Information for Faculty Mentors

(updated June 2018) The information on this page may be out of date, as the Department of EECS has several major changes planned starting Fall 2018.  As of this writing, please contact Prof. Stuart Kleinfelder, the course coordinator for EECS-CSE senior projects, for the current policy.

Here are some information for faculty mentors

Creating Project Pages

Q: How do I post a project idea?

A:  Click on this link to create a new project page.  (you can also click on Add contents > Senior project).   Be sure to tag the topic of the project and tag the created-by as faculty.  

Q:  What if my topic is not one of the keywords?

A: You can select "Other" for now, and then request a new keyword be added (phchou@uci.edu)

Faculty approached by students

Q: Some students approached me.  What do I do?

A: Please talk to them!   They may already have a project that they want to work on, or they may want to find out if you have some project ideas for them.

Q: How should I decide whether to mentor a team?

A: First, the project topic should be of mutual interest between the faculty mentor and the student team.  Second, the team should consist of members who have the necessary skills for the project.  Third, you should feel like you can get along with the team!

Q: But what if the project is outside my field and I am not a very hands-on person?

A: It is no problem.  Your job as a mentor is not to teach the students everything -- they are supposed to figure out the details.  Instead, your role is to help students by asking the right questions, manage the project, stick to the execution plan , and how to present the work.

Team Size

Q:  How big should the teams be?

A: The mentor is the ultimate judge on this, but in our experience,

• The ideal team size is about 3-4 people. We have asked the students to form teams first before approaching the mentors.  
• If you have other ideas, you are welcome to post your specific requirements on this site for the students to see.

Q: But the team that approached me says that they already have 5 (or more) people.  What do I do?

A: Depending on your project: if you know what you are doing, and you can imagine evenly distributing the tasks over the 5 team members, then great, by all means do it.  However, in most cases, we do not recommend it, because in our experience, there will always be at least one person who will not make contributions when you have 5 or more people on a team.

Q:  But I have a big project and I might want to have 8-10 people!

A:  One strategy is to divide the large group into smaller groups of 3-4 people each.  The teams can collabote with each other.  But then again, if you have a way to manage a larger team, by all means go for it.

How to Sign Up?

Q:  I want to mentor a team.  What do I do?

A:  You should sign up as a "lab instructor" for EECS 159A/CSE 181A and as a "lecture instructor" for your own section of EECS 159B / CSE 181B.

1. For the "A" course, you should ask the students to sign up for a lab section under your name.  The lecture part of the "A" course will be centrally administered (for accreditation purpose).
2. For the "B" course, you should ask the students to sign up for an EECS159B or CSE181B course under your name.  The B course is not centrally administered; you will give grades to the students directly.

Q:  But there is no EECS 159A or CSE 181A lab section under my name. What do I do?

A:  Please contact CASA (Curriculum, Analysis, Analytical Studies and Accreditation) office at engcasa@uci.edu to request

1. that a lab section be created under your name.  The enrollment cap should match the number of students you have agreed to mentor in the corresponding majors.
2. that an EECS 159B or a CSE 181B course be created under your name in the quarter following the "A" course.  If the A course is taken in Spring, then the B course can be in either summer or fall.

Q:  Student told me my lab is full and they can't enroll. What do I do?

A:  Some other students may have signed up for your lab randomly without realizing they were supposed to sign up under their mentor's name.  You can find out from WebRoster who those students are and ask them to enroll in their mentor's lab.

Q: I have been getting requests from students for authorization codes to add or drop my lab. Where can I find them?

A: Please login to WebRoster, click on the EECS159A or CSE 181A Lab under your name, and it will take you to a page that has a link to Authorization Codes.  The same code can be used for adding or dropping your lab.  By default, you get 10 codes for add and 10 for dropping, but they should be interchangeable.  If you need more, email engcasa@uci.edu.

Length of Project

Q: How long is the project?

