Managing Undergraduate Research – Lessons Learned

Dave Musicant

Carleton College

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Who Am I? Assoc Prof at Carleton College

Liberal arts: 1900 students ~15 CS majors/year

Teaching: AI, DB, DM, PL, CS 1 & 2

My research: Machine learning and data mining Have advised 26 students, 12 projects Currently: Enchilada

Environmental Chemistry Through Intelligent Atmospheric Data Analysis

Heavy debt to SIGCSE 2001

Managing Undergraduate CS Research

James W. McGuffee, St. Edward’s University Herbert L. Dershem, Hope College Linda Lankewicz, The University of the South Gary Lewandowski, Xavier University Dian Lopez, University of Minnesota - Morris Oberta A. Slotterbeck, Hiram College

My criteria for selecting students

Individual Smart Quick learners Self-motivators

Group Balanced levels among them Can work well with me and others

Why groups? Support My time Community

Finding the right projects

They know... how to program, a bit some basic algorithms

They don’t know... nuances of my field enough math good software design my tools

Programming projects work best... but can’t publish just programming

The pace is going to be SLOW Snail factors

Other demands Procrastination Learning it all for first time

What helps? Signup for a year Meet often Email task lists

Bug tracking software Partners Reward per hour ($)

Watch their egos

Research can go wrong Students blame themselves ... or just don’t get rewards of success

Positive reinforcement important Often

Students’ original ideas Allow to pursue?

Evaluation No grades Discussion good