University of California, San Diego Computer Science and Engineering

Grad Students Positions

Grad Students Helping the Department
Grad Students Helping Grad Students
Grad Students Lounging Around
Grad Students Having a Life

Grad Students Helping the Department

CSEGSA Coordinators
The two individuals holding CSEGSA Coordinator positions serve as liaisons between the faculty/staff and other graduate students, and oversee the operations of the CSEGSA. When graduate student input or assistance is needed on a matter, the Coordinators are often asked by the faculty or staff of the CSE department to find student volunteers. In addition, students may bring their concerns to the Coordinators, so that they can be addressed by appropriate faculty and staff members together with the CSEGSA. Additional tasks include holding organizational meetings to recruit volunteers, maintaining the CSEGSA web page, and handling just about anything else that comes up. Perks of this job include getting to know many people in the department, and learning how things really work around here. There are two coordinators, traditionally a senior coordinator and a junior coordinator. The current coordinators can be reached at: coordinators at cs ucsd edu .

2007-08 : Sat Garcia [sat], Scott Yilek [syilek], (Alvin AuYoung [alvina], Barath Raghavan [barath] (senior))
2006-07 : Barath Raghavan [barath], Alvin AuYoung [alvina]
2005-06 : Alvin AuYoung [alvina], Barath Raghavan [barath]
2004-05 : Barath Raghavan [barath], Alvin AuYoung [alvina]
2003-04 : Alvin AuYoung [alvina], Barath Raghavan [barath]
2002-03 : Doug Brown, Joe Drish
2001-02 : Joe Drish, Renata Teixeira
2000-01 : Renata Teixeira, Sara Miner

GradCom Representative
The GradCom representative acts as a liaison between faculty and the students and holds the fairly important responsibility of keeping an eye on the faculty and making sure that they act in the best interest of the students. The faculty are typically very good about keeping the interests of students in mind so the two major job responsibilities are to go to faculty meetings and Graduate Committee meetings as the student observer / representative. It is a great way to meet the faculty and be involved in the real workings of the department (oh if you only knew), but requires someone that can deal with faculty as well as someone that will honor the privacy of their peers that happen to be discussed in GradCom.

2007-08 : Garo Bournoutian [garo]
2006-07 : Ayse Kivilcim Coskun [acoskun]
2005-06 : Justin Burke [burke], Michael McCracken [mike]
2004-05 : Justin Burke [burke]
2003-04 : Jeff Brown [jbrown]
2002-03 : Jeff Brown
2001-02 : Jeff Brown, Tim Sherwood
2000-01 : Tim Sherwood

Faculty Recruitment Representative
The Faculty Recruitment Representative organizes meetings between graduate students and prospective faculty. The job does not require too much time. It typically goes something like this:

A week or so before a candidate is coming to visit, you will be asked to sign up for a time slot for a meeting. Meetings are either 30 or 45 minutes.
You go listen to the candidates talk.
Shortly before the meeting, you send out mail to csgrads letting them know that there is a meeting and that they should come.
During the meeting, you help answer the candidates questions, and guide the discussion.
After the meeting, you gather feedback from the students. Would you want the candidate as an advisor? Did he explain things well? Would he be a good match for our department?
You forward the feedback to the Faculty Recruitment Chair, (after anonymizing it), and he distributes this information to the whole faculty. They use this data when making hiring decisions.

There are several benefits to this job:

You help future grad students by helping to screen future faculty. If a candidate would make a poor advisor, you can share this with the Recruitment Committee, and save future grad students from suffering.
You learn about a lot about interviewing. By observing the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates, you will be able to present yourself better when you have to look for a job.

