I did my teacher evaluations and left this as a comment for my pre-tenure teacher.

Coach Bangerter is more than just a teacher but is a giant in the community, and an asset to the University. He is valued very highly by the Students here at Brigham Young's University. Coach wanted everyone in his class to understand the material, and I would dare say that he wanted us all to get an A in the class. Unfortunately, the university wants a strict bell curve for the grading scale.

Coach Bangerter has equipped me with various techniques for dealing with real life every-day situations, such as "What do you do if someone comes up to you on the street and asks you to find the impulse response of a particular input output relationship?" Before I took coaches class, I would have gone about this situation all wrong; trying to solve for an h(t) without even knowing if it could be done. I now know that I first need to check this stranger’s input-output relationship to determine if it is indeed linear and time-invariant. This is 2011; you can't just trust that every input output relationship you are handed is LTI like you could back in the nineties. And if it is not LTI than I have no business finding an h(t).

Coach explained things very clearly, and was very sensible to the student’s workload. On more than one occasion I visited him in his office just to be in his presence, and feel his awesomeness radiate to every corner of the room. He is a true American Hero and an inspiration to all of us. No lie, on more than one occasion, I left his class wanting to be a better person. Coach has done things that not many have and has cast himself into the caliber of people such as Elisha Kane, George Washington, Coolio, and I would even daresay, Mr. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier himself.

Coach Bangerter knows both his signals AND his systems. And he shared that knowledge without refrain to his students, in an attitude and pace that was respectful to all of his students. He was bold, but not overbearing. Nor did he ever require that a student should run faster than he had strength. Coach was a leader. And not one of those crappy leaders, like my first missionary companion. He was a leader that led by example, and never required anyone to do a convolution that Coach himself could not do. Coach was a master of incentives. He knew that while grades were a great motivator for most of the class, not everyone responded the same to this particular incentive. He wanted maximum participation from everyone, and this concern for his pupils led him to the discovery of yet another incentive that could reach out the few in the class that were unresponsive to grades.

When posed with difficult questions in class, Coach Bangerter didn't cower, no. Rather he felt the thrill of challenge and tackled great transforms with his class supporting him the best they knew how.

Coach had vision, and more importantly, the ability to create vision in his students. On more than one occasion he took the day to depart from the usual in order to educate us on big picture topics. He would show us how what we learned applied to MRI, building a stereo amplifier that would blow the pants off of any audiophile, blowing up a picture to twice its original size, and dealing with strangers on the street that need complex signals converted back to analog.

Although the best Athletes do not necessarily make the best coaches, I will stand as a witness that Neal Kepler Bangerter is not only one of the leading experts on signal analysis but has also earned the title of “Coach” in the rawest meaning of the word.