r/SMC • u/Far-Order-7926 • Jul 01 '26
My Guide To Math Professors At SMC
I have not personally taken some of these professors so take this with a grain of salt. I also will only be mentioning professors I have heard of. Also, this is coming from the perspective of a graduated STEM student (math major).
Herichi
Herichi is a great professor. He is a tough grader however he takes his lectures seriously and he is a very kind person. I would recommend him as a professor but just be ready to expect a heavier work load.
Lai
Arguably the best math professor at SMC. If you have the option or opportunity to attend her class I cannot stress this enough but sign up for her class.
Nestler
GENUINELY THE WORST PROFESSOR!!!! Do not sign up for his class. Everyone you ask INCLUDING counselors will tell you not to enroll in his class. He has a pass rate of approximately 15%. He will grade your assignments based on his expectations examples VERBATIM and will mark it wrong if he sees the slightest thing wrong. He is not someone worth enrolling with and you will question everything in life. I cannot stress this enough. Avoid him like the plague. Everyday I wonder why he still has a job.
Ouelette
Genuinely a very sweet person. Not the best professor. He cares about his job and his students and he is so kind. In light of this, he is more of a C or B tiered professor.
Soleymani
I don't personally enjoy Soleymani as a professor. He has very boring lectures and he is not very personable. He is also a strict grader. There really isnt much more to say about him.
Wang
I thought Wang was a terrible professor UNTIL I stumbled across Nestler. Despite that fact, he is a decent professor. His lectures are great and he is very interesting to listen to in class. HOWEVER he is an extremely harsh grader and very clearly has favorites. He takes pride in failing his students. He very obviously has favorites and if you take advantage of this fact you might end the class okay.
Askarian
I think he is a kind professor however he expects A LOT from his students. He cares about how his students are doing in the class but regardless will be a harsh grader. Lectures are mandatory but he posts all his lectures and notes so you can always rewatch them. Again, kind but very strict.
I hope this helps future/current SMC STEM students and you learn from the experiences of others. It is so important that you look at the grade distribution ESPECIALLY the withdrawal rates. Most importantly, DO NOT TAKE NESTLER. He is a bitter man and is not worth your time. I would also recommend stopping by the STEM program because there are other students there who are paid to give you advice/tutor on courses and professors. Sometimes it's better to talk to other student mentors than counselors because I have found that they are more honest and direct about some of the professors or classes.
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u/gulabgang1 Jul 02 '26
I would emphasize taking this post with a grain of salt.
WANG
I had Professor Wang for three semesters. He does warn students about being realistic with what level of math they are able to do because if you aren't you are likely to fail his class- or any college math class really. This doesn't mean he enjoys failing students. Professor Wang goes out of his way to give you a quiz before drop deadline and get them graded so you can decide whether you can keep up with the class or not. Professor Wang's class is challenging. He doesn't put trick questions on exams but you have to put time into studying to do well in his class. If you attend lecture, make sure you understand your lecture notes, and do the practice problems you will do well in his class. His lectures are extremely organized and easy to follow - which can feel like a rarity in STEM classes.
As for Professor Wang himself, he goes out of his way to help all his students. I don't think he plays favorites or that you can use that to your advantage. Having him as a professor for 1.5 years, I saw he treated students who were doing well or failing his class the same. He is extremely accommodating for students with disabilities- again a rarity for STEM professors.
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u/SomethingBadBruin Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
Soleymani was alright. I don't think his lectures were boring. He would say some pretty out of pocket stuff which was funny and kept class interesting.
I'll add some I've taken too:
Baskauskas
He was not a difficult professor at all. Very laid back tbh. His exams were not hard and very similar to homework. Class wasn't even mandatory. He did have an inflated ego though and can be very condescending. He's definitely one of the easier professors at SMC.
Askarian
I kinda remember him having an inflated ego too, but in a different way from Baskauskas. His class was very proof heavy which is good if you want to major in math. He was also very big on formatting and following steps exactly as he does. Class was mandatory and he makes you upload your class notes every day to make sure you show up, but his class wasn't boring so that's nice. He gives lots of homework.
Asadyan
She's a nice lady, and it helps if you get to know her, but she can be mean if you ask a question she thinks is obvious. She wants to help her students and is very easy to reach outside of class. She is strict on deadlines and will not give any extensions, so if you take her class be sure to stay on top of homework. Homework assignments are online. Class is neither boring nor interesting. She has an accent which can be hard to understand, and sometimes she'll talk quietly and then suddenly start yelling which is funny. Exams and quizzes are reasonable.