A: Technically, it is 2 quarters: the "A" course is one quarter, and the "B" course is the second quarter.   Many mentors find the two-quarter sequence to be too short.  So, you may want to consider one of those options that allow you to extend the project into 9 months.

In general, it pays to talk to students early and possibly observe them for a quarter or over the summer to warm them up, and they'll start being productive when they officially start the "A" course.

Q: But I expect my project to take longer than two quarters.  What do I do to oblige the students for more than 2 quarters?

A:  First, you need to set the expectations straight with the studnets up front.

1. When planning out the schedule of work, include the extra time beyond the "A" and "B" course sequence.
2. By the end of the "B" course, you can give them an "I" grade for "in-progress" (some people think of it as "incomplete"), which is not a Fail, but it gives you one quarter to change the "I" to a real grade.  Otherwise, it automatically turns into an "F" after one quarter.
3. If you want students to get credit for the additional work, you can ask them to sign up for EECS 199 or CSE 199, which allows them to count up to 4 units towards their technical electives. You can do the 199 in conjunction with the "I" grade.

Mentoring

Q:  Do I have to meet with the students each week?

A:  You can make whatever arrangement you want with your students.  Some choose weekly meeting like a research meeting, while others arrange meetings on demand. In any case, it is a good idea to require that all members of your team to submit a weekly progress update and give each person a score each week.  This is a way to make sure they make consistent progress each week.

Q:  Do you have a template for the progress report?

A:  Yes.  This is what we have used in the past:

Grading

Q: Who gives the grades?

A: The grades are given by the official instructors.  Starting AY2016-7, 

1. EECS 159A and CSE 181A are centrally administered, so the official instructor will give the grades.  However, the instructor traditionally includes assignments such as project plans or othe writeups that get graded by the mentor, so the mentor does have a say in part of the students' grades (30% as of Fall 2016).  It's just that the grades submitted by the mentor are part of but not all of the total grades received by the students they mentor.
2. EECS 159B and CSE 181B will be individually administered, so the mentor is the official instructor of the course that the team signs up for. The mentor therefore will have full control over what grades each student gets.

Q: How do I grade the weekly progress report?

A:  You decide, but here is what we think are important:

• completeness of reporting
• execution of your plan
• ability to solve problems and novelty 

Be sure you ask the students to be "informative" and "descriptive" in their progress report, and tell you what they have learned in the process of doing the work. Often time students will tell you they work very hard, but they should work smart, not just work hard.  Busy work by itself does not translate into good grades. 

A common pitfall with progress reports is students will give an "indicative" one-liner report, e.g., "In the past week I worked on debugging and testing" or "I continued coding and read datasheets" -- and stop at that, without being informative.  That is usually a sign of either busy work or not spending time.  You should then remind them to always be more descriptive and informative, tell you their thinking process, and what they have learned.  Most mentors can point out problems in their approaches.  It is important to give students feedback on a regular basis.  Otherwise, students can easily waste a few weeks if nobody tracks their progress.

Q:  Should I give grades individually or as a team?

A:  If at all possible, please grade the students individually.  This is because in many cases some students clearly perform much better than others and clearly deserve a better grade.  However, other times a very technically savvy "team captain" may want to take over the whole project, even if other members want to do their part.  In that case, you'll want to talk to that captain that it is all about team work and that you will grade them more as a team.

Q: I thought the students also attend the Fall Design Review, Winter Design Review, etc and give presentations to external evaluators.  How will these presentations count towards their grades?

A: They will not count.  The FDR or WDR events are sponsored by the Dean's office.  We have been good citizens and opted in, but there is nothing that obliges anyone to attend these events.  You are not required to count their participation in such events as part of their grades.

Timing

Q: I'd love to mentor a team!  But Fall quarter is not a good time for me to mentor a project...

A: Starting AY 2016-7, we'll (try to) offer EECS 159A and CSE 181A in not only Fall quarter but in at least one other quarter, too.  This means a project will not need to be aligned with the Fall quarter but practically any quarter you want.  This will give both faculty and students more flexibility.

Here are some possible combinations: