The purpose of this page is to explain the responsibilities of a student host for a faculty candidate. In general, the role of the student host is to be the liaison between the faculty and the grad students for the given faculty candidate. Specifically this involves getting grad students to come to the grad student meeting with the candidate and then making sure that students' opinions are registered to the faculty for review, via the web-based feedback page.

The job is actually quite easy, but there are some details about which you need to be aware. Below is a rough listing of the steps to take.

  1. Please remember that all communication regarding faculty recruiting is confidential and should never be shared or discussed outside the Allen School. We have worked hard to have a say in faculty recruiting. Violating confidentiality will result in a loss of that privilege.
  2. Make sure that there is a student meeting in the candidate's schedule. This will typically be done by Marianne Kiga but as an extra precaution, you should make sure it's there. The meeting will typically be at 1:30 on the first interview day (Tuesday or Thursday).
  3. ExCEL candidates have two student meetings: one with CSE and one with EE. Make sure that the two meetings don't conflict and that CSE students know which one to go to.
  4. Make sure that a room has been reserved for the student meeting; this will also often be done by Marianne but the final responsibility rests with you. GC 287 is a good room for this.
  5. A week or two beforehand, send out information about when and where the meeting will be. The mail should be sent to active-grads@cs which contains only those grads who are actually here this quarter. Please be careful about this.
  6. A day or two beforehand, send a reminder e-mail to active-grads.
  7. Before the meeting, make sure you look at the feedback questions to make sure that the discussion is fruitful. As the student host, you are responsible for keeping discussion going during the meeting.
  8. During the meeting:
    • The Graduate Student Host will run the graduate student meeting with the candidate and ensure that everyone has a change to ask questions without one student or a small group monopolizing the conversation.
    • Get students to provide feedback It is important that all graduate students be encouraged to provide anonymous feedback (more information to come on how to do this).  They will have the opportunity to specify if they overlap with the candidate’s research area, they attended the talk, and/or attended the student meeting.  The more students participate in this process the better.  The faculty will rely on the graduate student host and the graduate student liaison to FRC to get students to participate in this process.  Student feedback will be part of all discussions about the candidate at faculty meetings.
    • The student meeting is expected to last approx. one hour (1:30-2:30pm), but it is just fine if it goes over due to questions and conversation> Please ensure it ends no later than 3:15 to allow for the candidate to have a break to get water, go over their talk, or just sit for a few minutes.
    • During the break, the candidate might want to use the visitor office they've been assigned. Feel free to leave them there and then come back at 3:15pm.
    • At 3:15pm, please escort your candidate to the lecture hall in Gates Center (Amazon Auditorium) so that they can work with the production crew to set-up their presentation.