The department is divided into two arms, each headed by an Associate Chair. The two arms are Operations and Academics.
Patti Spencer is the Associate Chair and Director of Operations. She manages the administrative, technical and external affairs sides of the department.
Greg Lavender is a Senior Lecturer and the Associate Chair for Academics. He manages both the Undergraduate and Graduate Offices, schedules the courses, and oversees all academic issues.
This works for both FedEx and USPS. FedEx requires the 'Taylor Hall 2.124'. USPS requires the '1 University Station C0500'.
Department of Computer Sciences
1 University Station C0500 Taylor Hall 2.124 University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712-1188
Get on department mailing lists. Patti Spencer can add you to the faculty mailing list. You may want to be added to appropriate research-group mailing lists. Contact the current faculty in that area for info.
The department is housed in 5 buildings:
You get authorization from the department. This can be via Patti, or using a 'key request form' in the department office.
You pick keys up from the University Keys office, which is a couple of buildings away from ACES, across 24th street from the Power Plant.
Get an office key; a key to the department office in Taylor; an ACES card key, if applicable; and keys to any lab(s) that you use.
Your key to the department office (TAY 2.124) also opens the faculty lounge (TAY 3.128) and the classroom (TAY 2.106).
There is one department copier in the department office, another in the grad student lounge, and another in ACES 5.212. All of them require code numbers so that copies can be charged to the appropriate account.
Robert, the administrative assistant who works the phone console in the department office also assigns copier accounts. You need to get a form from him. Apply for both an instructional account and a research account (using your startup money).
The department staff will do course-related photocopying for you, if you give them one-day advance notice. The originals can be provided in paper form, in the 'copying inbox' in the department office, accompanied by a form that indicates how many copies you want. Alternatively, you can submit copy requests over the web, and attach a PDF file with the originals. Use the following URL: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/department/copyrequest/copyrequest.html
The copying staff puts the copies (along with the original) in your physical mailbox, unless the copies are of a test, in which case they hold onto them for you to retrieve them in person.
The originals need not be in loose paper form; you can put a book in the copying inbox with a copy form that tells them which pages of the book to photocopy.
There are lots of mail aliases for the things you need to get done. You can always mail to gripe@cs.utexas.edu. But you may get a faster response if you use one of the following (all are @cs.utexas.edu):
| udb | Accounts, passwords, groups, aliases and lists, disk space... |
| webmaster | Web server problems, configuration problems, etc (but the department content ownership is widely distributed) |
| microlab | administration of the public Windows/Mac labs |
| machelp | Macintosh support |
| help | Generally, simple questions from the undergrads |
| faqs | Supports the frequently asked questions pages and online docs |
| operator | File restore requests |
| gripe | UNIX system administration catch all |
| shopreq | Hardware, network, move equipment, printer service. For initial requests, use the web page, http://www.cs.utexas.edu/facilities/shopreq/. |
| preq | Purchasing requests. For initial requests, use the web page, http://www.cs.utexas.edu/facilities/preq/. |
| admin | Main office (Kata, Kathy, Patti) |
| accounting | Budgets, travel, appointments, etc. |
| oea | The Office of External Affairs (Patti, Nancy, their staff) |
There's huge overlap in these lists in terms of who reads them, the division is largely for archival purposes since only two lists use a 'ticket' system ('preq' and 'shopreq').
Thereare also lots of other mail aliases. Below are listed a few of the most common.
| faculty | All of the tenure track, tenured, and non-tenure track faculty |
| ttfac | All Assistant, Associate, and Full Professors |
| bcouncil | All Associate and Full Professors, i.e. the Budget Council |
| fullfac | The Full Professors |
| dept | All departmental staff |
| staff | Synonym for "dept", all staff |
| grad | CS graduate students |
| under | CS undergraduate students |
Envelopes and preprinted airbills for charge back to the department are in the department office. They are locked up, to ensure the entry of the proper UT account number. The department office staff can unlock this cabinet for you.
