Can't keep up with writing his own assignments, incredibly difficult exams, and entirely unavailable for questions regarding the work he assigns. Seems to be on the spectrum.

3 question quiz at the end of every lecture. If you don't pay careful attention, you won't pass it. His lectures never cover enough material to make projects reasonable, write ups are hard to understand. Test average was always 75. Rude and inconsiderate outside of class. Never answers emails. Hides from students. Do not recommend.

Tests are very difficult and its grading takes him 3-4 weeks. Homework feedback also take very long, its about 2 weeks left to the end of semester and still haven't received feedback on parts of homework 2! He has been very unorganized; he always teaches the material you need for homeworks 2-3 days before the deadline.

If you have the option to take the course with a different professor, I highly recommend you to do so. There are not many resources to resolve your doubts. Even the TAs don't have office hours! There is alway a pop quiz from the material of same day! Before you get to study at all. And of course the quiz will effect your grade.

He was very bad with returning grades. I'm not exaggerating when I say it took him 3 months to grade a project and a test. Not to mention he is always behind on his own syllabus, which means you have less time for assignments. Pop quizzes all the time which affects 8% of your grade. Tests are awful, memorization heavy for no reason at all. Avoid.

Bad professor. No feedback.

well In the great NCSU CSC, you don't get many options as to who your teacher gonna be. But if you do get to choose don't pick this guy. and be sure to fill call eval to talk about this guy if you do. He needs to know how bad of a professor he is. He might lecture well be he is bad at everything and will not help you succeed.

Good guy but not good professor. His test is incredible, such as "how many 'a's appeared in the United States Declaration of Independence" or "how many soldiers were shot exactly once during Operation Overlord". Basically something so professional that only he understand why should we remember it.

Generally, he just tried to briefly introduce the OS based on the Dino book . However, your coding is all about IPC programming. To be honest, Reading the CSAPP, APUE and UNP vol.2 is better than taking his classes if you want to learn what OS it is. His test tells you what is studying exclusive for test.

I took Dr. Sturgill during 2020 when the semester was cut short due to COVID. He is very smart, but he is absolutely inaccessible outside of class. He doesnt respond to emails or Piazza AT ALL. He completely ghosted our entire class on the test date until the day of the test and was an absolute nightmare to deal with once we moved to online.

The coursework for 230 is made up of almost entirely projects, which are the hardest projects I have ever had for any class. They are incredibly poorly formatted, difficult to understand, graded incredibly harshly, and take at least 8-10 hours to finish each. Try to get credit for this class somewhere else, this is genuinely a terrible class.

Sturgill is perpetually behind. By the end of the semester, bi-weekly projects were being posted 4-5 days late and grades were over a month overdue. He is virtually inaccessible outside of class. I learned a lot and enjoyed the material but there was too much chaos. He is the only professor I have had in CSC that I would describe as unprofessional.

Awful, wasn't accommodating to extenuating circumstances, and even yelled at the class. Very unprofessional.

Sturgill is heavy on the lectures and while attendance isn't technically required he provides daily quizzes at the end of the lecture which forces you to attend. Exams are hard and detailed. To give credit where credit is due he does try to make the course doable. But he provides very little help if you are stuck and will not help debug anything.

I had him for 230 and 246. He does not make the hard classes he teaches any easier. I would not recommend him, but he is supposed to be the better of the professors that teach his classes. Good luck...

Just don't. Tests are probably some of the most difficult ones I have taken in my entire CSC degree (and he makes them difficult on purpose). He doesn't care even if half the class fails. They also don't grade things on time. Assignments from September have still not been graded in November causing students to repeat old mistakes and lose points.

Please, please listen to me. For your own mental health, for your own sanity, DO NOT TAKE HIM! This class is a classic example of academia being academia. Just because you can write it in one line, doesn't mean you should. Readability is important. C will make you a better programmer, but his class will just make you frustrated. Take someone else.

Imagine having 5+ TA and still delaying grade returns because he insists on re-checking everything to prevent students from getting extra points. He holds up homework and projects long after TAs finish, and the support vs work is totally out of balance because of him. Will not debug during office hours, will not answer questions directly, awful

Ended up dropping. He has definitions in his slides that he defines half the time verbally during lecture. He is the type of person who will put more effort in a non-answer than the actual answer. He holds the belief that if you are not incredibly gifted, you should NOT do computer science. I reject him and his high-minded belief. Avoid at all cost

Traps are set so that you get points taken off on the "Homework" and Projects. We've had to put in 5+ hours outside of class to watch out of class lecture for an in person section because of how much material there is. "I shouldn't have to answer that, you should already know". He's intolerant if you don't immediately understand it.

