CSC 600 is a required course designed to introduce new graduate students to two important topic areas:

1. Information about the graduate program, the department, and the university that is relevant to all incoming graduate students



2. A description of research projects being conducted by faculty in the Computer Science department

Students will learn useful information about the graduate program in computer science, the department, our computer facilities, and the university library system. Students will also meet the people responsible for managing these resources.

The remaining lectures will involve presentations by department faculty. Each faculty member will introduce themselves, discuss their research interests, and describe one or more research projects they are conducting. This is an excellent opportunity for students to learn about ongoing work in the department in preparation for choosing thesis topics, supervisors, or graduate courses.

Attendance

Although there will be no assignments or tests, attendance in CSC 600 is MANDATORY. Any student missing more than two lectures without a valid university excuse will not receive credit for the course, and will be required to re-register during the next fall semester.

Attendance will be taken through a summary sheet, where students are asked to fill in short, simple answers to questions about each week's presentation. Summary sheets will be handed out at the beginning of each class, and collected at the end of the lecture. Receipt of a summary sheet with acceptable answers will be used to confirm a student's attendance for the given class.

Note: Attending less than 80% of a lecture will not be counted as "fully attending the lecture." Because of this, we will provide summary sheets up to 10 minutes after a lecture begins (i.e., until 2:30pm). After that, summary sheets will no longer be available for that lecture.

Updating Your EMail Address

For all students, your Unity email address is your official university address. You are responsible for monitoring email sent to this address. In particular, course-related email messages are automatically sent to your Unity email account.

It is possible to have Unity email forwarded to a different account. See this page for a link that describes how to do this, and for other important information about your university email account.

Computer Science Graduate Student Association

If you'd like to participate or learn more about the department's Graduate Student Association, they maintain a web page with information about current and future graduate student events.

Academic Integrity

All students at the university are expected to understand and agree to the university's code of student conduct. This document explains the various types of behaviour that are not allowed, including cheating, plagiarism, aiding and abetting, disorderly conduct, and so on.

For CSC 600, common examples of academic integrity violations include (but are not limited to):

• Claiming attendance for a class you did not fully attend
• Knowingly assisting another student to claim attendance for a class he or she did not fully attend
• Being disruptive during a lecture in a way that impacts the lecturer's ability to present material, or that impacts other students' ability to follow the lecture

Issues related to inability to attend a lecture can be discussed with me prior to the lecture. However, apart from university-allowed exceptions, we normally will not waive the attendance requirement. Examples of excuses that we do not allow include conflicts with other course work, conflicts with job-related commitments, and so on. The two allowable absences given to each student are meant to cover these types of unanticipated situations.

For confirmed cases of academic integrity violations, in addition to any university-mandated sanctions, students may also have their registration in CSC 600 restricted or cancelled.

Tentative Schedule

Below is the tentative schedule for topics and presenters. Please note where your lecture is located, for some lectures PhD students will attend special sessions in 3211 EB-II.