Jacksonville State University Classes

MS102 (College Algebra) Summer I 1984

Dr. Johnny Smith taught this course. It was my first college course ever, and it was the only one I took that term, just so I could get used to the college atmosphere. I was between my 10th and 11th grade years in high school. I did very well in this class, and I thank Mrs. Donna Bojo, my high school algebra teacher at Cedartown High School, for the excellent preparation which allowed me to be able to jump right into college math and learn it easily.

CS201 (Introduction to Data Processing) Summer II 1984

Mrs. Kay Gray taught this class, which was my first computer science class. It was a very introductory course which was really for non-CS majors. Then, I did not know I would be majoring in computer science then, though. In this class, we had several programming assignments in which we used the VS BASIC compiler on the IBM 4381 under the MUSIC operating system. I hadn't even had a typing course in high school at this point.

MS103 (Trigonometry) Summer II 1984

Dr. Thomas Lawrence Hicks taught this course. I remember getting my first Hewlett-Packard calculator during this course, an HP-11C. After this course, I went back to high school and had geometry in the 11th grade. If I had gone my 12th grade year, I would have had trigonometry there.

MS141 (Calculus I) Summer I 1985

Dr. Johnny Smith taught this course. After playing around and learning Calculus on my own for about a year and a half, I finally had a course in it. I was fresh out of high school and hadn't done much rigorous math in a while, since I had a year of high-school geometry.

CS254 (Introduction to FORTRAN) Summer I 1985

Dr. Michael Spector taught this one. This was, by far, the most challenging, most difficult class I had encountered. This was during one of the summer terms, in which classes met 2 hours per weekday for a month. That's 4 weeks total, and that usually meant one test per week. In this class, we also had one programming assignment per week. He would come in every Monday and give us a new programming assignment which would be due the next Monday, and the only way to get each one done was to spend several hours a day in the lab, and spend many hours in the lab on Saturday and Sunday to get the programs done by the Monday due date. It always took me until late Sunday afternoon to get the programs done. The assignments were done in WATFIV on the IBM 4381 under MUSIC. My userid was "JH06".

CS240 (Introduction to BASIC) Summer II 1985

Mr. Jerry Reaves taught this one. We had just switched from the VS BASIC compiler to the Waterloo BASIC interpreter on the IBM mainframe, so I figured I'd take this course to learn to use its features. I'm glad I did because later on, when I worked as a computer lab assistant, I was asked to convert a radio station schedule program to a better output format, and it was a large Waterloo Basic program. It was nice to already be familiar with it, because as we all know, all BASICs are quite different, since each is extended in its own way. I don't remember my userid that term.

PSY201 (Principles of Psychology) Summer II 1985

Dr. Bill Palya taught this course, and he did not teach from the book, or on what would be tested. He used the class time to have interesting discussions related to the material in the book. The tests came straight from the book, though, so we basically had to study and learn the book material on our own. The neatest thing about Dr. Palya is I learned about his lab in Ayers Hall. He had several older computer systems running the RT-11 operating system, which I learned to a slight degree. I spent a lot of time down there playing with his systems. Dr. Palya was one of the most interesting characters I'd met at Jacksonville.

EH 102 (English Composition) Fall 1985

Robert Felgar taught this course, and I knew from the beginning that it would be difficult. I made a "C+" on my first composition and improved enough to make a "B" in the course, which was the first "B" I made in college. It just was not possible to make an "A" in his class, because I could not write the way he wanted me to, and there was no way to read his mind and know what he wanted, until it was too late and you had received your grade, and then the damage was done. He was the first college teacher I had that gave pop tests. English never was that great of a subject for me. In high school, I did very well in writing compositions, and quite poorly in literature classes. In college, the opposite was true.

PHS 211 (Physics for Scientists and Engineers) Fall 1985

A teacher named McRae taught this class. He was very picky when it came to correctness and precision of answers, and his class was very difficult. I feel lucky to have made an "A". He was the second teacher I had in college that gave pop tests. As you can guess, I hate pop tests. In this class, they counted half a regular test, which was way too much.

PHS 211L (Elementary Lab Techniques) Fall 1985

Luckily, there was a change in the scheduling of the labs and I did not have McRae for the Physics Lab, and had another guy, named Stamper. He graded in a much more reasonable fashion and was not as strict as McRae.

MA142 (Calculus II) Fall 1985

This was a 5-hour course, which met every day for an hour. Dr. Smith taught it. It went very well. It was the calculus class that covered integration.

