Policy on Advising Privileges
for Students in the Computer Science PhD Program
Spring 2000
4/1/00 FINAL POLICY: Passed by faculty vote of 40 in favor, 5 against.
This policy seeks to provide graduate students in the CS PhD program
maximum flexibility in selecting advisors while preserving the unique
culture of the program. We recognize that there are faculty without
regular appointments in the Computer Science Department who engage in
high quality research in computer science. On the other hand, we take
great pride in the environment we provide our graduate students: we
guarantee financial support, we allow maximum flexibility in changing
advisors, we treat them as research colleagues, and we evaluate their
progress each semester.
A (research or tenure-track) member of the CMU faculty may be granted
"advising privileges" allowing him or her to act as sole advisor for a
CS PhD student. This privilege is automatically granted to faculty in
other units of SCS. For faculty outside of SCS, approval by the
department head and the CS program head is required.
In return for this privilege, we require the following of the faculty
member:
- He or she is expected to provide full financial support for the
student.
- He or she will have a "sponsor" from within the CS Department.
This sponsor is a faculty member who can provide advice on the
policies and principles of advising in the CS PhD program.
- He or she will help maintain the culture of the CS PhD program and
treat the student accordingly. Specifically, he or she must
ordinarily attend the semiannual "Black Friday" review meetings in
their entirety. These meetings are the major venue for calibrating
our expectations for the graduate students and their advisors.
These requirements hold whether or not the faculty member has an
appointment within SCS.