Dr. Roberts, After much deliberation I have decided that I will be changing majors to computer science, and just wanted to let you know ahead of time that I will be dropping 316 so that it doesn't cause any organizational problems for you. I sincerely enjoyed your classes this year and I can say without any hesitation that you were by far the most outstanding professor that I had experience with during my time in the Electrical Engineering department. The class organization was superb and your level of professionalism lent a much appreciated level of fluidity and coherence to the learning process. Your class demanded analytical thinking and the use of reasoning faculties beyond the scope of simply memorizing and applying formulas, and that is exactly what I wish to have more of in my studies. Your willingness to fully work through homework problems in class was also very helpful because it allowed us to see examples and absorb the information in a second way after seeing it explained in the lecture slides. The answers you gave to students' questions were always incredibly clear and it was very apparent that you truly cared about whether you had fully answered the question. Finally, it was very nice to be able to follow along with your lectures so easily by reading the corresponding chapter in the text; your being the author of the textbook was definitely a positive. Also, the clarity and well-formatted layout of the lecture slides made them very easy to follow, and I personally found myself much more willing than usual to read through each of your slides in detail. Overall, when I think about your class, what comes to mind is an overwhelming sense of coherence and extreme competence on your part. If anyone fails to succeed in your class, the blame certainly does not fall on you. Thanks again for the dedicated effort that you obviously put into teaching and I hope to find more professors of your caliber in the computer science department. I leave the class with nothing but the utmost respect for you. Dr. Roberts, I hope this e-mail finds you well. I graduated from UTK back in 1996, and took several of your communications courses while in undergrad. (Some classes more than once.) You were, by far, the most difficult professor I had the privilege to learn from while at UT. (Dr. Kennedy paled in comparison. HA) Your courses wreaked havoc on my GPA, but they were the most enjoyable and interesting course in the EE curriculum. To this day, I look back on your courses and enjoy all of them. I still have a vast interest in the communications field, though I do not work within it. The closest I come is using MIL-Spec 1553 in my International Space Station hardware, dealing with S-Band and Ku-Band communications systems, and impressing my non-tech friends with my CDMA knowledge learned in your class. I am glad you are still at UT, and the EE department is strengthening itself with you as a core. As for myself, I am a Design and Analysis EE for the Boeing Company in Houston, TX on the aforementioned International Space Station program. My team are the technical experts on the ISS electrical power system hardware. We work in mission control and troubleshoot issues as they arrive on-orbit. We also have to analyze, test, and fix broken hardware on the ground. I use a lot of the knowledge gained at UT, and it is a fun job. I just wanted to write and thank you for being hard on us, and for being passionate about making us learn the material. If all the EE professors follow your lead, we will have a Top 25 program or better in no time. Thank you for your dedication. Dr. Roberts, I read your article in the recently published EECS annual report, and I want to congratulate you on your retirement! You commented numerous times in the article about the importance of emphasizing undergraduate teaching over research. From my experience at UTK and in your classes, I believe that your actions were much stronger than any of the words you spoke for this article. Your passion for teaching to a high standard of quality was obvious, and this passion made me want to learn and hold myself to a high standard in your classes. Thank you for your many years of service at UTK, and thank you for a contagious passion for learning and personal growth. Dr. Roberts, I would like to thank you for being a great teacher. Over ten years ago, I graduated from the ECE department in the fall of 2003. I completed my master’s in 2006 from the University of Maryland. In all of my years, I can say that you were the best teacher for one simple reason - you pushed me to learn, in a constructive way, more than any other teacher or mentor. My first class from you was what was called ECE 310, and the first quiz was a huge wake-up call. After that test, I worked very hard, putting in many hours to understand the concepts and material. When I earned an A from you, I felt I had truly earned it. It gave me the confidence that I could do anything. I then went on to take several more course from you, including a graduate course that I later transferred to Maryland. It is a null point now, but at the time, I was so angry that my A was transferred as a B, as that is UMD’s policy. The majority of my technical work is in image processing and optics, and I use the tools that you taught me on a daily basis. I am frequently using FFTs and many other signal processing tools. Probably the most interesting signal-proccesing discovery I’ve made is a trick to increase sampling. For under-sampled point-source images collected on a detector, one can take the square-root of the Irradiance, and increase the Nyquist cut-off by two fold. This has become a critical step in processing image data, as we are building the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to Hubble. Almost every time I use this trick, I have a flashback to your class. Thank you dearly for pushing me harder than I knew I was capable of achieving, and for never making it easy. Struggle is nature’s way of making us stronger, and that is very applicable for making good engineers. Please let me know if there is anything you ever need, and I will see what I can do. If you are ever in the Maryland / DC area, I’d like to buy you a beer, and give you a tour of some of our cool toys. Dr. Roberts, A friend recently showed me the updated version of your website and it got me thinking that I should take the time to say thank you for working me hard in ECE 315 and 316. Knowing what I know now about the applicability and the far-reaching implications of Signals and Systems, I appreciate that you did your level best to teach the material not only in a way that