Grad Student Review

Every year, the CS department does a performance review for each of its Ph.D. students. Here's mine.

We are very pleased with the quality of your work and with the pace of your progress. We want to congratulate you and encourage you to continue doing such an excellent job. We especially note the unusual and significant achievement of having originated and led the development of Cyclopath, a system that has (a) earned significant real-world usage, (b) resulted in deep collaborations with local government and non-profits, including a sizable grant from the Metropolitan Council, as well as (c) serving as a platform for carrying out excellent research. We also note the unusual and significant leadership role you have taken on the Cyclopath project, engaging in extensive informal and formal mentoring of less experienced students as well as doing large amounts of software project management. We understand that this work certainly has taken away from the amount of "pure" / narrowly construed research you could have done -- that is, you probably could have published more papers if you had not done this. However, you *still* have published a good number of very high quality papers, and the amount and type of effort you have put in have led to accomplishments are much more substantial and longer lasting than just a few (more) research papers.

We congratulate you an reaching an advanced stage in your degree program. At this point, we think you should be ready to finish and defend your thesis within the next year. Please consult closely with your advisor to develop a detailed timetable and verify that your examining committee is appropriate. You also should be seeking career guidance from your advisor if you have not done so already.

Sincerely,

Loren Terveen
Director of Graduate Studies
on behalf of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering
The University of Minnesota

The tone is interesting to me, as Loren is my advisor in addition to being the DGS.