2007-08 : Barath Raghavan [barath], Justin Ma [jtma]
2006-07 : Barath Raghavan [barath], Justin Ma [jtma], Hakon Verespej [hverespe]
2005-06 : Jenny Wang [guilian], Christopher Fleizach [cfleizac], Daniel Hsu [djhsu], Chip Killian [ckillian]
2004-05 : Chris Tuttle [ctuttle]
2003-04 : Barath Raghavan [barath]
2002-03 : Xianan Zhang
2001-02 : Dmitrii Zagorodnov
2000-01 : Eric Tune

Graduate Admissions Representative
Back for the 2007-08 school year!
When the department considers applications for admissions to the graduate program, the input of current graduate students is often important. First and foremost, the Graduate Admissions Representative should talk to Graduate Admissions committee chair to open a dialog on the topic of including graduate students in the admissions process. If the members of the committee feel that this input is needed at any point in this process, our representative will either provide that input or assemble a group of current students to serve that role. This is an excellent opportunity to help determine the future of the department!

2007-08 : Chris Kanich
2006-07 : Position discontinued
2005-06 : Position discontinued
2004-05 : Position discontinued
2003-04 : Satish Narayanasamy [skumar]
2002-03 : Rahul Lahoti, Wenjing Rao
2001-02 : Sashka Davis
2000-01 : Florin Baboescu

Job Seminar Coordinator
The goal of the job seminar coordinator organizes seminars, presentations, panels, and informal get togethers with faculty and grad students, covering a broad range of topics related to job search and interviewing. Particular events include 'Getting a job', 'How to have a good career', and a seminar for graduating students (brief talks on all research areas in CSE).

2007-08 : Tom Ristenpart [tristenp]
2006-07 : Tom Ristenpart [tristenp]
2004-05 : Sagnik Nandy [snandy]
2003-04 : Dmitrii Zagorodnov [dzagorod]
2002-03 : Michelle Strout

Prospective Student Visit Day Coordinator
The department holds an annual visit day for prospective students in early March. As the coordinator, you'll be responsible for two tasks. First, you will need to find graduate student volunteers and pair each of them with a prospective student. Ideally, there will be 1-{1,2,3} mapping of volunteers to prospectives -- mainly to provide transportation if necessary. Second, you will need to organize activities for the prospective students during visit day.

2007-08 : Ross Tate [rtate]
2006-07 : Tingfan Wu [t3wu], Sat Garcia [sat]
2005-06 : Sat Garcia [sat]
2004-05 : YuChung Cheng [ycheng]
2003-04 : YuChung Cheng [ycheng]
2002-03 : Poorna Udupi, Amit Behere
2001-02 : Bianca Zadrozny
2000-01 : Mike Copenhafer

Social Committee Representative
The graduate students that serve on the department social committee meet with members of faculty and staff to plan social events for the department. This committee meets approximately monthly, and plans an event each quarter, such as a spring luau and December holiday party. As a representative, your responsibility is to provide student input to the committee, help coordinate with the csegsa, and to help in holding these events.

2007-08 : Yuvraj Agarwal [yuvraj]
2006-07 : Sat Garcia [sat]
2005-06 : Anthony Choi [buchoi], Allen Chu [awchu]
2004-05 : Allen Chu [allenchu]
2003-04 : Rakesh Kumar [rakumar], Tulika Agrawal [tagrawal]
2002-03 : Erez Perelman, Rakesh Kumar
2001-02 : Doug Brown, Tim Sherwood
2000-01 : no social committee

UCSD Graduate Student Association Representative
Due to the number of students enrolled in the CSE grad program, we have the right to have four representatives in the council of the GSA (Graduate Students Association). Representatives are the interface between the CSE students and the GSA. GSA reps have the opportunity to express the opinion of their constituents and their own in several issues, such as housing and fee increases. Discussions on topics of interest happen either in council meetings or university committees. The GSA council meets every two weeks and is desirable that at least one rep show up, so that we can be up-to-date with the latest campus developments. University committees are created whenever the presence of students is necessary to work along with campus administration. Examples of committees created in the past are Parking/Transportation Issues and International Housing Planning. The GSA is also a source of funding for several events in the department, such as the Beach Party and Grad Enrichment talks. Funding requests are presented in finance meetings by a rep and the rep has to be able to explain the nature of the event. Finance meetings also happen every two weeks. For more info, check the GSA web page.

