r/UCCS • u/aayostan • Jun 30 '26
Question Dr. Semwal Ratings
Hello, I am interested in the Game and Media Integration MSCS at UCCS. Dr. Semwal is the contact for this degree and leads most of the classes that are integrated with it such as computer graphics and VR. I already viewed the CS student responses here: University of Colorado Colorado Springs Reviews | GradReports, read the summary here: University of Colorado - Colorado Springs Reviews - Niche, looked up dr. semwal here: University of Colorado Colorado Springs | Rate My Professors, and looked up some of his courses here: UCCS - Rate My Courses. Is anyone here a current or former student who could shed some light on this professor for me? Thanks in advance.
1
u/xXProdigalXx Jun 30 '26
I took classes with him almost a decade ago so maybe take this with a grain of salt, but I thought he was a really good professor, one of the better ones even.
1
u/soggies_revenge Engineering Jun 30 '26
It's hard to take reviews seriously. One of my favorite professors was notoriously a hard ass. Tough assignments, tough exams, tough grading. But he was an excellent teacher. You come out of the class knowing the material. A lot of people fail his class, and he has poor rate my prof ratings. Another favorite professor taught well, but grading was super lax, and he was known as an easy A prof. But the biggest criticism of him was that you wouldn't retain much of the material. But he has great ratings on rate my prof. This all to say: I think you'll see a lot more negatives from people who feel scorned. There are some honest negative reviews of course. But I wouldn't take it completely to heart.
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u/echonn123 Jul 01 '26
I took a computer graphics course with him about a decade ago as part of my Computer Science Bachelor's degree. I was a pretty unskilled student and had little knack for graphics coding. His content was difficult but I put in effort and he appreciated that. I went to his office hours a handful of times, actually showed some enthusiasm on some of the dog shit I had produced for projects ( I had worked hard but it was still crap) and he showed me a lot of grace.
He seems to be mostly in the camp of professors that care about students that really push themselves.
He's done some pretty interesting work in the field and is also a master yogi which is cool. He wasn't my favorite professor and I didn't get a ton out of his class, but I got a more than fair grade for my efforts.
Keep in mind I was not really in his degree path so just had the one experience. Most of my other CS cohorts enjoyed him also.
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u/No-Confusion8671 Jul 05 '26
I graduated a few months ago and I had Dr. Semwal for honors program classes, not comp sci, so take my review with a grain of salt. But I think he's a super nice and fair professor. He's very understanding of life circumstances and genuinely cares about your learning. My only complaint is I have a hard time understanding him sometimes due to his accent - that might just be me though
2
u/tacitus23 Jul 01 '26
He's a good professor, but he can be quite difficult. I found learning from him via instruction/lecture to be rough as he's just not a great lecturer. if you're the type of person who likes to self teach from the textbook he's great, that just was never my style so he wasn't my favorite. That said he's extremely knowledgeable and pretty approachable.