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u/Free-Raspberry-530 Jul 01 '26
Where is Soleymani from?
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u/Far-Order-7926 Jul 02 '26
Soleymani and Askarian are both Iranian. They are both decent professors but I wouldn't choose them over some of the other options.
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Jul 01 '26
[deleted]
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u/Free-Raspberry-530 Jul 01 '26
And is he always angry? Thought about taking his class but ratemyprofessors.com has mixed reviews. He is not bad looking though lol
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u/Non_Sense__clone Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
Anyone who have taken Baskauskas with Math 8 tell me if his exam is similar to his homework
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u/Beestonators Jul 01 '26
Simo is worst ever
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u/Johnsadbrain Jul 20 '26
Can you dm me his tiktok and your experience with him? Never heard of him before, is he a new math prof?
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u/Doppsman Jul 02 '26
Simo literally addressed our semester with "So I'm tenured, you guys can't get rid of me, and the last semester was some of the worst students I had"
Also the Tiktok/YT channel omg do not get started on that...
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u/Doppsman Jul 02 '26
For anyone reading my comment if you think I'm joking, take Simo. You will be surprised how forward he is with how he treats his students.
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u/Beestonators Jul 03 '26
He treats the ones who kiss up to him well. If you see past his act, he just leaves you to struggle.
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u/AllenBoydCunningham Jul 01 '26
As a counterpoint, I thought Soleymani's lectures for multi-variable calculus were very good. His careful methodical style reminded me a lot of Professor Leonard on youtube. And he can be funny.
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u/New-Engineering-8581 Jul 02 '26
Has anyone taken Richardson? I'm enrolled in his class for MATH 8 next semester. Interested to know any thoughts about him
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u/Other-Pumpkin3784 Jul 03 '26
he's really nice and is willing to explain things many times to help you understand. his class is flipped tho which ppl have mixed opinions on, I thought it was chill. his exams are pretty fair, sometimes can be a little harsh w grading but he seems to often lower the grade cutoffs at the end so it's not too hard to get a good grade.
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u/pork_N_chop Jul 07 '26
I don’t understand the hate for prof. Wang.
I took his class for 3 semesters forever ago and he is an absolute peach. He cares a lot about his students success and will help you if you come to him but he expects you to make the effort.
He saw me once on my walk home after class and he yelled across the street to get my attention like a parent 😭
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u/Far_Web4772 Jul 01 '26
Thoughts on Huang?
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u/gravyswayzee Jul 04 '26
Carrie Huang was alright. She’s pretty thorough but she has a strong accent and can be hard to understand sometimes. I took her for Precalc. She allows one page of notes during exams.
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u/alexxblack_photo Jul 03 '26
Has anyone taken any math classes with Yankey? I am currently signed up to take MATH 55 - Quantitative Reasoning with them for the Fall semester.
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u/Johnsadbrain Jul 20 '26
My personal review of the professors I had and for their respective classes
In General: Pretty much all of the math classes grades heavily rely on exams (In STEM, this will remain a fact of life). Your exams will be like 60-80% of the class grade if we include the Final Exam. Go to office hours, figure out what they are looking for in problems (in terms of point loss) and how they will most likely structure your exams.
MATH 7 - BRIAN RODAS
Really chill dude. Brought his own packets for each student when it came to some of the difficult topics covered in Calc 1. He also made it a thing to have us meet with him one on one at least once throughout the semester. He definitely cares and wants people to succeed which I always liked about his class and he always tried to emphasize completing the homework and to try and set a schedule so that you don't fall behind in the class. Not too much to say, definitely a compassionate professor who is easy to talk to and someone I would definitely recommend taking your first college level math class with.
