CS7100: Requirements & Policies

Course Goals:

This course is an introductory course for new Ph.D. students. Its purposes are:

To introduce students to the College of Computing and the various resources available at Georgia Tech
To introduce new students to the faculty and their research areas
To give students an opportunity to do small research projects in several areas
To help new students get to know each other
To provide information that will help students succeed in graduate school

Course Structure

The main ingredients of this course are:

Lectures
Mini-projects
Reading Assignments
Attendance.

Thes are discussed in detail below:

Lectures:

We will devote about 2/3 of the course lectures to hearing from the faculty about their research areas.
The other 1/3 of the time will be devoted to discussing skills and strategies for succeeding in graduate school and attempting to understand the important aspects of being a researcher. These will include talks about applying for fellowships, writing and speaking skills. Information about different facilities around Tech (like the Library) will also be provide.
Panels of faculty/students will also be organized to discuss issues like "What does it mean to do research?", "Why is teaching a rewarding experience?", "What are the social implications of Computing?", etc.

Mini-Projects

An important part of the course is getting some initial research experience. It is assumed that there are 2 main types of students in this class and the attempt will be made to satisfy their needs and interests.

[Group A] Students who are already certain of their research interests and have already identified an area and a supervisor. These are preferabbly students who have already been at Tech and have no interest in doing projects in a different area OR with another advisor.
[Group B] Students who are new to Tech and are interested in exploring areas and getting to know the different faculty members and attempt doing something they never thought they would do.

Students who fall in Category 1 are required to get their advisors to define either a full 1 quarter project for them OR maybe 2 short projects. These students are encouraged to consider doing at least a small project with a different faculty member, but will not be forced to do this. These students are still required to attend the class and partake in other fun activities in the class. The professor will help assign the project grade.

Students who fall in Category 2 are required to choose 2 OR 3 projects from the suggested list. Faculty from all research areas submit projects for students in CS7100 (To Projects List). Students are encouraged to choose projects from different areas. They work on each project for approximately 2-4 weeks. Each project is designed to require approximately 30 hours of work. Students may ask questions of the professor who suggested the project. The professor will help assign the project grade.

These projects are an excellent way of getting to know professors; if you like them and they are pleased with your work, longer-term collaborations may result.

Homework

Readings will be assigned once a week.

The following statement is no longer in effect, however, it could easily made to be.

"To make sure that students are doing the assigned reading, students should submit summaries/commentaries of the main points of the readings. These summaries/commentaries should be approximately 1/2 to 1 page long and should address the major parts of the assigned readings. Students should turn in at least 5 out of 8 reading assignments to receive full credit."

Attendance

Students are required to attend class. Absences should be cleared in advance.

Evaluation

Attendance/Participation	40%
Projects (20% for each project, 3 required)	60%

Collaborations & Academic Integrity

Honor Code: Academic Honor Code instituted by the Students of Georgia Tech applies in this class.
Collaboration:

If the project sponsoring faculty member allows it, collaborations on projects is ALLOWED.

Late Policy

In essence there is NONE. You are in graduate school remember.

Absolutely NO extension on Projects. Due dates of these will be specified

How to submit reports/summaries

This whole class will be conducted on the WWW. All summaries and reports have to submitted via the WWW pages.
On the first day of class, everyone will be shown how to set up a WWW page of their own and then will be shown how to set up a directory on their web pages (classes/cs7100/) for this class. The reports and summaries will be written in html (using your favorite HTMLeditor) and linked to your WWW page.

WARNING: The College of Computing WWW server is updated everynite so to get your report online by class time, you will have to finish your report the night before.

Back to CS7100 Fall 1997 Home

updated by irfan 9/3/98 3:30pm