Project Unit

One way to obtain elective unit credit is through a faculty-directed project. Doing a project has the same primary goal of taking a course: the acquisition of knowledge. As a side benefit of doing a project a student often learns new research skills.

Here are some rules-of-thumb for considering what qualifies as a project which may be used for elective credit:

• The scope of the material learned should broaden the student's education; it should not be too narrow.

• The work should be something other than that which would otherwise be done as part of the student's directed research or as part of the research project run by the student's advisor.

• A student should be able to complete the project working full time for no more than one month (or quarter time for one semester). The time frame for doing the project does not have to respect semester boundaries, but a deadline for completion should be set.

• The project should have a written component resulting in a paper or technical report that demonstrates a high quality of writing.

• The project should also have an oral component requiring that the student present a brief (seminar length) description of the work performed. The student is responsible for scheduling the talk, and the project advisor is required to attend. The talk may be given externally.

To get a project approved for elective credit, a student submits a short (1-2 page) description of the project, written with the guidance of the project advisor. The proposal should clearly explain how the proposed work addresses the educational goals of the student.

Every project must be approved by two faculty members and the Director of Graduate Programs. The two faculty members are the project advisor and the student's regular advisor. In the case that the regular advisor is also the project advisor, the student and advisor need to select some other appropriate faculty member to evaluate the proposed work independently.