Scholarship Skills Winter 2012

PSU CS 569 (MS Students)
and CS 669 (PhD students)



Don't forget to
Sign up for the class mailing list!
Course Description and Grading
Course Schedule
Useful Links
Rubric for projects 2 and 4
Rubric for projects 5 and 7
Class Mailing List
Schedule of 5-minute talks
Rubric for talks
Schedule of 15-minute talks
Rubric for talks

Course Overview: The purpose of this course is to make you better scholars. In particular it attempts to make you better researchers, better writers, better presenters, and better reviewers. It concentrates on your reading, writing and composition skills. The course concentrates on both the production and consumption of the “media” used by computer scientists to communicate today. 

You will learn to both read and write papers, such as conference and journal articles; You will learn to both listen to and prepare and deliver oral presentations.  You will also learn skills that will prepare you for your career as a scholar: how to choose a thesis topic, and how to write a thesis; how to be an effective reviewer of material written by others; how to prepare yourself for the job hunt in academia or industry when you graduate. When you’re through with this course you should have a feel for the tasks and activities of modern scholars.
 


PSU CRNs: 44680 for CS 569 (MS) and 44679 for CS 669 (PhD). It's important that you sign up for the correct section.

Class meets: Winter Quarter 2012. 
         Monday & Wednesday 14:00-15:20, Neuberger Hall, Room 204   

Instructors:  

  • Andrew Black, office: FAB 115-10, phone 503-725-2411
    Office hours: Monday 11:30–noon and Thursday 10:00–11:50. It's also fine to just wander by my office and see if I'm free, or send an email or telephone me to set up an appointment at an alternative time.

Links
  PSU CS Department Comprehensive Exam

Required Text:
  Lyn Dupré. Bugs in Writing.  Addison Wesley, ISGM 0-201-60019-6. 
  (Some online notes are at http://www.ai.sri.com/~wilkins/dupre.html. )

Ancillary Texts: 

  Lynne Truss.  Eats, Shoots & Leaves.  Gotham, 2004.  ISBN 1592400876.
  Mark Zobel.  Writing for Computer Science.  Springer 1997.  ISBN 9-813-08322-0.

  Henry Watson Fowler.  The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, R.W. Burchfield
  (Editor), Oxford, 2000.

  William Zinsser.  On Writing Well.  Harpercollins, 1994.

  David A. McMurrey and Joanne Buckley. A Writer's Handbook for Engineers.
  Thompson, 2008.

  Mary-Clair van Leunen, A Handbook for Scholars, 2nd Ed,  Oxford University Press, 
  1992.  Some online notes are at http://www.cse.uu.nl/docs/tandt/html/Scholars/.

  Donald E. Knuth, Tracy Larrabee, and Paul M. Robers, Mathematical Writing.
  MAA Notes Number 14, The Mathematical Association of America, 1989.

  William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White.  The Elements of Style. Allyn and Bacon, 1995. 
  (You can find this text on the web.)

  Nichoals Higham, Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences, SIAM, 1993.

  Robert I. Berkman. Find It Fast. Harper Perennial, 1997. 

  Elizabeth Castro. HTML for the World Wide Web, 4th Ed.: Visual Quickstart Guide,
   Peachpit Press, 2000.

  Gary Blake and Robert W. Bly, The Elements of Technical Writing, Macmillan, 1993.

  Edward Tufte. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Graphics Press, 1983.