You need to write the UT account number to which you are charging the overnight shipment in the space on the form for the internal account number. If everyone does this for a while, Bill and Peter hope the airbills can be taken out of the locked cabinet.
UT solely uses Airborne Express, not FedEx.
Packing tape, string, scissors, and brown wrapping paper are kept in the department copier room.
No one keeps a standing supply of other packing supplies, such as boxes. But the purchasing people regularly receive boxes and packing peanuts, so with a day or two's notice they can get you just about any kind of packing material you want.
Reimbursement for travel (especially for visitors coming to UT) is a hassle. Be prepared for some level of frustration, especially the first time you do it. This is especially true if you're paying for travel with state funds -- the bureaucracy reaches its peak in this area. Some accounts can't be used for travel, others can, and yet others require special approval. If there is a university-wide budget crunch, additional restrictions may be imposed. Travel reimbursement is easier if you're paying for it with grant or gift funds.
You must fill out a travel form (Request for Travel Authorization or RTA) for any travel, even if it is personal travel (it lets the department know that you'll be gone). This form can be found at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/department/administrative_information/travel_request/.
To schedule a conference trip and have everything paid for in advance, after you fill out that form, ask accounting for the RTA and DOC ID for your trip. Then you can call the UT travel agent, Navigant, to have everything purchased from your account: 512-459-8203 or 800-798-0292
If you're hosting a visitor whose expenses will be paid by UT, you need advance approval. The department Office of External Affairs (OEA), oea@cs.utexas.edu, handles this. They must file a form with the dean in advance of travel; usually 1.5 to 2 weeks of advance notice are required. If the form isn't filed in advance, the Dean informs the Chair and makes her/him sign off on the malfeasance. Visitors can either pay for their own travel and get reimbursed, or we can order the tickets for them. Similarly, some hotels (e.g. Austin Folk House B&B) can be direct-billed to the department. Each visitor must supply the following info, needed by OEA:
Dawn Nobles in Accounting is a good source of information on all the details of accounting, reimbursements, and some of the ins and outs of the policies. She knows how to figure out how to meet the requirements of the university-wide bureaucracy. One important thing to know is that you can only be reimbursed for meals up to $35/day outside of Texas and $30/day in Texas. There is also a limit to how much you can spend on hotels that depends on the city. Check with Accounting in advance if you want to be sure to stay under the limit.
If you're getting reimbursed for food expenses, you need to provide the following. Note that this applies for any food, regardless of whether it is a restaurant meal or snacks bought at the grocery store for a research meeting:
Faculty forum, with free food.
Friday Pizza and Pop - Last Friday of every month
At the beginning of every semester there is a meeting to discuss the progress of all the students in the department. Most of the time is spent discussing borderline or troublesome cases.
There is also a weekly "graduate student tea time", to which faculty are invited (and actively welcomed). You have to bring your own mug.
To schedule a seminar talk and have it be added to the department calendar, first you have to make several choices:
Normally this should all be done at least 3 weeks before the visit. You then have two ways of setting it up:
For ACES rooms, use http://www.aces.utexas.edu/seminar/. These rooms are not permitted for class use. For Taylor rooms, use http://www.cs.utexas.edu/department/calendars/.
There isn't much, until you have money to pay for your own or a share of someone else's.
But there are lots of department-wide administrative staff who can help you with certain tasks. In particular, there are staff dedicated to purchasing and to accounting.
This mechanism of "specialized support staff" has the advantage that the staff are experts in their area, particularly in understanding and if necessary working around the university's endless rules. The disadvantage for you is that the staff does not report directly to you, but then you do not have to pay or supervise them. If you have any problems or special needs, you should feel free to discuss the issues with the heads of the department, the Associate Chairs for Operations (Patti) and Academics (Greg Lavender).
- Computer Hardware Setup and Installation
- Unix and Networking Administration
- Network Ports
Network ports are protected. They can be set up as either a fixed IP address, or for DHCP. Open a request for ports by using the shopreq link at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/facilities/shopreq.
