Carnegie Mellon

Here are some of my notes and thoughts concerning Carnegie Mellon University.

CMU was the first university I visited, after arriving in the States Wednesday night. My host was Lizzie Silver, a friendly Australian girl who is herself in her first year as a grad student. She told me Pittsburgh is an old industrial city that has been shrinking ever since the steel industry collapsed. As such most houses are relatively old, spacious and cheap. It should be relatively easy to find a place here, and if you have a roommate prices should be under $ 500 / month.

The next two days I spent visiting the Department of Philosophy at CMU. In terms of research the place seems very well-suited to me, with a strong focus on formal methods. Faculty that would be particularly interesting for me to work with include the decision theorists Horacio Arlo-Costa and Teddy Seidenfeld, Kevin Zollman who specializes in evolutionary game theory and David Danks who specializes in (causal) models of cognition. Unfortunately I did not meet Teddy Seidenfeld, but all the other faculty I met were all very friendly and open.

The Department is relatively small, by my estimate (I didn’t ask for exact numbers) around 20 each of faculty members and PhD students, plus a handful of master’s students. Master’s students are on a very similar program to PhD students, except they leave after two years with a master’s degree (usually).

Speaking of the program, PhD students are expected to take three courses per semester throughout the first three years of their enrollment (or was it the first two years? I forgot). There are a number of methodological courses everyone takes in the first year, but other than that you are expected to pick courses relevant to your own development. Taking courses at other departments of CMU and at the two sister departments at UPitt (History and Philosophy of Science and Philosophy) is encouraged.

According to David, in practice students take only two courses per semester after the first semester, the third slot being filled with courses like “independent research” or one-on-one reading with faculty – so effectively working on the research that will lead up to your dissertation.

An important goal of the course work is to develop areas of competence – areas that you would be able to teach courses in as you go into a career in academia. At CMU this is tailored per student, as different students want to go into different departments after the PhD, with some going to Math or Computer Science departments and others to Philosophy departments.

After the first semester a grad student at CMU is expected to work as a teaching assistant (TA), grader or research assistant (RA). Lizzie pointed out that serving as a TA in the intro to philosophy course at least one semester is compulsory. She decided to get this out of the way as soon as possible, so she would have her hands free if any possibilities for RAing came up. RAing is usually tailored to specific students in such a way that it is effectively pure research time for your PhD or close to it. Due to the relatively large number of grants active in the department, it is often possible to finance grad students in this way, freeing them from grading duties.

Work of the above-mentioned types can also be done over summer. This is a way to improve your financial situation as well as a chance to run your own courses as a lead instructor (i.e. lecturer) or to work on your research in relative peace. Ruth, one of the current grad students, indicated that the stipend as-is is somewhat minimal, but with the possibilities to earn more money over summer it is easily sufficient.

Much was made by both faculty and students of the open door policy. Apparently grad students spend a lot of quality time with the faculty, and also help each other a lot. Even though the grad student offices are located in a separate building from the faculty offices, they assured me they met up a lot, especially with their own adviser(s). There’s also the Thursday afternoon tea where the faculty come to the grad student offices for beer, wine and snacks (no actual tea).

The offices themselves seemed spacious enough, although only two have windows. They did have a nice common room and kitchen, with a fridge containing leftovers, which are often around due to the tea and other (free) food consumption in the common room.

The students seem nice as well. They were around a lot of the time, were very helpful in answering questions, and we had great fun celebrating St Patrick’s Day Thursday night and at the department dinner and conference party Friday night.

They told me they regularly attend conferences and submit papers to them. In general, the aim of the program is to have you submitting papers to conferences and journals as early as possible. Exchanges with other universities also happen, but they are somewhat rare, and due to funding issues may be more difficult to set up than in Europe.