• GRACS Primer

Some of the information below may be out-dated, please make updates as needed.

Introduction

This document has been put together by GRACS (the Graduate Representative Association for Computer Sciences) as an introduction to the department. Further information is available on the GRACS wiki at www.cs.utexas.edu/users/gracs.

GRACS represents the interests of CS graduate students within the University of Texas at Austin CS department, provides services and information to graduate students, and works to foster a sense of community among graduate students in the department. To contact GRACS, send mail to gracs@cs.utexas.edu or visit the GRACS web page at www.cs.utexas.edu/users/gracs.

If you have comments about or suggestions on how to improve the documentation, please email gracs@cs.

Administration

On arrival, you should visit the CS Graduate Office to meet Gloria and Katherine and to fill out various forms. The CS Graduate Office and the Computer Sciences Department office are located in Taylor Hall, rooms 2.114 and 2.124 respectively.

You'll need to meet with Dr. Gordon Novak for advising prior to registration. A group session is scheduled by Katherine. Check with her for date and time. In addition, fellowship students and those students who have been awarded RA-ships should receive letters instructing them whom to contact. New TAs should receive letters informing them about orientation meetings they need to attend. If you don't have the appropriate letter(s), ask Gloria what you should do.

The University requires all new international TAs to pass an English certification examination. New international TAs will be notified of these examination dates. All TAs and RAs are required to show proof of eligibility to work in the United States. Proof must be in the form of a picture ID (such as a driver's license or passport) and at least one of the following: Social Security card, passport, or a certified copy of your birth certificate.

Registration

Start with a course schedule and a graduate catalog. Course schedules can be purchased from one of the bookstores on Guadalupe Street (known as “The Drag”) or consulted for free via the registrar's Web page (see www.utexas.edu/student/registrar). Graduate catalogs can be purchased in the Main Building (the Tower), but these are also on the Web. Registration can be done on the Web or via phone.

Full-time graduate students are required to take 9 hours of courses during the spring and fall semesters, and 3 hours during the summer. Typical classes count as 3 hours because they meet for three hours each week. Thus, you must register for at least three classes during the spring and fall, and one during the summer. Registering for 12 or more credits requires the permission of the students advisor and the graduate advisor. All TA, RA, and fellowship appointments require full-time status.

Research is highly emphasized within this program and as such incoming students are required to start doing research their very first semester. To this end, incoming Ph.D. students are required to register for CS396 during their first Fall semester. The first half of CS398T provides a forum for faculty to present their interests and for students to learn more about ongoing research. The second half of the class matches students up with professors doing research that interests the student. Additionally, full-time Ph.D. students are required to register for 3 research credits (CS395) every semester until they reach candidacy.

Requirements are subject to change. Check with Gloria in the CS Grad Office if you have any questions.

Most administrative tasks can be accomplished via UT Direct. This include registering for classes, viewing and paying your tuition and fees, updating your address information, and many others. Access to these services is secure, and requires an electronic identifier (UT EID) and password. Information about the UTEID can be found on the web.

You'll need to consult the course schedule for courses offered and the steps for registration. Keep in mind that there are invariably additions and/or changes to the courses offered; the schedule on the Web is always up-to-date.

Resources about deciding what courses to take include:

• Department Degree Requirements at http://academics.cs.utexas.edu/users/UTCS/gradoffice/currentstudents/current.html

• Course Schedules at http://www.utexas.edu/student/registrar/schedules/

• Course Instructor Survey Results at https://utdirect.utexas.edu/mec/cis — (UT EID required)

• Department Listing of Graduate CS Course Info at http://academics.cs.utexas.edu/graduate/courseinfo.html

Additionally, you should talk to other graduate students. If you would like to talk to individual professors about their classes, check in the Graduate Office for information on office hours and office locations.

Note that, since the breadth courses are used in lieu of qualifying exams, the course work can be very demanding. If you have any weak points in your background, it can be a very good idea to start slowly.

