Very inept at lecturing. Slide shows/class materials are a MESS. Very skilled at making an interesting topic mundane and boring... If you are going to take astronomy, skip out on this prof.

Talks as if he is muttering to himself

The worst professor I have had instructing a class. Very poor lectures, the class is essentially divided up into him mumbling, watching astronomy youtube videos, and then using tophat. He is not well organized and does not address student questions.

Possibly the worst teacher/prof I have ever had in my life. Probably a nice guy at his core, but terrible as an instructor. Made errors in his notes and speaking points, mumbles, and notes aren't detailed. I love astronomy but he truly took all the fun out of what should be an interesting course.

Very bad professor, does not communicate material well during lectures. He gets easily distracted and does not answer questions during class. Essentially a usual lecture has him mumble for 1/3 of the time, watch bad quality youtube videos for another 1/3, and use tophat for the other 1/3 of class time. I don't recommend him, very poor instructor.

Mumbles, very quiet, doesn't take questions, confusing, disorganized lectures. Do not recommend. Stopped going to lectures after a 3 weeks. Get the textbook and do the online assignments.

When I got into Dr. Leahy's class for the first time, I knew I'd have to study on my own. He made us buy Mastering Astronomy (Pearson) for homework (25%) and he said he was still debating whether to upload them. I was ready to drop the course. Then I could find all the homework online, midterm wasn't half bad and for the final he gave the questions

Professor Denis is the image of a professor that is very much a researcher and not an educator. He is completely inept and lacks the grounding to understand how basic technology works; ex, his mircophone. And even if you could hear him it wouldn't matter since he's constantly mumbling. Not a GPA booster at all. Basic self-teaching skills required.

Awful prof! I skipped all the classes and just studied the book. Going to class is a waste of time. All the answers for assignments are online.

Dr. Leahy attempts to communicate content with enthusiasm, but this results in awkwardness and class silence most of the time. In the first lecture you could not find a seat (400 students filled the science theatre). By the last lecture, only 40 students remained in attendance. He gives students the questions to his tests, showing his carelessness.

I would not take a class with Leahy again. I took this course for my required science credit, and although the material might be straightforward, going to lectures with Leahy clouded my understanding of the material. He is extremely boring, and speaks extremely monotonously. After the first lecture, about 50-70 students out of 400 would show up.

Denis is a pretty bad professor, but he gives out exam questions and his assignments are easy, so you're pretty much guaranteed an A in his class

Yikes ok... If you are a first year engineer, DO ANYTHING YOU CAN TO NOT HAVE THIS PROF. I would almost always skip his lectures to go to a prof I could understand. What is a already difficult course (259) becomes so much harder due to a prof that did NOTHING! when I did go, i sat at the front, AND COULDN'T HEAR HIM! Nice person, bad prof... :(

He just takes the lecture slides from other profs, mumbles confusedly about them, and calls it a lecture. He's even admitted to only reading the notes 5 minutes before the class started. His writing is illegible and he makes many mistakes. If you take phys 259 with him, you can still do well, but you'll need to spend lots of time teaching yourself.

Hes nice, knows what hes talking about but doesnt know how to teach its like hes talking to himself. I thought he was good until 2 guest profs taught two different classes and I realized hes a good professor but bad teacher.

The absolute worst physics prof ever. Have never struggled through physics more in my entire life. Doesn't know how to convey solving methods or definitions and frequently makes mistakes showing steps to solve a problem. Spoke too quietly, could barely be heard at times and just overall a brutal professor to deal with. Seems nice but cannot teach!

Honestly, just do practice questions, no need to show up for this class. Leahy is very monotone when teaching and you will easy get bored. He is not suitable to teach. His class is a good GPA booster though. Most resources to study can be found online too. I recommend his class but you will only do well if you do lots pf practice questions

Leahy is a super nice prof and very accessible outside of class. He genuinely wants to make sure you do well in his course. He gives you half the test questions before hand so it's easy to pass. That being said, the actual lectures are so painful. He's all over the place and isn't at all interesting to listen to. Nice dude, bad prof.

Dr. Leahy is extremely boring and puts no thought or effort whatsoever into the class. The online final was incredibly difficult and poorly worded. ASTR 207 was the hardest option course I've ever had the displeasure of taking, and it is due to Dr. Leahy's poor delivery of the course. Avoid at all costs.

Don't bother with his lectures. Just read the textbook and you will do fine. Poor job with class communication, very brief announcements like 1 time a month with little info. Gives practice exams which have like half the actual questions which is great. Obviously a nice guy, just not a great professor. Take the course for a science option

Maybe in-person would have been better, but avoid taking his class online at ALL COSTS. Re-uploaded lectures from the spring, tests got progressively harder due to rewording questions--probably to avoid cheating but it made them incomprehensible and near impossible to understand. He also doesn't seem to know how to work the D2L grading system.

