Newsletter for 11/19/2023

New Announcements

Announcements

Fall 2023 University Deadlines

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.

Thursday, October 12th Graduate Student Enrollment & Fee Payment

If you have not paid your registration fees or enrolled in the minimum number of courses by this date, you will be charged a $50 late fee.  Please keep in mind that pending aid (Fellowship, GSR, TA) will not credit your account until you are enrolled in at least 5 units. 

Thursday, October 12th Graduate Student Part-Time Status

This is the deadline to apply for reduced course load and fees.  Part-time status forms must be approved/signed by your faculty advisor and submitted to the BSOE Graduate Advising office by the posted deadline.  Part-time application forms are available on the Graduate Division's website.

Thursday, October 12th Deadline To Apply For Degree
If you plan to complete your MS or PhD this quarter (Fall 2023), 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.

Wednesday, October 18th Deadline to Add/Drop/Swap Courses
This is your last day to add, drop and swap courses.  You will not be able to drop or withdraw from courses after this deadline has passed. If you are enrolled in a placeholder class, you MUST drop it by this deadline. More information on how to add, drop, and swap classes is available on the registrar website.

Sunday, December 1st 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.

Sunday, December 1st 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.

Thursday, August 10th Leave of Absence Fall 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. 

Winter 2024 University Deadlines

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.

Thursday, January 18th Graduate Student Enrollment & Fee Payment

If you have not paid your registration fees or enrolled in the minimum number of courses by this date, you will be charged a $50 late fee.  Please keep in mind that pending aid (Fellowship, GSR, TA) will not credit your account until you are enrolled in at least 5 units. 

Thursday, January 18th Graduate Student Part-Time Status

This is the deadline to apply for reduced course load and fees.  Part-time status forms must be approved/signed by your faculty advisor and submitted to the BSOE Graduate Advising office by the posted deadline.  Part-time application forms are available on the Graduate Division's website.

Thursday, January 8th Deadline To Apply For Degree

If you plan to complete your MS or PhD this quarter (Winter 2024), 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 29th Deadline to Add/Drop/Swap Courses

This is your last day to add, drop and swap courses.  You will not be able to drop or withdraw from courses after this deadline has passed. If you are enrolled in a placeholder class, you MUST drop it by this deadline. More information on how to add, drop, and swap classes is available on the registrar website.

Friday, March 8th 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.

Friday, March 8th 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.

Wednesday, November 8th 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. 

Graduate Dean's Research Travel Grant

Fall 2023 Graduate Dean's Research Travel Grant Accepting Application

The Graduate Dean's Research Travel Grant is designed to assist members of the graduate student community with travel to:

• perform thesis-related research
• present original work at conferences
• attend workshops, professional development, or programs pertinent to their graduate projects

The total amount of funds available and the number of applications varies each quarter and each application period is treated as an independent award process. The process is tailored to approve the maximum number of applications each quarter while maintaining a useful award size.

For students who are planning to apply for this grant, we highly recommend treating it as a reimbursement as opposed to using it to pay for your travel costs upfront. This is because the adjudication and subsequent processing time for the awards may take up to 2-3 months in total. We also cannot guarantee that every application will be funded.

Please Complete the online application to apply. Applications must be COMPLETE and CORECT to be considered.

Priority is given to applicants seeking funds in the following order: 1) research related travel, 2) presenting at a conference, 3) funds for professional development, or 4) attending a conference. You may also write in the reason for your request for a travel grant.

The amount of the award given, if granted, will depend on the total number of qualifying applications received and the overall number of grants to be awarded. Typically, the maximum amount awarded per person is $500. The Graduate Division continually seeks additional funding to increase the overall amount of travel and research award funds. Additional funding for this round of applications has been provided by the Graduate Student Commons.

If your application is successful, students will have the option of receiving funds via 1) an amazon eGift Card 2) a physical Visa gift card, or 3) fellowship payment (considered taxable income).

**Application Deadline: December 4, 2023

Equity-Minded Mentoring for Graduate Students

Equity-Minded Mentoring for Graduate Students
TLC Graduate Certificate Program - Winter 2024

Five Tuesdays in Winter at 9:00 - 11:00 am: January 16, January 30, February 13, February 27, and March 12

Are you a graduate student in a STEM or Social Sciences field who is interested in developing mentorship skills to build inclusive, supportive research environments? If so, consider participating in TLC’s Equity-Minded Mentoring for Graduate Students Certificate Program. 

