Steven Ratering

Dr. Ratering is new to the CS dept. at UWEC, and so some people think that he's unfairly maligned because he doesn't stack up "yet" to the rest of the department. My biggest gripe with him is that I seriously wonder sometimes why he's teaching at all. He's always willing to help, it seems, but sometimes his "help" is completely useless. When he looks at your non-compiling 70 lines of code for 20 minutes and says "it looks good" and then gives you a 30% on it because it doesn't compile, that's not "helpful" in my book. When you go and ask him a question and he looks at you with a look that says "that is possibly the stupidest thing I've ever heard, why are you in this class?", that's not helpful. It doesn't matter that he's in his office 12 hours a day, if when you go to him he ultimately isn't helpful. That said, he's a nice guy, a fair grader, and "makes you have to figure things out for yourself" = "is challenging".

Dr. Ratering is usually always willing to help out. Despite the willingness to help; I didnt always feel that he could. Some of his code is the worst I have ever seen. Although, im glad he does make students read from the book. There is a lot of material that would otherwise be missed in not doing so.

He's a very knowledgable professor, but does not have very good teaching methods for this course. Unless you are really into theory that has no immediate practical applications, don't take this course. But if you are interested in this type of stuff (mostly theory), take this course, because this professor is knowledgable enough that you will come out of it with a very good experience.

While some of the other students have rated this professor poorly, they don't apreciate how nice it is to have a professor who is in his office till at least 5:30 every day of the week. Dr. Ratering is always happy to help explain the material, and he places his concern on making sure the student understands. If you want to learn, then I would take him. If you are looking for someone to coast through a class with, stick to profs in the school of business. Also, Dr. Ratering does tend to be a little bland, but he makes an effort to "entertain" at least a little by bringing in either cartoons or interesting news articles that somehow relate to class each day.

Although he did get better near the end of the semester he has no notes. He teaches off of emacs when we don't understand the syntax he is using. He does a poor job explaining programs but still makes the program descriptions 10 pages too long.