Great at office hours, kind person, flexible and responsive via email. Great lecturer and well-structured slides. Fair grader and moderately difficult exams. However, easily the most course work I have ever had for a class. He's the heavy weight of the department for sure.

An especially kind professor I thought. Lectures are well structured and clearly thought out.

you definitely have to pay attention in lecture to be able to do well in this class as well as the labs. the grade was based on your labs as well as the midterm and final. tests are easy if you pay attention in class but definitely difficult if you dozed off or did not show up. some labs do take a long time so prep yourself for that.

The most tedious thing about this class was completing a couple pages for our "lab" which could be done before section and submit it to leave early. Besides that, notes were posted online (although they were blank), and the tests were open note! I loved coming to class and found the material super interesting.

Professor Rioux is super great and passionate about what he's teaching! The lectures are a little dense, and there's lot of material that you have to memorize if you want to do well on the midterm and final. Other than that, the labs are very interesting and the class is relatively easy/manageable and pretty cool!

Such a great professor. I had him for 104A and 114 as well, and he made the class very fun and clear even though the material can be confusing at times. I enjoyed learning with Matt! Definitely take one of his classes if you have a chance.

He is a super nice professor who really cares about his students. This class is just ALOT of work and they are tough graders. You have two classes a week, a 6-hour field trip then probably 10 hours of homework and lab to complete on your own each week, due EACH week. Also a 2-day camping trip. So it is a lot of work and a very hard class.

Matt is an amazing professor. He really cares about his students, is so kind and always willing to help clarify any material or help you in any way. He is very inspiring, but also his courses require an immense ammount of work as Earth 115 labs would take me like 15 hours a week.

Tough grader. Good feedback. Challenging class and the way it's being taught. Boring and confusing. unclear directions on labs. 30+ pages of labs (because we are Ph.D. or graduate students, apparently). I am annoyed because all my UD labs aren't that long.

Matt cares a lot about his students and genuinely wants to help us succeed. I didn't find him to be a particularly exciting lecturer, but I'm also not an Earth science major. Overall, this class covered a lot of important core concepts in an easily digestible way, and as long as you do the labs in a timely manner, you'll do great.

Best lecturer Ive had at ucsb. His slides are honestly structured really well so note taking is easy important because tests are open book so GOOD NOTESNO STUDY. The 2 rock sample-based labs are super poorly designed but all other labs are straight forward and can be done in 1 hr. One lab was a beach walk :)

Super easy GE, barely any work and pretty simple geological concepts. The tests are just based on his lectures and are really easy. To get a good grade do the labs early and you'll be fine.