One of the most caring professors I've had as an undergraduate. Marner worked at JPL before retiring a few years ago, and now teaches as an adjunct professor at UCLA.

For MAE 162M, all the team members are chosen by the TA and Marner provides a list of topics you can work on. There are 1-2 hour lectures before group meetings with Marner and the TA. The lectures were on topics related to "things you don't learn in engineering courses" such as communication techniques, IP, economics, safety, teamwork, etc. There is also a quiz towards the end of the course, which is relatively easy as long as you study all the notes.

In the weekly group meetings, Marner can give you suggestions and motivation for your project, but most of the work has to be done by the team and outside of class. He is not a total expert in the assigned project topics so if you need help you should seek outside sources. For example he (and the TA) can't tell you where you went wrong in the analysis or what you need to do to make a designed component more creative. But he can suggest some ideas. Marner expects tons of progress each week, so be prepared to work hard. At the end of 10 weeks, expect to design a thermo-mechanical system/product, write a 100-200 page report discussing all the aspects of the project, and deliver a 20 minute presentation.

Regarding his character, Marner is a very honest and conservative professor. Very easy to approach and remembers everyone's name even though he is over 65. I would recommend Marner as he teaches MAE 105D, 131A, 133A, and 162M.

Had Marner for a couple of classes and he is by far the all time best professor at UCLA. He's caring, he knows his stuff and is loaded with great advice. All you need to do to well in his class is GO to class. He occasionally calls on students, but explains everything step by step. Truly a great experience.

the devil is in the details.

this is the part that you care about:
for 162M we had 25 people in the class he gave 7 people A and the rest got A-,B+,B.

he expects high quality work from you and will divide you into groups based on some survey questions you answer.

he is really really nice and awesome. take him.