Resources for TIES Faculty Advisors, TAs and Staff >> Responsibilities of Faculty Advisors

Lab (weekly): Attend the weekly scheduled lab. The students meet for two hours in the scheduled lab. The advisor typically attends for approximately one hour, to go over team activities, to advise on selection of projects with respect to technical and design content, review the team's progress, and to give other advice as needed.

Common Lecture (weekly):   TIES staff will schedule and arrange ENG 100L common guest lectures, which we will coordinate with ENG 100 lectures.   Faculty advisor suggestions for speakers and topics will be solicited before the start of each quarter.   Each advisor might be asked to host and attend 1-2 lectures per quarter.  

Weekly reports (weekly): Each individual student and team submits a brief electronic weekly report form that summarizes the individuals' and team's accomplishments for the past week and outlines each member's plans for the coming week. These are available through the myTIES system. You will be notified of the reports availability by email. The advisor is to read the reports and offer comments and advice.

Reports and presentations: (twice per quarter): Each team delivers a Quarter plan with spend plan and gives a proposal presentation in the first part of the quarter, as well as a final quarter written report and continuation plan. Advisors are to read and critique the reports and attend the presentations.  

Team Budget: (included in Quarter Plan and Final Reports): Each team prepares a budget to cover expenses. Included in the budget is justification for each expense. The advisor is to read and approve the team's budget. All team budgets then must be further approved by TIES administrators prior to purchasing equipment.

Evaluation and grading: Team members are evaluated based on their individual contributions and on the overall performance of the team. Grades are based on the student's design notebook, lecture attendance, the team's weekly reports, team web pages, on the formal project presentations and reports, and the evaluation of the community client. Each student is asked to critique both his/her own participation in the project and that of all team members (Peer Evaluations available through the myTIES system).   TIES will support undergraduate tutors and or TA's (as support allows) to perform the major tasks of grading, including reading and summarizing design notebooks.   (Requests will be solicited prior to each academic year for tutors/TA's by TIES). The advisor and/or TA is to send individual feedback by email to each team member, giving the student's individual and team grades and final grade.    The Advisor is responsible for assigning final grades.

Interaction with community client : The students have primary responsibility for interacting with the community client. The advisor should have at least the following interactions:

1. Meet with the community client prior to the start of the first quarter. For continuing teams, the purpose of the meeting is to re-establish contact and discuss broad goals for the year. For new teams, the purpose of the meeting is to work with the client to generate a list of possible projects to serve as a starting point for the team's discussions with the client.   TIES staff will arrange the team's initial meeting with the community client, which should occur during week 2 or 3 of scheduled lab session in each quarter.
2. Attend the team's first meeting with the community client.
3. Communicate with the community client to get their feedback regarding the team and individuals for input to each quarter's final grades.

Faculty Advisor meetings (approximately 2):   Attend TIES Faculty Advisor meetings, as requested.