After plugging into a DHCP port, you have to go to ‘horatio.cs.utexas.edu' to authenticate with your department login before you can use anything else. This has to be redone every time you connect. Also if your machine doesn't respond to pings, you will have to reauthenticate every five minutes! If this is a problem and you're using Windows XP, try turning off the "firewall protection" for your network connection.
One good way to get up & running quickly is to bring your own laptop, and then start using a DHCP port.
There are two wireless networks; the one you get depends on where you are in the building. For the CS one, you have to authenticate through horatio, just like wired-DHCP. For the UT wireless, your first web request is automatically redirected to an authentication page that requires your UT EID.
- Multiple Levels of Support for Research Machines
There are several different levels of technical support for department computers. A machine can have one of three levels of support:
The department offers limited support of Windows and Mac OS X laptops. If you order an approved laptop, technical support will install the initial base image and then provide a backup mechanism. If you hoark the laptop, they'll reinstall the basic image for you. You'll be responsible for installing things other than the base which will have things like a postscript viewer, etc. Approved machines: Dell D400, D600 and the D800, and any Mac.
Usually,you'll just teach a graduate seminar your first semester. This gives you an easier workload while you're trying to get up and running, and also provides an opportunity to recruit grad students to your area of research.
Greg Lavender, lavender@cs.utexas.edu, is in charge of deciding who will teach which classes.
But generally, faculty within a particular area work with each other to come up with a plan for teaching the core courses that need to be taught each year.
It's worthwhile reading over the graduate and undergraduate program information that's available from the department main page. People in the department tend to refer to courses by number, so it's good to be generally familiar with the requirements, etc.
Greg Lavender has a nice graphical dependency chart for mandatory and optional undergrad courses; ask him for a copy of it.
Preliminary decisions about who will teach which classes are made very far in advance -- about a year! So as soon as you've decided to come here, start thinking about which courses you want to teach, and discuss it with other faculty in your area.
Most class-related paperwork is handled through UT Direct (the online paperwork system accessed via your UT EID). You just log on to UT direct, and there's a menu entry for your classes. UT direct URL: https://utdirect.utexas.edu/utdirect/ A very useful feature there is the class photo roster.
If a graduate course has less than six students registered by the 10th day of classes, it is subject to being killed. This may be relevant for seminar courses. If you're close to the cutoff, make sure everyone who might want to take the course is registered.
For undergrad courses, the number of students who must be registered is 10 or more.
There are various rules about when students can add and drop classes, and under what circumstances. These rules can be different for grad students and undergrads. You won't go too far wrong if you just sign whatever paperwork the students bring to you, and let them take responsibility for what they're doing.
All classes have an assigned final exam time. Final grades will be due 72 hours after this final exam, so even if you're not giving a final exam, it's important to know what the assigned date is so that you know when you have to turn in grades.
You are not supposed to set due dates for ordinary assignments (even end-of-semester projects) after the last day of classes, although often students will be happy to get extensions into this period if the class does not have a final exam. If you do this, make sure to set the due date so that you have enough time to complete grading.
There are rules about when undergrads can and cannot sign up for graduate classes. If there's a smart undergrad who wants to take your graduate class, a workaround is to have them sign up for undergrad independent study. If you do this, beware that the grade turn-in deadline for the undergrad independent study is often earlier than the turn-in deadline for the grad course. If this is the case, contact the undergraduate office (Yadi Chujachi, yadi@cs) and arrange to turn in the student's grade after the deadline. This is usually not a problem.
The course grade deadlines set by the registrar reflect a time when they required more manual labor. If possible, try to meet the individual course deadlines set by the Registrar, but being a bit late is generally fine. If you find that you will be late, contact the undergraduate or graduate office and arrange to turn in the grades late. The final deadline that the registrar sets is VERY important. If your grades have not been turned in and you are nearing the final deadline, you will be contacted. Yadi Chujachi can help you with any problems in this area.
Check with someone who knows more (e.g. Greg Lavender or Roger Priebe) if you have a suspected case.
The CS department has had problems with cheating in the past, and now deals with it quite strictly. Students may be expelled for it. It's your responsibility to state very clearly what kinds of cooperation are permitted and not permitted on assignments, particularly programming assignments.
If you catch a student cheating, you can reach a "negotiated settlement" with them -- e.g. "F" on assignment, "F" in course, etc. If you cannot reach a settlement, you submit the evidence to the university, which can impose a penalty. In either case, you have to fill out a form documenting the cheating. Thus, even for a negotiated settlement, the cheating will be on record in the student's university file, and a subsequent infraction will be treated much more harshly.
If you need help with any of the following student issues, contact Roger Priebe:
If you have questions about classroom management, writing a syllabus, using graduate or undergraduate teaching assistants (we call the undergraduates "proctors") contact Roger Priebe.
Ana Hernandez, ana@cs.utexas.edu, handles class times and classroom scheduling.
You should bring your own chalk. It is supposed to be replenished by Custodial Services, but isn't always. The department's office supplies (in dept office copier room) include chalk. But, the restocking of these supplies does not always keep up with the demand; if you need chalk five minutes before your class starts, just ask.
Some rooms have video projectors with laptop connectors. If this is important, make sure to request such a classroom from Ana.
There are various teaching labs in Taylor (basement) and Painter. See http://www.cs.utexas.edu/facilities/accommodations/public_labs/ If you need particular software or hardware, talk to Patti.
This program is an honors program for computer science undergraduates. Students apply at the same time (or about) that they apply for general admission to UT. The department uses this program as a way to recruit top undergrads who might otherwise go to schools like MIT. The there are honors sections of many of the undergrad courses for these students. Many of these students are very bright and motivated. There is a recruiting event for students who have been admitted to this program each spring; consider spending an hour or two at it to talk with these students and their parents. You'll enjoy it, and it makes a difference in convincing them to come here.
The most promising grad students who have been admitted to our program each spring are invited to visit the department for two days. This event has proven to be an important mechanism for convincing top students to choose UTCS. Make the time to participate in this event.
Several students told Bill and Peter that the faculty research presentations (and one-on-one meetings) at this event were important in choosing the faculty members they eventually worked with. In many cases, students decided whom they wanted to work with at this event! This is another good reason to make an all-out effort for this event.
Grad students are admitted to the department as a whole, not to work with a particular professor or group.
It's perfectly acceptable (and common) for students to try out more than one professor during their first couple of years. This works well as a trial period for both students and faculty; you're not obligated to continue working with a student until they are working on dissertation research.
In more detail, here's how it works:
Every semester, every student pre-candidacy Ph.D. student must sign up for a research-for-credit course. For first year students during their first semester it is called 396. This course starts with a 3-week period during which all faculty members present their research to the students in 20-minute slots. Then the students must sign up with someone to do research. After the first semester, the course is 395. Students can continue on with the same professor (if he/she agrees), or else they can shop around.
Your presentation in CS396 is important to convince students that they should consider working with you. Try to convey some of your personality and enthusiasm for what you do, in addition to some details about your research area.
You will immediately start getting inquiries from students out of the blue asking if they can be admitted to the program. Store and send back something like the following:
Thank you for your interest in our graduate program. Any questions about applying or admissions should be sent to csadmis@cs.utexas.edu. Further information about our graduate admissions process is available at: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/academics/graduate/.
Further information on my particular research interests and projects (including numerous publications) are available at: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~<you>.
Feel free to mention your interests in my work in your statement of purpose. If the admissions committee finds your application promising, they may contact me at that time to obtain my additional feedback. Including copies of any publications or project reports can also be very useful.
Thank you for your interest in our graduate program and my research in particular.
Sincerely,
All PhD students are assigned a desk space in Taylor or ACES. The space may either be in an "office" area, or a "lab" area that has cubes in it.
In Taylor, student "offices" are shared, hard-walled offices. In ACES, student "offices" are cubes in open areas of the building.
The Space Committee chaired by Patti runs the space assignment process. Assignments for the next academic year are done in late spring, so some amount of advance planning is required. You will get emails starting in March informing you about the process.
