Decide How to Title Graduate Students

[jayfo]

Faculty can have one or more position, each of which consists of a title and a unit.

position:
- title: Associate Professor
  unit: Information School
- title: Adjunct Associate Professor
  unit: Computer Science & Engineering

It seems clear students have one or more unit. But what about title?

We already decided to group students as "PhD Students" and "Masters Students" (see #62). We could eventually find that we want or need an "Undergraduate Students".

Given that, what is an appropriate title? Or should there be no title? Remember we have several different units and types of student to consider, and we want a consistent approach.

position:
- title: PhD Student
  unit: Information School

position:
- title: Masters Student
  unit: Human Centered Design & Engineering

position:
- title: Masters Student
  unit: Division of Design

position:
- title: Masters Student
  unit: Human Computer Interaction & Design

position:
- title: Undergraduate
  unit: Information School
- title: Undergraduate
  unit: Computer Science & Engineering

The most prominent display of these will be on the people pages.

Note that the above splits the M from MHCID. Another potential example of a title I am missing here is something like Undergraduate Researcher. So I do not think the above are perfect, I am just using them to illustrate some of the range.

What do we think? Are they right? Better ideas? Something we're missing?

@andyjko, @depstein, @mjskay

[mjskay]

The splitting M form MHCID problem seems symptomatic of the fact that "title" and "expected degree" (or something like that) are only approximately the same thing for PhD students (where for Master's students you have, what, MHCID, MDes, MSIM, MS, etc ... ?). If we're getting anal the title corresponding to "Master's student" for "PhD student" might actually be "Doctoral student". Or making it consistent the other way around, every "Master's student" becomes "[MDes|etc] student".

But that seems messy and complicated where "Master's student" and "PhD student" (or "Doctoral student") is simple and people know what they mean, which is probably enough?

As another complicating thought you probably don't want, on the PhD side you might also distinguish between "students" and "candidates".

[amyjko]

The simpler the better. We don't want the data model impeding our limited time to manage and update this content.

• Can students really have more than one unit? Faculty certainly can.
• title seems sufficient, or even a more general role, which could be the enumerated type { faculty, doctoral, masters, undergrad }, with the possible addition of staff.

[jayfo]

1. We have a role by nature of our grouping into { faculty, doctoral, masters, undergrad }. That provides for our highest-level grouping. I had that as a tags field, but I agree it should be a role.

2. Where faculty have one or more title and unit, perhaps a student only has one or more unit.

   2a. For faculty:

   role:
   - faculty
   position:
   - title: Assistant Professor
     unit: Information School
   

   2b. For a doctoral student that is the name of their department:

   role:
   - doctoral-student
   position:
   - unit: Information School
   

   2c. For a master's student that is the name of their program:

   role:
   - masters-student
   position:
   - unit: Master of Science in Information Management
   

   role:
   - masters-student
   position:
   - unit: Master of Human-Computer Interaction + Design
   

   role:
   - masters-student
   position:
   - unit: Master of Science in Human Centered Design & Engineering
   

   2d. We can leave undergraduate undefined for now, but it is probably the name of their major.

3. Do we agree it should be "Doctoral Students" instead of "PhD Students"?

I am ok with this. What do people think?

[depstein]

Yup.