BSOE Graduate Student Newsletter
Announcements
Resources for Remote/Online Teaching - For Graduate Students
from the Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning (CITL) and Online Education
As we start up this Fall quarter and new academic year, we want to make sure you know there are a lot of resources available to support you in your roles as educators, whether you're working as a TA or GSI.
MONTHLY NEWSLETTER
ONLINE GUIDES & RESOURCES
Trauma-Informed Teaching Strategies: A guide co-created by graduate student educators and the CARE office with strategies for teaching remotely with a trauma-informed lens during times of crisis.
Antiracist Teaching Practices: An introduction to the foundations of antiracist teaching, with further resources for decolonizing the curriculum, creating more equitable learning environments, and pursuing further personal reflection.
WORKSHOPS & ONE-ON-ONE SUPPORT
Workshops
CITL and Online Education are offering workshops on a variety of topics related to teaching in our current moment, including:
- Teaching with Zoom
- Getting Started in Canvas
- Introductions to YuJa, Gradescope, and Hypothesis
- Supporting Student Resilience & Trauma-Informed Teaching Strategies
- Supporting Student Learning in Remote Environments
- Facilitating Timely Conversations about Race & Racism (hosted by the Office for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and CITL)
- Remote Assessments & Academic Integrity
- ...and more
You can register for workshops at the "Get Help" page on the Keep Teaching website, under the subheading "Workshops."
Individualized Support
- Online Education Slack: Join this digital space to ask questions and get answers about remote/online teaching.
- Online Education Drop-in Hours: For questions related to remote/online instruction, especially questions related to navigating Zoom, Canvas, YuJa, and more, drop in to Online Ed's open virtual office hours at 2:00-3:00 on weekdays. (Zoom link here)
- CITL Consultations: We're available by appointment to discuss your questions related to teaching practices and course/assessment design. Email CITL at citl@ucsc.edu to schedule a virtual meeting.
- Canvas Readiness Checks: If you're an instructor of record and would like someone to check your course in Canvas to make sure everything is working correctly, request a course readiness check with an email to online@ucsc.edu.
We are accepting Teaching Assistant (TA) applications/preference forms for the Spring 2021 quarter. To be considered, you must submit the TA form by Monday, February 1, 2021 by 11:59pm PST.
For the TA Application/Preference form and detailed information regarding TAships please see:
You can select up to 7 preferences and they can be from any of the BSOE departments. However, please note - departments will give priority to students in their own department so select wisely.
Please review this link for an unofficial course listing for Spring 2021 (dates/times may change). Before listing a course as a preference to TA, please check with course listing to make sure there will be no time conflict between your courses and the course you would like to TA. Please access the document using your @UCSC email address.
New Grads please note the following: If you were guaranteed a TAship as part of your admission offer, please complete the application/preference form found on the websites listed above. Only include courses from the department you were admitted to as courses in other departments are not guaranteed.
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If you do not hear from our office by February 19, 2021, you can assume that you were not selected and we encourage you to apply again for Fall 2021.
We are only accepting applications for Spring 2021. Please do not submit an application for a future quarter - it will be discarded.
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Basic Eligibility:
1. Full-time graduate student enrollment (10+ units).
2. Unfunded, has not been offered or accepted another TA, GSI (TF or Assoc-In), or GSR position already for the same quarter.
3. Does not have other employment that would require exception for >50% employment.
4. For international students - meet at least one of the following minimum requirements used to measure English fluency to determine eligibility for TAships:
- 89 overall and 26+ on the speaking portion of the internet-based TOEFL, or 8+ overall for IELTS;
- 71+ on the Versant exam;
- Successful completion of LAAD 210 or the Grad Prep Program, if required; or
- Waiver on file for exemption from language exam (this does not include TOEFL waiver for admission purposes).
- Unfortunately, if you do not meet any of the minimum requirements, we are unable to consider you for the current openings.
2021 CCC Registry Virtual Career Event for graduate students and any others who are interested in jobs with the California Community College system. The virtual event will run for four weeks and includes all jobs at the CCC’s, not just faculty. We will also have several informative workshops available.
Flyer: CCCReg2021%20Flyers.pdf
Graduate Students:
An important opportunity has arisen to contribute to efforts to diversify the
graduate student population in Computer Science & Engineering while getting paid!
