General Statements:  

MS-ARP students are expected to participate in the consortium commensurate with their standing as a graduate student pursuing a post-professional degree. MS-ARP degree requirements are intended to support your professional skill development as you gain academic expertise in applied research practices in the built environment. Professional conduct includes, for example, being responsible and proactive around program expectations; being clear, concise and courteous in communications; respecting confidential information and intellectual property guidelines; and helping to shape the MS-ARP program experience by fully participating in peer cohort and consortium activities. 

Meetings: 

MS-ARP students are responsible for scheduling, preparing for, and leading regular progress meetings. Specifically, you are responsible for:  weekly check-ins with your faculty advisor; weekly check-ins with your practice mentor and monthly meetings that bring everyone together to ensure a regular dialog around expectations and progress each semester.  Additionally, MS-ARP students are expected to, minimally, meet with the program director at the start of the semester and within a week after midterm to review progress and course registration for the following semester. Faculty advisor and practice mentor schedules may fill quickly, so you are encouraged to set up your meetings for the entire semester as soon as possible.  

Project Wrap-Up and Summary Documents: 

A summary document is required at the conclusion of each research project (or significant research phase). These documents are widely available online and should be of the highest professional quality. For consistency within the Consortium for Research Practices, your document will follow a graphic layout and content template, which is provided in your MS-ARP resource folder. Your course instructor, faculty advisor, practice mentor and program director might all want to review the document before it is considered final. In addition to the reasonably sized PDF file, you are expected to upload a packaged working file folder to Google Drive and share the link with your faculty advisor. The summary document and packaged file folder are due on the last day of final exams. 

File Management and Archiving: 

Students are expected to document and save all working and final files in the appropriately designated, shared MS-ARP course and/or program folders throughout the semester.  All research project presentations and final documentation must be uploaded to the MS-ARP degree shared drive as part of the program archive; supplemental materials (e.g., project statements, working documents and drafts) may be duplicated to the main drive or linked with an alias when the materials are otherwise stored in a course folder.  All required templates are available on the consortium website.  The general file naming convention is Year Semester_LastName FirstName_Project Title_File Name. 

Intellectual Property: 

The MS-ARP degree and its Consortium for Research Practices offer extraordinary opportunities for bridging academic work and professional practice.  Throughout the degree program, you may become aware of proprietary or confidential information that must be held as such at all times. You will also be participating in research activities that variously belong to different entities, depending on how those materials (or property) came about.  The university has an intellectual property agreement with consortium firms and industry partners that delineates the terms of ownership, use, transferability, citation and attribution of work produced as part of your internship.  In its most general sense, the university owns all rights to work produced as part of a graduate assistantship (such as a research assistantship), you have rights to work produced as part of an academic course, the firm has rights to work produced in the firm (including your work during the research practice internship); and firms may use and share, but not alter reports summarized within the academy as part of the degree program.  Communicate with the program director if you have questions about intellectual property developed as part of the MS-ARP degree.  Agreeing to these rights is part of the internship agreement you will sign prior to beginning your internship with a Consortium for Research Practices member firm.  

Learn more about professional communication and documentation HERE (Policies and Expectations // Professional Communication, and Project Summary Documentation).