2007-08 : Justin Burke [burke]
2006-07 : Justin Burke [burke], Matt Tong [mhtong], Neel Joshi [njoshi], Dana Dahlstrom [dana], Garo Bournoutian [gbournou]
2005-06 : Garo Bournoutian [gbournou], Dana Dahlstrom [dana], Neel Joshi [njoshi], and Matt Tong [mhtong]
2004-05 : Dana Dahlstrom [dana], Matt Tong [mhtong], Kirill Levchenko [klevchen], and Neel Joshi [njoshi]
2003-04 : Dana Dahlstrom [dana], Chris Roedel [croedel], Cynthia Bailey Lee [clbailey], Girija Vijayaraghavan [gvijayar], Erik Vandekieft [evk]
2002-03 : Tony Lee, Elena Silenok, Poorna Udupi
2001-02 : Ankur Jain, Flavio Junqueira, Poorna Udupi, Dimitrii Zagorodnov
2000-01 : Joe Drish, Poorna Udupi

Virtual Community Catalyst
Many graduate students in our department think that it would be nice to create a "virtual community" like the ones they've seen in other computer science departments. For this job we are looking for a tech-savvy individual (i.e. server administration, web scripting) with fresh ideas and lots of enthusiasm, who can build off our existing forum and wiki to attract a critical mass of participants necessary for this community to be useful and more or less self-sufficient.

2007-08 : Open
2006-07 : Eric Weigle [eweigle]
2005-06 : Eric Weigle [eweigle]
2004-05 : Eric Weigle [eweigle], Saurabh Panjwani [spanjwan]
2003-04 : Dana Dahlstrom [dana]
2002-03 : Dana Dahlstrom
2001-02 : Dana Dahlstrom
2000-01 : Dmitrii Zagarodnov

Chez Bob GURUS
Chez Bob is the department's student food co-operative, providing nourishment to tired grad students stuck in computer labs. Running Chez Bob consists of a few independent tasks, each of which are not too time-consuming. These tasks are

2006-07 : Unknown
2006-07 : Justin Ma [jtma]
2005-06 : Justin Ma [jtma]
2004-05 : Jianhua Liu [jhliu]
2003-04 : Mike McCracken [mmccrack]
2002-03 : Mike McCracken, Rahul Lahoti
2001-02 : Gyozo (Victor) Gidofalvi
2000-01 : Alan Su

2007-08 : Unknown
2006-07 : Justin Ma [jtma], Kirill Levchecko [klevchen]
2005-06 : Daniel Hsu [djhsu], Justin Ma [jtma]
2004-05 : Haixia Shi [hashi]
2003-04 : Weihaw Chuang [wchuang]
2002-03 : Huaxia Xia, Yuanfang Hu
2001-02 : Huaxia Xia, Yuanfang Hu
2000-01 : Alan Su

2007-08 : Michael Vrable [mvrable]
2006-07 : Michael Vrable [mvrable]
2005-06 : Michael Vrable [mvrable]
2004-05 : Patricia Shanahan [pshanaha]
2003-04 : Wenjing Rao [wrao], Jianhua Liu [jhliu]
2001-02 : Wenjing Rao
2001-02 : Alan Su
2000-01 : Alan Su

Espresso Czar
This individual will be responsible for the maintenance of the new espresso machine that will be added to the lounge. The espresso czar will attend a training session on the proper use of the machine and be responsible for assisting in the development of a clean-up plan, train students who wish to use the espresso machine, and help to make sure that the necessary espresso-making supplies are kept in stock.

2007-08 : Unknown
2006-07 : Patrick Verkaik [pverkaik], Sean Peisert [speisert], Sanmay Das
2005-06 : Neil Alldrin [nalldrin]
2004-05 : Neil Alldrin [nalldrin]
2003-04 : Neil Jones [ncjones]

Social hour Coordinator
The Coordinator ensures that weekly Social hour actually happens (although does not necessarily do everything). Formerly was the Donut/Bagel hour coordinator.