HY201 (American History I) Fall 1985

Dr. Ralph Brannen taught the course. No surprises. He just presented the material and tested us on it. I was glad to be able to make an "A" after the hell I went through in my 11th grade history class.

MA143 (Calculus III) Spring 1986

This was the first class I had with Dr. John T. VanCleave. It was also the first class I'd ever had that ended at night. It was a very enjoyable class. There were several teachers taking that class and I heard many amusing stories, and Dr. VanCleave often added some humor to his presentations. Dr. VanCleave was a great instructor for every class I took under him. There was always at least one question on every one of his tests that has some sort of "twist" to it.

HY202 (American History II) Spring 1986

Dr. Ralph N. Brannen taught the course. Second verse, same as the first.

EH201 (American Literature I) Spring 1986

Dr. Mulraine taught this one. It was difficult, but I survived it.

CS231 (Introduction to Computing) Spring 1986

This was my first class with Dale Johnson. This was the first class taken by most CS majors, but not me. My userid was "JK03". That was the userid that I was using that term on January 31, 1986 when I was playing around in the lab at Martin Hall and brought the system down playing with "CP" commands. "CP ATTN" was the one.

MS423 (Survey of Geometries) Minimester 1986

Taught by Jerald Abercrombie. This was my first theoretical math course, taken immediately after calculus. This was, by far, the most mentally challenging course I've ever taken. I had an extremely difficult time learning to remember the proofs we were required to regurgitate on the tests. It was unlike any material I'd ever been required to learn before. I didn't really larn the material well until the last week of the term. I made "81" on my first test, and "66" on my second test. At that point, I figured I was doomed, but on the final exam, which counted half, I proved I'd learned the material, by making 102 on it (100 + 10 point bonus). I had an 87 3/4 average, and he pushed it over to an "A" because he knew that I'd learned it. I had this professor again for a very similar course requiring a lot of proofs, Linear Algebra, just a month later, and had no problems at all with the course. I'm very fortunate that I chose to take this theoretical geometry course, dealing with Euclidean and Non-Euclidean geometries, this term, because the exposure to proofs helped me tremendously in future courses, and I'm very thankful that I had a professor that would spend some time, teaching me how to go about remembering the proofs. Now that I think back, 11 1/2 years later, I figure that this course, and this professor, probably helped me more in learning how to remember and perform proofs, than any other. If I hadn't taken this course, then I would have had a much harder time with Linear Algebra, Intermediate Analysis, and Topology.

EH141 (Oral Communication) Minimester 1986

Taught by Cauthen. This was a fun course. I remember doing speeches on what it's like to be an air-traffic controller, the negative effects of smoking, and the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster.

CY105 (General Chemistry) Summer I 1986

Taught by Fred A. Grant. I did very well in this course, and for that, I can thank no other than Mrs. Daisy Waldrep of Cedartown High School. She was 11th grade chemistry teacher, and she had been teaching the subject for many years. Her chemistry class was harder than my college chemistry class. Most people in CY105 with me that term had a lot of trouble with it.

CY107 (General Chemistry Lab I) Summer I 1986

Taught by Fred A. Grant. This was the lab accompanying the CY105 class.

MS352 (Linear Algebra) Summer II 1986

Taught by Jerald Abercrombie. This course was challenging, but was much easier on me than the theoretical geometry class I'd had back in the Minimester. I'm thankful that this course was not my first theoretical one, and that Dr. Abercrombie had prepared me for theorem proving back in the Minimester.

SY221 (Introduction to Sociology) Summer II 1986

Taught by Dr. Adams. As of December 1997, I have missed a total of two classes in my entire college career. Both were in SY221. I really hated about that. I missed one because I was very, very sick with a cold, and missed another because I was very nervous about a test in Linear Algebra later in the day, and skipped this class to study for it. I did OK in the Sociology class, though, but I do not recommend skipping any class. I missed 10 percent of the class time by missing those two class periods! This professor was very fun, and I'm glad he didn't hold my missing two of his classes against me. Both times, I talked to him before class about it before missing them.

MS310 (Numerical Analysis) Fall 1986

Taught by John T. VanCleave. Solving problems numerically has always been interesting to me.

PHS212 (Physics for Scientists and Engineers) Fall 1986

Taught by Dr. Thomas Lawrence Hicks. This course was very difficult, and I made some low test grades, but I got an "A".

PHS212L (Elementary Lab Techniques) Fall 1986

Taught by Dr. Thomas Lawrence Hicks. This was the companion lab for PHS211.

