Course Content and Schedule: This course consists of seminars which will be presented roughly once a week, on a monday and/or a wednesday. Generally, after the speaker 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.
You are responsible for checking the seminar schedule on the web ( http://www.cs.tamu.edu/seminars/681seminar) and your email (announcements will be sent to csgrads@cs.tamu.edu) for up to date information (be sure to check each monday and wednesday as sometimes seminars will be announced at the last moment).
Mechanics and Grading: All registered students who miss at most 2 seminars presented in this class during the semester will receive credit for this course. Students will be allowed to make-up for missed seminars by attending other relevant seminars, but must see (or email) the instructor for approval.
To receive credit for attending a seminar, students must prepare a short summary of the seminar on a form that will be provided. For seminars presented in this course, the completed forms are due at the conclusion of the seminar and will be collected in HRBB 124.
This form must also be completed for make-up seminars. In this case, the students should print out a copy of the form (provided here) and should return the completed forms to the Instructor's mailbox (in the 3rd floor mailroom) or can slip them under his office door (402B HRBB). These reports are due within 3 days of the seminar (e.g., on Monday for a seminar on Friday).
Students who miss more than two seminars, after accounting for make-ups, will not receive credit for this course.
Although you should reserve the entire scheduled time slot (4:10-5:25), in most cases the seminars will finish around 5:00pm. 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 5:25pm, whichever comes first. If this is a problem for you, please see the instructor. 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 graduate program and students. Students noticed exhibiting such behavior will not receive credit for attending that seminar. Thus, if you are not interested in a particular seminar, then don't attend - and attend a make-up seminar instead.