Spring 2027

Mechanics of Materials

Mechanics of Materials covers stress, strain, torsion, beam bending, compound stresses, deflections, indeterminate members, and columns for civil engineers.

offering recorded3 credits
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 Corinne Henak3.8/5

Summary

1 / 6

Past student reviews · Corinne Henak

The course was rated as moderately difficult, with a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Compute stresses, strains, and deformations for structures experiencing tension, compression, torsion, bending, and thermal loads

  • Combine analyses for different types of loading

  • Analyze engineering structures for failure by yield and buckling

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

↗
average GPA
letter grades
A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

E M A 201 and MATH 222, or graduate/professional standing, or member of Engineering Guest Students

    • take all
    • graduate/professional standing
    • member of Engineering Guest Students
    take one
EMA 303 used by

“Used by” includes alternatives; linked courses may have other requirements. This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
  • Any of
    • All of
    • graduate/professional standing
    • member of Engineering Guest Students

Professors

Spring 2027
Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 4.25/5 from 4 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

For this course: 3.0/5 raw quality · 3.0/5 difficulty · 1 reviews

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

Past student reviews · Corinne Henak

Corinne Henak’s lectures were described as less effective than reading the textbook, with slides covering the same material. One student noted that while in-class examples were decent, Henak often rushed the important parts.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2020: 2.99 GPA, 38.5% A/AB (n=65 letter grades); Fall 2022: 2.35 GPA, 31.1% A/AB (n=61 letter grades); Spring 2023: 3.13 GPA, 47.6% A/AB (n=63 letter grades).

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

Past student reviews · Sonny Nimityongskul, Aaron Nimityongskul

Students found Aaron Nimityongskul helpful in office hours, noting that exams were generally reasonable and homework was challenging but valuable. He was described as caring about student success and effective in the required sequence.

AARON NIMITYONGSKUL is recorded teaching in Fall 2015. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

ANDREW MIKKELSON is recorded teaching in Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025, Spring 2026. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

CORINNE HENAK is recorded teaching in Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2022, Spring 2023. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

JACOB NOTBOHM is recorded teaching in Spring 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

JENNIFER DETLOR is recorded teaching in Spring 2023, Fall 2023. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

MELIH ERITEN is recorded teaching in Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

ROBERT WITT is recorded teaching in Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2016, Spring 2017. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

WALTER DRUGAN is recorded teaching in Fall 2009. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

WENDY CRONE is recorded teaching in Spring 2007, Fall 2008, Spring 2010, Fall 2010, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

YING LI is recorded teaching in Spring 2024. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist
LEC 001Classroom Instruction0 / 2300
DIS 301Classroom Instruction0 / 500
DIS 302Classroom Instruction0 / 500
DIS 303Classroom Instruction0 / 500
LEC 002Classroom Instruction0 / 2300

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections. Enrollment reflects scan time.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Corinne Henak

Students found Corinne Henak's lectures less effective than the textbook, suggesting the slides largely duplicated the reading material.

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2025: 2.65 GPA, 21.1% A/AB (n=275 letter grades); Fall 2025: 2.96 GPA, 36.4% A/AB (n=382 letter grades); Spring 2026: 2.85 GPA, 31.9% A/AB (n=342 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Corinne Henak

The course was rated as moderately difficult, with a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5.

Past student reviews · Corinne Henak

One student felt that important parts of the in-class examples were rushed, making the lecture experience less useful than studying independently.

Topics

  • Stress, strain, torsion, and bending of beams.
  • Shearing stresses, compound stresses, and principal stresses.
  • Deflections of beams, statically indeterminate members, and columns.

Skills

  • Computing stresses, strains, and deformations for structures under various loading conditions.
  • Combining structural analyses for multiple types of simultaneous loading.
  • Analyzing engineering structures to determine failure modes such as yield and buckling.

Grades

Historical instructor

Spring 2027 · Projected

Before grades are released

– average GPA

Approximate 80% prediction interval

About this estimate

The course’s semester-average GPA, not an individual student’s grade. The center uses 5 same-season terms, weighted toward recent results.

The range uses the finite-sample 80th-percentile rank of absolute errors from earlier same-season forecasts. Each forecast uses only records from earlier terms. At least four forecasts are required; bounds are rounded outward and limited to 0–4. This is an empirical estimate: changing instructors or grading policies can reduce its coverage.

8 earlier forecasts · 0.24 GPA average error.

Grades over time

Through Spring 2027

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Spring 2026 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1280 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

Download part 1
Selected offering source records
EMA 303 · Spring 2027

Mechanics of Materials

Recorded 2026-10-14
Raw records 
[
  {
    "run_id": "20261014T203208-0851c9a1",
    "semester": "1274",
    "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00",
    "offering_id": "1274:346:006582",
    "course_id": "EMA 303",
    "course_uid": "course_d3ef3d28e556046ee2bca234",
    "term_id": "1274",
    "source_course_id": "006582",
    "source_subject_id": "346",
    "title": "Mechanics of Materials",
    "credits_min": 3,
    "credits_max": 3,
    "typically_offered": "Fall, Spring, Summer"
  }
]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
Download part 1
Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
Download part 1
Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

Download part 1Download part 2
Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "3b4cc72bd706ab4c5f389a2bfb144942bcd573f644655493a7db8b8974396249",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}