CPSC 481: Seminar
Course Homepage
Fall 2006

Class Meeting:
Tuesdays and/or Thursdays, 9:35-10:50pm, 124 HRBB

Course homepage: http://parasol.tamu.edu/~amato/Courses/481

Instructor: Nancy Amato
office: 414B Harvey R. Bright Bldg
email: amato [at] cs.tamu.edu
url: http://parasol.tamu.edu/~amato
office phone: 862-2275

Course Goals: The purpose of the course is to provide you with career planning resources and to expose you to a broad range of current topics in computer science and computer engineering that will be helpful to you in your careers.

Course Content and Schedule: This course consists of seminars which will be presented on Tuesdays and/or Thursdays during the semester. There will be a total of about 15 seminars during the semester. You are responsible for checking the seminar schedule on the course homepage and your email (announcements will be sent to the mailing list for the course) for up to date information. Be sure to check each monday and wednesday evening as sometimes seminars will be announced/cancelled at the last moment.

Generally, after the speaker(s) is finished, there will be a question and answer period where the audience can ask any questions they might have that were not answered during the seminar. This is often quite interesting and is considered part of the seminar. If the speaker is not finished, or if the question and answer period is ongoing, you are expected to stay until the end, or until 10:50am, whichever comes first. If you are in the seminar, you are expected to pay attention and refrain from activities such as doing other work, reading the newspaper, or sleeping. Behavior such as this gives speakers a bad impression of our program and students. Students noticed exhibiting such behavior will not receive credit for attending that seminar.

Mechanics and Grading: To receive credit for this course you must satisfy all of the following requirements:

• Satisfactorily complete at least 12 Seminar Reports. To receive credit for attending a seminar, students must prepare a short report of the seminar on a form that will be provided. The completed forms are due at the conclusion of the seminar (after the conclusion of the final question and answer session) and will be collected in HRBB 124. No make-ups will be possible for seminars. There will be at least 14-15 seminars scheduled during the semester, so all students should be able to attend at least 12 even if they have a few unavoidable absences.

• Satisfactorily complete at least 3 CS Culture Assignments.

• Complete other periodic assignments made during the semester (e.g., make and submit a resume).

• Each submitted assignment (i.e., culture assignments and other assignments such as the resume assignment and career fair assignment) must include a completed and signed coverpage. Report forms and coverpages for CPSC 481 seminars will be available in the classroom at the beginning of class.

Resources

• Texas A&M Career Center
• CPSC 481 Spring 2006 (schedule and links to some useful materials)
• CPSC 481 Fall 2005 (schedule and links to some useful materials)

Fall 2006 Course Schedule