Home  .   FAQ  .   Admissions .   Considering CS? .   Get Involved .   Program Planning .   Research  .   Who to See .   Faculty  .   Declare  .   Xenon  .   CSE

Information For CSAA's

General Info

• You can email all of the advisees in the group as well as the faculty member by sending email to "faculty last name"-advisees@cs. So for instance, to email all the advisees in Nick Parlante's advising group, send email to parlante-advisees@cs
• At the beginning of the year, you should send out an email to introduce yourself to the advisees and let them know who you are. As a good example, here are some intro emails sent by CSAA's in the past. (Mike, Padmini, Eric)
• When someone new declares into your advising group, you should get cc'd on the notification email. It's a good idea to contact the new advisees (or forward them the welcome message) so they know who you are right away.
• If you get the chance to take some pictures at your advising event, please send me some and I'll try to post them on the website.

Organizing Quarterly Lunch/Dinner
The School of Engineering has funds set aside to encourage all advisors to spend time with their advisees. Basically, you get $17 per person in the advising group for two events during the year. The vast majority of advising groups use this money to go out to lunch or dinner, but if you and the faculty advisor want to organize some other activity instead, that is highly encouraged. You could for instance, organize a bowling trip or go see a movie. Maggie Johnson's Advising group once carpooled to the beach for a BBQ, and Mehran Sahami's group went to Google (where Mehran works) and took a tour. Go ahead and be creative - people will have more fun and be more likely to attend future events if you can provide a relaxed, comfortable atmosphere!

Where?
If you decide to do a lunch or dinner, you have a few options. If your faculty member is a member of the Faculty Club, you might wan to consider doing lunch there. $17 is exactly enough to cover Faculty Club Lunch (they plan it that way) and it's both a nice treat and easy to get to for students. The Faculty Club also has really nice round tables that can easily seat about 9-10 people, so no one has to sit at a different table, or at the end. If you decide to go off campus, the choices are virtually endless - just keep in mind that you'll have to do some carpool organization. Also, make sure you try to pick a place that can seat all of you together. Finally, many of the larger advising groups choose to order food and do the dinner on campus. The good part abou this is that students get a chance to mingle instead of just sitting in their seat, and they can come late or leave early as they please.

When?
Lots of people wonder when the best time is to do your Advising Event. I can't even begin to tell you how much more successful these events are when they are at the beginning of the quarter. Some advisors like the idea of doing events at the end of the quarter, so they can discuss what students are planning for the next quarter. While this makes sense in theory, what ends up happening is lots of people are just too busy, and even worse, lots of advisees will flake at the last minute when they get overwhelmed with work. This is frustrating to the advisor, who might feel that the advisees are unreliable. It'll also probably be a hassle for you if you're trying to organize reservations or carpools, or just deciding how much food to order.
As far as times of the week, personal experience has shown that Friday dinner usually gets the most attendance, although Thursday dinner works as well. Lunch times, I'm not sure - I'd guess later in the week when assignments are not usually due probably works well. Most CSAA's will pick a few time slots and then email the advisees to see which one works for them, and this seems to work pretty well.

Logistical Information

• Reserving a Room
  If you do an event in Gates, you can reserve a room by using Infomaster. Click on Enter the Gates Information Network and then click on the little snowflake symbol next to "Events" to create a new event. Give it a name, room number, time, etc and hit Create. If the room is already reserved, you will get a screen showing the conflict, and you should pick another room. If you want to browse room schedules, go back to the main page and click "Schedule". Gates 104 and 100 are both commonly used for these types of events since they are unlocked and accessible from the side entrance of Gates (the one that is not locked at 5, and leads to the basement). You can also reserve the Patio or the Lounge next to the Patio.
• Paying
  WRITE ME
• Getting the Ping Pong or Foosball Table
  WRITE ME

Stanford University Computer Science Site content maintained by the CS Course Advisor. Design by Linda Nguyen, '05. 01010011 01110111 01100101 01100101 01110100 01001000 01100001 01101100 01101100 01001100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100001