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STAR Graduate Student Thesis Policy:
Draft #5
- The STAR policy on student theses is based on the principles that any
collaborator is free to delve into any aspect of the data, and that the
basic arbiter of what constitutes a thesis is the thesis advisor. The main
purpose of the policy is to state expectations about communication within
the collaboration.
- PWG convenors maintain lists of analysis topics in their areas of
interest which are judged to be in need of additional effort.
- Students and their advisors are free to pursue a project from any
PWG convenor's list, or to propose a new project. It is expected that
the specific details of a student's project will emerge only after the
student has been interacting with the relevant PWG for some time, and
after in-depth consultation with the PWG convenor and the STAR Analysis
Coordinator.
- The chair of the STAR thesis committee works with the Analysis
Coordinator to maintain a descriptive list of all ongoing analysis projects,
including names of all students and non-students working on those projects.
The STAR council member from each institution is expected to review these
listings periodically, and submit the necessary information to
keep them up-to-date.
- It is anticipated that there will always be many unpursued analysis
projects in STAR, and many new analysis opportunities will open up every
year as new detector subsystems come online, luminosity improves, etc.
The likelihood of independent analyses with a large degree of overlap is
small and will probably decrease with time. However, STAR policy does not
explicitly discourage duplicate analyses.
- In the event that there is a large degree of overlap between two
independent analyses, it is the task of an ad hoc godparent committee
appointed by the spokesperson to adjudicate differences between the
overlapping projects where required, and to assemble the manuscript for a
journal publication by drawing on material from the independent analyses.
- In overlap cases involving a student thesis project, it is expected
that the student's advisor will be a member of the godparent committee.
- Each student who uses STAR data for his/her PhD thesis is expected to
have contributed to a STAR community service project in some significant
way. Usually this will be an amount of work roughly equivalent to one
third to one half the total research effort for a typical PhD.
- Advisors are primarily responsible for ensuring that their PhD
advisees satisfy community service expectations. Council members are
expected to respond to requests for information about the current
service work of thesis students from their institutions.
- The STAR thesis committee should review the operation of this policy
as soon as sufficient time has elapsed to judge its effectiveness.
Return to STAR thesis committee page
August 27, 2000
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