultimately have little complaints with the class. Our group absolutely could have done better with report-writing and time management, and I did feel heavily stressed as the report deadline approached (nothing beats a cold beer after 5pm on those Friday deadlines). Still, we did well enough each time! The class is stress-heavy and workload-heavy, but if you stick it through, you'll find your grade is just fine. This is coming from what I believe was an average group. My biggest piece of advice is to have your graded reports open as you construct your later reports--make sure you don't make any mistake you've made before.
Fall 2020 - This is a time-consuming class. It was taught by Simonetti and Sam (Srivastava), but is clearly led by Simonetti. He's a tough grader! Very detail-oriented and will literally "grill" students on past material they should know. But in all honesty, you can tell he's a practiced, experienced engineer who is pushing you to really try. --- Organization-wise, for COVID, there are 4 labs where you will be provided with data excel sheets from the TA. You will also be provided with a word-document having you roleplay some scenario that involves the data ("you are an engineer hired to perform an analysis of a distillation column..."). I believe the difficulty of the course stems from its open-endedness. You have the lab manual from previous years, the word doc, and an excel sheet. With those three files, you are to generate a very professional, specific, focused, high-quality report to the best of your ability. Overall, it's a lot like the last ChemE lab, but with more focus on report quality. I honestly felt like the workload is way more, however, since we have way more time to work (there's rarely lectures and lab is not really mandatory...) but I still felt MORE stressed for this class--this might likely be due to the material, which is very 101C and 103 oriented, both of which I'm fairly shaky in. --- I ultimately have little complaints with the class. Our group absolutely could have done better with report-writing and time management, and I did feel heavily stressed as the report deadline approached (nothing beats a cold beer after 5pm on those Friday deadlines). Still, we did well enough each time! The class is stress-heavy and workload-heavy, but if you stick it through, you'll find your grade is just fine. This is coming from what I believe was an average group. My biggest piece of advice is to have your graded reports open as you construct your later reports--make sure you don't make any mistake you've made before.
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2022 - I have no complaints about Dr. Simonetti himself. You can tell he tried his best. He actually cared about the learning experiences of students. That said, the lab itself was awful. Most of the experiments were just moving water around in some shape or form. The equipment didn't work, because it was ancient and never maintained. Things also depended heavily on your team. Bad team, and you are hosed. Dante clearly tried his best, but there's not much he can do when the equipment is broken. Workload was definitely on the more intense side. Fortunately, the grading is pretty lenient for the class, but that's pretty much the only good thing about the class. The class honestly felt like a massive waste of time as a guy who's now in industry, where equipment works properly and is actually maintained.
Spring 2022 - I have no complaints about Dr. Simonetti himself. You can tell he tried his best. He actually cared about the learning experiences of students. That said, the lab itself was awful. Most of the experiments were just moving water around in some shape or form. The equipment didn't work, because it was ancient and never maintained. Things also depended heavily on your team. Bad team, and you are hosed. Dante clearly tried his best, but there's not much he can do when the equipment is broken. Workload was definitely on the more intense side. Fortunately, the grading is pretty lenient for the class, but that's pretty much the only good thing about the class. The class honestly felt like a massive waste of time as a guy who's now in industry, where equipment works properly and is actually maintained.
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