This is my second class with Professor Davoyan. He is a really engaging lecturer that always makes sure things are clear for every student. You will never feel lost if you pay attention to his lectures. This was taken during COVID, but he was very forgiving with tests. Rather than a midterm, we had several small quizzes with a week to do each. For the final we had a few days. The questions were extremely fair. The homeworks helped prepare you for all the problems he could ask.

This was my second class with Professor Davoyan, and I would gladly take a third class if I had the chance to. Davoyan comes to class and gets started right away most times, with a lot of writing, but also a lot of good explanation. He has a slight accent, but it doesn't interfere with understanding. He can be very direct in what you need to know and understand, but he will keep driving a point until we get it. Davoyan clearly has an immense passion for aerospace and space exploration, and he will sometimes include slides at the end of lectures to reinforce our learning and give real examples of the topics we are covering, as well as giving us insight into the industry itself and the kind of thinking needed.

From what I've heard from classmates, Davoyan's teaching style can be a bit polarizing, with some people really enjoying it, and others disliking it. However, I can definitely recommend this class with him. The knowledge he possesses and the passion he has for this topic are reason enough to take it with him, and if you are passionate in this subject, you will love this class.

*** Disclaimer: This review is for 161B with Davoyan ***

This class was very helpful for me personally because I have a spacecraft systems engineering internship this summer, and it helped me to gain some breadth on the roles of different subsystems in a space mission. I also have an interest in space exploration and astronomy, which made the subject matter very interesting for me. Lectures were very well done, and they taught me a lot. Previously someone informed me that Davoyan is a bad lecturer but I found that to be absolutely not the case. We also had two guest lectures that gave us valuable insight into how space mission principles are applied to actual missions (like the JWST). If you've ever taken a class with Davoyan, you know he tries to make his classes as stress-free as possible. For 161B this consisted of three take-home, week-long quizzes (though four were planned) and a take-home, two-day final. While these contributed to the entire course grade (60% for the quizzes and 40% for the final), he also assigned optional homework assignments graded on effort/completion that were worth up to 15% extra credit. Although it may be tempting just to skip all of the homework, they provide good practice representative of quiz questions - in some cases they're the exact same problem just with different numbers. Additionally, there was a plethora of extra credit opportunities via multiple surveys. It's definitely the most relaxed upper-division class I've taken, and I'm glad I did so in a quarter where I had to take 19 units. I highly recommend you take this class with Davoyan.

No midterms, just quizzes throughout the quarter. They were take home with plenty of time to complete. The final was in the exact same format, just a little less time to complete and a couple more questions. As professor said, he doesn't want you to be concerned about the grade, just learning. The grading scheme follows that very well (homework is extra credit, extra credit problems on the quizzes). The book covers the content very well and is useful for the quizzes.

One of the most straightforward classes I've ever taken. The textbook is available for free on ScienceDirect, though paying attention in lecture and taking good notes was enough to complete the HW and quizzes and do well on the final, and the TAs even went over the specific HW problems in discussion (textbook is good for understanding some of the qualitative stuff in better detail than he covers in class, but you can do fine without looking at it or googling specific questions you have). Class comprised of a weekly HW assignment (usually only a few simple problems), three take-home quizzes (basically also HW assignments; he likes to give a few days to work on these then solve it in about 10 minutes in class), and the final. The material is very formula-heavy and the professor really cares about the students understanding the material, so he rarely tests on simple computation and focuses more on qualitative understanding (i.e., pay attention when he defines and explains things in class). He made the class pretty low-stress by giving A LOT of extra credit opportunities over the quarter and making the final (the only in-person test the whole quarter) completely open note.

In summary: not the most complicated class material, and a very considerate and fair professor. Put in the time to solve HW and pay attention and take good notes in class, and take advantage of extra credit opportunities. If you have a question in class, definitely ask it and he'll make sure you understand. 10/10 would highly recommend this class and professor, and would gladly take this class again.

Really cool class, and Artur was a cool professor. He wasn't very responsive outside of class, but he was fine over Zoom.