Some of you may be aware
of the Cal-Bridge program ( https://www.cpp.edu/calbridge/ ), which knits together
Physics and Astronomy and now Computer Science departments
in the California Community Colleges, and the Cal State and UC systems, to
identify promising students from diverse backgrounds and bring them into strong
mentoring and professional development settings, and then help them get into
Ph.D. programs. A number of these "Cal-Bridge Scholars" find themselves facing
challenges in specific courses, creating a need for tutoring. The Cal-Bridge
program is looking for graduate students that would be interested in joining
a pool of paid tutors that could be called upon when need arises. Tutoring pays $30-40 per hour depending on tutor qualifications.
We hope you will consider this opportunity to engage and contribute to
this promising program. More than ever, drawing the full community together
in support of diversity and inclusion in our field is of paramount importance,
and contributions to these efforts are increasingly recognized as central to the
health of our field.
If you would be interested in joining the Cal-Bridge volunteer tutor pool,
please fill out the fields of this Google form ( https://forms.gle/rvmxuN1cin71QWNn6 )
Thanks for considering this, and we look forward to hearing from you!
Let me know if you have any questions.
Matthew Guthaus
UC Co-Director, Cal-Bridge
mrg@ucsc.edu
Whether you're writing your dissertation or working on a homework assignment, there are a number of writing support resources available to you as a UCSC graduate student. For a full list of these resources, please check out the Graduate Division's website.
Students can access our upcoming events on the Career Success student event calendar or Handshake! We will continue to partner with Handshake to host our virtual career fairs.
For students who need help with job applications, we are offering written resume and cover letter feedback. Click here for more information: https://careers.ucsc.edu/student/coaching/drop-in-advising.html
We will continue to send our weekly undergraduate, graduate and jobs newsletters throughout the quarter. If you are hosting a program related to career development and would like it to be featured in the newsletter, please submit the information here.
Link to infographic: ay-infographic_47932088_1.pdf
The Research Center for the Americas is pleased to announce Winter webinars and Call for Application for graduate students.
(1) Pre-Recorded Webinars by The Professor is In - Register by Feb. 1st
These pre-recorded webinars are being offered by The Professor Is In and are being made available to UCSC graduate students only in any Division. Please register by February 1, 2021 to access links to these pre-recorded webinars. The topics include the following:
- Talking Mental Health in the Academy, in a Pandemic
- What Grad Students Need To Hear
- For Grad Students Only: Turning Your Ph.D. Into a Job
- Women and the Academic Career: What Works, What Doesn’t
(2) Dissertation Writing Support with Heartful Editor - Apply by Feb. 15th.
The Research Center for the Americas and the Latin American and Latino Studies Department are delighted to be partnering with Heartful Editor, a professional copyediting service, to sponsor at least five graduate students writing dissertations in the fields of Chicanx/Latinx Studies and/or Latin American Studies. Selected students will work with Heartful Editor to have one dissertation chapter (35-45 pages) professionally copyedited in Spring 2021. Any graduate student in good academic standing writing a dissertation that is aligned with the scholarship of the RCA and LALS is eligible and encouraged to apply.
(3) Tinker Foundation Pre-Dissertation Travel Grants - Apply by March 2nd.
In partnership with the Latin American and Latino Studies Department of UC Santa Cruz, we are pleased to announce the availability of research grants for travel to Latin America. This is the second and final year of this grant. These grants are made possible by the Tinker Foundation with additional support from the UC Santa Cruz Foundation's Board Opportunity Fund, Graduate Division, and the Office of Research. These awards are open to students with good academic standing in all graduate degree programs. These grants are for travel and field-related expenses for brief periods (a minimum of two weeks) of pre-dissertation field research in Latin America. Please refer to the RCA's Tinker webpage for information about this grant. We will be hosting a virtual information session on Wednesday February 10, 2021 at 1pm. You can register for the information session HERE.
Please note the following upcoming university deadlines, and ALWAYS check the Academic and Administrative Calendar for important dates and deadlines. Bookmark this year's Academic and Administrative Calendar and refer to it regularly.
Friday, January 15th Deadline To Apply For Degree
If you plan to complete your MS or PhD this quarter (Winter 2021), the degree application needs to be submitted to BSOE Graduate Advising office. This is also the deadline to pay for filing fee, if applicable. More guidelines for graduating are available on the Graduate Advising website.
Monday, January 25th Deadline to Add/Drop/Swap Courses
This is your last day to add, drop and swap courses. Please remember there is a 48 business hour turnaround for any enrollment codes once received. You will not be able to drop or withdraw from courses after this deadline has passed. More information on how to add, drop, and swap classes is available on the registrar website.
Monday, January 25th Grade Option
This is your last day to change your grading option for any courses you are enrolled in.