To save money when buying textbooks, there are some helpful hints on places to purchase books on the GRACS wiki: http://z.cs.utexas.edu/moin/bin/gracs.cgi/Buying_Books

Financial Assistance

Consult the CS Graduate Information Bulletin for information on doctoral fellowships, teaching assistantships and research assistantships. Most students are eligible for funding through a teaching assistant position. Once you are working for a particular faculty member, that professor may pay you as a research assistant using money from a grant. Both TA and RA positions are forms of UT employment, and so have the accompanying benefits: health insurance, automatic tax withholding, paycheck direct deposit.

Another source of funding comes from fellowships that are available throughout the department. Most fellowships, because of their generous terms, are competitive and often require an application and recommendations. However, since fellowships are not a form of UT employment, they often have added complications. Typically, you need to find your own health insurance, or pay monthly to extend the UT employee benefits. Taxes are not automatically withheld, so it's important to set aside money for that. Finally, the checks are either mailed to you, or you can pick them up at the Main building. Always make sure you understand the terms of the fellowship before it starts. Another subtle difference between employment and fellowships is that employment pays you for the previous month's work, while a fellowship often pays for the upcoming month. Thus, at the end of a fellowship, you may have a month without a paycheck.

Obtaining In-State Tuition

Students being supported by teaching and research assistantships are eligible for in-state tuition, but there is a bureaucratic dance that must be performed to get it. Effective Spring 2004, students will need to fill out the form to change their tuition to instate rates via the web. It can all be done via the web listed here: www.utexas.edu/business/accounting/sar/waivers.html. Look in the section entitled: “Faculty, Teaching, Research Assistants and their dependents” to get access to the web application form.

Important Points to Remember

• Students must have a high-assurance EID in order to access this site.
• Students may begin this process as soon as registration for the semester begins even if their appointment has not been confirmed.
• By a designated time, if the student is found not to be eligible for instate rates their application will be revoked and they will be billed for the non-resident portion of their tuition
• Students must do this every semester in which they expect to be appointed for a 20/hr per week assignment as a TA/AI/GRA.
• Students who are employed outside of their department will need approval from their graduate adviser. If you will be employed by another department, you can see Gloria for this approval.
• Pay the new bill before the applicable deadline.

Important Restrictions

The University has a few important rules regarding graduate student funding. They are typically not a problem, but you should be aware of them nonetheless. You can find more detailed information at the Office of Graduate Studies. Also note that some of the rules are slightly different for international students.

The 99 hour rule

The Texas state legislature put State Law SB 961 (“the 99 hour rule”) into effect in the fall of 1999 in an effort to encourage Ph.D. students to graduate more quickly. The rule states that after 99 doctoral credit hours, graduate students cannot receive in-state tuition. Out-of-state tuition is two- to three-times higher than in-state. Furthermore, this rule applies even if you are a Texas resident.

To fully understand this rule, you must understand what is meant by “doctoral credit hour.” If a student comes to UT for a Ph.D., the student is not automatically classified as doctoral on arrival. If the student has a baccalaureate degree then he or she will initially be classified as being at the Master's level, even though he or she may not be interested in getting a Master's degree on the way to the Ph.D. The student must accumulate at least 30 hours of study before becoming eligible to be classified as a doctoral student. A student who wants to get a Master's degree on the way to a Ph.D. can of course do so, and for the first 30 hours would be classified as a Master's student, but thereafter could be reclassified as a doctoral student even if the Master's degree wasn't finished yet. For students entering with Master's degrees, the habit has always been to try to determine whether the degree was germane to the doctoral degree the student intended to get. For example, a person with a Master's degree in English, but entering the Physics department, would not be considered as being more advanced with someone entering with a baccalaureate degree.

The bottom line is that Ph.D. students entering UTCS with a BA or BS degree must complete their doctoral degree in 130 credit hours, which translates into about six or seven years.

