Review:
Whoever wrote the second review is a donkey.... big dump in your pants.

Workload:
Doable, we are in college.

review a class you took with Karen Panetta - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
Not sure what idiot wrote that whole rant about Panetta being a horrible teacher, but I bet you're one of those kids who skips class, doesn't bother to TRY to go to her office hours, and never went to a scheduled lab section when the TAs were there and started your project late.

Sorry Panetta's not a teacher who's going to hand you your degree on a silver platter. Karen Panetta is an AMAZING teacher if you pay attention and come to class.

The final project was difficult, but far from impossible considering my group and every other group I know of finished it fine. I'm sorry if you started it a week before it was due and expected the TAs to write it for you, but don't blame your on the professor.

Panetta has AWESOME networking in industry and is an excellent teacher.

Workload:
N/A

review a class you took with Karen Panetta - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
I don't know who wrote one of the last reviews, but to say things that are 1 hurtful and 2 quite frankly false is unacceptable. I would dare anyone on this campus to find a professor who never makes a mistake; in fact I would dare them to find a professor who doesn?t make a mistake once per class. There's no such thing as a perfect professor or a perfect class. Dr. Panetta has been one of the best and most supportive teachers I've had at this school, she?s the reason (one of the few) that I remained at this school rather than leaving when I had the chance. She has been nothing but a positive influence in my life, and she has done much to make me the best engineering student I can be. There are a few people who may think that this professor doesn?t know what she?s doing, and makes mistakes? these are the people who don?t do well in her classes. If you work hard and understand the material then you enjoy her class, and you don?t have a problem with the quizzes and exams. I hate to break it to everyone out there but we?re no longer freshmen and it?s becoming time when professors and TA?s no longer hold your hand through every step of the process. They are going to ask you to (gasp) think on your own a little bit and (surprise) penalize you when you don?t.

I will concede that this year?s final project was difficult, but it was doable in the space provided. Every programming class (especially in assembly) is a memory management class; these TA?s did write it on this processor as it?s the one that?s been used for several years now. For some groups there were issues with not being able to write code in the memory space provided, for others there were no problems. It?s true they could have shown us how to flash the EEPROM and we would have had no issues w/ memory constraints (especially as this is where program code is supposed to go on the 68HC12 microcontroller) but they didn?t, so we had to THINK a little bit. Oh and just as a side note, the space in DB12 was $0b00 and you didn?t want to do movw (those I think take up 6 bytes of memory) you wanted to use equates to define the clocks and then use the ORG command followed by a DB in order to actually initialize the variables (this takes up no memory, and there is then pretty much ample space to work with for the rest of the program). I don?t know what TA?s this kid had but mine where fantastic, they knew this stuff backwards and forewords and where able to help me with many small issues and questions I had, as well as give me clues that helped me save memory and make my code more efficient.

I can?t respect the review, or the views of someone who doesn?t believe in working hard to learn something. At some point in your life there won?t be a teacher to tell you how ABSOLUTLY everything fits together, and at some point you?ll have to figure it out for yourself. The more practice you get with that in mind the better off you?ll be in the real world. This woman is an excellent teacher, she will demand a lot from you but if you?re willing to put in just a little bit of true effort, you?ll get a ton out of it. Take a class from her, be daring and do some work?you just might find you?ll learn something.

Workload:
The workload is fine as long as you stay on top of it. Dr Panetta gives out weekly assignments (problem sets) and there are quizzes based on the homework and lecture. She tries to make her students think on exams rather than just parrot the exact material she?s given you in lecture. This is not an easy class, there?s a lot to cover and it requires extra work, but it?s enjoyable and you learn a lot if you do the work.

review a class you took with Karen Panetta - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
Dr. Karen Panetta is one of the professors I respect most here at Tufts. I?ve had her for both ES4 and EE14, and I learned an amazing amount of information in her classes. Her field experience from NASA and Tyco Electronics makes her a valuable asset for not only information, but also networking. Professor Panetta also has a great deal of concern for all her students, provided that they show her respect. Showing up for class, paying attention, and not talking during class are essential to learning the material because it is often complex.

Lab was challenging, but it built on itself well. Our first project was to write a simple ?hello world? style program. Next was a slightly more complicated ?Hello world?. After the 2nd lab a paper was assigned on the interrupt system on the 68HC12 (the processor used in the class). This paper made the 3rd lab very simple and easy to accomplish because it used the interrupt system which we had just written a paper about. The final project was very difficult because of memory issues with the processor. Luckily, Cedric, Loren, Matt, Linda, and James are all very competent TAs, and with their help, our group was able to finish the program early. If any group needed help on their project the TAs were there during every scheduled lab section to help them out by giving suggestions of how they (the TAs) implemented a particular aspect of their pong program. Cedric, the head TA, even went to the extent of knocking off part of the requirements because some groups were having problems implementing them.

Occasionally, Professor Panetta makes a minor mistake on the board (usually with binary numbers). This is almost immediately corrected by a number of people sitting in the classroom. Anyone paying attention when these corrections are announced can easily fix their notes.

Professor Panetta?s exams are very difficult, and if you don?t come to class and pay attention it is very easy to do poorly on them. Her exams are a learning experience because she takes something that you already know and applies it to something new. I?ve heard many people say that Dr. Panetta doesn?t know how to teach. These are often the people who do poorly on tests and quizzes and skip class. I can assure you that Dr. Panetta is an excellent teacher.

Professor Panetta is also a very easy person to get in touch with. She always answers her email promptly and has office hours after every class in case anyone has any questions or concerns.

I highly recommend her as a Professor and a networking tool for anyone who wants to seriously get into industry.

Workload:
Homework was busywork, but helped reinforce what as learning in class.

review a class you took with Karen Panetta - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
First of all, you might notice that there are a number of positive reviews of Panetta praising her enthusiasm and care for students. These posts have a grain of truth. However, I must respectfully disagree with the overall picture of Professor Panetta's teaching capabilities.

Panetta is, quite simply, the worst professor I've been forced to deal with at Tufts. It's almost ridiculous how bad she is. First of all, she's pretty dumb, especially for an Engineering professor. She'll make subtle errors in her work on the board that you'll only notice when you're being quizzed on the material or have to do a homework on it.

For a concrete example, she told us in class that the ORG statement won't take up memory on the 68HC12 -- which is correct. Then, she asked a question on the quiz the next week involving this -- and most of the class got it right. When she went to the board to explain the problem, however, she had no clue what the right memory map of the assembled program should be. (If this doesn't make sense, it will if you have to put up with her for EE14). Another time that really pissed me off was when she apparently spent about 3-4 minutes hastily writing up a homework assignment that was based on an exercise we went over in class. When you looked at the exercise in the notes and the problem she assigned, you could tell that, not only did she not have any idea what exactly we'd gone over in class, but that she'd also made subtle mistakes in the exercise given in class. It's hard to learn stuff this way, and this sort of crap happens all the time, and it's simply unacceptable in a class as rigorous as EE14. To be a good Professor, you HAVE to be on top of the material you're teaching, PERIOD.

I don't think I'll ever get over my anger about the f***ing final project she assigned. Basically, her chief-annoying-TA, Cedric, made us code the game "Pong" on the 68HC12. Problem is, none of the TAs bothered to actually code the program themselves before assigning it to us (they used a slightly different microprocessor last year). A week or two before the thing was due, we get an email basically saying "Whoops.. didn't realize there's only 500 bytes of RAM to fit the whole program in". Instead of admitting their mistake, and either expanding the memory available, or significantly reducing the amount of features we had to code, they basically told us "Tough shit.. make your code super efficient to make it fit, and, since I'm so nice, I'll knock off one minor feature implementation". Everyone who coded the project now knows significantly more about assembly coding on the 68HC12 than any of the TAs (actually, there's one smart one out of four or five...) because we had to figure out so much on our own during the course of the project. I'm not sure where she got some of these TAs, but some were absolutely, completely useless. And, of course, while we were spending hours upon end in that despicable lab trying to make the program work, Panetta was nowhere to be found.

