Graduate Coursework

Contents

1. Registration and Coursework Policies
   
   1. Satisfactory progress
   2. Registration and Minimum course load per semester
   3. Taking Courses in Other Departments
   4. Pre-Candidacy Research Credits
   5. PhD Coursework Waiver Policy
2. Course Listing
   
   1. Areas and Courses
   2. 898/899/799/798 Section Numbers
   3. Special Topics Courses

1. Registration and Coursework Policies

Satisfactory Progress

You are expected to make satisfactory progress toward your degree, commensurate with your other responsibilities. You must maintain continuous registration either via coursework or research credits. You must maintain an overall B average in your coursework exclusive of CMSC 799 (Thesis Research) and CMSC 899 (Dissertation Research).  Otherwise, your graduate admission may be terminated.

If you receive a grade of I (incomplete) in any course, you must have this grade removed before you can be granted your degree. If you receive a grade of D or F in a graduate course, you may not complete your degree unless you raise your grade for that course to a C or higher by repeating the course.

You are responsible for being aware of and meeting all deadlines and requirements relevant to your progress through graduate school. Exact dates of examinations and application deadlines are posted by the Graduate School each academic year, and by the department each semester. The department will notify you of any changes in departmental policies either by sending you mail or by posting an announcement to gradlist [-at-] cs [dot] umd [dot] edu.

You are responsible for notifying the Computer Science Graduate Office in writing of any circumstances that would prevent you from maintaining graduate standing or fulfilling the requirements for your degree.

Registration and Minimum course load per semester

All Computer Science graduate students must register using Testudo (http://www.testudo.umd.edu). Each semester, your advisor must approve your registration as well as changes to it. The Computer Science Graduate Office helps students obtain permission to take restricted courses. Due to heavy demand for Computer Science courses, we strongly advise you to register early.

Minimum course load

Course load is measured in units, which are defined as follows:

Audited courses do not generate graduate units. A part-time graduate student must complete at least 12 units per year. A full-time graduate student is normally expected to successfully complete a combination of courses that totals at least 48 units each semester (excluding summer sessions). For graduate assistants, the minimum full-time requirement is reduced to 24 units, calculated as above (36 units for half-time appointments). Graduate assistants and International students must maintain full-time status.

Consult this reference to help calculate whether or not your coursework qualifies you as a full-time graduate student:

Taking Courses from Other Departments

Courses from other departments can be used to satisfy the elective requirements (see section 2.3 in the policy manual). In certain cases, courses from other departments may be used for MS/PhD qualifying coursework. These courses must still meet the requirements for qualifying designation: they must primarily (at least 75%) base the course grade on a combination of homework, programming assignments, research projects, and exams. Any of these components are optional, except the courses' written exam(s) which must account for at least 30% of the grade. If you want to do this, you should submit to the Grad Office a request that:

• Identifies the course, gives info (syllabus, instructor, etc.)
• Identifies the area in which you want the course to count
• A letter of support from your advisor

The Grad Office forwards the request to the relevant area representative and asks for a decision on:

• Whether the course is acceptable as a Phd/MS course for the area
• If so, at what level (400 or higher).

Please submit the request sufficiently prior to the start of the semester in which the course is to be done.

Pre-Candidacy Research Credits

Pre-candidacy research credits (CMSC898) are used to maintain registration and/or full-time status when formal coursework will not meet those requirements. If you are doing research with your advisor but have not yet advanced to candidacy, you should also register for CMSC 898 to reflect these efforts.

CMSC898 section numbers are directly related to the professor you are doing your research with. A listing of section numbers can be found here. 

Note: For PhD students getting an MS along-the-way, CMSC798 should be taken in place of CMSC898 for the maximum of 6 credits, as CMSC898 does not count towards the M.S. 

PhD Coursework Waiver Policy

Up to three waivers may be granted to reduce the number of courses needed to be taken at UMD. This is granted to students with prior graduate coursework at a comparable school. For this, the course must closely approximate a UMD qualifying course (exams, be at the graduate level, and have a comparable syllabus). They must be approved by the appropriate field committee. These courses can be used either for the mastery or elective courses. Waiving courses does not reduce the number of A’s needed at UMD.