made sense, but also in a manner which would root deep and functional understanding of the problems and questions raised. Your preparation, timeliness, and knowledge of the subject matter was invariably impeccable, and I never recall any answer which you gave to be in the least, inadequate. That is more than can be said of many people in the educational system who would call themselves instructors. This sort of quality in teaching really only comes from a genuine desire to see students learn and succeed. It has been almost 2 years since I sat down to take my last test in ECE 315, and while I was afraid of failing that class almost every day I walked into it, and I'm glad it's over now, the concepts and lessons learned continue to be invaluable. You were also extremely fair, always explaining precisely what was expected of the student and the format in which it was to be submitted, and the only time which you ever made an oversight in course planning, (the change between 315 in fall of 2008 and summer of 2009 when you changed the layout of the courses) you considered my, and other students', lack of preparation and assisted us in getting back up to speed. I've heard from some that you will be retiring soon. I'm sure that there will be those students who sigh with relief at not having to take the Dreaded Dr. Roberts for Signals and Systems, but I'm also willing to bet that their education will be the worse for it. There are few teachers on this campus, or elsewhere, with the diligence and courage to challenge students in the way that you do. Greetings Dr Roberts, >> >> >> >> It's true that your classes are by far the most difficult I've taken here at UT. It's also true that these classes have had a negative impact on my GPA. Nonetheless, your courses have been my favorites so far in the ECE curriculum. >> >> I have found the subject material to be engaging, thought-provoking, and thoroughly useful. I have also enjoyed the challenge. Since engineering students are so heavily loaded with work, we have a tendency to exert only as much effort into a class as is necessary to receive a satisfactory grade. Of course, we are doing a disservice to our future selves in this habit, but it's hard to keep pushing yourself once you've secured an A. Personally, I need more motivation to put enough effort into a material to learn it thoroughly (as opposed to just enough to do well on a test), and your course structure and grading policy provide me with that motivation. >> >> These have also been my favorite courses because of the character of the person teaching them. You treat all of your students with patience and respect. You have obviously put a huge amount of time into crafting lesson plans and a sequence of topics that will maximize the student's opportunity to learn. You're willing to spend very long hours grading so that we can get feedback on assignments as soon as possible, and are willing to stay for hours after class helping students. I also appreciate your wit, and I frequently found myself chuckling during class. >> >> From observation, the students who perpetuate the "hard ass" reputation that you may have are also the students who seem to be allergic to hard work. You put in a lot of effort towards helping us to learn and succeed to the fullest extent of our abilities, and I just wanted to send you this note to let you know that I really appreciate it. Dear Dr. Roberts, I don't know if you remember me, but I most recently took 315 with you last summer and have since graduated this past December. I am now working at ************************************************************************************. Much of the scripting and manipulating of large data sets I learned from your course has been very useful in my career thus far. I just wanted to thank you for all of the hard work you put in to your courses and how you teach students the importance of attention to detail. . . . Again, thank you for all the hard work you put into teaching, your course and being a tough teacher. I'm sure it can be tough seeing or hearing about students upset with you over the workload, strict grading and difficulty of the material. I know I was one. In the long run it does not go unappreciated. Dr. Roberts, Now that the semester is over I wanted to take a second to say thank you. Sense the first day of circuits to the last day of 316 I've been challenged, perhaps for the first time, to thoroughly learn the material you have been teaching. The experience was somewhat treacherous however, it was definitely the most I've learned sense I've been attending school. I feel that the subjects you teach are very important to becoming a successful student and competent engineer. I'll have to admit at first I thought your class to be unfair, but I've developed a new respect for your unique style of teaching. Engineering students at UT are fortunate to have you as a professor! You motivated me to do my very best and because of that I have a lot more confidence in my ability to develop into a successful engineer. I appreciate how organized your lectures are as well all the time you spent after class ensuring I understood the material. Most importantly, thank you for maintaining the standard of education provided by the university. Because of you the quality of education at the University of Tennessee is being preserved. I'm thankful that my diploma will mean a lot more than just a simple piece of useless paper! Dr. Roberts, Hey I saw that you had posted grades. I waited until after you did so you wouldn't think I was trying to suck up to you or anything. I just wanted to tell you that I enjoyed all of your classes despite the difficulty level. I think you're a very good teacher and I have a lot of respect for you for the hard work that I know you have put into your book and your ability and desire to always be able to answer our questions. I know that kind of preparedness doesn't come without hard work. If nothing else, your homework problems have made me a much more efficient mathematician. You probably wouldn't believe that from looking at my test scores, but take my word for it. Haha. My mind goes crazy on tests sometimes. Anyway, from your story at the beginning of the semester, I got the impression that maybe some other students didn't appreciate what you have been trying to do for us since day 1 and I thought you deserved a thank you. I wish I could have been a more prepared student at times. Sometimes I feel like I have let you down by not being so. I promise I will continue to learn though and thank you for all your hard work. Dr. Roberts, Thank you very much for allowing me