INFORMATION FOR
CICS Faculty

What is ERSP? 

The Early Research Scholar Program (ERSP) started as an NSF-funded project at UCSD. The program seeks to expose students to CS research early in their careers and to promote a community that works towards computing for the common good.

Here are some participant highlights from UCSD and projects from UCSB. 

Why join ERSP as a faculty mentor? 

As a faculty mentor, you work towards our goal to enable undergraduate students learn basic research skills. Towards the end of this program, it's likely that the students will actually be able to contribute in a meaningful way to your research. Besides, you get to interact with undergrads who are young and excited to learn about your research.

Additionally, you may also pursue a REU-supplement award to support ERSP, or add to the broader impact section of a grant proposal.

FAQS

1. What are the commitments for a faculty mentor?

• Starting in fall, hold weekly research meetings  with the ERSP undergrads. Give feedback on the proposal for their Spring project.

• In the spring, monitor the research project that students are implementing for you.

2. Are faculty mentors required to commit throughout the spring and fall semesters?

• Yes, but if there is a problem with the relationship, we can address issues as they arise.

3. Can the primary mentor/point of contact be a grad student or post-doc?

• Yes!  Grad students and post-docs make some of the best mentors.  Feel free to reach out to them.  They also benefit immensely from the opportunity to develop their mentoring skills.  However, we do also ask that you (the faculty) have some interaction with the students.

4. What's the commitment on your end?

• Come up with a project that is appropriate for second-year undergraduates to work on over the year.  We can help you with this.

• Have an orientation meeting with us at some time during the Spring/Summer to learn some best practices for mentoring early undergraduate students and some tips for framing a successful project.

• During the AY (Fall & Spring), arrange for you or one of your grad students or advanced undergraduates to interact with ERSP undergrads in a mentoring/guiding capacity.  Or be willing to take on this role yourself (this would probably involve about 1 hour/week). You can also invite them to some of your regular research lab meetings, so that they learn about your research.

5. Besides attending research meetings, what else will the students do?

• In the fall, students take CICS 237 'Introduction to Research in the Discipline’ 2cr course, for which they will be practicing basic research skills like reading research papers, keeping a research log, presenting technical concepts, identifying interesting problems, making progress toward a solution that is not known to exist, etc. All of these skills will be practiced in the context of your research project. 

• In spring semester,  students are enrolled in CICS 396A 'Directed Research Group’ 3cr course where they will carry out an independent research project under your guidance and with the support of the ERSP mentor.

6. What's in it for me?

• By the end of their participation in this program, it's likely that these students will actually be able to contribute in a meaningful way to your research

• You get to interact with undergrads who are young and excited to learn about your research

• You also get to contribute to the broader impacts section of a proposal!

7. Do I have to commit for the full 2 semesters?  

• Yes, but if there is a problem with the relationship, we can address issues as they arise.

8. Can I have fewer than 4 students?

• We prefer to place students in groups of 4 both so that we can accommodate a larger number of students and so that they can build a community of support among their peers.  You can split their work into two sub-projects if you want, but it usually works best if they just all work on the same thing.  

9. What knowledge/background can I expect these students to have?

• ERSP students are very early in their careers (sophomore year) and are almost always students with average to minimal pre-college CS experience.  You can expect that they have taken at least two basic programming courses but many do not have more than that.  However, you'll be amazed at their ability to learn what they need for your project over the course of the year under our guidance.  They are all extremely passionate and eager to learn.