I took Prof. Nelson's class, but he's not listed as a teacher here yet! Honestly, I picked this course because it fulfilled a major requirement and looked like a relatively easy summer class. I wasn't going to put much effort into it, however, after attending the first few lectures and meeting wth the professor in office hours, I realized that the material was not only interesting, but also extremely relevant. I loved the hands-on aspect of the fieldwork assignments. I also appreciated the readings/videos about class and race (especially the gentrification and prison complex topics). I felt like I actually got to go apply something I learned in class to the real world, which has usually not been the case in other theory classes I've taken. Above all, Professor Nelson truly cared about his students and it showed. I am grateful that he allowed students to participate in different ways. He had small group discussion with 2-3 students, written responses, entire class discussion and even emphasized that he would make exceptions if people felt more comfortable just talking one-one in office hours. A lot of people, including myself, have anxiety, so I thought it was really considerate and sweet that he was so flexible. He took note of everyone's unique learning styles and tried to help everyone succeed. Another thing I noticed, was that when we watched videos, he sat down and watched with the rest of the class. I'm not sure why, and there's probably a sociological explanation LOL, but I appreciated that. Overall, this was definitely one of the top 5 classes I have taken at UCLA! My only suggestion is that it would be helpful to have some kind of practice quiz (maybe instead of or in addition to the 5 minute write) in order to prepare for the final and to help us gauge what we need to study. The points breakdown is class attendance (he keeps track with ungraded 5 minute writes/in-class assignments) 15%, 3 field 1 page work notes 30%, a 3 page response paper about those field notes 15%, and a MC final 40%. Overall, it was a great class and I recommend it as a SOC or regular elective or to knock about the SOC Interactions requirement.

Professor Katz is not given enough credit. When I initially saw his reviews on bruin walk I was a bit nervous. After taking his course I've learned that he is a brilliant man who has a deep and sincere passion for what he is teaching and once you grasp the main concepts of his ideas, you'll do great!! He's not as hard as everyone says and he actually takes the time to talk to you and get to know you as an individual, you just can't be afraid to speak to him! He's wonderful! I took 130 and received an A-...you can too!

Ridiculousness. Do not take him.
In Sociology 130, he made the clicker questions worth 30% of our grade, which seems awesome, except that there was an argument for every single clicker question because they were often very ambiguous and difficult to understand. For the clicker questions, the distribution of answers was most often 25% per answer (A, B, C, D), or when it was good, it was distributed as highly as 50%, one or two times, the rest of the time, you might as well have had a monkey clicking for you.
The positive reviews on here clearly seem to be written by him or one of his TAs that needed a class to TA and if he didn't get enough students, they would have cancelled his class.
His approval ratings for this quarter must be lower than the approval ratings of baby punchers. I hope the university takes note of this and gets rid of him, he was so ridiculous about the way he graded, lectured, and his interactions with the students.

Anyways, if he is still here after this quarter, do not take him.

DO NOT TAKE A CLASS WITH THIS PROFESSOR. While I am sure Katz is a brilliant Sociologist and a lovely human being, you DO NOT want him to be your professor. I have never experienced such collective frustration amongst students as in his class. Although the curriculum should have made for a fascinating and very mind-expanding experience as a student, I genuinely have no idea what I am supposed to be learning. The grading is such a mess that I would honestly bet my life that at least 90% of the class feels that their grade is a lottery, and has no relation to how much they work for the class or understand the concepts. He gives daily quizzes based on the reading that total to consist of 30% of your final grade, but even if you do all of the reading and feel that you understand it, there is still a good chance that his quiz questions will trick you. Every day after the quiz I take out my laptop and try to take notes during his lecture, but I can never figure out what is relevant and what is just one of his abstract tangents. The poor TAs have to spend all of their section time dealing with students venting about lecture and then trying to reteach what they think Katz was trying to say. I am still unsure of my final grade, but even if after some intense curve I were to receive an A+, my feelings about the course would not change because the experience has been so upsetting.

You might be frustrated with Katz' style if you are expecting a professor to spoon feed you information that will need to be spat out on a test like Gerber mashed fruit on a bib. If you enjoy learning from thinkers of great thoughts, enjoy thinking very abstractly and deeply about ordinary interactions, and possibly are pursuing education for the sake of becoming educated, then you'll be lucky to have Prof. Katz teach this course if you're taking it.