Spencer is a very jovial and considerate person and I say this only having known her while she was pregnant. When I had a panic attack right before a test and emailed her she calmed me down and let me take the exam the next week. Hw consists of regular webworks and written homework packets (weekly to biweekly). Additionally before each class a pre class worksheet is due that takes no more than 30 min. The teaching style is she goes over the preclass ws then we have time to work on an in class ws. While I didn’t enjoy this class as it was a lot of work it was definitely the class I retained the most from.

This course is by far one of the hardest APMA classes I've taken at UVA. Spencer is very all over the place in terms of teaching, so it made it that much harder, as well as the class being very difficult in general. If you work hard, you could probably do well. I would make sure to go to office hours and study a lot for tests. However, if you have the option to take another course instead of this one, I would.

Disclaimer: I took this course in Fall 2020 semester when classes were online.

This course was very disorganized. Spencer is a great person but she was struggling a lot to run the class online. Worksheets and Written Homework problem sets took forever to be returned and there in general seemed to be a lack of support for students. If this class had been in person it would have been much, much better.

Prof Spencer is such a nice professor and really made a subject that I usually don't like into a fun one. Definitely recommend her. Also, this class in general is very structured and the worksheets are very helpful in explaining everything. I had to take this for my major (and probably wouldn't have taken it if I didn't have to), but if you're thinking about taking it, go for it!

It's an interesting course, but it was by far the hardest class I took my first year. The first order equations typically weren't that bad, but solving equations with matrices was something that I found to be quite confusing. The professor was good, but make sure to set aside plenty of time to reinforce the stuff you were taught.

I absolutely love Professor Spencer! She is very enthusiastic about ODE and she has a lot of availability for you to get help if you need it. She is very approachable and she is very understanding. Her class can be a little disorganized, but the other factors make up for it. She has great TAs and I really liked the structure of the class. She lectures for the first part of class and then gives you a worksheet that you work on in groups for the remainder of the period. Some people like the worksheets and some people don't, but I liked learning this way instead of just lecture. We had 6 tests over the course of the semester and they weren't terribly hard as long as you studied beforehand. The post homeworks can be a little annoying to remember, but they definitely help with the understanding of the material. I really enjoyed this class with Professor Spencer and definitely recommend!

Love Spencer! She's the GOAT!

Professor Spencer is a very nice teacher! She offers a lot of OH which is very great but most of her class time is like group work sheets. She spends about half of the class time to lecture and show examples and the other half is to work on our worksheets (in class). I wish that I had more practice with the materials we learned in the beginning because it was a lot to memorize. But great teacher overall and the TAs are AWESOME.
I was in Dorning's class during my first semester but I didnt like his teacher style so I pushed this class until this semester. Dorning's class is "easy" but all the works are on a paper (old school) which is good but I didn't like the fact that his notes were on a chalkboard where it is really not that legible as the class goes.

I found the difficulty of this class to be very subjective. Spencer's style didn't match with my learning style at all so it was a struggle. I learn best through lecture with a professor explaining concepts and working through examples with us, but Spencer teaches this class by lecturing for 10 minutes or less then handing out worksheets for you to figure out on your own. A lot of people did really well with this and were able to grasp the concepts extremely well through this method, however based on my learning style I found it really difficult. It was hard for me to extend from the basic examples on the worksheets to the challenging problems on her tests and quizzes when I was teaching it to myself and the textbook was basically useless. Spencer was helpful in office hours but she can't reteach everything in an hour. Overall, if you're really good at teaching yourself and learn best through just practice problems this class will be great for you. Otherwise maybe look into another option if you're not willing to add in WAY WAY more time.

Professor Spencer is a great teacher and organizes her class extremely well and always makes sure everyone's on track. She'll always try her best to help everyone and the TAs are especially helpful. The tests are generally straightforward with no tricks involved. Would recommend her to anyone looking to take this class.