Space for each year is assigned based on faculty requests. The following description written by Patti provides more detail:
Here's how it goes. Space for each year is assigned based on faculty requests. We don't care whom you name - they can be staff you've hired (for example, J names someone like that), PhDs, Master's or undergrads. We do ask that you name people with whom you're actually working - or plan to work with in the case of incoming students - but since faculty have to provide the machine on the desk of anyone that is named (except incoming PhDs), over-committing isn't usually a problem.
We try to seat named students either near the professor or in lab space used by the professor. In TAY that can be a problem, so we make sure everyone gets the same no. of students (roughly) on the floor (if they need the seats), and then we put people up on 5th floor. Some faculty have students only in offices or cubicles, some have them in offices/cubicles and using labs, and some have them only in labs. For example, all of Risto's students are in offices on TAY 4 or 5. Ben has students in offices on TAY 4 who also use the Robotics Lab, and he has a student who is only in the Lab. This permits a kind of double-dipping and has always been a little controversial, but it is my considerable experience that people just need to work in different ways. We try to make sure that they can.
If multiple people name a student, I tell the faculty and one takes primary ownership (i.e. which entails providing the equipment while probably committing the student to space that is used by the prof's other students). You should check with your students to see if they need to move to you. I would guess they would if they are no longer working with the other faculty, but only if you want/need to ensure where they are seated next year.
If a PhD is not named by any faculty member, he or she has to enter a request for an office. That process takes place after the faculty have named their students. We expect to be able to seat all our PhDs who want space, but the students who are not named have to go where I can find them space. The dept provides the equipment.
The reason to name people is to create a working environment. If you don't care where your students are seated since they will all use your lab, then there is no reason to name students.
This system evolved because we're space-starved, and faculty wanted a way to ensure that they got their people on the same floor as they were, or put in a group, etc. The equipment requirement makes it so that people don't reel off the names of everyone and her brother on the off chance of some of them working in the research group. People with lab space keep that lab space only by keeping it filled with equipment. Equipment drives the whole issue - if we ever got sufficient space, this would possibly change. As it is now, space resides centrally with the department and is annually reallocated, with an eye to keeping churn to the minimum.
[If you want students near you], it's possible that some other faculty might feel the pinch by having to lose a student or 2 in that space. However, it usually all works out. The process is annual for two basic reasons - one is that with so little space we have to garbage collect, and the other is that people do change affiliations, new professors do come in, etc.
Please be aware that if you name someone, you will be held responsible for providing that person with equipment for all of the academic year, even if that person quits working with you. Also, the students who are named by you will remain in the space all year.
The department will continue to provide equipment to incoming students even if you name them.
Since different research groups and faculty have different lab setups and different philosophies on student assignment, everyone does something a little different. For example, one philosophy says you should seat your students together so they can work with each other easily, but a different philosophy says that they'll work together anyway, so you should seat them with students from other groups, thereby exposing them to students doing other kinds of research.
The department doesn't have a well-oiled infrastructure for submitting grants; this is a known shortcoming and will hopefully be addressed in the future. Established faculty typically have administrative assistants to help them, especially with budgeting, but you won't. Try to beg a bit of help from one of the experienced admins; in particular, ask for an example budget spreadsheet. If you're a 'systems' person, try asking Gem Naivar, who's the admin for many of the systems faculty.
The department Accounting Office can help you with some grant details, such as department machine and overhead charges.
All grant proposals have to go through the University's office of sponsored projects ('OSP'). They officially require a minimum four-day lead time, but they will usually do it more quickly if necessary. But leave plenty of time on your first grant submission. OSP web site: http://www.utexas.edu/research/osp/.
Each proposal submitted via OSP needs a completed UT proposal form. The form is available on the OSP web site. It is not very long, but asks for info (e.g. code numbers) that you might not know on your own, so look at it a few days in advance.
OSP doesn't really do much that is actually helpful for you. Usually, they just tell you if there are any arithmetic or policy errors in your budget. But then you have to fix them and resubmit.
The competence and attitude of staff in OSP varies. Vernon Woodard is one of the more helpful and competent people.
