Changing the Computer Science Graduate Curriculum



Summary of Individual Interviews with Computer Science Faculty and Graduate Students Concerning Perceived Problems with the Graduate Curriculum

(Version 1.0)

Interviewer: Maletic

Faculty Interviewed: Batcher, Breitbard, Dragan, Khan, Lu, Melton, Nesterenko, Peyarvi, Rothstein, Ruttan, Volkert

Faculty on Leave: Farrell (emailed comments), Potter (did not respond to email), Wang (emailed comments)

Faculty Not Interviewed: Baker, Walker (both involved in all meetings and made numerous specific suggestions)

This is a summary of individual interviews of CS faculty. The interviews focused on uncovering perceived problems with the graduate curriculum. While a small number of solutions were suggested, most comments focused on problems or general goals and guidelines that the particular faculty member felt important to the Department. Below is a summary of approximately 16 pages hand-written notes. Additionally, a group of graduate students (approximately 8) gave input during a called meeting. The students present represented a cross section of the graduate student body, but for the most part, advanced Doctoral students gave the bulk of the comments. It was a very useful meeting and a great many good comments emerged.

Student Comments:

o Faculty take too long to grade qualifiers (is this indicative of the faculty’s view of the exams?)

o Why four qualifier exams?

o Too much depth in qualifiers

o Would like to see more consistent grading of qualifier exams

o Would like courses and qualifiers de-coupled

o They have to take the course at the right time or else they don’t know what will be on the test

o Would like consistent guidelines for qualifier exams

o Eight (8) credits are required for GAs – this is a huge burden on students (3 courses) when combined with teaching. Many other departments have 4 credit hour courses.

o Would like to see sequences of courses: (for example: OS 1, 2, and 3) in all research areas

o Need more course offerings – “What else do I take?” Many students have taken all of our offerings with many credit hours remaining, and few if any interesting courses.

o Avoid trendy course

o Would like to see an “Intro to Graduate Studies in CS”

o Would like to see more graduate student presentations

o Students complained about a serious lack of quality in some M.S. Thesis (specifics were given)

o Students complained about non Graduate Faculty directing M.S. Thesis (with the result being low quality) – “I worked really hard on my Thesis and people are getting credit for really poor quality work”

o Students would like faculty to be more visible

o Students would like more departmental activities tied to the educational process: Faculty presentations, Lab open house, etc. “I don’t know what other Faculty in the department are doing [besides my advisor].”

o Dissertations and Thesis should result in publications (external measure of quality)

o Would like to see “publishing” as a more explicit component of the program

Faculty Comments:

1. Entrance requirements

o Should integrate with our undergraduate program (some question to the current state of this)

o Should allow students with B.S. and M.S. from local Universities (e.g., Akron, CSU) to enter our program without great difficulty

o What about other schools with (very) different MS program, they end up taking a large number of courses in our M.S. program

2. Advisor assignment and Plan of work (both Ph.D. and Masters)

o Need a more formal process for graduate advising.

o Need a graduate secretary

o There should be a required form for advisor and change of advisor form, this will help give a history of the student and support other matters.

o A formal Plan of Work (form) should be required by a given date. This must be signed by the advisor, and keep updated

3. Required course work (and course offerings)

o A very serious lack of course offerings

o A lack of depth of material (course sequences)

o A lack of new topics (special topics)

o Inability of faculty to support their research through course offering

o Students are taking the required courses (for the qualifiers) instead of advanced topics, there are too many required courses

o Limit number of research credits

o Need to make PhD students take more courses to support advance offering

o Faculty need to be able to teach at least one research course a year

o Could co-ops be part of the program?

o Possible abuse of practical training

o We don’t keep up with the times

o Rotation schedule constrains our offerings in a negative manner

o Too many 50K and not enough 70K courses

4. M.S. Thesis, M.A. exit requirements

o Quality of M.S. Thesis is low in some cases, this reflect poorly on entire faculty

o Many people want to avoid producing too many M.A. degrees

o Overall most people felt M.A. was necessary (for industry people, inter-disciplinary programs, etc)

o Build a more industry track MA program

o M.A. could be a project (light weight Thesis) and presentation (Pass/Fail)

o Problem with reforming committee at last min.

5. Qualifier/Entrance examination

o Need to be more flexible

o Support all faculty equally

o Tied too closely with courses (that do not support research)

o Takes far too long to complete exams for students

o Content (level of depth) and grading is uneven for exams

o Too much of a burden on specific faculty, hard to grade

o Lack basics (Theory and Algorithms)

o Exams recover course work

o Exams are currently depth, not breadth (breadth is a little about a lot, depth is lots about one thing)

o The level of the exams should be more closely tied to basic concepts at a lower level

o Two goals: trying to be PhD entrance and MA exit

o Two (other) goals: Depth and Breadth

o Not all students may need to take exams??

o Qualifiers should be one term and basic knowledge

6. Candidacy Examination and Prospectus

o This should be the place that depth in the research field (and closely related topics) be checked

o Could be made a bit more formal with regards to exam aspect

o They may not be very consistent? a better description may be in order?

7. Dissertation Defense

o No one perceived problems with the defense process

o Committee selection process

8. General Comments

o Qualifiers currently dictate entire program

o The program must better support (faculty) research programs

o Need to make researching, publishing, and presenting an explicit part of the program

o Get rid of 4/50000 splits – Goals of teaching Grad vs UG is too great

o Not enough in depth course offerings to educate Ph.D. students and support research areas

o Courses should support depth of study in particular research areas

o

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