Stupid lecture quizzes end up hurting you. Finds ways to dock points from HW. Tests are oddly specific such that even after hours of studying your grade is destroyed Take any other 230/246 professor. The 5 star reviews here do not represent the reality of this class. If anything the series of 1 stars as seen in Fall 2025 on RMP should be a warning.

"HW will be returned next week" ... proceeds to take 2 months. "Exam will be returned tomorrow" ... proceeds to take a month. "Will release the assignment tomorrow" ... proceeds to release 2 weeks later providing us only a week to complete assignment that should take 3 weeks. Grading, planning, workload and timing is just utter ridiculous. AVOID!!!

Way too much material. Attempts to cram 100 sides worth of information in a single sitting. Finishes your question yet somehow manages to not answer it. Finds ways to dock points on HW, so obtaining that beautiful green checkmark in Jenkins means nothing. If you don't memorize a term from slide 28 out of 600, it's sayonara to your test grade.

Worst professor of my life. He will give you outrageously hard assignments. also make sure you know your spelling or you will lose points for forgetting one letter. He doesn't seem to have the ability to write a decent set of instructions for any assignment to the point the other professors are confused by his write ups. DONT TAKE AWFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pro: Knows C. Cons (a lot): Takes forever to return grade and feedback of major assignments, impossible tests (be ready to remember obscure definitions),complained that students make him do extra work yet he never assigns anything on time, never reply to emails / barely answer questions on ed. DONT TAKE HIM, he's NIGHTMARE FUEL.

Happy Thanksgiving! He is "grateful" for his students. To demonstrate this, professor spent Thanksgiving day regrading homework and trying to squeeze out as many point deductions as possible. States very casually that his exam average was a 60 without any shame not realizing his class has an impact on GPA, grad school, scholarships, and well being.

"On Tuesday, I discovered that I made a mistake in grading homework assignment 4. Some missed system tests weren't being included in the feedback or considered when calculating the grade for the assignment. For these students, the correction will reduce their grades by about 2.75 points, on average." Happy Thanksgiving, students!

His goal: Make the class as difficult as possible without getting in trouble. He enjoys making things unnecessarily difficult and enjoys watching students squirm. Other instructors can't even decipher his own projects, let alone help because of how complicated his assignments are. HE DOESNT CARE ABOUT YOUR GPA! DO NOT TAKE! AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!

He rates himself. Read the 5 start reviews and it's obvious which ones are him. My honest review is that he tries to do too much, bottlenecks the grading until the last week of the semester (no exaggeration), provides overly complicated assignments and focuses on weird details that are covered in

Absolutely awful at teaching, only reads off the sides and dances around questions. Shows no effort to help students succeed. All projects were delivered late (a semester long project was 2 weeks late) without pushing back the deadlines, while the instructions were confusing and full of mistakes (both in spelling and classification of material).

The exam average is in the 60s. Exams are "That one term listed once on slide 47 from 5 weeks ago". I studied 2 weeks in advance for exams and still struggled. HW grades come out late so you lose points you couldve fixed on the next HWs. On the DAY of Thanksgiving he even LOWERED grades on HW that came out a MONTH ago instead of just letting it go

I have always been academically strong and ready to tackle an academic challenge. This class made me lose faith in myself let alone my ability to learn. If you have always been a straight-A student, this class will make you start calculating minimum grade to pass and stuff like that. PLEASE, I beg you take with another professor.

Thousands of lecture slides. Make sure you know every single term that was never used in code, it will be on the test. Takes a month to grade homework, goes back a week after grading to take more points off. Literally refused to give assignment grades back and was reprimanded. Daily quizzes meant to take your grade down that sometimes are hard.

The roach of the CS department.🪳🪳🪳🪳🪳

Decides the best way to “help” the class is shift 4% weightage from midterm to final exam which will already be extremely hard and lot of material rather than address the fact that his exams are just bad with a 60 average, standard deviation 20!!!!

I will agree the CSC department has some ruthless professors (whose sole purpose is to weed out students). Sometimes, a challenge is appropriate (take CSC 316 with Dr King for instance) which is a great one. But this guy pushes the limits on ruthlessness and sole ability to not care at all about student success, student grades, and amount of work.

Ignores student questions via email or discussion form. Course is overall disorganized and very badly paced. Designed to fail as many as possible :)

I was depressed so to distract myself I started studying for this class. Then I realized this is the reason why I was depressed.

Never seen a professor's RMP rating drop so much in 1 semester... so I'd like to pitch in for the fun of it!