Some notes:

• A maximum of 3 courses can be waived. Please only submit 3 requests at a time. More can be submitted if negative decisions have been reached on some of your original requests.
• No graduate courses taken for undergraduate credit will be waived (courses taken for graduate credit while enrolled in an undergraduate program, as in the BS/MS program, are eligible).
• Course waivers will not reduce the number of As required in courses taken at UMD (4).
• Waivers will not be considered for courses which are no longer being offered at UMD, or for non-CS courses.
• 400-level courses are not acceptable for credit towards the PhD, so any 400-level course equivalents you wish to count towards your MS should be requested using the Inclusion or Transfer of Credits form. This has a limit of 2 courses from an outside institution (per Graduate School policy). Note that these courses will count towards the maximum number of waivable courses (3).

Waivers are granted by field committees and approved by the Director of Graduate Studies. Requests for waivers should be submitted via this form to the appropriate field committee chair(s) by October 1 if you started in the fall semester, and March 1 if you started in the spring semester. Note you must explicitly link to the UMD course you are waiving, so a comparison can be made.

2. Course Listings

Areas and Courses

The graduate program coursework is organized into areas, each with associated faculty and courses. There are currently eight areas:

• Artificial Intelligence
• Bioinformatics
• Computer Systems
• Database Systems
• Software Engineering/Programming Languages/HCI
• Scientific Computing
• Algorithms and Computation Theory
• Visual and Geometric Computing

Below are the courses by area:

Some courses may appear in more than one area. However, you cannot use a particular course to satisfy more than one area's requirement.

It is expected that courses at the 600-800 level will be offered on a rotating basis, roughly every three or four semesters.

In addition to the courses listed above, special topics courses are offered, under the course numbers CMSC 818, 828, 838, etc.

898/899/799/798 Section Numbers

Sections for the following independent research courses (CMSC798, 799, 898, 899) are by faculty member.

• CMSC798 - Master's Non-Thesis Research
• CMSC799 - Master's Thesis Research
• CMSC898 - Pre-Candidacy Research
• CMSC899 - Doctoral Dissertation Research

It is assumed students have already received faculty approval for registering for their section. For CM899, PhD students who have advanced to candidacy will automatically be registered each Fall and Spring by the registrar if the student has advanced by end of schedule adjustment for that semester. PhD students graduating in summer would need to register for 1 credit of CMSC899 to meet the requirement of being registered the semester of graduation.

Off-campus Internship/Individual Study (I1** or I2**): Students who are off-campus or on internship can register for "I" sections in summer (replacing the zero in the course number with the letter "I"). These sections are intended for when the student is NOT required to come to campus. All coursework is off-site or there are no on-campus meetings with the advisor. Students will be charged the off-campus mandatory student services fee if they are enrolled in this type of section.

MS/PhD Status of Special Topics Courses

1. This section lists special topics courses (i.e., 498, 798, 8x8) by semester, and for each course, indicates the following:
   • Fall 2015 and later - whether it is MS/PhD qualifying and area
   • Spring 2015 and earlier - whether it is PhD qualifying and area; whether it is MS qualifying and area; whether its exams consistute an MS comp in an area and, if so, which of its exams.
     • [Spring 2015 and earlier: MS or PhD qualifying courses must base their grades primarily on exams (and not on paper readings, presentations, etc). An MS comp must be based entirely on exams (and not projects, homeworks, term papers, etc). It can be one or more of the regular exams in the course (e.g., final, midterm + final), regular exams augmented with additional questions, a separate exam, or any combination.]
2. Instructors offering such courses should email the relevant information to the grad office well before the start of the semester.
3. Information for a semester is finalized when the semester starts.
4. If a special topics course being offered is not listed here, then it does not count as MS/PhD qualifying or toward MS comps.