Daniel Amyot: Guidelines for Graduate Students Supervised

Version 1.1,  June 17th, 2004
(Based on Dr. Timothy C. Lethbridge's guidelines, version 1.1. With all my thanks.)

This document is designed to be read by prospective students, new students as well as ongoing students.

N.B. Bien que ce document ne soit pas encore disponible en français, il est certes envisageable de travailler et faire votre thèse en français avec moi si vous le désirez. Contactez-moi si vous avez des problèmes à comprendre le contenu de ce document.

These guidelines are provided so that everybody has an understanding of how I plan to work with graduate students as their supervisor. If you have questions, please don't hesitate to talk to me about them. Understanding the guidelines will hopefully help prevent various kinds of problems, including mismatches in interests.

My motivations as I work with graduate students are:
  1. To ensure that you, as a student, have the highest possible quality education, and
  2. To ensure that I, as a professor, get my research done effectively.
I also need to warn you up front about a couple of aspects of my academic career:

1. What kind of grad students am I looking for?

I can supervise students in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Systems Science.

If you want to join my group, then you should have most of the qualities listed below. It is up to you to show your initiative and convince me that you have these qualities:

a) You show enthusiasm about at least one of the topics of my primary research which currently are
A list of (undergrad/COOP) projects is also available. Many can be transformed/extended into thesis topics.

b) You are eager (not just simply willing) to perform research that fits into my research plan. This includes working on specific subprojects that I have stated I will do in grant proposals, and following the methodology I propose. Note that, if somebody else is already doing a subproject, then it will no longer be available to you.

c) You show that you have your own ideas that fit in with and extend mine.

d) You communicate well with me. This primarily means you listen to and quickly understand my ideas and see my "vision" for the research. It also means you express your own ideas in a way that I find concise, clear and easy to understand.

e) You are eager to work with people in industry. This includes travelling to companies (e.g. Nortel, Mitel, KLOCwork, IBM/.Rational, EION, Telelogic, and others in the Ottawa area), performing a considerable amount of work in companies (e.g. one day a week), and collaborating on (often confidential) industrial projects.

f) You have an appropriate background in my research areas, and particularly in the area of your research topic. This does not just mean basic computer science, it also means knowledge at the senior undergraduate level of:
If you are missing one of these areas, then strong background in another area can make up for it provided you study the missing area early in your graduate studies and it isn't required before you can start basic work on your thesis. In general it may not possible for me to educate you in missing areas using directed studies courses because it may take too much of my time. Please consider these aspects seriously before contacting me.

g) You show a willingness to progress rapidly in your studies. In general, I will be reluctant to accept part-time students.

h) You have some industrial experience.

i) You have good grades (A) in programming and software engineering courses. Good skills in UML, XML, C++ and Java are a plus!

j) You demonstrate good writing skills. This does not eliminate people whose mother tongue language is not English or French.

k) You show initiative. For example, I expect that grad students will have read through all relevant material on my Web site (not just titles) before approaching me to be their supervisor.

l) You show good research skills: Among other things, this includes digging up material in the library without being asked, formulating good research plans, evaluating your research well, being critical of others, etc.

m) You are a team player. Most of my research is done in collaboration with other professors from the CSERG group (L. Logrippo, G. Bochmann, R. Probert, H. Ural, A. Williams, S. Somé, T. Lethbridge, A. Felty, I. Kiringa, and others) or from Carleton University (M. Woodside, D. Petriu, L. Briand, F. Bordeleau, J.-P. Corriveau, and others). One of them may become your co-supervisor if you are my Ph.D. student. Additionally, many group meetings and much collaboration with other students are to be expected.

2. How do I select grad students?

I select grad students based on the criteria listed above. I will never accept a grad student without interviewing them first and seeing samples of their work.

If I do not select you, it may have nothing to do with you as a person or your abilities; it might just be that I have no more spaces (regardless of whether I am funding them), that your interests and abilities do not match my needs (see above), that our communication styles and personalities do not match well, or that I am unable to evaluate you adequately.

