Assistantships that I supervise

Dr. Michael A. Covington
Institute for Artificial Intelligence
The University of Georgia

About assistantships...

The University of Georgia provides financial support to many of its graduate students in the form of a 1/3-time (15-hour-per-week) job whose pay is just sufficient to cover a student's living expenses. These jobs are called assistantships.

To get an assistantship, you should apply for it when you apply for admission, and make sure that your application is on file and up to date with your department. You cannot get an assistantship if you have not applied for one.

In the AI M.S. program, all applicants are considered for practically all of the assistantships, whether or not they have contacted the professors in charge. In other degree programs, it may be a good idea to contact the professor with whom you want to work, but your primary point of contact should be your graduate coordinator.

Apply on time!

To be considered for an assistantship, your application should reach us by January 1 if you plan to arrive in August (Fall Semester).

We start awarding assistantships in mid to late January. We cannot consider you for an assistantship if we have already awarded it to someone else.

Teaching assistantships

There are no classroom teaching assistantships (TAships) associated with the AI M.S. program. There are teaching assistantships in various other programs, but I am not associated with them; see your graduate coordinator.

AI Lab technicians

Note: After January 1, 2005, I will not be supervising the AI lab technicians myself.

The AI Lab technicians (typically a team of two or three) are chosen by a committee that considers all the applicants to the AI M.S. program.

Qualifications include prior experience with computer support (especially Windows 2000/XP) and excellent communication skills. The job includes writing documentation as well as performing routine maintenance on computers.

The University requires a test of spoken English for all instructional assistantships awarded to non-native speakers of English, including these lab assistantships. You can take the Test of Spoken English (TSE) before applying or take a University-administered test (called SPEAK) during your first year. In either case, what matters most is the actual quality of your spoken English, not just the test score.

Research assistantships

I have had an externally funded research project in the area of computational psycholinguistics. At present (August 2006) we are in between funding sources.

Assistantships for this project are awarded on the basis of specific qualifications. Each assistantship is awarded to the most qualified candidate, who is generally someone who has already come to my notice because of relevant experience.

My research assistants come from a variety of degree programs, not just the M.S. in AI.

When I choose research assistants, I'm looking for outstanding students, not average or mediocre ones. Specifically, I look for:

• Excellent academic performance. Assistantships go to the most qualified applicants, the cream of the crop. If you don't normally make A's in your courses, that's not going to be you.

• Specific qualifications. I choose people who are already demonstrating their ability to do good work in an appropriate research area, or whose previous degree makes them uniquely qualified.

• Communication skills, including excellent spoken and written English. To work on natural language processing, you have to be good at language. If you hate writing term papers, you're not a good candidate for this project.

• Scholarly skills — ability to use libraries, read the scholarly literature, and write research papers. Rarely do I employ someone just to do programming or other purely technical work. I'm looking for people who can actually participate in the scientific discoveries, not just the technical infrastructure. In general, candidates must have already demonstrated their ability to do research and communicate the results in writing.

• Maturity as indicated by a realistic sense of the quality of your own work. I'm not impressed by mediocre students who deliver a pushy sales pitch. (Make A's in your first semester courses and then we'll talk.) Nor am I flattered by people who tell me I'm the greatest scientist they ever heard of. A sign of scholarly maturity is that you know how your own work compares to the research that other people are doing in the same field.

I'm aware that a good candidate could appear from "out of the blue" at any time. If you have an outstanding record and think you may be qualified to work with me, please let me know.

Postdoctoral positions

There are no postdoctoral positions at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

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