2007-08 : Natalie Castellana [ncastell]
2006-07 : Pat Rondon [prondon], Barath Raghavan [barath]
2005-06 : William Beaver [wbeaver], Daniel Tracy [dtracy]
2004-05 : Will Chang [wychang]
2003-04 : Wen Yen Jen [wjen], Mei-Fang Huang [mhuang], Chien-Yi Hou [cyhou]
2002-03 : Leeann Bent
2001-02 : Amit Behere, Renata Teixeira
2000-01 : Student Affairs Office

Beach Party Czars
The Party Czars plan the CSE Department's semi-annual beach parties. Required tasks go something like this:

2007-08 : Open?
2006-07 : Ryan Braud [rbraud], Karen Lin [k9lin], Aaron Arvey [aarvey]
2005-06 : Jeannie Albrecht [jalbrecht]
2004-05 : Jeannie Albrecht [jalbrecht]
2003-04 : Cynthia Bailey Lee [clbailey]
2002-03 : Gyozo (Victor) Gidofalvi
2001-02 : Gyozo (Victor) Gidofalvi, Joe Drish
2000-01 : Melanie Dumas, Gyozo (Victor) Gidofalvi

2006-07 : position discontinues?
2005-06 : Michael Vrable [mvrable], Chip Killian [ckillian], Diwaker Gupta [dgupta]
2004-05 : Kirill Levchenko [klevchen]
2003-04 : Greg Chun [gchun]
2002-03 : Marvin McNett, John Bellardo
2001-02 : Marvin McNett, John Bellardo
2000-01 : Alan Su

Graduate Enrichment Coordinator
Graduate Enrichment Program is "designed to promote the success of graduate students by providing assistance to supplement what the departments and faculty normally provide through traditional channels." Basically, OGSR gives us a certain amount of money for activities that can "enrich" graduate students intellectually. This has traditionally translated into a series of seminars (about 6 per academic year). So the job of the "grad enrichment coordinator" essentially comes down to coming up with ideas for seminars, finding speakers, and arranging the actual seminar (reserving the room, sending out the announcement, and ordering refreshments).

2005-06 : position discontinues?
2004-05 : Satish Narayanasamy [skumar]
2003-04 : Michael L. Van Biesbrouck [mvanbies]
2002-03 : Tim Sherwood
2001-02 : Dmitrii Zagarodnov
2000-01 : Dmitrii Zagarodnov

Graduate Student Orientation Coordinator
The role of this graduate student is to organize events during the first few weeks of the Fall quarter to give new graduate students the opportunity to meet one another. One event which this coordinator might want to participate in is organizing the Fall beach party with the Beach Party Czar.

2005-06 : subsumed by social committee?
2004-05 : Cynthia Bailey Lee [clbailey]

Grad Lounge Recycling Coordinator
This job requires minimal time and is a great help to the environment. The university began helping the department with all of our recyclables -- paper, cardboard, glass, plastic, and cans. The lounge recycling coordinator keeps the recycling areas in the lounge organized and stays in contact with the campus recycling program to make sure the system continues to work for us and for them.

2004-05 : position discontinues?
2003-04 : Chris Calabro [ccalabro]
2002-03 : Holly Dail
2001-02 : Flavio Junqueira
2000-01 : Holly Dail

Grad Lounge Cleanup
These individuals are responsible for cleaning the grad lounge, including the common use refrigerator, twice per year.

2004-05 : position discontinues?
2003-04 : Neil McCurdy [nemccurd]
2002-03 : Leeann Bent, Ranjita Bhagwan
2001-02 : Leeann Bent, Barbara Kreaseck
2000-01 : Barbara Kreaseck, Beth Simon

Group Representatives
These graduate students will serve as liaisons between their group and the csegsa. Input from each of the groups are especially needed for input from faculty recruitment talks, prospective student recruitment, and other general department issues such as layout for the new building.