Cameron de Wet

I unfortunately did not have a great experience in climate dynamics with Cam last spring. The department is still trying to figure out where climate dynamics lies within the broader ECSC scope, as this is only the 3rd year it was offered, with a new professor as well. I did enjoy the labs and projects of climate dynamics, and wish I had taken it with Lizz Ultee (who no longer teaches at Midd.) It is helpful to have some knowledge of python going into this. About 2/3rds of our class (of about 30 people) had no coding experience, which meant a large chunk of time was dedicated to basic coding, leaving the other 1/3rd feeling bored. I recognize this is a climate class, not a coding class, but as a member of the 1/3rd, it felt like the structure of the labs did not allow for a deeper understanding of what the code was doing. Often time the code was pre-written and required a "copy-paste" style approach. I think a better approach would be to require some intro-level coding class as a prerequisite, that way more of the class can be dedicated to applications of climate dynamics. Overall it felt disorganized -- I wanted to give Cam some grace, given it was his first time using Python, let alone teaching two classes that semester. However, the lectures were not very relevant to the material and quite frequently Cam would read directly off the slides. Additionally, grading was extremely slow; it would often take several weeks for our lab grades to be returned. By finals week we only had half of our labs returned -- this meant I had no clue where my grade was standing. I felt quite competent in the material but ended up getting a B with no explanation. No exams no quizzes, just weekly readings and coding projects. Fun concept, and extremely applicable to today's world, but unfortunately poor execution as it stands. I have confidence it will be taught better in the future though. The material is solid, it's just a matter of how it's being taught, and how the department will handle potential prerequisites.

I unfortunately did not have a great experience in climate dynamics with Cam last spring. The department is still trying to figure out where climate dynamics lies within the broader ECSC scope, as this is only the 3rd year it was offered, with a new professor as well. I did enjoy the labs and projects of climate dynamics, and wish I …Read more

I enjoyed this course. The material was very interesting and relevant to our world today. The exams were easy and we had about one or two discussion posts a week based off of readings. Lecture based classes that moved very quickly and covered a lot of material.

Cool course if you are into climate modeling- I took the class because it's in my major. If you have Python experience, the coding portion of this class will be no problem. Even if you have no coding experience, Cam and the TAs were very helpful at answering questions, and a lot of the code is just recycling code from the directions. A lot of the content will be familiar if you've taken other environmental science classes; the biggest difficulty of the class was figuring out how to make code work on the out-of-class assignments.

Cool course if you are into climate modeling- I took the class because it's in my major. If you have Python experience, the coding portion of this class will be no problem. Even if you have no coding experience, Cam and the TAs were very helpful at answering questions, and a lot of the code is just recycling code from the directions. …Read more