Western Kentucky University / M / Sergey Marchenko

Brilliant professor! Really a pleasure to have as a professor! Gives lots of extra credit and the labs are fun! Very nice and willing to help, but you must communicate with him in order to stay up to date on your grade, its your responsibility. At the end of the semester, I think I earned over 100 points in extra credit! It was great! Take advantage of it and come to class, he makes it worth your while. A++++

Marchenko is an excellent professor! I loved his class! His tests are fairly simple and you dont have to bring a scantron. He is easy to follow during lectures and he is an overall nice man. A lot of extra credit is given. Even though attendance wasnt mandatory, I WANTED TO GO TO THIS CLASS. Its FUN!

impossible class. this guy can't speak and is unwilling to answer questions or help. also, he treats students poorly. unless you have a decent background of knowledge in this subject, STAY AWAY.

This man is unreal. Between his horrible accent (Canadian and Ukrainian) and his 300 level teaching style, this class is next to impossible. His notes are very hard to follow (only slide pictures) and he's not very willing to help students. It was a wonder I even managed to save my grade. The only upside to his class is some extra credit offered online, although the book is outdated.

TAKE ANYONE BUT HIM. No matter how hard you study, YOU ARE DOOMED TO DO POORLY.

Honestly, I hardly ever went to this class and still did well. He offers A LOT of extra credit. Which is really helpful. And even though sometimes he's a little hard to understand, he's a really goofy guy, and very helpful if you need it. Definitley register for mastering astronomy if you take him because he gives you so much extra credit on there.

He offers lots of extra credit opportunities. There's a study guide for each test too. He's pretty easy to understand. The class was really boring sometimes.

Sergey is a really nice guy, but you can barely understand him. What he says in class does not make a whole lot of sense. He is REALLY hard to pay attention to. This makes the class hard. If you know Astronomy though you may be able to do well. I would suggest looking for someone else, but Sergey isnt the worst he is just difficult to understand.

I am not a NASA pro and he is -- but he is super nice and really tries to explain things if you are lost. The worst part of the class is the tests...You must read or study...But I did so so on tests - and did a lot of XC with online quizzes and did awful on the final and got a B out of the class. You can get a good grade even if you don't do so well...

He is good guy but hard to understand because he is from the Ukraine. The labs were easy but the test were a bit more difficult. The class is extremely boring but sort of easy.

This class requires some basic math skills (mostly scientific notation) but nothing that was too difficult for me and I'm terrible at math. Some people didn't like this class but if you invested some time studying before the test you should be fine. If you do well on the tests, you can get out of a cumulative final. The labs were pretty simple (I didn't bother turning in the math one because I was lazy.) and the labs in the planetarium are especially fun.

On the advice of my advisor, I took astromomy 104 to fullfill my science with a lab need. I told her I was not great in science or math and really dreading taking a science. She and several other people assured me that this was a fairly easy class, that would be of interest. Imagine my surprise when I found out halfway through the class that I was Not going to learn the names of, or how to find, any constellations! Instead I found myself taking page after page of math/ scientific problem notes. Yes, there are examples in the book; and I expected we would possibly have to do one or two IN Class. We were given a numerical lab with 4 questions. Not too bad, until I looked at it. The first question has 13 different distance and radius you have to find. Question 2, has two planet masses to find; question 3 only has one section, and question 4 has you find the weight of a person on 4 planets. Okay, still not a lot, if you know more than general math. But the instructor did not make it clear that first you have to convert such things as days to seconds, kilometers to meters, etc. Before you can even fill in numbers to the fornula! Mr. Marchenko keeps referring to this as astro-physics and I believe him! When he does explain it is rapid and over my head. At the beginning of the semester, he had asked what each student wanted to get out of the class. The majority of the answers were like mine, "I want to be able to name and locate planets and different constellations, and spend some time using a telescope." On the tests we have had, we have not even named a constellation. In our observation lab, we spent an hour finding a couple stars, discussing their color, and drawing moon craters. I know no more about constellations and their names or locations than I did before I took the class. Overall, I do not feel this man is teaching an entry level class. I am not the only one feeling this way. Several students are frustrated and feel like we should have been given a warning that this class was going to involve so much math. This class is going to cost me some grade points, and I feel like I have worked my tail off, and learned absolutely nothing of use. He says he can not make us attend classes, but if you miss you don't keep up. He said we could get extra points for taking a quiz, but only if you stay til the end of the class for the quiz. The quizzes are just as bad! Be warned, if you are not a science or math major, do not take this class from this instructor.

I would not recommend this class. Although it is easy to skip class (I'm skipping it right now, actually), he is very hard to understand and sometimes doesn't understand his students. His labs are simple and the tests are all multiple choice, but his lectures are terrible, and that's all he does is lecture. Extremely boring since you can't understand him. His homework is also moderately difficult.