Student Handbook

The Allen School will reclaim the desks of students who are graduating, mastering-out or who are on extended leave (greater than three (3) academic quarters). Students are tasked with clearing out their desks in preparation for a new occupant. If you are graduating with a Ph.D., then you are allowed to maintain your desk until the end of the quater in which your final exam takes place. The following steps should take place as soon as you schedule your final examination:

• Submit the Grad Move Scheduler GForm to notify support, operations, and grad advising of your pending depature.
  1. This form will outline the steps you need to take in order to return any university-provided equipment. In addition, you will be asked to schedule when your desk will be reclaimed by the Allen School and will agree to have cleared it of all items by that time.
• The Allen School expects the desk to be returned to us in the same state it was in when you arrived. This includes:
  1. emptying your pedastal drawer of all items,
  2. clearing the desk of all personal items (monitor, mouse, keyboard, and other peripherals can remain),
  3. and disgarding any trash/unwanted materials.

  You can find information below on where you can dispose of recycling and e-Waste, shred papers, drop off items to lost and found.

• Once you have returned your desk to its starting condition please submit a photo using the Graduate Office/Workroom Photo Upload GForm. The Grad Move Scheduler also has a link to this form.

Recycling If you have any paper, metal, glass or hard plastics that do not fit in the bins on your floor, please bring it down to the Allen Center or Gates Center front desks. We have larger recycling bins available.

Shredding If you have sensitive paper documents, such as lab notebooks or student exams, that should be destroyed, please bring them to the shredding bins. There is one located by the Xerox machines in CSE2 160 (Gates grad mailroom) and one located in the supply area of the Allen Center front office.

e-Waste Non-Functioning Items: Any cables, peripherals, CDs and small hardware can be dropped off in the e-Waste bin on the Allen Center 1st floor. The bin is located with the trash/recycling/compost bins in the atrium, by the elevators. For larger items, or non-trivial items that are functioning but no longer wanted (that may be reused), please contact support@cs.

Lost and Found The Allen and Gates Center front desks have lost and founds. We can take any items that aren’t yours and you’re fairly sure don’t belong to your office mates. We hold those items for 2 months and then send them to the HUB lost and found.

Extra Office Supplies If you have office supplies that you got from the Allen School supply rooms, please return them if they’re usable by someone else (whiteboard markers, scissors, boxes of staples).

• Students leaving the Allen School need to relinquish your building keys. This should be done by the time your desk is ready to be reclaimed. You may drop them off at the Allen Center Reception desk or at your Exit Interview with Graduate Advising.
  1. If you do forget to return your keys, they can be sent to the Allen School by postal mail. If returning keys by mail, please use a sturdy envelope and seal it well to prevent keys from falling out in transit.

• You must return any CSE issued hardware to the CSE Support desk by date of final departure (CSE1 207)
• IMPORTANT—assume all forms of access will be suspended, and all local and cloud data across all university provided resources and locations will be deleted 1 QUARTER AFTER GRADUATION. Your CSE account, computer login accounts (attu, etc.), home directory data, and access to most resources (CSE GitLab Projects; Email and Cloud Data) will be removed one quarter after graduation. Speak to your faculty advisor if you anticipate needing your account to be active for longer. For detailed instructions for how and when to take action see the CSE support’s after graduation checklist.

• Students leaving the Allen School need to relinquish your building keys. This should be done by the time your desk is ready to be reclaimed. You may drop them off at the Allen Center Reception desk or at your Exit Interview with Graduate Advising.
  1. If you do forget to return your keys, they can be sent to the Allen School by postal mail. If returning keys by mail, please use a sturdy envelope and seal it well to prevent keys from falling out in transit.

• Change your address as a student and as an employee. Your W-2 forms will be sent to the address you show under your employee tab.
• Email your faculty’s grant manager to confirm that they are aware of your plan to not work as an RA for the period of leave.
• Email payroll@cs with the expected date you will no longer be working for the UW. Respond to their inquiries.
• Clean out your grad mailbox, be sure to setup forwarding with any vendors using that address.

At the point of leaving the Allen School there is an opportunity for soliciting honest and candid feedback about student experiences at the school and thoughts for how the school could improve the program. The goal of conducting an “exit interview” would be to capture this feedback in a way that is more honest and personal than a digital survey. Exit interviews are conducted and scheduled by the Grad Advising Team. It is expected that a student will meet with one member of the team, not all members.

What to Expect

The interviews are conducted in person if possible as part of the logistics for returning keys and clearing building spaces. The advisor will send the student a list of starter questions at the interview is scheduled to allow them to collect their thoughts. During the interview the advisor will be recording notes in a google form as the interview progresses and try to make the interview into a conversation.

If the student is unable to meet for an in-person interview, a phone/video call interview should be preferred to just having the student fill the form directly. Having the student reply only in writing is an option if needed or preferred by the student.

All students are offered the opportunity to provide additional written or verbal feedback at any point the interview as well.

Confidentiality and Data

The student’s individual response will be treated as a student record, and subject to protection under FERPA in a similar manner to the annual Review of Progress. If the student would prefer to contribute any piece of feedback anonymously, separate from their specific student record, they can say so at any time during the interview and that decision will be respected by the interviewer. Data requested to be anonymous will be collected in a separate document to prevent accidental inclusion. Students may also request to share data in confidence with their interviewer, which should not be recorded or reported unless required by law.

Answers to each question recorded by the interviewer will be made available for viewing and analysis within the grad advising team, and de-identified and aggregated themes across responses will be made available internally to faculty and students in an aggregate report. Students can opt out of this aggregation if desired, and their interview will be marked and stored separately to avoid accidental inclusion.

Actions and Analysis

Raw data not requested to be anonymous by the student, in the form of notes taken by the interviewer, will be available to the grad advising team to refer back to as a part of the student’s record. These individual records are private, but results will be made actionable to the wider Allen School community in two forms: direct interventions suggested by the advising team and an annual aggregate report posted to the Ph.D. Program Data, Statistics, & Reports page.

Direct interventions are actions taken by the advising team inspired by feedback and ideas given by students in the exit interview. Examples could be new training resources created, new initiatives for student support, or changes to update department policies given insights into how these policies are currently impacting students. The G5PAC, GSV, and other student groups could help share the burden of refining and implementing these interventions with the grad advising team and the faculty. These interventions should stand on their own, and must not rely on specific references to confidential student reports in their justification, although it can be mentioned if they were inspired by takeaways from the exit interview process in general.

The annual aggregate report complements any direct interventions, and is a way to share interview results while protecting individual student privacy. After graduation of each cohort (sometime in the summer), the advising team will create a brief takeaway report summarizing themes found across interview responses not requested to remain confidential. Aggregate statistics of the form (x% of students suggested) or (N students mentioned) can be reported as long as the percentages are sufficiently high to protect individual students. The inverse can also be reported (i.e. no students mentioned this interesting topic we thought would come up). The annual report will be archived internally and past reports will be made available to current students and faculty.