Absolutely terrible lecturer, watching paint dry would be more interesting than watching his recorded lectures. Thus, the class was entirely textbook dependent with lots of reading. Curved the quite difficult final exam and the curve was too high so he removed it and lied about it. Avoid!!

Honestly, I don't care about the other ratings of Denis before I enroll in ASTR 207. The final is one of the hardest 200level finals I have ever written. I understand the situation is different due to online classes. However, he shouldn't give us a hard final to work on, when the wording of the questions is unclear and confusing

Ridiculously unfair. He made the final obnoxiously difficult just because of the fact that it was online. The average was a 62.5%. If you think this is an easy class, think again.

This is not a GPA booster anymore. He purposely made this final very difficult as we weren't even allowed to go to our previous questions to check before submitting them and for some questions, he worded the questions in a way that didn't even make sense.

Online is brutal. Mid terms worth practically nothing were easy, but final worth half the course was ridiculously difficult. DO NOT TAKE ONLINE AS A GPA BOOSTER.

The assignments and midterms were easy if you studied. Lectures were boring and pre-recorded. But the FINAL. Yikes. Just because your class grades are too high does not mean you need to make the final impossible. My grade dropped 15% after the final. I understand you need to stop cheating, but this is totally unfair to students during a pandemic.

This might have been the most lack lustre effort Ive ever seen from a prof. He used recycled lectures, got his midterms from a test bank and used Pearson for assignments. The most effort he put in all semester was making the final incomprehensible and straight up unfair. Do not take this class online.

Do not take this class if possible, especially if you've been told its a GPA booster! Tests were incomprehensible, filled with mistakes and heavily weighted. And don't bother studying the lecture notes or practice tests, as the questions will be unrelated and unfair. Lectures were recycled from a previous semester and very poorly delivered.

Honestly, I was stoked for this class in the beginning. This has sadly turned out to be one of the classes I dreaded the most. This prof could not care less. Recycled material from the summer. And then decides to make a ridiculously hard final that you couldnt even decipher with google translate. Shame on you.

He put in absolutely zero effort into teaching or helping students, the lectures were recycled from the spring and were UNBEARABLE-- two hours of a monotone voice and extremely long pauses. The midterms and assignments were easy, but it seems he decided to make his class "harder" by making the final impossible to understand and worth 45%.

Leahy has super monotone lectures and recycles everything: tests, assignments, & lectures. He attempted to prevent cheating on his final worth 45% by rewording the questions. Unfortunately, the exam did not make any sense because of the awkward wording. I studied before going into the exam and read the textbook. Scraped by with a 67% on the final.

Every test wed taken he gave us test banks saying that he was taking questions from it, which he did, hence people saying this is an easy class. He said this for the final, then making it significantly harder than the previous tests and pulled little to none from the test bank. As someone who did fairly well on the final, it was a malicious move.

Lazy prof reused boring long lectures from previous semester, uses test banks for all tests, if you want to learn take this class with different prof. Got mad about high class average (but he gave us questions that were going to be on the test, telling us to study them) but too lazy to make his own questions so badly reworded test bank ones LOL

The class started out easy as it should be because ASTR 207 is an introductory class. The assignments were straightforward and both the midterms were decent. I went into the final with a 96%. I came out of the final with 76%. For whatever reason Leahy decided to make the final harder than it needed to be. Plus he reused the spring's lectures. pain

Lectures are mostly filled with hours of static silences which takes up unnecessary amounts of time from doing different tasks for other courses, provides the worst final exam ever made with poor grammar and improper writing, and to top it all off, he rarely responds to any emails.

Reused lectures from the spring. The final exam was a mess with unacceptable grammar and structure errors, and was made exponentially harder than the midterms. The most helpful review for this prof says easy A but the course average after the final was a C, think again. Seems like a nice guy, but he has clearly lost his motivation to teach.

Taught myself the whole course by textbook. I had a running A until the final, which was riddled with grammatical errors. His lectures were asynchronous and between 2-4 hours long, he was not engaging and talked incredibly slow. He barely responded to emails, and when he did they were one word non-specific answers. Worst course i've taken so far.

This is by far the worst professor I have had at this school. He is inaccessible and doesn't care to professionally or helpfully respond to emails. Uses entirely recycled course material and teaches through very slow, long, and unspecific lectures. I recommend just teaching yourself through the textbook chapters assigned. Grades from tests.

