Advice



collage of photographs of cities, nature, texture, buildings, people, and other subjects
Some of my photographs featured in the pages below.

I created these pages to help people (students, new faculty, others) understand typically unwritten customs and procedures in academia. You're welcome to contact me if you have questions about them.

These pages won the Best Teaching Material award at TeachingNLP 2024.

Getting Started

The Guide to the Advice contains a welcome video, suggestions for which of these pages to read, and a brief history of this part of my website.

The Guide for Interacting With Faculty is for students (especially first-year undergraduates and international students) who want to learn about expectations that university faculty have for them.

Writing and Publishing

The Guide for Scholarly Writing ("Writing Guide") is for students who are writing manuscripts for assignments or for publication.

The Guide for Citations and References is for students who are new to using citations and references, or need to refresh their memory.

The Guide for Research Conferences ("Conference Guide" or "Publishing Guide") is for students who want to share their work with the research community.

My Lab and Research

The Guide for Joining My Lab is for prospective students and visitors who are interested in doing research with me. It also contains some general guidance on graduate school in computer science and information science.

The Guide for Working in HLT Lab ("Working Guide") is for current lab members.

The Guide for Student Research ("Research Guide") is for students getting started in research. It contains information on strategies, expectations, and common obstacles.

Academia as a Career

The Guide for the Tenure-Track Job Market in Computer/Information Sciences ("Jobs Guide") is for people who want to apply for faculty positions.

Tenure Worth Wanting contains advice for pretenure faculty. It focuses on sustainable effort and finding meaning in work, addressing some topics that I hadn't seen covered elsewhere.

The Guide to Professorspeak is a glossary of terms for new faculty and others who are curious about the jargon faculty use.

Inglorious Proposals is for faculty who are getting started with submitting proposals to the NSF for research funding and others who want to know more about the process.

Autobiographical

My Academic Journey is a brief chronicle of my experiences with academia as a student and a career-seeker.

Thoughts on Failure is a personal narrative about my biggest failures, with some advice from experience. People who set challenging goals for themselves may find the contents of this page particularly relatable.

Thoughts on Competition is a personal narrative about competing for scholarships, awards, and other opportunities that I encourage my students to apply for.

Thoughts on Uncertainty is a personal narrative about uncertainty during major transitions in my education and career.

Thoughts on Photography describes my approach to taking the pictures that appear throughout these pages.

I also wrote an article on Medium about being a NICU dad.

Short Pages

I provide an example CV for PhD students, with LaTeX source code and advice in footnotes.

Need Help? is a page I sometimes send as a reply to prospective research advisees who need help formulating their questions. I encourage other faculty to reply with a page like this when necessary, rather than ignoring prospectives' emails.

For Teaching Assistants is a page with instructions for teaching assistants joining my classes.

Updates

To find out what's new, read the Advice Changelog. I also share some updates on Twitter.