Student Employment Limitations

Graduate students may only be employed by the university (as a TA, RA, AI, etc) for fourteen long semesters (fall and spring). Since this amounts to seven years, it coincides fairly well with the 99 hour rule. There are other details about graduate student employment that you can find here.

Doctoral Work Limitations

While there is no official time limit on acquiring a doctoral degree, there are a number of limitations on work that applies towards the degree. At the time of admission to candidacy, all completed work must have been done within the previous six years. Once in candidacy, students are encouraged to finish within three years.

Computer Account

Katherine in the CS Graduate Office will give you information on creating your computer account when you first check-in. Your computer account allows you to read and send electronic mail and to read and post news. Email and news are essential channels of communication in the department. You will miss out on important information if you don't have your account and read both email and news regularly. For departmental information, the two key newsgroups are utcs.general and utcs.grad (other newsgroups of interest are linked from the GRACS home page). It is worth noting here that Netscape includes both a mail and a news reader and is much more convenient for new users than the traditional UNIX alternatives.

Mailboxes, “The GRACS Lounge”

Graduate student mailboxes are located in the graduate students' lounge (or “the GRACS lounge”), located in Taylor Hall room 141 (obtaining this room was one of GRACS's first major accomplishments, way back in 1988). Announcements, information concerning your university employment or fellowship, and mail you receive through the department will be placed in your box. Please do not have personal mail sent to the department. This is also a place for people to leave papers, books, tech reports, etc. for you. Since the graduate students' lounge has a cipher lock (get the code from the CS Graduate Office), it could be relatively secure, but unfortunately students have been lax about keeping the door closed (including leaving it wide open when no one is there), and books have been stolen from graduate student mailboxes. Please close the door if you are the last one to leave the room, and please clean up after yourself.

Graduate Student Location

Graduate student offices are located in Taylor Hall (TAY), Applied Computer & Engineering Sciences (ACES), and the Tower (MAI). To find out where a graduate student's office is, use finger (as in, finger username@cs).

Patti Spencer assigns offices for the graduate students. You may give out the following address for CS-related mail (not personal mail):

Department of Computer Science Taylor Hall 2.124 The University of Texas at Austin 1 University Station, #C0500 Austin, TX 78712-0233 USA

You can also receive occasional faxes in the CS Graduate Office at (512) 471-7866.

GRACS

The Graduate Representative Association of Computer Sciences (GRACS) represents the interests of CS graduate students within the department and the university, provides services and information to graduate students, and works to foster a sense of community among graduate students in the department.

GRACS consists of a five member executive committee and a small number of project committees. For instance, the Primer Committee is responsible for this document, and the New Student Committee is responsible for the new student orientation and matching buddies. GRACS sponsors the weekly Tea-Time in the faculty lounge and occasional Pizza Parties throughout the semester.

To help make this very large department a little less impersonal, GRACS established a buddy system. Each new PhD student gets an “email buddy” which is another PhD student who has volunteered to answer his or her questions. This allows new students to feel at home faster than they might otherwise. Buddies are chosen from volunteers who have been at UT at least a year, with consideration given to matching countries of origin and research interests whenever possible.

We would like to encourage your participation in GRACS. GRACS is your organization. Its effectiveness depends on your participation. Please volunteer for GRACS committees or run for election to the executive committee. Elections are held twice a year, with the five members holding staggered terms of office to ensure continuity. To get more information about GRACS, visit the home page or send us mail at gracs@cs.

Connection

As mentioned earlier, a major means of communication within the Computer Sciences Department is the network of computer systems. In order to get started using the departmental systems, you must have a computer account.

In addition to computers found on your assigned space, there are public labs in Taylor and Painter; a list of them can be found here. Some of these are in locked rooms; the combinations are available from Patti Spencer (pes@cs). There are also a number of labs you can use with permission from the professors/committees that own them, including the LESS and LECS labs. There are laser printers located throughout Taylor Hall as well as in several other locations.