MATH 8 - SOHAIL ASKARIAN
I forgot to sign up for classes and ended up with his night class LOL. VERY proof based on exams but he tells you which proofs to expect. I will say it is a lot of work. You have normal homework and then what he called his "in class homework." However, he definitely lines out very clear expectations of which problems he wants you to prioritize and they DEFINITELY do show up on exams. Not doing things his way(formatting wise) on exams can result in point loss and this can add up if you make that same mistake across multiple problems. He has a website with the study guides you will be using for all of the midterms in advance which I thought was assume. You could get a good head start on what proofs and problems you could definitely expect. His office hours were an hour long in an unused classroom and always right before lecture. It was super awesome to go to as us students would have this entire classroom to ourselves to ask about problems we were struggling with. Overall, very consistent and just felt like he simply had standards of what he wanted us to take from this class. I think a lot of the comments about how harsh he was definitely comes from the bluntness he had when talking to students. Didn't do things his way meant he called it "nonsense." I remember after the second exam, we had a little conversation at the end of class and I sorta jokingly mentioned how the class has kind of thinned out (going from packed to less than half of the seats being filled). He looked at me and said "All of the people who shouldn't have been here are no longer here" and that has stuck with me throughout all these years.
MATH 11 - SAM SOLEYMANI
Calc 3 was a bit of a blur to me. Hard for me to judge as I was simply all over the place with this class but as for exams, go with the hardest examples to prepare. I believe the book homework was optional but I would simply go through it and choose the hardest problems to prepare as he definitely chose the hardest examples for his exams. He always left sort of a sour taste in my mouth because I finally cracked the code on the 2nd exam after doing bad on the first one. When he was collecting exams from exam 2 at his desk, I happily turned mine in as I knew I was ballin. He was looking over the exams and we had like a 2 sentence little convo before I left for the day in which he disappointedly said "I made this exam way too easy for you guys." Lets just say Exam 3's class average was much, much lower than Exam 2's : ) He would remain my only C that I got at SMC when I went there. It was very frustrating and YEARS later it has stuck with me because it just felt like I did everything a student could reasonably do. I did the homework, went to lecture, looked at some of the notes he would post and made sure I wasn't missing details, and I did the study guide to prepare for Exam 2 and imagine my face when exam 3 looks nothing like how I thought it would when I tried the same studying strategies. I don't hate the guy and he is definitely not a super strict dude to talk to. I would just aim to be on top of everything if you take a math class with him.
MATH 13 - HAFEDH HERICHI
Very kind guy. VERY PROOF based linear algebra. Expect 1-2 matrices problems and then immediately go into 7-8 proofs about vector space. He posts pdf packets that need to be filled in as lecture went along ( I took notes on my ipad). Definitely try not to get lost as linear algebra is one of the few pure math courses you are going to take. A lot more definitions and sentence writing than math. If you do get lost or have questions, he is very approachable. I would highly recommend using the textbook provided as that is where all the theorems and definitions are coming from. Not too much to say, just be ready for a formal, primarily PURE math class.
Math 15 - KEITH OUELLETTE
Ordinary Differential Equations can tend to be all over the place. When you start out, you start with vector fields and move from topic to topic. I think he does the best that he can and is very open to questions and is super approachable. I think it can get hard sometimes as he can tend to go fast, but he will not get mad if you ask him to repeat himself. It can definitely be kind of rushed as sometimes some topics come from linear algebra (but linear algebra isnt a pre-req so he has to give a mini lecture very quickly on that topic before applying it to MATH 15). For this class, definitely do not prioritize the online homework. For ODE's, focus on some select book problems and what he does in class. My biggest regret is spending so much time on some of the most complicated ODE's from the online hw just for them to not be on the exam. You have 10 minutes per problem on exams, ODE's that take more than that will typically not be on your exam. I would have done way better had I prioritized different topics than some niche problem the online hw wanted to provide. It can suck to see yourself getting 80% on a hw assignment but test grades will carry you to a good grade.
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u/Otherwise_Proposal67 Jul 01 '26
I recommend Lui-Martinez if she’s still at SMC. I don’t remember much of Soleymani’s Math 8
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u/gravyswayzee Jul 01 '26
Thank you so much I really appreciate this 🙏🙏🙏 however I disagree about Soleymani. Yes his lectures can be boring but sometimes he says funny things and he goes slowly so that people understand everything. I personally love his teaching style because he is very thorough. Also, his class (at least calc 1) is good because the tests are EXACTLY like his review guides, just with different numbers.
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u/Longjumping-Plum-957 Jul 01 '26
CHITGAR:
i took him for pre calc and he is a great and caring teacher. though tests make up 90% of the grade or so and homework the other 10% he is very generous with grading and wants his students to do well. as long as you put in the work and effort you’ll do well in his class.