IMPORTANT: The system defaults to Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory grading. Instructions for how to change your grading option to letter grades (ABC) can be found here.
Tuesday, February 16th Late Add with Fee Deadline
The Add by Petition form requires the signatures of both the instructor and the department adviser and needs to be submitted to the Office of the Registrar.
Friday, March 19th Leave of Absence Winter Deadline
Deadline to petition for leave of absence (LOA) beginning the next quarter. LOA forms must be approved/signed by your faculty advisor and submitted to the BSOE Graduate Advising office by the posted deadline. LOA application forms are available on the Graduate Division's website.
For the second year, eBay is running a ML Challenge. The prize of the competition is an internship at eBay for the winning student or team.
The announcement attached describes the competition in more detail, but in a nutshell:
The question we invite you to address is how to identify two or more listings as being for the same product by putting them into the same group. We call this Purchase Level Equivalency (PLE). That is, if a buyer purchased two items from two different listings in a single group, they would assess that they had obtained two instances of the same product.
The competition started August 24. It is being hosted on EvalAI.
Please feel free to ask any questions. We have set up a mailbox dedicated to this competition at MLChallenge@ebay.com.
Events
Event Date and Time: 01/21/2021 3:00 pm
Event Location: Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/91976226038?pwd=bUY1d2F6eGUxS1BRanFybWlNelBWZz09
Abstract: Interactive error correcting codes are codes that encode a two party communication protocol to an error-resilient protocol that succeeds even if a constant fraction of the communicated symbols are adversarially corrupted, at the cost of increasing the communication by a constant factor. The fraction of corruptions that such codes can protect against is called the error resilience. Several recent results have shown that drastic gains in the error resilience can be achieved by using interactive codes that implement "feedback". I shall be reviewing (at least) two of these works in this talk.
Based on joint works with Klim Efremenko and Gillat Kol.
Bio: Raghuvansh R. Saxena is a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University. Prior to joining Princeton, he received his Bachelor of Technology degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Delhi. Raghuvansh has a wide interest in theoretical computer science, especially in developing new complexity theoretic and coding tools for emergent problems in several areas of computing, such as distributed communication and electronic markets. Many of his works are driven by his search for "efficient" and "practical" solutions to modern day problems. Some of the honors that he has received are the Microsoft PhD Fellowship and a Siebel Scholarship in 2019 and the President's Gold Medal (IIT Delhi) in 2016.
Contact: Sabyasachi (Sabya) Basu at sbasu3@ucsc.edu
Event Date and Time: 01/20/2021 6:30 pm
Event Location: Contact Alin Wakefield (amwakefield@ucdavis.edu) for Zoom Details
UC Davis has partnered with University of Maryland, Baltimore County (an
Honors University in Maryland) to offer the NSF-funded PROMISE Engineering
Institute <https://promiseengineeringinstitute.com/>. The aim of this
program is to *mentor and support* *underrepresented *graduate students,
postdoctoral researchers, and junior Faculty members as they consider
and/or prepare for academic careers. The program further aims to provide
participants with comprehensive *research and pedagogical skills*. More
importantly, we aim to create a *friendly and connected* student community.
The Lead PI for the project is Renetta Tull, UC Davis Vice Chancellor for
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
25 MS and PhD students from UC Davis joined us for a successful kickoff
meeting in December. *Our goal is to expand participation in this program
systemwide. *We are now eager to invite interested graduate students from
our sister UC campuses to join this program! Our next meeting will be
on *January
20 at 6:30pm pacific*. We will host a panel of current UC Davis faculty who
will share their insights about pursuing academic or research careers.
*ASEE Future Faculty Institute*
As a further benefit of participating, we invite students to participate in
a, FREE (covered by our grant), nationally-recognized professional
development program facilitated by the American Society of Engineering
Education (ASEE). In partnership with UC Davis & UMBC, ASEE will make space
available in their Future Faculty Institute. Additionally, those who
register will receive a FREE ASEE student membership. Please note the
Future Faculty Institute includes 3 offerings with limited seating of 25
per offering)*. See attached for registration.* To register, simply click
on the link with the corresponding time and topic as described in the
attached flyer. Registration will close one week before each institute
begins. This is being provided at NO cost to students
This invitation is open to all University of California engineering
graduate students!
Jobs
We're recruiting for our 2021 Congressional Innovation Scholars Program, placing technologists to serve as tech policy advisors to top Members of Congress (offices like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and the House Judiciary Committee).