To submit NSF proposals, you will need a FastLane account (NSF electronic paperwork system). You have to go through the UT Office of Sponsored Projects to get a FastLane account that is associated with UT. Call this office in advance to tell them that you need this.
Once you have the FastLane account, you need to give permission to "View", "Edit", and "Submit" proposals to the UT Office of Sponsored Projects.
For various grant paperwork, you will need a "Department/ORU code", of the form 'dddd-ppp', where 'dddd' is the department code, and 'ppp' is your PI code. The UTCS department code is '0300'. OSP will assign you a PI code the first time you submit a proposal. You can use '000' if you have to put something down before you know what your code is.
For NSF proposals, you need the social security numbers for all PI's and co-PI's; get these well in advance if you are the PI.
OSP specifies that you need to give them a large number of paper copies of each proposal (4?), but for NSF FastLane proposals, they only need one paper copy, plus one paper copy of the UT proposal submission form.
Many grant proposals request a description of department facilities. You can use the following (from Patti Spencer, accurate Spring 2006):
To provide the most advanced resources for teaching and research, the Department of Computer Sciences manages its own network and systems, which number over 1000 hosts. Under the direction of the Associate Chair for Operations, a staff of 6 hardware support, 7 software support, 2 lab support, and 1.5 purchasing personnel specify, buy, install, and maintain the computing infrastructure for the department. Through accounts on the department's UNIX, Windows, and Macintosh workstations, students, faculty, and staff have access to numerous public laboratories and private research equipment.
Many different computer systems are available for research use by faculty members and students in the department. The department has several research clusters including an eight node computational biology cluster and a 474 node Linux cluster received on matching grants from IBM and NSF. These clusters as well as all public computing resources are available to everyone via Condor, a resource management tool for widely distributed systems. The department has an immersive theater and video wall for graphics and visualization research. In addition, there are 75 Linux boxes on graduate desks. Several hundred other workstations of varying configurations and platforms are located in private research labs or on researchers' desks.
All departmental computers are networked together using gig or 100 Mbps Ethernet. The network, managed and maintained by staff, consists of over 30 Cisco switches, with a Cisco 6509 serving as its point of presence and firewall. Network servers include a research-dedicated NetApps 820 with 3 terrabytes of storage, a NetApps F825 with 7 TB of RAIDed disk that is used for home directory service, and a NetApps FAS940 with 4 TB of disk as well as many other file servers.
You can write an internal UT funding proposal to get two months of salary for your first or second summer. Kathy will send you the application information. The proposal is due in early October.
The proposal requires three letters of recommendation, of which two are expected to be from external (non UT) letter writers. UT is unwilling to reuse the letters they got when you applied for your faculty job, so you will have to contact your letter writers again. In theory, these letter writers are supposed to comment not just on your abilities, but also on the content of the proposal.
The proposal is a good excuse to start planning your research program in detail, and if you view it in that manner, it can be a productive use of your time.
Professor Patti Spencer manages the Office of External Affairs. Nancy Hatchett (nph@cs.utexas.edu) is the Coordinator. If the press is interested in your research, let her know, and she'll help manage the interaction. For a full list of services offered by OEA, please see http://www.cs.utexas.edu/oea/
Ordering Class Textbooks
To submit a textbook order for your course, use your CS login to
access the UTCS Textbooks Database at https://z.cs.utexas.edu/textbooks_db/home.php. The textbook order form is located under the "New Book" tab; all fields marked with an asterisk are required. Once
your order is submitted, you will receive a confirmation email and be
able to view your course order via the class search function on the
Textbooks Database home page. Questions about your order can be
submitted to smoak@cs.utexas.edu.
Note that the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost requires authorization for the use of textbooks written by a UT Austin faculty member.
Ordering Desk Copies
To request a complimentary textbook desk copy from a publisher,
submit an email to Sarah Moak Hyman at smoak@cs.utexas.edu with the
text title. Please keep in mind that If rush delivery is not
available, desk copies can take up to 4 weeks to arrive.