Take this class if you're trying to become a clown due to the amount of clownery in the class. Can't mark a test properly and has the most monotone voice that will put you to sleep. Avoid this class unless you like wasting money and losing your virginity to an option.

SPRING: Tough prof/class. Not very accesible outside of class, and it is clear this course is not his priority. Lectures are quite slow paced and slides are broad, but if you read the textbook you will do fine. The real issue is with the unwillingness to admit mistakes within his tests, and refusing to curve when the class is clearly struggling.

Get ready to teach yourself the entire course. Do not attend his lectures nor even look at his slides. Read the textbook and memorize the test banks as his entire test comes from quizlet / test banks online. Horrible prof, clearly has given up on teaching and he refuses to curves test where the average is a C. Wouldn't round my 84.96 to an 85. GL

Taught myself the entire course from test banks and the textbook. Assignments are behind a paywall that you have to pay, refuses to curve test where the class avg is a C, refuses to admit to mistakes as he gave us a question with no right answers on the final and refused to remove it. Waste of money, the material is easy itself but awful prof

Puts zero effort into this course, you can tell he just doesnt wanna be there. you have to read the text to completion and sit through his horrible lectures, and he will put seemingly arbitrary facts on the tests. you CANNOT pass the tests without reading the textbook, this course should be an easy A, easy content, but a genuinely horrid prof.

Be ready to rely mostly on the textbook, his lectures are 100% useless. He doesn't finish all the content needed before a midterm, and sometimes includes questions on the midterm that we didn't cover. Think of a simple topic to understand, he'll make it even harder to understand by over-explaining it. Only take a class with him if you have to.

To put it short, he teaches like he's bored, or like the class is not his priority. He shows no real passion or effort into keeping students engaged, nor seems to care when 3/4 of the class has disappeared before the semester is over. Testing is frustrating and is not very keen on helping go over them to see where you went wrong.

bad, very bad

Doesn't really care about the class

Honestly an easy course for non-science majors as all you had to do was read the textbook and do mastering astronomy. Do not even bother going to lectures as they are a waste of time considering all he does is stare at the floor when he lectures, doesn't even acknowledge students. This probably explains why only 20/425 would attend lectures.

His lectures are very monotone and very hard to stay awake during them. I only went to 2 lectures throughout the whole semester and ended up with an A. Read all of the assigned textbook readings and study online quizlets, all his test questions are from the assignments, Pearson, and quizlets online.

I would only recommend taking this class if you don't mind forking out the money to memorize Quizlet questions. Despite reading all textbook chapters and watching all mind-numbing lectures, the questions on tests have NOTHING to do with the material. He copies and pastes Quizlet questions for his exams. Like, seriously????

Nice guy, tries his best but his lectures are a great tool for falling sleep, very hard to stay awake during such monotone lectures, experncie read textbook and your golden.

Dude should retire he sounds like he loses himself mid sentence.

He needs to retire. Unless you read the textbook front to back, you are not passing. The lectures are unbearable, he mumbles more than anything and you cannot understand a thing. His assignments are easy (Google is your friend), but exams are very difficult. He seems like a really nice guy, but he just cannot teach.

Nice person, however it is clear that he struggles to teach. Is often hard to follow on lectures, and if you dont read the textbook front to back you will fail, overall avoid this course is not a GPA BOOSTER. VERY HARD TO LISTEN AND UNDERSTAND WHAT HE IS SAYING, as he just looks at the floor while lecturing

His lectures are dry & you won't get much from them. It's a very "do it yourself" course, so make sure you read and take notes on the textbook. His tests are pretty much word for word from testbanks but if you can't memorize them then you better memorize the textbook.

His lectures are dry and will not help much with your exams. His exams are all questions from test banks, so if you can find the test banks and the quizlets and just study those you should be okay. But if you can't find them, get ready to read the entire textbook and teach yourself.

Horrible course, especially with Leahy. By far one of the worst professors ever as he moves too quickly, summarizes whole chapters with 2 pictures and a few sentences and leaves you to read everything while keeping up with class—horrible professor and course. This course takes away valuable time to study for other classes as well. Stay away!

Take his courses if you are behind on sleep, because he will send you to dreamland.

This man has one skill, and if you think its teaching then I'm sorry to disappoint you because its not. He has the amazing ability to cure an insomniac with his dreadfully inaudible voice, and I think that should be studied. He could really help a lot of people.

Leahy is so monotone and does not give a crap about his students. On the final exam there was a multiple-choice question that had all wrong answers and he didn't bother taking it off the test...

Very quiet, and very poor at explaining. Basically not worth it to go to his classes if you are not adept with mathematics, the textbook has better explanations than him. Would prefer a teacher who was able to explain complicated subjects without stuttering, and can speak clearly.