Information for Prospective Students

Spring 2005: I have no open slots in my research group.

I frequently receive e-mail messages from students who have been accepted into Syracuse University, expressing interest in working with me. I would like prospective students to understand several things:

• I don't take M.S. students into my research projects. M.S. students are at Syracuse for three semesters, and the first semester is spent getting up to speed on the research project, the second semester is spent doing work, and the third is spent looking for a job. Thus, I cannot justify the investment of time and money for three semesters into an M.S. student for one semester of return.
• I don't take on students sight unseen. I cannot possibly judge the research worthiness of a student remotely, particularly based on a brief e-mail conversation. I can only judge a student after having them in class and interacting with them face-to-face here at SU.
• My most constrained resource is my time. Thus, if I have a full slate of students, I cannot take on another student even if that student is willing to work for free. The time commitment of supervising a student would cause me to neglect the students I'm already working with.

• The first attribute I expect you to have is to be a hard worker. I assume that you're smart, or you wouldn't be here. Successful graduate students work hard, and don't watch the clock. Working with me is not about putting in the 10 or 20 hours your assistantship officially pays for; graduate school should be the most difficult challenge you've faced. To quote Tom Hanks's character in A League of Their Own: "It's supposed to be hard. The hard is what makes it great. If it were easy, everyone would do it." There will be times when you do not know what I want you to do; I expect you to ask for clarification, and to some degree, to take the initiative to define the problem space yourself.
• Second, almost all of my work is related to computer systems. Therefore, I expect you to have or to acquire a basic knowledge of Unix and Unix system programming. This means that you have to understand most of the basic Unix commands, and understand how to write shell scripts, compile and install software, and configure systems. It's ok if you don't already know this, but you have to be willing to learn it "on the job," and largely from your own experimentation.
• The final, and most important, attribute is a desire to learn. I want to know how you react when faced with a problem you don't understand. Do you throw up your hands and say, "This machine/program/... is broken," or do you carefully examine your assumptions, read all the available documentation, and perform experiments to determine the exact nature of the problem? Is your motivation to make the problem go away, or to understand it and truly solve it? The best learning experiences come from exploring this kind of situation.

In closing, I ask you to examine why you want to work with me. If you just want a grade, I advise you to look elsewhere. If you just want rent money, there are other, less challenging ways to earn it. If you want to attack interesting problems in CS/CE and solve them, and if you want to be challenged to stretch your abilities and to learn about systems, then I want to work with you, as well.

My goal is to support all of the students working with me. However, I can only continue to support productive, talented, interested students. Thus, a new student will go through a probationary period working on a well-defined research project. At the end of the probationary period, I will decide whether to continue supporting that student or not.