Information for New CS Faculty

Here is a list of the first few things to do when you get to WPI: Go to ID Card Services, Founders Hall, to get a WPI Identification (ID) card. Contact CCC (Fuller Labs) to get an account on the university-wide network. Contact the CS Systems administrators to request a CS account. Set up mail forwarding from your CCC account to CS. Set up mail forwarding from sequoia (a "private" CS faculty machine). You will get a sequoia account when you get your CS account, but mail sent to you at sequoia will not forward automatically to your CS account. Sequoia is a machine without any student access. Visit the WPI Police Department (508-831-5433) for a parking sticker. Another "first-day to-do" list has been maintained by Ted Clancy, ECE <ted @ wpi.edu>. Some things to be aware of regarding courses: CCC does not create accounts for specific courses. Install course-specific software in you personal CCC account. Also, the CCC requires one full term's notice for the installation of software on their lab PC's. The CCC maintains most of the labs on campus, including labs commonly used by CS undergrads. If you need help installing course software, on a CCC machine, write to <helpdesk@wpi.edu> If you need software installed of a course on CS-maintained PC's, your should contact <system@cs.wpi.edu>. While system@cs tries to be more accommodating than the CCC regarding software installations, they usually take a couple of weeks to complete. CS- maintained PC's include all of those in faculty, staff, and TA offices, as well as TA office hours room(s), and the various project and research labs. WPI does not use newsgroups for course communications. The department will create mailing lists for each course at the start of the term. Alternatively, faculty can get course areas on myWPI (the campus Web-information portal) that include discussion boards. If your course is full, students can go onto a waiting list maintained by the registrar's office. The registrar's office deletes these lists on the first day of classes, after which time class additions are up to the faculty member (usually first come, first served). Since WPI does not have a final exam period, finals are given during the normal term. In B and D terms, students sometimes choose to leave campus before the term ends. Be sure to put a policy statement on your syllabus regarding final exams for students who choose to do this (most of us disallow makeups in this situation). Finally, some general tidbits: You can put cash on your ID card to be used at the campus center food court. Visit Accounting on the second floor of Boynton hall to do this. Minutes of faculty meetings are in /cs/faculty/. Our CS department web pages provide Answers to Frequently Asked Questions About the Department ( http://www.cs.wpi.edu/Help/ ). For student advising use the Advising Aids. Be aware of the WPI CS Assessment Coordination Committee Web Pages. Note that you need to establish a "professional" web page for yourself - such as this example. To get this on the web please provide all the information about yourself for a WPI Faculty Directory entry by using the Faculty Update Form. You'll also want a more personal web page: you can set that up yourself in your cs.wpi.edu account public_html directory. See the example by Kathi Fisler. It is best to do that before the directory entry so that you can refer to the personal page from your directory page. Adding yourself to the Research Groups and membership lists can by done by contacting the group's coordinator and <webmaster@cs.wpi.edu>. Adding yourself to a research group's email list can be done via the majordomo service. The Research Interests list is maintained by <webmaster@cs.wpi.edu>.

{Some original notes provided by Prof. Kathi Fisler, Sun, 1 Jul 2001}