In this program, you and your colleagues will meet bi-weekly (5 sessions total) during the Winter quarter to explore and practice evidence-based strategies that have been shown to support underrepresented students in research environments, particularly those from racially minoritized groups, including:

• Establishing and co-creating clear expectations for the mentoring relationship;

• Communicating effectively and with attention to how different life experiences, identities, and positions of power shape participation in and experiences in STEM and Social Sciences fields;

• Promoting students’ sense of belonging and academic identities.

In between our bi-weekly meetings, you will have the opportunity to engage with brief readings and draft your own mentoring philosophy. 

Join us if you’d like to be part of a new generation of researchers committed to changing research culture through equity-minded mentoring! Register here between November 13 and December 11 (registration closes at 5:00 pm on the 11th). A waitlist will automatically open up at the same registration link after 25 people have registered. We will contact registrants and waitlisters about your status soon after open registration closes on December 11.

For more information, visit: https://tlc.ucsc.edu/programs/equity-minded-mentoring-certificate-program/ 

NCFDD Newsletter

NCFDD Membership - FREE for graduate students!

BE Grads, you're now in a critically important stage of your academic career where you're learning how to become an excellent teacher and rigorous researcher in your discipline. NCFDD provides on-demand access to the mentoring, tools, and support needed to be successful in the Academy. They focus on four key areas that help achieve extraordinary writing and research productivity while maintaining a full and healthy life off campus: strategic planning, explosive productivity, healthy relationships, and work-life balance. 

Becoming an NCFDD member you will have access to a plethora of workshops, programs, webinars, multi-week courses, and writing support. As an NCFDD member, you will be able to build a network of mentors, sponsors, and collaborators. This is an amazing opportunity to support you through this stage of your professional life. 

Visit NCFDD to learn more about membership and to join their newsletter. 

UCSA & UCGPC Optional Fees

Did you know that you can opt out of the UCSA or UCGPC Association charges by submitting an online form before the third-week deadline of the affected quarter? If you opted out and wish to opt-in, you will need to complete the same form. Follow the navigation below to access the form in your MyUCSC portal.

Instructions:
MyUCSC >> Graduate Student eForms tile >> UCGPC Registration Fee Opt-out link in the left navigation

Reminder: After the third week of instruction (the Add/Drop/Swap Deadline on the Academic and Administrative Calendar) you are no longer able to opt out of the fees for the current quarter, but you may opt out for future quarters. A refund of current fees may be directed to the UCSA or UCGPC.

Teaching & Learning Center - Graduate Pedagogy Fellows 2023-24

The Teaching & Learning Center (TLC) invites applications for the Graduate Pedagogy Fellows program, which supports the development of peer leaders in higher education pedagogy with a focus on the significance of the Teaching Assistant (TA) role in supporting equitable outcomes in student learning.

TLC Graduate Pedagogy Fellows are known for:

• advancing a more equitable culture of teaching and learning on our campus,

• creating more robust resources and support systems for peer graduate student educators in their teaching fields, and

• strengthening their own professional development in teaching and mentoring.

Program Details:
In Winter 2024, Fellows participate in a 10-week course, hosted by TLC, that meets weekly on Thursdays at 2:00 - 4:00pm.

• The Winter course will be held in-person in TLC’s teaching space in the McHenry Library.

• There will be a remote attendance option for grads with accessibility needs.

• Participants will be asked to engage in asynchronous activities between sessions.

In Spring 2024, Fellows collaborate with TLC and their home departments to develop or refine an interactive, discipline-specific pedagogy program for graduate students in their departments. 

• Depending on departmental needs, Fellows may design a pedagogy course, workshop series, or peer mentorship program, or a combination.

• Fellows also prepare to serve as facilitators of the professional development opportunities they create, with the objective of leading those programs in the following academic year (i.e. in 2024-25). 

• To support this process, Fellows participate in two group workshops and two individual meetings with a TLC mentor in Spring 2024; the modalities and times of each of these commitments will be determined based on Fellows’ Spring schedules.

