Professor David Garlan Student
Travel Guidelines
Students:
First, I want to say that I believe conferences and workshops are
an extremely valuable part of your Carnegie Mellon graduate experience.
As a general rule, I'd like to be able to send each of you to at
least one major conference a year (typically ICSE or FSE). Also,
the exposure and exerpience that you get in giving talks and interacting
with other people in the community is a central part of what you should
be doing here. David Notkin once published a copy of a letter that
he routinely sends to his students, click here,
it coincides exactly with the way I look at things.
Second, to make the experience a particularly good one, I do ask
that you do two things. Most importantly, I'd like to have a written
trip report from each of you for each external event that you attend.
The purpose of the report is to help you focus on what you are getting
out of the experience, to help me and the ABLE group know what kinds of
insights and experiences you had. The trip report doesn't have to
be long, but it should show that you've done some thinking to distill what
was really important, and what kinds of follow-on activities (if any) might/should
result. A page or two is plenty. The second thing is that I'd
like you to be prepared to give a short oral summary at the next research
group meeting.
Third, there are a number of administrative things. Margaret can help with some aspects of the trip,
but I'd like to ask you to do as much as you can on your own. Margaret
will typically file the final expense report.
Thank you,
David Garlan
Travel
Preparation
Things to be done on
your own.
- Register for the
conference or workshop -- usually you'll need your own credit card to
do this and Carnegie Mellon will reimburse you later.
- Either arrange the
trip on your own (e.g., via the Web), or work with our travel agent,
Lea Costanzo, [leaco@hotmail.com],
of People's Travel, to book transportation (tickets, rental car, etc.).
A traveler profile
should be set up with the agency but you should do the detailed work
of planning travel times, getting instructions on how to find the conference,
reserving a car, etc. If you have to make changes, contact the
travel agent directly.
- Make hotel arrangements
-- I ask that, if possible, you room with another student to save on hotel
expenses. This doesn't necessarily have to be with someone in our
research group or even from Carnegie Mellon.
- Submit any conference
materials -- such as papers, registration form, etc.
Travel
Reimbursement
When you return, you
should provide a set of receipts along with the expense report form that
itemizes your expenses with a short explanation of each. For example,
if you went out to lunch, make a note on the lunch receipt that this was
for lunch on a certain date, and on the expense report list it as a food
expense.
In general, if a conference or workshop provides a meal, (say lunch)
as part of the registration package then it's not reasonable to ask for
reimbursement for that meal.
General guidelines are:
- $20-$25 for dinner
(and never more than $40)
- $10-15 for lunch
If you want to go out
to a fancy meal, that's fine, but usually you'll have to pick up the extra,
unless you clear it with me. Sometimes, it will make a lot of sense
to do this -- for example, if you are tagging along with the DARPA Program
Manager, you may not have a lot of choice about opting for something reasonable.
I'd certainly approve those exceptions. "Victory dinners"
with Bradley or me are another reasonable exception.
If you attend a group meal, the restaurant may only give out one
receipt. In those situations, do your best to get a copy (xerox
is fine) and indicate what portion of the total was your part.
Travel
Advance
In general, I'd prefer
it if you pay for things with your own credit card or cash, and then
get reimbursed later. If this is not possible we can sometimes
put in for a travel
advance that must be processed by Margaret.
Forms
Revised: 12-Jun-2003