Would tell us that things would be graded by a specific day, and they would be graded a month later. Not good time management, and for our final semester project we got less time on it because HE DIDN'T FINISH THE WRITE UP IN TIME. Student's penalized for his lack of organization. Also tests VERY difficult. No curve. Say goodbye to your perfect GPA

I understand this class is not meant to be easy, but god forbid you don't have a photographic memory and can't memorize every word he says in lecture. Too much emphasis on small details rather than general topics. On bright side, projects are worth decent part of your grade and those are not terribly difficult. Tests and daily quizzes are HORRIBLE.

Don't know what this guy's problem is, but he seems to enjoy making the class as hard as possible. Test avg was in the low 60s with no curve. He goes out of his way to make things harder, and if you need flexibility, he'll ignore you or give a non-answer. He's reminds me of an evil robot that's sole purpose is to make students suffer. Start praying

Take him if you want to be miserable and lower your GPA! You get a pop quiz after every lecture and if you aren't able to memorize everything after 75 minutes of lecturing you will do bad on it. For tests you either have to memorize every slide from the class or hope you get lucky enough that the stuff you remember is on the test.

He has a massive disconnect between his students and the coursework. He boasts how he made his tests harder recently. He doesn't respect human life as he will include every little arbitrary term from the hundreds of slides for several fill in the blank questions for as much credit on the tests as writing entire algorithms in C. Ruined my major.

Saw a quote the other day summing up this class - "if a professor cannot lecture without notes/slides, how can students be expected to remember EVERYTHING"? Obviously a bit far-fetched as the point of college is learning material and all, but the man makes his tests SO DIFFICULTLY SPECIFIC on purpose. He gets a sense of joy from doing so.

So heres the TLDR on what happened. CSC 230 under went restructuring. That kinda made a lot of chaos. His exams are still equivalent to the Great Wall of China. The 1 big new project we get this semester was released late with less time to do it. Also, to celebrate Thanksgiving, he took away points because of errors in the auto grader. TYVM

CSC 230 w Sturgill has the potential to be a great class. However, lack of support (no email response except 1 TA), unrealistic deadlines, not returning grades/feedback on time, and tests which ask meaninglessly specific questions (no technical interview will ask), all make it to be a poor experience. Severe disconnect between professor & students.

I don't know what y'all did to him last semester but it made him turn CSC230 into a weed out class. You'll get tested on the most minute details said once in class and that goes for the quizzes you get after each lecture too. Very disorganized class.

Absolutely ridiculous standards for students and grading. Posted a major project write up a month late, cutting a month out of the time for completion. Exam questions require photographic memory. He will dance around questions. This is the kind of class that will force you into mental distress and have you calculating minimum passing grades. 0/10

He takes IMMENSE JOY in lowering grades as much as they can for students. Just look at his past gradients and you will see what I mean.

This guy is insane. His tests are made for you to fail because he enjoys watching students fail. I joined in for an office hour one day and this guy is lounging on the couch like he is at home? If you want to fail a course, take this section.

The positive reviews are either from him or from masochists. The tests are impossible, he takes forever to grade homework, and he gives little to no leniency. He somehow has a PhD but can't make the connection that if the test average is a 60, his tests are probably too hard or he just doesn't care (probably the latter).

He decided the best way to "help" students after the averages on the first two tests were in the low 60s was to shift the weight from those tests to the final, which also had an average in the low 60s. He genuinely doesn't care that his class affects GPA, grad school, scholarships, and mental well being. Avoid at all costs

Tests were absolutely insane and pulled questions from topics he talked about for 2 picoseconds. Daily quizzes were also disgusting too, because some days you don't get enough sleep and aren't paying enough attention to minute details from the slides.

Nice satire below me. Go take OS with McLeod if the hardcore exams aren't for you. Everyone has their preferences, so don't shame whether they pick.

Doesn't reply to students emails or discussion board questions - what's the point of a professor if we are not given the teaching support we are paying for (all the material can be learned easier, more stress free, and affordable on YouTube)!!!

Dr. Sturgill is a very miserly, nitpicky, and unaccommodating professor. He expects you to know the content after hearing it once. On exams, he asks overly specific questions and will deduct more points during regrade requests. He takes an eternity to write and grade HWs and will not respond to Ed posts. Don't be fooled by his happy demeanor. -HY

For an exercise I put down (example only) 1100 1111 instead of 11001111 and got no credits for it. Asked him for a regrade since it is otherwise identical answer and clearly showed that I understood the concept. He looked into it and said he won't give credits. Don't bother wasting your time with him. Dude doesn't care about his students.