Graduate Student Job Descriptions
Faculty-Graduate Liaison (FGL)
The FGL is a senior PhD candidate tasked with handling most faculty-grad interactions and concerns. This is the person to talk to if you hit a difficult moment in your grad career. Responsibilities include monitoring czar, khan, and merc activity, allocating office space, and controlling access to the grad nest egg.Graduate Student Council Representatives
The CS department is currently entitled to 3 representatives in the Graduate Student Council. At least one of these representatives should be a masters student. The Council itself is a collection of grad representatives from all departments. See GSC page for more details. The CS reps must attend the GSC meetings and represent the CS department in graduate school affairs. In addition, they are responsible for filing the GSC rebate form, which funds the nest egg.Faculty Search Head
These students assist the faculty in recruiting and hiring new faculty. There is a Czar for each area of the faculty search. Responsibilities include: Assisting in the creation of the short list of candidates, disseminating information about job talks to the graduate students, attending job talks in their area, organizing the graduate student-candidate interview, and presenting the graduate student opinion to the faculty search committee.Social Czar
The Social Czar is responsible for keeping a sense of community in the department by organizing at least 1 social event a month.Facilities Czar
The Facilities Czar represents the graduate students on the department's facilities committee. This committee is responsible for allocating money for and determining the specifications of new machines, monitors, etc.Hospitality Czar
The main responsibility of the Hospitality Czars is to organize the graduate-student recruitment weekends. This includes setting up faculty / student talks, organizing lunches and tours, and arranging housing. Students visiting at other times are also made welcome by the Hospitality Czars.Orientation Czar
The complement to recruiting weekend is orientation week, when new students are welcomed to the department. The Orientation Czars set the weeks schedule, and arrange for all the appropriate talks to take place. In addition, they arrange for the yearly photocollage to be made.Fac/Grad Lunch Czar
Fac/Grad Lunches happen at least once a month and are informal meetings where graduate students and faculty eat pizza and discuss some topic of interest. The Czar is responsible for organizing a faculty member and a topic, reserving the room, and getting pizza.Comprehensives Czar
The job of the comprehensive exam czar, who must be a PhD candidate, is to assist the faculty member in charge of the comprehensive exams to ensure that the exams run smoothly. During the programming exam, the comps czar monitors the process and works with the responsible faculty members to solve any problems that might occur.Curriculum Czar
The Curriculum Czar must be a PhD candidate and represents the graduate students on the Curriculum Committee. S/he will lobby for grad student interests with the committee and the department chair. This Czar will also serve as our Sheridan Center Liaison.TGIF Czars
The TGIF Czars (there are usually 2) are responsible for providing food for the weekly TGIF social hour with funds provided by the department. At least one of the Khans must have a car.Tea Czars
Another two person team, the Tea Czars organize the weekly departmental tea and cookies.Snack Czar
The Snack Czar is responsible for maintaining the snack shelves, collecting money, and purchasing new snacks.Calendar Czar
The Calendar Czar works with Astaff, Tstaff, faculty and grads to keep track of events of interest to the department and minimize scheduling conflicts. They collect information on classes, reading groups, lectures, lunches, lab meetings and the like and maintain an up-to-date calendar.Info Khan
The Info Khan is responsible for maintaining the graduate student web structure.Knowledge Khan
The Knowledge Khan is responsible for the dissemination of exciting departmental research to all members of the department. The primary method used is to organize the yearly departmental retreat.Fridge Khan
The Fridge Khan is an anonymous position, responsible for the cleanliness of the department's fridges. Once a month, he/she/it must examine the refrigerators and discard any items that need it.Rubber Chicken Khan
The primary responsibility of the Rubber Chicken khan is to maintain a coop of rubber chickens. A chicken is traditionally awarded to (i.e., thrown at) a PhD candidate who has successfully defended his/her thesis, following the faculty handshakes and preceding the champagne.The khan is also responsible for assigning the chicken thrower for each thesis defense. The chicken thrower is usually the closest friend in the department of the chicken recipient.
TeX Merc
The Tex Mercs support astaff in their use of LaTeX and TeX. Secondary responsibilities include maintaining the TeX project and various TeX related programs, such as xdvi, and dvips and being available to answer TeX related questions from other users in the department.Java Merc
The Java Merc is responsible for installing and maintaining versions of Java needed by courses and researchers that are not provided by the standard OS install. The Java Merc also responds to questions about, and problems with, those versions of Java. The Java Merc is not responsible for handling application-specific design, development or debugging related questions.Ergo Merc
The Ergo merc maintains the departmental ergonomic website as well as a pool of ergonomic keyboards and voice recognition software. New users are taken care of (workspace evaluations) and injured parties are led through the department and university ropes. In addition, this merc coordinates the Brown RSI-awareness campaign and collects statistics on RSI at BrownCS for reporting to the Facilities Committee.| Page Owner: Alexandru Balan | Last Modified: Tue Oct 23 11:50:31 2007 |