Hi everyone,
The Master’s Programme Committee for Mathematics and Operations Research had its sixth meeting of the year on October 10th. Below is a summary of the meeting’s proceedings.
Decision Items
- Master’s theses topics and languages as well as appointment of the thesis supervisors and advisors were approved according to the proposal.
- Master’s theses grades as well as statements from the supervisors were also approved according to the proposal.
New SCI Master’s Thesis Guide
We discussed the introduction of the new SCI Master’s Thesis Guide MyCourses page (Course: SCI Master's Thesis Guide 2023- | MyCourses). The content of the thesis guide is essentially unaltered but the MyCourses page is now organized more clearly. An issue regarding visibility settings was identified: Guests had access to more information than students. Feedback has been forwarded, and all visibility settings will be checked by the admins of the MyCourses page. A general concern was raised regarding the maintenance of the thesis guide (Who updates what and how often?). It was also agreed that since the For Supervisors section has no confidential information, it could be visible to students to promote transparency in the thesis process.
The examination of the thesis guide spurred a discussion about master’s thesis presentations within the Systems and Operations Research (OR) major. Currently, OR students are not formally required to hold a thesis presentation. This will change at the end of the year, so every math and OR student has to present their thesis regardless of their major. This change will also be updated to the thesis guide MyCourses page.
Finally, we discussed reconfiguring the process of finding a supervisor within the master’s programme. Currently, some professors receive disproportionately many supervision requests by students. Instead of contacting their favorite supervisor candidate directly, students will be instructed to contact the professor in charge of their major, who can then point them to a fitting (and hopefully not overloaded) supervisor. The aim is to balance the supervision workload more equally among all potential supervisors (professors, senior lecturers and university lecturers).
Next Meeting
We will reassess the visibility and content of the new master’s thesis guide in the next meeting on December 12th.
Best regards,
Perttu