1997-1998 GradCom Activities

This is just a basic list of some of the things that were dealt with by the graduate committee in 1997-1998. I'll just put the basics here for those who wonder what the heck we do. Anyone who wants more info on any of these items should feel free to contact me (esimon@cs).

GradCom is supposed to be (one of) the graduate student's methods for suggesting to/complaining about/affecting the department as it applies to your graduate academic life. If you have an issue of this nature that you want addressed, contact me (esimon@cs).

• Proposal for new Masters of Engineering Program (not a replacement of the MS program). A lot of work went into this both from GradCom and from other interested faculty. The current status is that we have a tentative proposal outlining the program, but whether or not we "want" the program and the specifics of the implementation have yet to be decided.
  
  
• Research Exam Change. GradCom discussed and proposed to the faculty a move to incorporate the University's Qualifying Exam as part of the Research Exam (this used to be associated with the Thesis Proposal). This was accepted by the faculty. The benefits to the department are GREAT financially (our fees drop by thousands of dollars when we become doctoral "candidates"). The only change to students is that we have to comprise a full 5-member committee for the research exam. Your advisor should help you with this since you now have to do this a year or 2 earlier than you would have before. Talk to them.
  
  
• Web Page Redesign. GradCom chair, Bill Griswold, initiated a move to make the graduate program web page (and the department pages in general) more useful and more interesting. This led to a re-design of the departmental web pages and the addition of some information on the grad program web page. Though there is still some work to be done on this (we're hoping to put together a "who are we" page highlighting some of the cool non-academic pages and/or links already maintained by grads), it's already much more informative.
  
  One thing that came out of this was the role of our web page in attracting new grad students. To this end, a lot of the grad program page redesign focused on presenting the appropriate info to prospective students "browsing" our department. From an administrative point of view, an on-line pre-application submission system was developed and is now in use -- allowing students to more easily and more speedily begin the application process.
  
  Anyone who has additional ideas for improvements to this page, either for current grad student usability or for improving its content in terms of attracting new graduate students should please contact Julie Conner (conner@cs)! We'd love some help!