The department maintains a number of useful documents for new users available from a rack in Taylor Hall as well as via the Web at www.cs.utexas.edu/users/UTCS/online-docs. Also worth reading are the FAQs at www.cs.utexas.edu/users/UTCS/faqs. = Seminars, Talks, and Presentations = Normally, during any given week a number of technical talks will take place. Attending some of these colloquia, proposal presentations, oral defenses and such provides not only interesting technical stimulation, but gives you the chance to get to know the department a little better. A newsgroup, utcs.talks, has been set up specifically as a forum for announcing these talks (although most notices are also sent out via e-mail). = Recreation = While this document deals primarily with the CS department, it's worth mentioning that one of the best things about the University of Texas at Austin is Austin. It is a wonderful place to live with a tremendous number of things going on. Austin is perhaps best known for having great music and being home to UT and the state capital. Austinites enjoy a town that is big enough to offer a wide variety of things to do, but not so large as to suffer the problems of many big cities. You will have to explore Austin yourself, but no doubt you will be riding or jogging on the Town Lake hike and bike path, eating Amy's ice cream, drinking Shiner Bock or (better) Celis beer and listening to music on Sixth Street before long. To get more information on what's happening in Austin, pick up one of the free weeklies, “The Austin Chronicle” (www.auschron.com) or “XL,” available in most restaurants and coffee houses. These come out every Thursday.

Also, UT has excellent fitness facilities and intramural sports offerings. Check out the RecSports page at www.utexas.edu/student/recsports. Austin has some great camping, hiking, and biking areas. For information on this, check out austinexplorer.com. Austin is also an excellent place for going fishing. There are many lakes around. Check austin.about.com/cs/fishing for more information. Faculty Research Interests The best ways to become acquainted with faculty members and to learn about their research interests is to take classes from them, attend talks by them, and read papers or tech reports written by them. You can also make an appointment to talk with them personally.

Computer Facilities

The Computer Sciences Department owns a wide variety of computers; see www.cs.utexas.edu/users/UTCS/online-docs for more information on our ever-expanding computing platforms.

Libraries and Technical Reports

For material not on the Web, you can consult one of the three libraries containing CS-related books and publications: the Perry-Castañeda Library (PCL), the Engineering Library (ENGIN) and the Physics-Mathematics-Astronomy Library (PMA). This means that it does not suffice to go to a single library when you want to do Computer Science research. All of the libraries' holdings are searchable via an online catalog system, UTCAT on the library terminals and UTNetCAT on the Web (www.lib.utexas.edu).

You can also consult several web-based reference locations:

• The Scientific Literature Digital Library commonly known as CiteSeer at http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/cs.

• NCSTRL, the “Networked Computer Science Technical Reports Library,” at www.ncstrl.org. It provides unified electronic access to CS technical reports from a large number of participating universities (including UT) along with a search engine.
• ACM Digital Library for free (as of this writing) at www.acm.org/dl. It has a large chunk of recent ACM publications and conference proceedings available for download along with a reasonable search engine.

• The UT Library maintains a list of electronic reference material including many journals, some of which are accessible only from a UT host. The page is at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/.

• Google Scholar is a great resource for finding publications: http://scholar.google.com/

Office Allocation

Office assignments are managed one time a year (in the Fall) and are allocated according to your research area and advising professor. Requests for student preferences are sent out in in the Spring.

Photoduplication

• If you are an RA or a TA, you can get a copy code for the department's machine(s). There is one machine in the GRACS Lounge for all RAs and TAs to use and there may be other machines located nearer to your research group. To get a copy code, obtain a copy code form from Taylor 2.124 and have your advisor sign it.
• If you want to make a lot of copies, the Union's Copy Center offers copy services for a reasonable price. They also frequently carry course notes and other class readings. Ditto for commercial operations along the Drag and around campus.
• All the libraries have copiers — you can buy copy cards at any of them. If you need to photocopy reference material that can't be checked out, this is your only option.