During all this, of course, Panetta would be going over the most inane crap in class. While we were spending hours upstairs in lab figuring out how to squeeze extra instructions into memory (one I'm fond of is using movw to write 16 bits into D instead of LDAA, STAA, LDAB, STAB .. and you can overwrite the D-BUG12 code at $0b1e for extra variable space) we would be going over the most mind-bogglingly stupid crap in class... memory maps, timing diagrams, and some other very simple stuff.

Basically, in my opinion, Panetta doesn't have the capability to teach first-grade, arithmetic, much less an undergraduate engineering course. I'm pretty sure the Deans don't give a shit what we write in the class reviews, so I thought I'd at least spread the word in public. Not that anyone who should care will, but it feels good to vent after a year (ES4 + EE14) of terrible instruction, hateful labs, unavailability for help, and a phony sense of care for students (She'll act nice to you if you're a total suck-up). My hope is that she'll actually read bad reviews like this herself and lose some of her hyper-inflated ego.

Workload:
Labs SUCKED. The homework was hastily written up. E.g. "Do All the problems in chapter 8" . Or "Finish the program we went over in class (which, of course, would have errors) and make it better". She could be a total bitch about grading exams.. especially since she would make all sorts of errors on the board during class, but if we made any slight slip-up on an exam (like not labeling a wire whose function is obvious) it's automatic point deduction.

Overall, we learned some useful stuff, but only because of work we did on our own.

review a class you took with Karen Panetta - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
Great professor, highly recommend. The classes were interesting, she taught the material very well - applying it to real world applications. When it came to finding an internship, I used examples from this class and it helped a lot. If you have any questions about the material or advice for internships/jobs, she is excellent to talk to - I always stopped by during office hours.

Workload:
Assignments and labs applied material taught during class. This is the part that will help you with real world applications (especially when you need examples for interviews!). They were challenging in the fact that you have to apply the information, but as I was saying that's what helped me the most. The amount of time put into the classwork was typical for engineering courses at Tufts.

review a class you took with Karen Panetta - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
Clear presentation coupled with good office hours and easy access to supplementary aid. Very fair grading. Wrote me a recommendation and got me two interviews using her connections without request from me. Very open to constructive criticism. Best advice, don't be wise and be prepared to work. If you're an EE or a CompE you've been getting off really easily, most schools would completely destroy you. Oh and if you thought this was too much work and that lab at 4+ hours every couple of weeks was too much you need to consider changing majors, fast.

Workload:
The labs can sometimes be a little hard or long but they don't in any way ask for the impossible. Specifically when we're well prepared in class as we were. All you have to do to get all the work done for this class is try to do like 10 or 15 minutes a day and don't screw around in lab. Also make sure to go to lab prepared and up-to-date. If you expect the TA to do everything for you or haven?t gone to class in a week it's gonna kill you. But then of course, that'll be your fault. Oh and for gods sakes don't cheat, that'll end very very badly.

review a class you took with Karen Panetta - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
I would like to comment on the horrible and TOTALLY untrue comments made about Karen Panetta. She is ALWAYS prepared for class, cares about her students and is a brilliant woman. Just because she is nice and has a personality, is no reason to attack her integrity.

Students from the class mentioned above, behaved like childish brats and were rude and very disrespectful towards her. You want her respect?

Try acting like an adult. She expects her engineers to act like engineers, to be accountable for their actions and take an active part in their education.

Someone claimed she only had 1 hour of office hours. Have you ever ACTUALLY gone to her office hours? Obviously you didn't because what was said was totally untrue and a blatant lie.

Professor Panetta helps people find jobs, is honest and prepares students for the real world, where things don't always go your way.

I suggest the students try being more honest about what they write rather than making up stories about a professor in attempt to discredit some one who has dedicated her life to helping students.

