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The CS Honors Track

Undergraduate students in Computer Science completing BA or BS degrees have several options for completing honors work. The details are on the Commonwealth College website, and they vary by when you entered the University. The current person Honors program director in CS is Prof. Tim Richards and he is happy to take any questions.

The core of the honors track is the capstone project, which is a chance to work one-on-one with our faculty on a year-long, in-depth research project. It's fantastic preparation for graduate school and industry, providing a chance to learn skills that are harder to obtain in a classroom setting.

The exact requirements for Honors work vary because the Commonwealth College is going through a period of transition. This set of web pages therefore focuses on the Capstone project, since that requirement is common to all students completing honors in the department now or in the future.

Capstones

The capstone is a two-semester project that is often started in the fall of the student's senior year. However, this is not the best approach. The department strongly advises students to start their capstone in the spring of their junior year, for several reasons. First, it allows students to complete the project by December of their senior year, which makes it a point to emphasize when applying to graduate school and industry jobs. It's difficult to talk about a half-completed project. Second, students have the opportunity to complete the project over the summer after their junior year (if the capstone advisor agrees), freeing up time to take other classes. Finally, students can elect to their project via the 491DD Research Methods class, which is discussed below.

The basic timeline for completing a capstone is as follows.

  1. During pre-reg the semester before you plan to start your capstone: Start looking for a research capstone advisor. For help in selecting or finding an advisor, please see Prof. Richards. The basic story is: don't be shy, go out and introduce yourself to some professors that are doing work that might interest you. No one is going to find you. Once you find an advisor, email the name of the advisor to Prof. Richards along with a single word that describes your capstone topic. E.g., networking, robotics, machine learning
  2. By the end of final exams the semester before you plan to start your capstone: email Prof. Richards a single, informal paragraph that describes the basic topic of your capstone. You should write this paragraph collaboratively with your capstone advisor.
  3. After classes end in the previous semester: start work with your capstone advisor to write a proposal.
  4. By the first day of classes: give a final draft of your capstone proposal to your advisor
  5. One the first friday after classes start: send your final proposal to Prof. Richards for approval. The proposal must include the weekly time when you are meeting with your advisor. Also, you must include the name of the second reader of your capstone. In the worst case, you have until the Add/Drop deadline to complete the proposal.

If you cannot meet these deadlines, please send mail to Prof. Richards. In particular, if you miss the proposal deadline (Step 5), then you must detail why your proposal can still be completed in the time remaining in the semester. Under no circumstances will proposals be accepted after add/drop. In that case, the capstone must be delayed a semester.  The UMass calendar is posted here.

During your second semester of capstone, you need to provide Prof. Richards a revised proposal for your second semester of work, and you need follow only Steps 4 and 5. (The revised proposal is sent on to Commonwealth College.)

Although a completed capstone is 6 credits toward graduating from UMass, only 3 credits count toward your CS degree (that is, it's worth one CS elective). If you want all 6 credits to count towards your CS degree (as if you took two CS electives) then take Research Methods.

Research Methods

As part of completing your capstone, you can register for 491DD Research Methods. The class is designed to help you complete your research, and the homework revolves around your specific project. By completing the class, you make progress on your capstone. The class will provide a structure for completing your capstone that your advisor may not be focused on (they are going to be focused on defining the problem). While taking the class, you'll also meet with your capstone advisor weekly. The course is offered only in spring semesters.

Research Methods isn't appropriate for every capstone. It works well when:

  1. The project has a strong empirical component. Students working on projects that are entirely focused on theoretical computer science or on projects that only involve programming (and not on understanding the observed performance  of their system) will find that the course does not align well with their project.
  2. The project has some emipirical data available by the first day of classes of the spring semester. Rather than starting from scratch, ask your capstone advisor to leverage an existing research project, perhaps started with one of their graduate students, that already has some preliminary data. While some students like to come up with their own research projects, this ideal doesn't play out well with Research Methods and often the capstone concept in general. There is no way to put a deadline on research (and yet the capstone does just that) and starting from scratch basically means not a lot will get done and your won't have your advisor's full resources and time available to you. This is good advice regardless of whether you enroll in Research Methods.

Be sure to confirm with both your academic advisor, the instructor of 491DD (Prof. Jensen), and your capstone
advisor to confirm that Research Methods is the right course for your capstone.

In sum, if you don't take Research Methods, your completed capstone will count towards only one CS elective and have to take some other class. If you complete both Research Methods and your capstone, you get an extra boost in making your capstone really work out, and you have two CS electives towards your degree.

491DD will be first offered in spring 2011, and there are a limited number of seats for undergrads at this time.