Reviews of professor Charles Winstead

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Charles is not a bad professor, he really knows his stuff and I would recommend taking his class if you are really into databases. His quizzes are very easy, but his homework assignments are very large and time consuming. My main concern were the exams: no matter how hard I studied, I wasn't able to fully prepare for them, but he does curve grades.

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Good: Great guy, easy going, industry expert, lenient on extra time for exams+HW Bad: Exams take 2x allotted time and refuses to shorten, disconnect between simple in-class examples and difficult HW questions, HW takes 5-15 hours, few changes for remote/online (covid) made learning difficult Great guy but hated his class, probably good in person.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Charles is a great teacher who clearly cares about his students. There definitely is a lot of work to do, but the lectures do a pretty good job explaining the materials and contain many examples. The homework can be time consuming, the quizzes are easy, and the exams can be a little rough but he does allow a sheet of notes (doublesided) on the exam

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Charles is very knowledgeable when it comes to DBMS. If you are taking CS486/586, do take it from Charles. He has quizzes every Monday for undergrad students and a small project for the grad students. He is very clear as to what will be on the tests and the homework directly sets you up to do well in the class. Highly Charle's class!