Work Schedules and Office Hours

Where and When to Work

All students are required to spend the 5 hours per work week or half their hours worked, whichever comes first, in 2221 DUE, the KDD Lab. These hours are to be scheduled in advance and must be communicated to the group director. Students may work all additional hours from home or during additional office hours in the Engineering Complex (preferably in 2221 DUE). This does not include meeting times, so for example, if a student works 6 hours per week not including meetings, they may specify just 3 hours of office hours, but if the student works 11 hours per week including 3 hours of KDD meeting times (1 hour for the weekly meeting, 1 hour for the seminar, 30 minutes for a weekly meeting with Bill, and 30 minutes for their subteam), they should still specify 4 hours of office hours.

Calendar for Each Semester

Every KDD member should share their Google calendar of the next semester with kddresearch@gmail.com before the end of the current semester (for example, the Spring 2019 calendar should be shared before the end of the Fall 2018 semester). To ensure the privacy of your calendar, here are some convenient options:

1. Share your personal/professional calendar with the above-mentioned email address with the option "see only free/busy (hide details)" selected (as in Google Calendar). Please make sure that the visibility of your KDD Office Hour event (time which you expect to spend inside the lab) is set to Public (not private or default visibility). This will allow Office Hour event to be visible while keeping other events of yours as private.
2. Share a dedicated calendar showing your office hours in the lab, known hard time conflicts (which can be shown as “busy”) and some flexibly available times (where we can schedule appointments with you), with the default event details set to be shown as “busy”.

In addition, please make sure your KDD office hours are clearly specified in your shared calendar.

How Much to Work

Undergraduate research programmers are generally expected to work 8 to 20 hours per week, typically 10-15 during regular weeks unless permission to work more than 15 is requested and given. This is usually discussed at both the interview and during the orientation period both verbally (during orientation presentations) and in writing, in the offer letter and orientation document.

Required KDD Meetings

The KDD Lab meets twice per week: for an all-hands meeting (schedule) and for a research seminar (schedule), which is sometimes synchronized with the other data science groups and includes an invited talk by an outside speaker. All KDD members are expected to attend both of these meetings unless expressly excused due to a time conflict, or because they are a volunteer on a single project, taking only an independent study with the KDD Lab that semester, or just visiting.

Required Research Meetings

Every student member of the KDD group should have a brief research meeting with the group director (Bill Hsu) each week. Please make an appointment for each semester by the end of the previous semester or at least one week before the new semester begins: up to 30 minutes for undergraduates, 30 minutes for M.S. students, and 60 minutes for Ph.D. students and postdocs. Additionally, every student employed on a research project should attend at least one subteam meeting. The times are set by mutual agreement among team members with the team lead, and the group director may or may not be able to attend.

Orientation Period

The first pay period after hiring is an orientation and acclimation period. If students are hired on a tentative or probationary basis, they should not bill hours for attending orientation, KDD Lab meetings, the KDD seminar, or other tasks. Otherwise, they may bill hours for orientation unless otherwise specified. They should not bill hours for attending other KDD Lab meetings until given express permission to.

Crunch Time

In very busy project periods the KDD group director and research project leaders may ask for students to work up to their maximum hours per week (20 during the academic year). Conversely, during very busy exam periods, students may indicate by giving prior notice that they need to work fewer than 8 hours that week.

Policy for GTAs in KDD

KDD students are not to wait for GTA supervisor assigned times but are to treat Friday kdd-seminar, Wednesday general meetings (if they are graduating, being advised on independent study, or working on their report/thesis/dissertation), and one-on-one meetings as priority time conflicts just like regular lecture courses. GTAs employed by the CS Department and working with KDD for their research should also note the following:

1. Set your weekly office hours so Dr. Hsu can select a one-on-one meeting time, giving TAs with obligatory office hour schedules appropriate priority;
2. Put your class times, Wed/Fri KDD meeting times, and our agreed-upon one-on-one meeting time on your Google Calendar. reserving these as prior commitments, and the rest of your office hours as tentative;
3. You should contact your major professor/supervisor to indicate these obligations to your KDD research group/advisor. (cc: Dr. Hsu to let him know when you do);
4. If there are any hard conflicts that Dr. Hsu needs to negotiate with your supervisor, find out and let him know and he will do so;
5. Finally, we revise your in-lab hours in 2221 DUE to finalize your schedule and distinguish hours in 2221 from hours in the GTA office.

Submitting Hours

All hourly employees must use KSU HRIS to enter their hours. Please submit hours by 1700 CDT of the Friday on which pay periods end - this means before the KDD seminar. If you need to estimate time worked on Saturday, it's OK to give a close estimate and adjust by putting down hours the following week if you go over or under your estimate. If you submit late, you need to tag your supervisor and Dr.Hsu in #timesheets to make sure you are not get missed. Dr.Hsu needs to approve the timesheets after Friday's seminar, if he loses access he cannot approve timesheets by himself anymore and this might cause some of you would lose access to add hours for the next timesheets. If you are submitting your timesheets late, you will have a risk to get paid late or risk forfeiting hours if there is no place to move them.

In addition, student employees, including (but not limited to) graduate research assistants and undergraduate research programmers, should fill out an electronic timesheet to their team lead graduate research assistant or development team manager each they submit a time sheet. This is in lieu of clocking in and out of the lab in a log book. Please consult the sample timesheet below and save the template for your use. The task categories are:

• Software development and debugging
• Reading background material
• Meetings
• Writing (papers and documentation) and preparation (of presentations and demos)
• Task transfer (communicating with others about receiving tasks from others or giving tasks to them)
• Other duties

You may modify task categories as needed. The purpose of this timesheet is to track your overall productivity and identify any issues such as a student being stuck on a task, needing some guidance on how to be more effective and efficient, or needing time to conduct a literature search and tips on how to do so.

Billing Hours

Unless otherwise specified, students may always bill hours spent presenting work to project sponsors. Students on scholarships should bill hours spent on scholastic activities such as attending the KDD seminar or weekly KDD Lab meeting to the scholarship first. Time spent on an independent study project, open house exhibit, or other project for which is not employed, should not be billed. All other hours, including individual research advising time (outside of academic advising and any meetings concerning course projects), may be billed. This includes projects on which a student is a paid employee and is also earning course credit. Please see timesheet slack channel for updates.

Time Sheet Template

Last updated by rfali on Oct 4, 2023