CSE Graduate Student Orientation

1
CSE Graduate Student Orientation

• Fall, 2003
• Glenn D. Blank
• (Thanks to Drew Kessler!)

2
The Agenda

• Greetings from the CSE faculty
• Requirements and milestones of the M.S. Ph.D.
  programs in CSE
• Choosing an advisor
• Writing guidelines
• Using the CSE computer resources
• QA with CSE TA

3
Greetings from the CSE faculty

• Mark Arnold (computer architecture and
  arithmetic)
• Glenn D. Blank (multimedia e-learning, computer
  science education)
• Liang Cheng (networking and distributed
  computing)
• Brian D. Davison (web-based systems, networking,
  information retrieval)
• Samuel L. Gulden (formal languages, program
  semantics and verification)
• Jeff Heflin (semantic web, intelligent agents)
• Donald J. Hillman (information systems and
  databases)
• Christine Hofmeister (software architecture and
  component-based software)
• Edwin J. Kay, Associate Chair, CompE advisor
  (object-oriented programming)
• G. Drew Kessler (virtual environments,
  human-computer interaction, graphics)
• Hank Korth, Chair (High performance and real-time
  database systems)
• Daniel Lopresti (bioinformatics, document
  analysis and digital libraries)
• Hector Munoz-Avila (case-based reasoning and
  decision support systems)
• Roger N. Nagel (enterprise information analysis
  systems)
• William M. Pottenger (data mining, parallel
  optimization)
• John Spletzer (autonomous robots and sensor
  planning)

4
Requirements

• When in doubt, refer to
• The University Catalog (Section 4 CSE section)
• The Graduate Student Handbook (college)
• The CSE web sites
• www.cse.lehigh.edu/graduate/graduate.html
• www.cse.lehigh.edu/graduate/cs-qualifiers.html
• Your Advisor
• CSE Graduate Coodinator (glenn.blank_at_lehigh.edu)

5
M.S. Requirements (Summary)

• 30 credits
• At least 18 credits of 400 level classes
• 15 credits of 400 level in major field
• No more than 6 credits at 200 level
• Can only be outside of major field
• Courses outside of major must be in department
  that offers graduate courses
• Optional MS Thesis (3 credits for CS, 6 credits
  for CompE, oral presentation)

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Course Requirements for M.S.

• Grades
• Need a B- or better to count 300 level courses
• Need 18 credits of B- or better
• Lower than C grades do not count
• If you get 4 grades lower than B-, youre out!
• Distribution/Core/Comprehensives (for CS)
• 2 courses in each of 4 areas
• At least one 400 level course in 3 areas
• www.cse.lehigh.edu/graduate/cs-qualifiers.html

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Computer Engineering M.S.

• Both CSE and ECE courses are in the major
• Distribution
• 2 courses in computer hardware/architecture area
• 2 courses in another area, 1 course in a third
  area
• Of these 5 courses, 1 400 level course in each
  area
• Other areas
• Computer software systems
• Signal processing and communications
• Computer software applications
• Circuits and systems

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Admission to Candidacy for M.S.

• Soon after completing 15 credits, you should
  submit an admission to candidacy form
• Outlines how you will complete your degree
• Must be approved by the Graduate and Research
  Committee
• Get the form from the Graduate Coordinator
• Get signatures
• Submit to the College Graduate Office

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The Ph.D. Program

• The timeline (courtesy of John Linebarger)

Qualifying Exam
Admission to Candidacy
General Exam
Dissertation Defense
(Think creatively on your feet under
time pressure)
(Dissertation area, proposal outline, and
committee)
(Dissertation problem, approach, and proposal)
(Final dissertation problem, solution, and
document)
This Dec/Jan or, if no M.S., after 18 credits
Within 1 year of the qualifier
Earlier than 7 months of graduation
Draft to Committee 6 weeks before graduation
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And... Course Requirements

• 72 Credits, 48 if entering with CS/CompE MS
• (42 if CS/CompE M.S. is from Lehigh)
• Lower than C grades do not count
• If you get 4 grades lower than B-, youre out!
• Courses are subject to approval by Committee
• Same distribution requirements as M.S.
• www.cse.lehigh.edu/graduate/cs-qualifiers.html
• Note that courses taken for B.S. and M.S. can
  satisfy some of the required courses (w/ petition)

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The Ph.D. Committee

• Need to form a committee for Admission to
  Candidacy (a.k.a. the Ph.D. Proposal)
• Need 3 Lehigh faculty and 1 external (at
  Lehigh or not, but not in home dept.)
• Includes advisor
• Can have more, if useful
• Need to have a rough idea of topic
• Generally a hypothesis and investigation plan
• To present to potential committee members

12
Choosing an Advisor

• For M.S. students
• Find someone who you think will give good advice
• Helpful, but not necessary for the academic
  advisor to be your thesis advisor (if doing a
  thesis)
• For Ph.D. students
• Academic advisor is generally the thesis advisor
• Needs to be able to direct/advise your thesis
  work
• Needs to be someone you can get along with
• www.cse.lehigh.edu/dkessler/Info/graduate.guide.h
  tml