Fellowship Award & Recognition:

• Each selected Fellow receives a $2,000 fellowship award.

• Upon completion of the program, each Fellow receives a professional development certificate, issued by TLC, to indicate their leadership in utilizing and promoting effective and equitable teaching strategies in higher education classrooms.

• Fellows also gain recognition from their academic departments for their leadership as they work together to plan pedagogical professional development for graduate students in the following academic year.

How to Apply:
Each department with a graduate program is invited to solicit applications from interested graduate students, and to select from that pool one candidate to be considered for the 2023-24 cohort of Graduate Pedagogy Fellows. From among this group of departmental nominees, TLC will select approximately 20 Fellows. All interested graduate students are encouraged to apply to their departments for consideration. If needed, TLC will give priority to candidates from departments that have not recently participated in this program.

To apply to the Graduate Pedagogy Fellows program, prepare and submit the application materials listed in the GPF 2024 Call for Applications to your department by Wednesday, November 8. We recommend that you check in with department staff to confirm your department’s internal application deadline and submission process.

Each department will review applications and pass along the application of their selected departmental nominee to TLC by Tuesday, November 21. TLC will notify applicants and their departments of acceptance by Wednesday, December 6.

**For more information, please visit: https://tlc.ucsc.edu/programs/graduate-pedagogy-fellows/ 

ETC gRAD

ETC gRAD

This BE group is led by graduate students who support teaching, learning, and community in engineering. It is a great opportunity for grad students to meet others who care about teaching outside of classes and research, and a nice atmosphere for reflection and support. 

ETC gRAD focuses energy on ideas and projects that will improve learning for undergraduates (and yourselves!) and improve students' overall experience in Baskin Engineering through community building. 

Meetings are on Wednesdays, at 5:00 PM in BE 330. Dinner is provided by Campus Hospitality. 

Dates:
October 18th
November 1st
November 15th
November 29th

Grad students, please RSVP using this link so there is enough food! 

This group has some important learning science projects underway, energy for discovering ways to support students to learn in engineering, and momentum for creating a more cohesive and supportive graduate community in Baskin!

Excite the Dream Program at ODU

Excite the Dream - Old Dominion Univeristy

The Office of Faculty Diversity and Retention at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, is now accepting applications for the Excite the Dream Program that will take place in person on January 24 & 25, 2024. 

The Excite the Dream Program at ODU is designed for underrepresented scholars with dreams of pursuing a career in academia. This program provides an opportunity to participate in a two-day experience designed to cultivate skills in teaching, research, grant writing, and innovative use of technology. Scholars will have the opportunity to tour ODU's campus, meet with the Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs, present their research to current faculty, department chairs, and deans, and receive scholarly advice from our award-winning faculty. 

To qualify for this program, one must be from an underrepresented population and have completed their terminal degree by September 2024. 

Application Deadline: November 19, 2023
For more information about the program and to apply, please visit: https://www.odu.edu/acadaffairs/faculty-diversity/excite-the-dream

Events

UCSC Student Climate Conference

The UCSC Climate Coalition would like to invite all UCSC students, staff, and faculty to the Second Annual UCSC Student Climate Conference, Sat Nov 18 (9-4) at UCSC's Rachel Carson College.  We are accepting from any UC graduate student or undergraduate papers, academic posters, and art related to environmental justice, climate vulnerability, or social action -- details at bit.ly/CliCon23CALL.  Note the Nov 1 deadline for submissions and the Nov 15 deadline for registering to attend. The event is free and open to the public, with breakfast and lunch included!

The conference title this year is "Shifting the Story: Climate Vulnerability, Social Solidarity, Environmental Justice," and our keynote speaker is Ashia Ajani, from UCB.

Faculty, we'd love your help in spreading the word, maybe using the poster we've attached which has QR codes that link to our Call, the registration page, and (what will eventually be) our program. Please encourage your students to submit papers, art...or just attend!

Hope to see you on Nov 18 -- please come!

NVIDIA on Infrastructure

NVIDIA on Infrastructure -- Enabling the Backbone for AI and High-Performance Computing Environments and Hardware

High-Performance Computing Environments and the hardware used in them continue to evolve rapidly.  The key to keeping up with the scale of change is to have an incredible software infrastructure.  The Hardware Infrastructure organization develops critical workflows to enable engineers across the company to achieve the impossible - from training the newest deep learning models in data centers with thousands of GPUs to building the next-generation chip architectures.

