Written on October 1, 2018
Town Hall Minutes Spring 2018
Minutes from the semi-annual Computer Science Graduate Student Town Hall on April 19, 2018.
Announcements
- Pay rate increase
- AY Salary- 24,469 level 1 (pre-proposal), 26106 level 2 (post proposal)
- Weighted August and May stipends
- Christine: Department working with GSA to learn and discuss issues
- Feel free to approach Graduate Director (Christine Lv), Rajshree (Graduate Advisor), or CSGSA (csgsa@colorado.edu) with any issues or questions
Course Survey Results
- Stephen presented course request results
- Working on long term planning- tracking who’s demanding courses (by depth area)
- Thank you for giving us feedback on course requests
- Feel free to send suggestions to GSA or Rajshree
- Add a comments section on the shaping of the course (ex. Use Python vs MATLAB, matching with industry)
- What about the write in course requests? Want to restrict breadth courses to CS department, but depth can be non-CS. Discussing allowing Masters to petition courses outside the CS department. There are discussions about how to shape the curriculum in the future.
- Comment that breadth is a very strong requirement that we already covered in undergrad.
- We do want students to have a broad background.
- Poll: Is 4 breadth classes too many?
- Students feel discouraged from taking classes that interest them in order to satisfy requirements
- Consensus: People would be fine taking breadth but want more generalization/differentiation between breadth areas.
- Some labels seem arbitrary
- 7000 level don’t count as breadth because they are typically topics classes, but can be petitioned to count as breadth. Haven’t been reviewed as thoroughly
- Masters students would like 7000-like courses where they learn more software and prepare them for industry. (7000 for PhD are great for research, Masters want equivalent courses to prep them for industry)
- Can [applied] Big Data be added as Breadth area?
- Can Distributed Systems be split up into 2 topics/courses? Level 1/level 2 covers a lot of material
- Rajshree asked for writeup, hope to send on to faculty.
- In addition to FCQs, course review about material covered?
- Are course requirements clear?
- Yes, once we ask Rajshree.
- Let’s get it all centralized
- Masters communication forum requested (slack?)
GPTI/Communication/TAs
- Gap in communication when trying to communicate with GPTIs, create a gtpi mailing list / instructor mailing list
- What works in communicating with TAs?
- Re-evaluating TA feedback from professors
- Pre and post course survey to measure problems and points of improvement
- What is the balance in responsibility between TA and research for PhD students
- Could TAing count toward graduation requirement?
- Interview process for TAs should be by subject if possible
Course preparation
- Post previous class structure/rubric alongside syllabus along with major (anticipated) changes
- Ask new professors to more rigorously plan classes
- Sometimes ends up overly simple
- Hypothetical: A student presents someone else’s work. What do you do?
- NOT COOL DUDE
- Notify the faculty member and go to Grad Comm
Reporting Harassment
- Disturbing number of people who reported witnessing harassment and didn’t know where to go
- Christine (Grad Comm director) is the point person.
- Jim Martin (ECES 126) also volunteered as tribute.
- However, remember faculty are mandatory reporters for certain things.
- Draft a “flow chart” of who to go to for which situations
Improving community
- Hoping for regular happy hour/social after colloquia
- Contact csgsa if you have ideas you want to see come to life
- Come to the spring picnic!
- Event during orientation
- Come meet new students
- Scavenger hunt!
Suggestion after town hall
- Instead of strictly doing happy hour, maybe do Bowling nights? ($9.50 per person for 2 hours includes shoe rental and soft drink).