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:

  • Faculty take too long to grade qualifiers (is this indicative of the faculty’s view of the exams?)
  • Why four qualifier exams?
  • Too much depth in qualifiers
  • Would like to see more consistent grading of qualifier exams
  • Would like courses and qualifiers de-coupled
  • They have to take the course at the right time or else they don’t know what will be on the test
  • Would like consistent guidelines for qualifier exams
  • 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.
  • Would like to see sequences of courses: (for example: OS 1, 2, and 3) in all research areas
  • 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.
  • Avoid trendy course
  • Would like to see an “Intro to Graduate Studies in CS”
  • Would like to see more graduate student presentations
  • Students complained about a serious lack of quality in some M.S. Thesis (specifics were given)
  • 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”
  • Students would like faculty to be more visible
  • 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].”
  • Dissertations and Thesis should result in publications (external measure of quality)
  • Would like to see “publishing” as a more explicit component of the program

Faculty Comments:

  1. Entrance requirements
  2. Should integrate with our undergraduate program (some question to the current state of this)
  3. Should allow students with B.S. and M.S. from local Universities (e.g., Akron, CSU) to enter our program without great difficulty
  4. What about other schools with (very) different MS program, they end up taking a large number of courses in our M.S. program
  5. Advisor assignment and Plan of work (both Ph.D. and Masters)
  6. Need a more formal process for graduate advising.
  7. Need a graduate secretary
  8. 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.
  9. A formal Plan of Work (form) should be required by a given date. This must be signed by the advisor, and keep updated
  10. Required course work (and course offerings)
  11. A very serious lack of course offerings
  12. A lack of depth of material (course sequences)
  13. A lack of new topics (special topics)
  14. Inability of faculty to support their research through course offering
  15. Students are taking the required courses (for the qualifiers) instead of advanced topics, there are too many required courses
  16. Limit number of research credits
  17. Need to make PhD students take more courses to support advance offering
  18. Faculty need to be able to teach at least one research course a year
  19. Could co-ops be part of the program?
  20. Possible abuse of practical training
  21. We don’t keep up with the times
  22. Rotation schedule constrains our offerings in a negative manner
  23. Too many 50K and not enough 70K courses
  24. M.S. Thesis, M.A. exit requirements
  25. Quality of M.S. Thesis is low in some cases, this reflect poorly on entire faculty
  26. Many people want to avoid producing too many M.A. degrees
  27. Overall most people felt M.A. was necessary (for industry people, inter-disciplinary programs, etc)
  28. Build a more industry track MA program
  29. M.A. could be a project (light weight Thesis) and presentation (Pass/Fail)
  30. Problem with reforming committee at last min.
  31. Qualifier/Entrance examination
  32. Need to be more flexible
  33. Support all faculty equally
  34. Tied too closely with courses (that do not support research)
  35. Takes far too long to complete exams for students
  36. Content (level of depth) and grading is uneven for exams
  37. Too much of a burden on specific faculty, hard to grade
  38. Lack basics (Theory and Algorithms)
  39. Exams recover course work
  40. Exams are currently depth, not breadth (breadth is a little about a lot, depth is lots about one thing)
  41. The level of the exams should be more closely tied to basic concepts at a lower level
  42. Two goals: trying to be PhD entrance and MA exit
  43. Two (other) goals: Depth and Breadth
  44. Not all students may need to take exams??
  45. Qualifiers should be one term and basic knowledge
  46. Candidacy Examination and Prospectus
  47. This should be the place that depth in the research field (and closely related topics) be checked
  48. Could be made a bit more formal with regards to exam aspect
  49. They may not be very consistent? a better description may be in order?
  50. Dissertation Defense
  51. No one perceived problems with the defense process
  52. Committee selection process
  53. General Comments
  54. Qualifiers currently dictate entire program
  55. The program must better support (faculty) research programs
  56. Need to make researching, publishing, and presenting an explicit part of the program
  57. Get rid of 4/50000 splits – Goals of teaching Grad vs UG is too great
  58. Not enough in depth course offerings to educate Ph.D. students and support research areas
  59. Courses should support depth of study in particular research areas

11/4/2018Computer Science