13
Writing Guidelines

• If you dont have one already, get a writing
  manual. I recommend
• A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and
  Dissertations by Kate L. Turabian, Chicago Press
• Read it use it while writing
• The best way to become a good writer is to write
  often (at least a paragraph a day)
• If you can, get someone to read and critique your
  work

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Citing Sources

• Critically important for academic writing
• Give credit where credit is due
• Copying words, figures or ideas from another
  authors work without citing and quoting is
  stealing. Its called plagiarism.
• Words copied directly should be quoted and cited
• Ideas that are paraphrased should be cited

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Citing Sources, the Form

• Two main forms for citing sources
• Parenthetical (Kessler, 2002)
• Sources listed in References alphabetically by
  author
• Kessler, G. Drew (2002). Advice for CSE
  students, Proceedings of the CSE Conference,
  Aug. 2002, pp. 1-5.
• Numerical 1
• Sources list numerically by order of appearance
• 1 G. Drew Kessler, Advice for CSE Students,
  Proceedings of the CSE Conference, Aug. 2002, pp.
  1-5.
• Usually specified by publication or instructor

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Department Representatives

• 2 Graduate Student Council (GSC) Reps.
• (Needed to qualify for dept. graduate student
  travel money)
• 2 Reps. to CSE faculty meetings other
  committees
• Association of Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Student chapter
• acm.cse.lehigh.edu

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Computer Resources

• Separate from the Lehigh LTS resources
• help_at_eecs.lehigh.edu
• System administrators Bryan Hodgson and David
  Morrisette
• Graduate students can have an account on the
  department UNIX systems
• Provides yet-another-email-address
• Provides disk space that can be used for class
  work, research, or file-sharing
• Provides certain UNIX-based tools for research

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Where are the computers?

• The Sun workstations in PL 118 and PL 122 are
  available to CSE students
• One can access these machines remotely through an
  ssh (Secure Shell) client
• From off-campus
• gateway.eecs.lehigh.edu
• From on-campus or from gateway (example)
• ssh pioneer.eecs.lehigh.edu

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The Unix File System Commands

• man ltcommandgt Get a manual page on a unix command
• man -k lttopicgt Get a list of manual pages on
  topic
• ls List current directory
• ls -als List directory with details
• cd Go to your home directory (aka )
• cd ltdirgt Enter the ltdirgt subdirectory
• mv ltagt ltbgt Move ltagt file to name or directory
  ltbgt
• rm ltfilegt Remove a file
• mkdir ltdirgt Create a directory
• rmdir ltdirgt Remove a directory
• quota -v Describes your disk
  usage and quota

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More UNIX Commands

• cat ltfilegt List a files contents
• cat ltfilegt more List a files contents,
  piping them to a
• pager program
• more ltfilegt Same as above
• cp ltf1gt ltf2gt Copies ltf1gt to file or directory
  ltf2gt
• export Lists shell variables
• export VARval Sets variable VAR to value val
• echo stuff Prints stuff to the screen
• echo VAR Prints the value of VAR
• man bash Manual page for the bash shell
• exit Like it sounds

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Email

• Your address will be netID_at_cse.lehigh.edu
• By default, email will be forwarded to your
  Lehigh Account (netID_at_lehigh.edu)
• You can change the forwarding address by editing
  the .forward (note the dot in front) file
• If you remove the .forward file or change it to
  forward to a department machine, you can use
  mailx (or elm, or ...) command to read (and send)
  your mail

22
Editing

• There are primarily two editors for UNIX vi and
  emacs (and its cousin xemacs)
• emacs is easier to use for beginners
• Arrow keys move you around, also
• Cntr-f, Cntr-b forward and back
• Cntr-n, Cntr-p next and previous line
• Cntr-d delete character
• Cntr-x-Cntr-s save file Cntr-x-Cntr-f find
  file
• Cntr-x-Cntr-c quit

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Printing

• The lpr command can be used to print a text or
  PostScript file to a printer (use a2ps for
  program listings)
• lpr -Pltprintergt ltfilegt
• cat ltfilegt lpr -Pltprintergt
• a2ps -Pltprintergt ltsource filegt
• Available department printers (lpstat -a to
  list)
• PL122, BW pl122-4000n or pl122
• PL122, color (may need paper) pl122-cps
• PL355 pl355-si, 2-sided pl355-duplong

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Where are the Windows?

• X is the windowing system for UNIX workstations
  (Suns version is OpenWindows)
• initx (or openwin) will start the windowing
  system (if sitting at the machine)
• How the windowing system is configured is
  dependent on a few configuration files
• .xinitrc, .Xdefaults, .twmrc, others...
• Best advice ask to copy config files from
  someone who has it working

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Unix Processes

• UNIX is a mult-processing OS
• Adding at the end of a command runs it the
  background (as a job)
• Output is job and process id
• fg brings a job to the foreground
• Cntr-z stops a process running in the foreground
• bg restarts a process, putting it in the
  background
• kill ltidgt halts the job with the given process id
• kill -9 ltidgt halts the given job without fail
• ps -elf lists running processes with ids

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QA with CSE TA

• Chris Janneck (CJ)
• Has experience as TA for Prof Kessler,
  Engineering 1,