to put you down as a reference. I did receive a job offer and am currently working for ***. here in Knoxville. No Matlab here at ***, but I enjoy all aspects of coding and circuitry so I am sure everything I learned throughout college will be beneficial to my career here. I also wanted to say that during my years at UT in the EE department your classes were the ones I looked forward to taking more than any others. I know you probably don't hear that much, but I have talked to other students that feel the same way I do. The level of difficulty is not high it is the way you test students that makes the class so much more interesting and intellectually challenging. Understanding, not memorizing, the material taught in class is a key component that I think many of the professors, except yourself, are missing. I am grateful that I was able to attend your classes and learn a fraction of what you know. Thank you once again for helping me by being a reference, and I wish you luck with your book. Dr. Roberts, I immensely enjoyed having you as a professor over the course of three semesters, and regardless of what other students of yours might have to say about your methods of teaching, I thank you for being able to bridge the gap between a student's understanding of the materials presented and your own. During office hour visits or responses to an individual's in-class questions, you would take whatever amount of time required to ensure that a student understood the concepts presented; several professors offer the same kind of one-on-one tutoring, but what sets you apart is the elegance of your approach. You have an unmatched ability to understand where a student's disconnect with the material is rooted, and take the steps needed to walk the student through the said material to a full understanding, which I believe is a truly remarkable gift. Dr. Roberts, I know its late and you probably wont get to read this until the morning but I just could not sleep. I keep thinking about your class and wondering if I did good enough to pass. I can remember back to the beginning of the school year and the email that you sent me regarding my attendance in your class. After that email I was sure to make it a priority to attend your class and learn the material. I understood the homework problems and when I had a question, I made it a point to come to your office and ask for help. Going into this final, your grading scale had me in the middle c+ range. I done well on the homeworks you assigned and learned a great deal about matlab and your class by doing the projects. I guess im just not great at taking tests. I sometimes feel as if I have test anxiety. I start getting nervous and my mind goes blank. However, once I calm down and relax I am able to think and work the problems, although sometime I make careless mistakes and dont realize it until after the tests. I just want to pass your class and be able to graduate on schedule next semester. I hope that you continue to present the material to us the same way as you have been. It is hard and challenging but of all the engineering and math classes I have taken here at UT yours were on a whole different level. I have learned more in your classes than all the others combined. I will be taking 316 next semester and look forward to carrying over the same strong work ethic from 315 in hopes of learning the material and truley understanding everything you want us know! Imnot writing this email to tell you about my problems,im just writing it totell you that I learned alot this semesterin 315 and that I hope that your sympathy for me did not fade away. I guess im going to try and get some sleep now and not worrytoo much. Thanks Dr. Roberts and have a great day! Dr. Roberts, Now that finals are over I wanted to thank you for providing me one of the most rewarding academic experiences I have had thus far at UT. Your class was easily the most challenging course I have ever taken, and your approach to teaching forced me to actively seek answers and explanations rather than be spoon-fed formulas to regurgitate on an exam. That being said, I think this is what distinguishes you from other faculty members I have come across -- your genuinely care about your students' success but are not willing to hand out undeserved grades. I think this is the proudest I have ever been of a B, mostly because I know how much I had to struggle and work for it. My study habits and overall approach to solving problems have improved drastically due to your course. I've heard you won't be teaching circuits any longer, but I wanted to thank you for your help this semester in not only my comprehension of the course material, but in my preparation for the real world where solutions won't always be crystal clear. Dr. Roberts, I wanted to first of all thank you for the reference that you gave me a while back with ------------. I wanted to let you know that I was offered the position working contract to hire with -------------- through ------------. ELI the ICEman helped me during the interview as well. I am providing technical support for ------------ energy monitors. ------------ monitors give power and energy measurement readings and depending upon the meter be communicated through network systems and saved in databases to provide each customer with the energy measurement solution they are looking for. I thank you for challenging me in my coursework and pushing me as hard as possible. Your classes pushed me beyond my own expectations and goals. This makes my job in the field that much more manageable, and I believe has given and edge on much of the competition around me. Again, thank you again for the reference and for all that you've done.  Dr. Roberts, First, I would like to preface this request with some words of gratitude. I immensely enjoyed having you as a professor over the course of three semesters, and regardless of what other students of yours might have to say about your methods of teaching, I thank you for being able to bridge the gap between a student's understanding of the materials presented and your own. During office hour visits or responses to an individual's in-class questions, you would take whatever amount of time required to ensure that a student understood the concepts presented; several professors offer the same kind of one-on-one tutoring, but what sets you apart is the elegance of your approach. You have an unmatched ability to understand where a student's disconnect with the material is rooted, and take the steps needed to walk the student through the said material to a full understanding, which I believe is a truly remarkable gift.