Professional Organizations

Austin has a number of computer-related professional organizations, some of which have student chapters here at UT.

The student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery is located in TAY 1.130 (the west end of the basement in Taylor Hall). Activities of the (mostly undergraduate) student chapter include lectures, Pizza and Professor lunches, a monthly newsletter and a book of members' resumes (which is distributed to interested businesses), renting lockers in Taylor Hall, organizing programming contests, and social activities. For more information, visit www.utacm.org/. There is also an Austin chapter of the ACM.

Public Transportation

There are two bus services, both administered by Capital Metro. The first is the UT shuttle. All the shuttles run every 5–10 minutes from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and go between campus and areas where students reside.

Shuttle maps are available at the information booth in the Tower and at http://www.utexas.edu/parking/transportation/shuttle/. Note: many students choose their lodgings based on proximity to the shuttle routes (rent is much more expensive in the campus area).

The second Capital Metro service is the city bus system. There is also the 'Dillo, a free trolley-like bus that runs from the southern part of campus to downtown. A current UT ID allows you to ride any Capital Metro bus for free. Just scan your ID when you get on board. Maps and schedules are available at the Texas Union information desk or in the PCL. You can call Capital Metro at 474-1200 for answers to specific questions (including “when does the next bus 5 come by 43rd and Speedway?”); their Web page is www.capmetro.org.

Parking Location and Authorization

Parking is based on a system of parking permits corresponding to different categories of students and employees. Parking on the streets, parking lots and garages on campus is marked according to the permits that are required to park there. Note that all permits are mutually exclusive: you can't use a “better” permit in a lesser parking area, unless the signs explicitly allow it. In addition, the parking rules change depending on the time of day. For example, in the evening many areas are open to anyone. The following is a brief summary of the relevant types of permits. For more complete information, see the university parking information web page.

“C” permit The “C” permit is the cheapest and most easily obtained permit. Any student can purchase one while registering. However, it also offers the least desirable and most competitive parking options. The “C” permit lets you park at the Intermural Fields (at 52nd and Guadalupe), the Disch-Falk field (across IH-35) which is serviced by the Campus Loop shuttle, or at the Pickle Research Campus (way north near Braker and Mo-Pac) during the day and take the PRC shuttle to campus.

“A” permit The “A” permit is for staff and is limited to those with 20 hour employment appointments (TA/RA) and certain fellowships. An “A” permit is more expensive than a “C” permit, but allows you to park closer to computer science buildings. However, competition for these parking spaces is very tough. (On week days during the semester, expect to get into campus by 7am if you want to get a spot on San Jacinto. One may often find a spot East of LBJ later in the morning.) To obtain a A permit, get a copy of your appointment form and take it to the Parking Office, which is in the Trinity Parking Garage.

“M” permit Parking marked “M” is for motorcycles only. Many of these spaces are very close in to the campus, but also fill up very quickly. Currently, an M permit is free if you have bought an A permit already.

You can purchase a year-long contract that gurantees parking in one of the many parking garages on campus. However, this is by far the most expensive parking option. If you come to campus and cannot find parking, these garages are open for public parking for around $5 to $10, depending on how long you stay. Also, if you are eligible to buy an A permit, you may also pre-pay for discounted day passes for garage parking. The "share-pass" is $5 per day at most of the garages, but only $2 per day at two of the further garages. You may also elect to buy a garage permit for the year, but there is often a waiting list (the San Jacinto garage is typically 18 months).

"F" permits were for faculty, but now staff may also purchase them. However, surface parking is even more expensive than a garage pass, as these are the most convenient spots. “O” are administrative permits, and others. The parking rules are often significantly relaxed during breaks (such as winter break, spring break, and in between semesters). Always check the official parking web-page during these periods. Finally, beware football game days. On such days most of the parking on campus is reserved and you will have significant trouble parking on campus. If you own a permit, you are allowed to park in the San Antonio Garage (the West-most garage) for free on game days.

