Professor Kayen is a really interesting guy with a lot to say about the topic of geomatics. He works at USGS and teaches at Berkeley so he's a very busy guy and only flies down to Westwood for lectures and labs. Make sure to chat with him, he is a cool person whose primary goal is to excite you and help you learn. Despite his immense passion and energy for the subject, I found the material very dry and had trouble paying attention to his presentations. If you have a passion for things like geodesy and satellite imagery then take this class by all means. The labs are very laid back and you'll get to hang around Wilson Plaza a lot. Definitely a class to take with friends if you have any. The labs and assignments for this class were generally unclear in their directions and sometimes graded down arbitrarily, but if you keep an open dialogue with your TA this won't be an issue. When I took it we had one midterm and one quiz and both were pretty hard to study for given the breadth of material; Kayen doesn't highlight what you need to know very clearly, and I feel like he only tested us so he could get an exam grade to enter and not so we would digest the material. Overall I liked the professor a lot but would have preferred a more straightforward, consistent class.

Class was pretty fun. It's an easy lab for CEE. Class meets every Friday and varies in length. Professor Kayen lives in NorCal so he has to travel to class every day. He works at the USGS and is very knowledgeable about earth related things. You'll use Google Earth and 3D modeling a lot. Only problem with this class is that it's 2 units so you have to do a 199 to get the full credit. Final was easy and included relevant earth-related events in the world. I got an A.