EH202 (American Literature II) Fall 1986

Taught by Steve Whitton. This class was enjoyable; difficult, but enjoyable.

CS354 (Assembly Language Programming) Fall 1986

Taught by Ron White. We learned IBM mainframe assembly on the IBM 4381.

MS304 (Mathematical Statistics I) Spring 1987

Taught by Steve White. I was the oddball. Dr. White told me that everyone got the differential equations easily and had a terrible time with the probability and statistics. Not me! The probability and statistics, to me, was extremely interesting, and was very well taught. I made very high grades in the probability and statistics class, and didn't do very well in the differential equations class.

MS344 (Differential Equations) Spring 1987

Taught by Steve White. It was tough. My second "B". I understood the concepts, but could not work the very long problems without making mistakes that would throw off everything from there on. I knew when I got my first test back that I wasn't going to be able to make an "A" in this one. The test were very long for the time we had allotted to work them.

SY304 (Social Statistics) Spring 1987

Taught by fast Friendly Flying Freddy Friery! This term was fun. I had a harder time with this course than with the mathematics one, because in this course, I basically had to remember how to work a bunch of different problems, without the theory behind them, rather than going from the theory to the applications.

CS353 (Introduction to Programming Languages) Spring 1987

This was taught by Michael Spector and was a tough course. We wrote programs in several different languages. The worst one was the Modula 2 assignment. We used Logitech Modula 2 running on 4.77 MHz 8088 IBM PC's, and there were only 5 in the lab with enough memory to run the compiler (384K, I think). These were floppy-only machines, with no network, and compilation was so slow that it took forever to get anything working and debugged. I never finished that assignment, and it was the first programming assignment I'd ever failed to get working by the due date. The first assignment of the term was a COBOL program. He said, "Y'all thought you'd get out of here without having to write a COBOL program, didn't you?!" He gave us a week to do it. He suggested finding a working COBOL program and modifying it to do what he wanted. That's what I did. We did an APL program, a SNOBOL program, a C program, and a FORTRAN 77 program. The C and FORTRAN wre done on the new MicroVAX system that came in that semester.

CS412 (Computer Oriented Numerical Methods) Spring 1987

This was taught by Hruska. This was similar to the mathematics department version of this course, except we had to write our own programs, rather than using canned ones. This course emphasised programming and the mathematics course emphasized the theory behind the methods.

CS455M (IBM PC Assembly) Minimester 1987

This was taught by Ron White and although I'd already taken IBM mainframe assembly, this was quite a different experience. We used IBM 4.77 MHz 8088 PC's. It took over 5 minutes to assemble and link some of our larger programs.

CS361 (Digital Computer Organization) Summer I 1987

This was taught by Dale Johnson.

CS442 (Compiler Construction) Summer I 1987

This was taught by Dale Johnson.

MS370 (Intermediate Analysis) Summer II 1987

This was taught was Dr. John T. VanCleave, and although this was rumored to be the toughest math course at JSU, it turned out to be one of the most fun, enjoyable ones, because one of my friends, Tim Thompson, was in that class, and he and I hung out together in Gadsden quite a bit on weekend nights during summer 1987 until I moved to Huntsville. We both made 100's on our first test. Of course, we had a great time during that term sitting in Wendy's in Attalla talking about that course.

MS480 (Introduction to Topology) Summer II 1987

This was taught by John T. VanCleave, in parallel with MS370, and during the first week, there was a lot of overlap with MS370, which helped me tremendously in these tough theoretical math courses.

CS331 (Data Structures) Fall 1987

This was taught by Dale Johnson.

CS333 (Digital Logic) Fall 1987

Dr. Michael Spector taught this class. This class was tremendously fun. I earned my only true, unscaled, perfect scores on a test given by Dr. Spector in this class. I got a "200" on my first test, so he did not scale the other grades, because he typically took the highest score and added enough points to everyone's grade to bring the top grade up to perfect. On this test, the next highest grade was "178" (a high B). I remember Dr. Spector saying "People aren't going to like you, Evans!" as he handed back that paper. Dr. Spector's tests were always way tougher than the tests of any other professor in Jacksonville's CS department.

CS334 (Discrete Computational Structures) Fall 1987

This was taught by Hruska.

CS377 (Programming in Ada) Fall 1987

Dr. Michael Spector taught this class. We used the Meridian Ada compiler, running on our IBM PS/2 Token Ring Network.