Bicycling

In a climate like that in central Texas, riding a bicycle is a real pleasure most of the year (July, August, and September can be a bit warm, however!). Since parking a bike is relatively easy, and there are no schedules which dictate your time as with a bus, there are definite advantages to two-wheeling. Note that the city of Austin has one of the highest number of bike thefts in the world - be sure to lock your bike with something that's not easily picked or cut through.

The UT Police Department requires that bicycles that are “parked” on campus be registered. Their bicycle registration program is intended to help police in recovering stolen bicycles and as a deterrent to would-be thieves. The registration is normally on Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the Speedway side of Gregory Gym. Your bicycle will be stamped with your Texas driver's license number or your UT student ID.

The UT Police Department routinely posts bicycle-mounted cops at on-campus corners. Their job is to catch bicyclists who do not obey traffic laws such as stopping at the stop sign, riding on the sidewalks.

For more information about cycling in Austin and surrounding areas, visit www.texasoutside.com.

Nutrition

There are vending machines located in most buildings on campus, with wares ranging from soda to sandwiches to chips and cookies. In Taylor, the machines are located in the basement across from the elevators; in Painter, they are located on the 3rd floor, near the elevator in the NE corner of the building; and in ACES, the machines are located in 2.xxx in a room near the 2.100 corridor entrance on the East side of the building.

There is a plethora of restaurants around campus. One of the simplest choices for lunch is the Texas Union which contains a variety of chain restaurants, or the Dobie Food Court, with a few more offbeat choices in addition to the chains.

Recycling

Various groups on campus and in the CS department recycle cans, paper, and newspapers. Aluminum cans are collected in the GRACS lounge as well as in specially marked red trash cans around campus (and on every floor in Taylor Hall).

White laser printer and copier paper is collected in boxes or blue trash cans located beside each laser printer and copier. There are guidelines on the blue trash cans as to what can go in them.

Throwing unwanted, suitable paper in the trash rather than in the recycling box is frowned upon.

Laser printer toner cartridges are recycled after use. This is especially important since these cartridges are very expensive to the department. See the departmental “New User's Guide” for more information.

Hardware Deals

Austin is home to Dell Computers and, more importantly for grad students, offers good deals to faculty, students, and staff. National chains are also here including CompUSA, Fry's Electronics, and Best Buy as well as many small computer stores (one used by several former GRACS folks is Vintage Information Technology Services, a build-to-order shop).

Software Deals

UT students are entitled to a variety of substantial software discounts. See www.utexas.edu/cc/sds for some good deals on, among other things, most Microsoft products. Sun also offers UT students (and other non-commercial users) Solaris x86 (the system running on the graduate student Dells, source-compatible with Solaris for the SPARC) for the cost of media and shipping (around $20).

Suggestions

Type man printers to get the name and location of the various printers.

Use the LaTeX preview facility or ghostview to save paper! Other tree-saving tips: use enscript -2r to print two pages of a text file on one page, or psnup -2 to do the same for any PostScript file. Alias lpr to lpr -h to avoid printing the cover sheet.

For info about available machines, use the cshosts help command. You can do rlogin cshosts pubultra | /p/bin/idlehost to automatically log into a lightly-loaded public Sparc.

To find memory leaks or pointer errors in C/C++ code, use purify (just prepend purify to your link command, i.e., purify cc -o foo foo.c). For really precise performance analysis, use quantify.

To see if someone is logged in, use rwho | grep (username). For information about someone (like their office number), use finger username@cs.

Mailing Lists

Join some useful mailing lists at this website, particularly the csgrads mailing list used by GRACS.

Valediction

We sincerely hope that you have found this document useful, informative, and even a bit fun. If you have any feedback or suggestions (or even find a mistake in this document), we would greatly appreciate hearing from you! You can send your comments to gracs@cs or drop them off in the Graduate Office.

“Goodbye, and good luck.” :=)