I will never select a grad student who emails me randomly and expresses a non-specific interest in my work (actually, I may even not reply to generic requests). If you want to be my student, you should write something that convinces that all the points in the section above apply. You should also arrange to talk to me in person or by telephone. Note that I get many expressions of interest and don't have time to get back to everybody. If you are really serious about working with me, do not give up if I do not reply by e-mail right away. If you are not serious, please try to contact other professors.

Finally, just applying to the university and listing me as your proposed supervisor is insufficient.

3. How do I support grad students?

I sometime get funded for specific projects. If I support you, you have to do the work that was outlined in the proposal I wrote to obtain the money.

I will support (i.e. with money) you only if we agreed that I will do so when you /started/ the program. I will not normally entertain requests from unfunded students to start funding them. This is because I must plan my budget carefully.

Support is always subject to the availability of funds, and you must realize that the grants I receive are subject to renewal and variations, and can even be cut (especially in the absence of sufficient progress).

When you agree to be a grad student with me, I will only undertake to support you for the period of time that a grad student would normally take to complete their program (see below). Support beyond the initial period will only be considered if you have made good progress, yet the research has turned out to be more difficult than expected; and in my judgment it is not your fault that you are not finished.

Students with their own source of funding (e.g. scholarship) or without the need for funding are obviously more than welcome and will be given more flexibility.

Funding arrangements if you do other work:

I will allow you to do 1 TA (10 hours a week for a term) a year. In addition, I will also allow a PhD student to teach 1 course at just one time in their program. If you want to do any other work, then I will have to reduce the amount of support I give you, since you will not be able to do the work that the funding agency is paying me the money to have done.

Also, working more than the above amounts puts you at severe risk of delaying the completion of your program.

In the following situations, I will review of the money I give you, and possibly cease to fund you or reduce the funding:

Funding arrangements while taking courses:

At the beginning of your program while you are taking courses (or working on your comprehensive), it is normal not to be able to make significant progress on your thesis. If I fund you during this period (this might not always be possible) and you then quit without accomplishing the planned research, then I reserve the right to ask you to pay back the support money.

4. What will be the time-line of your research?

You will plan your thesis and develop an initial proposal and project plan in the first 4 months of your program.

You will monitor your plan and discuss it with me when changes are needed. Inevitably, changes will be needed as your research leads you in unexpected and interesting directions.

Note that Ph.D. students also have to develop a formal written thesis proposal that will be more in depth (see below).

Duration of Masters Degree:

A Master's degree should normally take about 20-24 months of full-time work. The national average is over 30 months, but I believe this is excessive. Excess time can be caused by such factors as a) a topic that is too uncertain or difficult, b) inadequate communication with the supervisor, and c) doing excessive outside work.

Duration of Ph.D. Degree

A PhD degree should normally take 4 to 4.5 years of full-time work. The national average is 4.5 years.

Courses

You and I should discuss all courses in which you plan to register. You should study the calendar and propose courses to me. I highly recommend the following:
I will also be looking for some of the following undergraduate courses (or equivalent) in your resume:

5. What is my style of supervision?

I like to meet with students about once every 10 to 20 days, especially after your coursework is complete. I will set aside a period every week for personal discussions with grad students - if you want to take some of this time, then let me know. If I have not met with you for a month, then I will ask to see you. My students will also be expected weekly group meetings (plus those specific to the projects in which they are involved).

I don't mind talking with you at other times, but I reserve the right to say no if I am to busy.

It is best for us to base our discussions on something you have written - so attempt to write something for every meeting, even if it is just a paragraph describing progress. These things you write for meetings can become part of your thesis.

How do you develop your ideas and how do we agree on a topic?

When you start work, either you or I will propose a research topic, and we will agree, in writing, about what you will do. If you want to change your topic I must agree. Remember that I need to get certain research done to fulfil the requirements of the funding agency.