The program pays a $60,000-annual equivalent stipend and other benefits and fellows have done incredible work like:
- Working on the House Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust Subcommittee report on Big Tech
- Passing the OPEN Government Data Act into law
- Securing changes to defense procurement policy to allow startups to better compete with big government contractors
We’re recruiting through 2/5/21 and there's more information here: https://www.techcongress.io/congressional-innovation-scholars-program
We have two upcoming calls about the program for more information: https://bit.ly/congressionalinnovationscholars
We’d like to invite you to join us for our upcoming virtual event series this January! Tune in to any of the sessions below to hear from Googlers, some sessions will feature live Q&A! Click the links below to register for the event(s) and add them to your calendar.
Life as a Google PhD Technical Intern
Tuesday, January 12th @ 4:00PM PT / 6:00PM CT / 7:00PM ET
We recently sat down with 3 former PhD interns at Google to learn more about the technical PhD intern application process and their internship experiences in Software Engineering, Research, and Data Science. Register to hear that conversation and learn more about Google’s recruitment process for these PhD internships.
Google recruiters will also be available to answer your questions live via chat!
Google Employee Resource Groups Spotlight Series
Jan 25th - 29th @ 4:00PM PT / 6:00PM CT / 7:00PM ET
Here at Google, in building a workforce that is more representative of our users and a workplace that creates a sense of belonging for everyone, we are building a better Google - together. Employee Resource Groups are a key piece to building our culture. Currently, we have 16 Employee Resource Groups (ERG's) with over 35,000 members globally! We're excited to highlight 5 of these groups - The Black Googler Network (BGN), The Hispanic/ LatinX Googler Network (HOLA), The Women Googler Network (Women@), The Google American Indian Network (GAIN), and The Disability Alliance Network (DA).
Starting on Jan 25th we’ll be posting a video each day throughout the week where we’ll hear from members of these Employee Resource Groups as they share how they work together to make an impact within their communities and on Google's overall culture.
For additional events and resources please visit CareersonAir.withGoogle.com.
We are hiring in computer systems this year. Areas of interest include, in the broadest
possible sense:
-Systems, including Data Systems (https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/17701)
-Distributed Systems (https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/17769)
Review of applications will begin on January 12, 2021, however the
positions will remain open until January 28, 2021.
January 22 – March 12, 2021 & April 9 – May 7, 2021
Friday’s from 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM (PST)
Register TODAY
This High-Performance Computing (HPC) User Training series is open to all who are interested in advancing their knowledge and experience on HPC systems and concepts. The program was originally developed in 2019 to support UCSD undergraduates interested in furthering their knowledge of HPC concepts and hands-on training, as well as, building a team interested in competing in the annual Student Cluster Competition held at the annual International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC). This program continues to focus efforts on building a team to complete in the annual SC Student Cluster Competition but also extends to any who are interested in attending.
Learn more about the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)
Additional SDSC training for Advanced Computing Users
Questions regarding our events, please contact us at events@sdsc.edu.
UC Center Sacramento is pleased to announce the call for the Presidential Graduate Opportunities for Leadership Development (GOLD) Fellowship! This fellowship will offer a doctoral-level graduate student in any academic discipline an opportunity to spend a quarter, semester, or summer term in resident or virtually in Sacramento for the purpose of conducting public policy research. Applications will be accepted until midnight Pacific time on Monday, February 1, 2021.
Further information is available at http://bit.ly/uccsgold or on the UCCS website (uccs.ucdavis.edu).
FLYER: GOLD%20FELLOWSHIP%20Flyer%202021.pdf
The College of Engineering announces four open tenure-track positions, at any level (assistant/associate/full), in the Department of Computer Science. Applications are encouraged from candidates with a strong background in any current or emerging area that will align with one of our department’s disciplinary interests in:
ML, NLP and Vision: https://recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF03850
Quantum Computing: https://recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF03853
Theoretical Computer Science: https://recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF03838
We seek candidates with potential or demonstrated excellence in research that complements or extends existing research strengths in the Department of Computer Science and elsewhere on campus, and the potential to attract extramural funding. We also seek evidence of, or potential for, commitment to the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion for historically underrepresented and marginalized student communities. Finally, we seek evidence of a commitment to excellence in teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels.
For fullest consideration applications must be completed by December 15, 2020; there is some possibility that applications that arrive as late as January 20, 2021 might be considered. Application packages should be submitted online at https://cs.ucdavis.edu/jobopportunities.
Please see the announcement here: JointAdShort.pdf