One particularly challenging problem is to identify and resolve DL model performance issues at scale.  Performance Monitors are built into GPU hardware and are critical to analyzing and improving the performance of applications.  While the underlying hardware is the same, the approach to acquiring and analyzing the performance data is vastly different based on the scale.  We will discuss how we enable analysis from thousands of GPUs in a cluster, down to a single GPU, and the supporting infrastructure that is required to ensure we can train the next great DL model.

Please join us to hear not only about this but other exciting opportunities at NVIDIA.

Speakers
Sharon Clay, VP of Hardware Infrastructure
Robert Hero, Senior Manager GPU Cluster Bringup
Nicole Magnus, Senior Technical Program Manager

Sharon Clay is VP of the Hardware Infrastructure organization and has been with Nvidia for 23 years,
previously working at SGI.  She received her master's from UCSC in 1992 focused on Neural Networks and NLP.
Sharon's vision and passion for automating processes led to the formation of the infrastructure group within Nvidia.
The organization is now comprised of hundreds of engineers whose expertise spans all disciplines of computer science
and is innovating every aspect of NVidia HW and SW engineering.

Robert Hero is a Senior Manager within the Hardware Infrastructure organization, currently focused on building GPU
Datacenters and supporting tools for enabling NVIDiai's LLM training. Before that Robert built tools to enable
predictions of application performance through the chip design process, closely working with architects, hardware, and
software engineers across the company.   He has been with Nvidia for 13 years and had done several NVidia internships
before that.  Robert received his master's from UCSC in 2006 focused on Volume Visualization of Unstructured Data.

Nicole Magnus is a Senior Technical Program Manager with the Hardware Infrastructure organization focused on innovating
the component integration and CI/CD used by Nvidia's HW and SW teams. The Component Integration team creates tools that
enable the entire company to collaborate efficiently with "Speed of Light" code verifications and submissions. She has
been with Nvidia for 3 years. Nicole received her bachelor's in Computer Engineering from Prairie View A&M University in 1993.

Jobs

The Rockefeller University - Fellowship Position

Postdoctoral Fellowships

The Center for Studies in Physics and Biology expects to have a small number of postdoctoral fellowships available for appointments in September 2024. They are seeking theoretical physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists with a demonstrable interest in the interface between their discipline and biology. The Fellows are to be at that stage of career as to function as independent members of the Center, free to work alone or in collaboration with any members of The Rockefeller University faculty. The appointment is nominally for two years with a third year implicit, but based on mutual satisfaction. 

Applicants should submit curriculum vitae, including a list of publications, a research statement and three letters of recommendation by November 15, 2023. The contents of all letters should be addressed to: 
Director, Center for Studies in Physics and Biology, The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, Box 75, New York, NY 10065-6399

Applications should be e-mailed in PDF format to: leem@rockefeller.edu 

Baylor University Computer Science Department Positions

Baylor's CS department is growing, and they have several new programs: PhD in CS, online MS in CS, data science major, and cybersecurity concentration. They also have newly built cybersecurity facilities. The wonderful faculty and staff make it a great place to work! 

The Computer Science Department at Baylor University is hiring five (5) additional faculty members this year to support their research and teaching. All job descriptions and application forms are available here: https://www.ecs.baylor.edu/research-departments/computer-science/open-computer-science-positions

All five positions start in Fall 2024:
1. Tenure/Tenure-track Professor in Computer Science
2. Tenure/Tenure-track Professor in Data Science
3. Tenure/Tenure-track Professor in Software Engineering
4. Tenure/Tenure-track Professor in Cybersecurity
5. Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Data Science

The tenure/tenure-track positions each require a Ph.D. in the designated field or a closely related field. The lecture/senior lecturer position requires an M.S. or higher in data science, computer science, or a closely related field. 

For any questions please contact CSSearch@baylor.edu. 

SJSU - Tenure Track Faculty Position

San Jose State University, San Jose, California has a tenure track faculty position at the rank of Assistant Professor

You can learn more about the position here!