I will give you orally and in writing any ideas I have about the topic (I will attempt to summarize these by email so we both have a written record). My ideas may be very concrete or abstract. It is up to you to decide if you are happy with the topic and the information I have given you. If you are not happy, you must seek clarifications and more brainstorming.

You will also get the opportunity to present your ideas regularly to the RDA/CSERG research groups and to get feedback from them.

6. What are the steps in research?

The early part of the research should be spent gathering information. You should search the literature and read as many papers as possible. You should also talk to industrial research funders such as Telelogic, Nortel, Klocwork, and others. Take full advantage of the uOttawa library, the ACM and IEEE digital libraries, and also CISTI (the National Research Council library).

Then comes the phase where you experiment with your ideas. Often there will be program design and implementation during this period of time. The choice of programming language is yours, although it should fit in with the infrastructure (see below).

The final phase is evaluation your ideas; this will normally be both theoretical and empirical (experiments or analysis of observations). It is essential that you use good statistical methods and gather sufficiently large amounts of data if you do empirical work.

These latter two phases will normally iterate. Also, you will continue to gather information throughout the research.

I strongly suggest that you write down paragraphs and chapters throughout your research. That way, after the research is complete you have most of your thesis written. A common problem students have is fear of the writing phase - due to this fear, they drag out the research phase for too long. Also, writing helps organize your thoughts and stimulates you to develop new ideas.

In addition to formally writing about your work as it progresses, you should also keep a handwritten hardcopy lab-book (or a series of such books) where you keep all your informal notes.

7. Other points

Responsibility to work with companies that are funding the work

For work funded by a company, you must do the following: Work with the company to understand their needs, and then implement your ideas so that real software/requirements engineers can test out your ideas. Having real software/requirements engineers work with your ideas leads to a form of empirical evaluation provided you systematically gather data during your observations. Non-disclosure agreements and IP protection are usually requested for industrial collaboration.

Building on the infrastructure

We have developed an infrastructure of software (e.g. the UCM Navigator in C++, feature interaction tools in Prolog, XML/XSL/Java tools, etc.). This was done at great expense to make it easy for students to then try out ideas. Access to industrial-strength tools will also be provided by various collaborators (e.g. CSERG/ASERT lab). It is important, then, that you take advantage if this investment by implementing your ideas on top of the existing infrastructure. This is important for two reasons: Firstly it means that users are not testing your ideas in isolation; secondly it allows us to give something concrete to those who are funding us.

Note however that we are not developers; we should remember that we are at all times trying to answer research questions. Development of software is merely a means towards that end.

Even though we are working in a research context, the software we develop should be of good quality. You should particularly focus on maintainability: Other students will have to build on what you have done.

One of your responsibilities when you become a grad student with me is to learn everything you can about the infrastructure. You should, of course, read all the relevant papers found in the UCM Web site, URN Web site, and the LOTOS Web site.

Programming support

In the past, our group normally had access to a full-time research assistant, namely Jacques Sincennes  (hopefully this will continue in the future). He will be able to give you help learning about the infrastructure and may be able to program ideas that you develop. You will have to work with him to implement ideas that you want to develop yourself.

English grammar, spelling etc.

It takes me a great deal of time to fix the grammar of non-English speakers. Therefore I ask you to find a friend (or pay somebody) to proof-read your work if you know your English is not particularly good. Do this before submitting anything new or that is significantly reworked.

Writing papers

I will normally expect every Masters student to try and write one publishable paper out of their research. For a PhD student I would expect about 3 papers, one of which is in a journal. I would normally be the co-author of these papers since many of the ideas come at least partially from me.

Office space and equipment

Subject to availability of funds I will supply a PC to PhD students in their office when they start work full time on their thesis after the first year, however when it becomes obsolete I may not be able to replace it (this is another incentive to get done by 4 years). Other students should use the ASERT lab(s) if space is available.

You are responsible for your own progress

I will give you assistance when you ask me, however I will not pester you to see if you are making progress. If I notice that your progress is slacking off, I will sit down and discuss it with you, but the ultimate responsibility remains yours.