Instructor:
Nancy Amato
Nancy's office Hours: usually 2-3pm on Fridays . Check the department calendar for schedule and link each week.
Teaching Assistants:
Sara Aghajanzadeh
Kathleen Isenegger
Max Fowler
This course is designed for CS STARS recipients as one part group meeting and planning time and one part research and mentorship learning and coaching. Research topics will include researcher hygiene, the hows and whats of doing research, and how best to prepare research for presentation and publication. Mentorship and leadership content will include team building and similar effective leadership and mentoring topics. Equity and justice will be covered in conjunction with department E&J sponsor talks and may be augmented with follow up course meetings. Additionally, STARS will use class time to discuss and plan to implement community building efforts and other opportunities within UIUC CS.
Course time is split between learning opportunities and hands on planning of events related to the ambassadorial and mentorship components of CS STARS. Attendance is mandatory unless extentuating circumstances arise, which should be communicated to the instructor and course staff.
The standard class meeting time will be Wednesdays from 5:00 - 6:00 PM in Siebel 2405, unless they are coinciding with a different sponsored talk in a different room. The course schedule below will be filled out as the semester progresses with relevant details. The course syllabus is available here.
Schedule
| Date | Topic | Speaker | Description | Work for next time | Course Material |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5:00 pm Wed Aug 25, 2021 | Syllabus and Kickoff Day | Introduce the ideas behind the CS STARS program. Get to know your fellow STARS and the CS STARS team! Start brainstorming about future research and community building opportunities for CS! | |||
| 5:00 pm Wed Sep 1, 2021 | Authentic Leadership | Brainstorm about what makes an authentic leader. Think about your personal leadership story and how it will link to research, mentoring, and teaching going forward. | Read The Story of My Life: Developing Authentic Leaders by Courtney Calinog | Here | |
| 5:00 pm Wed Sep 8, 2021 | Breaking down a research paper | We'll break down Courtney Calinog's paper in class and discuss both the paper's takeaways and the paper's presentation. Being able to learn from and critique research papers is a crucial skill for early research! | |||
| 5:00 pm Wed Sep 15, 2021 | Equity and Justice Day - "That Ain't Right: AI Mistakes and Black Lives" | Chad Jenkins | This talk will explore the causes of systemic inequality in AI, the impact of this inequity within the field of AI and across society today, and offer thoughts for the next wave of AI inference systems for robotics that could provide introspectability and accountability. Ideas explored build upon the “Before we put $100 billion into AI…" opinion. More details, as well as a zoom link for digital attendees, on the Speakers calendar link: here |
||
| 5:00 pm Wed Sep 22, 2021 | No class! - Go to Reflections/Projections |
Reflections/Projections |
We did not want to conflict with an ongoing, major CS community event. Instead, please attend Reflections/Projections if you are able! And keep |
Some event planning documents to look over, to be provided later this week | |
| 5:00 pm Wed Sep 29, 2021 | Outreach, Admissions, Community Building Tasks | Heather Zike & CJ Coleman | Meeting with Heather Zike, Undergraduate Program Coordinator, and CJ Coleman, Director of External Relations, to loop into existing outreach efforts and make plans for our community and outreach impacts. | ||
| 5:00 pm Wed Oct 6, 2021 | Mentor-Mentee Relationship Strategies Idea/Activity Planning |
Today's class is split half between strategies for getting the most out of your time with research mentors and on community outreach event planning. Mentor-mentee content covers from the first meeting through keeping future meetings productive while recognizing the responsibilities of both parties involved. Event discussions will include how to divide our resources to best meet community outreach goals. | |||
| 5:00 PM Wed Oct 13, 2021 | How is research going + what is research? | Part of class will be spent discussing research progress and part of class will be spent discussing how to make the most out of your research opportunities this year! | |||
| 5:00 PM Wed Oct 19, 2021 | E&J Day | Jeff Forbes | Jeff Forbes' E&J Day talk on "Exploring the National Science Foundation’s Work in Broadening Participation in Computing" Details and link for online attendees here |