Workload:
The assignments require students think outside the box. There are no canned answers here and if you think you can get by by copying, you'll get killed on the final. The labs are hard and require you actually put effort into quality writing.

review a class you took with Karen Panetta - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
As a student that was in the ee14 and es4 class with Prof. Panetta, I want to defend not only her reputation but let anyone who has any brain, understand that the comments made were totally bogus.

Anyone who goes to her office hours is well aware that she holds plenty of office hours and is always very helpful and works hard to make people comfortable approaching her. Furthermore, she is an outstanding lecturer. The woman has won teaching awards voted on by outgoing Tufts Seniors. She is extremely intelligent and is one of the brightest professors in the engineering school. She will not tolerate disrespectful behavior of students against students, her teaching assistants or herself.

As for the claim that she doesn't do letters of reference for students, she has done several for many of my classmates and myself. If she doesn't do a letter for an individual, then perhaps this speaks of the character of the person. She's probably doing that person a favor instead of writing a bad letter revealing how bad they are.

I witnessed individuals in this class, many of whom I am sure wrote the negative reviews, behave childishly and act like ranting babies in her class. Their behaving bordered on harassment and I felt truly sorry for her for having to tolerate such horrible behavior from such a small group of trouble makers.

Workload:
The workload is not wimpy. The problem sets are mostly design based so they require a lot of creativity. The lab reports required a lot of writing. The TA mentioned in previous comments was praised. The TA was the weakest part of the course. People who liked him were ones who he did the work for. He didn't follow through on anything, like passing back labs in a timely fashion. He also screwed up the scheduling of labs so that the final lab had to be extra credit because he scheduled it during reading period. Prof. Panetta put a stop to it and tried hard to intervene to save her students from him.

review a class you took with Karen Panetta - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
The lab was incredible. The lab alone raises my rating of this class from 1 to 4. I learned more in the lab with the TA (James) than I have in any other class I have taken here.

Workload:
The class was fairly light in workload, outside the lab. Weekly assignments from the book and a quiz every week or two.

The lab required seriously dedication and did not count for an appropriate amount of the final course grade, but who cares? It was an excellent lab and you really learn something from it, which is all that matters in the end.

review a class you took with Karen Panetta - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
Never at office hours. Never responds to e-mails. Not only was she UNAVAILABLE during reading period, she was absent during the final.

The final was missing a 60 page reference document that she promised, so the final was hell without it. People were talking. WAITING IN LINE to talk with the TA. It was a three ring circus in there.

Workload:
N/A

review a class you took with Karen Panetta - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
N/A

Workload:
The labs are very difficult and long. Prof. Panetta does not help you at all on the labs, and leaves the work for the TA.

review a class you took with Karen Panetta - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
After taking ES4 with Prof Panetta I thought she was a good teacher who was interested in her students? progress. This fall I was greeted in class by a completely different person. Her lectures covered material that was on a problem set from a week or two prior, she was never at her office hours, the final was a circus, assignments never returned... need I list all of my problems with that class? I only really learned from the lab, I could have skipped every lecture and come away with just as much.

Workload:
The lab was insane. Students were expected to work more than 4 hours a week on a lab that they were given no extra credit for.

review a class you took with Karen Panetta - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
She has office hours one day a week and is never around if you need extra help. She is slow at doing anything for her students (that is if she does it at all), i.e. recommendations, appointments, etc.

Workload:
The workload is about average compared to all the other EE classes.

review a class you took with Karen Panetta - help your classmates make informed decisions!

Review:
Karen Panetta is a professor often commended for her enthusiasm and dedication to students. Take her seriously and she will take your education seriously. She may not be the most brilliant mind in Electrical Engineering (especially compared to Gonsalves, Chang, Fermental, and other amazing professors), but she is truly a great teacher. She has good knowledge of digital design and basic analog circuits. Don't bother asking for letters of recommendation though-she's too busy (same for adviser).

Workload:
Fair amount of work. She doesn't control the course for EE11, but teaches it. Now teaches ES4 as well, but same deal there: no big surprises with workload. Just regular assignments to keep you thinking.

review a class you took with Karen Panetta - help your classmates make informed decisions!