Current instructor

Ross Swaney

/5Adjusted rating
/5RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 2.32/5 from 34 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.

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

What students say

Original student reviews · all captured dates

CBE 310
Quality 5/5Difficulty 3/5
Professor Swaney is a grizzled vet of the chemical industry. Listen in and you will tap into the knowledge of decades of real experience. His lectures can get a little long winded and may lack examples, but this is made up for by his underlying passion. Get ready for a tough old fashioned chemical engineering course if he's teaching it.
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CBE 450
Quality 3/5Difficulty 3/5
450 Swaney is very different from other classes; he's vert helpful in guiding the projects during office hours and has a lot of knowledge to share. However, old habits prevail: unorganized class, consistently behind schedule, doesn't know when his own exams are, and project info is scattered throughout 5-6 different PDFs. Overall, not bad.
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CBE 310
Quality 1/5Difficulty 1/5
Lectures are useless, no regard for other people's time, never provides direct answers.
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CBE 326
Quality 3/5Difficulty 3/5
Professor Swaney can be very helpful. Study the homework and discussion problems for the exams.
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CBE 326
Quality 1/5Difficulty 5/5
No confidence that swaney can solve his own problems without the answerkey. Rambles on in lecture. Is not helpful in office hours. Homework's are inconsiderately long
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CBE 326
Quality 2/5Difficulty 4/5
Prof. Swaney is an example of an intelligent/experienced engineer failing to teach well. Lectures weren't organized, consistently showed up 5-10 minutes late, long-winded, and only covered homework-relevant content on the class period before it was due. However, generous curve. I recommend heavily utilizing the textbook and TA office hours.
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Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.

Classes with Ross Swaney

CBE 599 is a special problems course focused on research or independent study in Chemical and Biological Engineering.

Offering recorded · Fall 2026

historical GPA · grades

Spring 2022–Spring 2026

Recorded teaching history

Explore courses taught by this instructor →
Browse recorded courses
TermCourseTitle
Fall 2026CBE 489Honors in Research
Fall 2026CBE 599Special Problems
Fall 2026CBE 790Master's Research or Thesis
Fall 2026CBE 890Pre-dissertator's Research
Fall 2026CBE 990Thesis-research

Teaching history may be incomplete. Course pages contain course-specific feedback and citations.

Instructor identity & provenance
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