ESS 716: Tips from Berkeley Engineering faculty

Laura Vogt:
Hello and welcome to the Not Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. I’m your host, Laura Vogt. I’m an associate director for marketing and communications for the College of Engineering. This week we’re talking about one of the best resources available to you as a Berkeley engineering student, the faculty. I interviewed three faculty members, Armando Fox, Bethany Goldblum, and Matthew Sherburne. I decided to split the podcast into two sections or two episodes because I asked Matt a lot more questions about being a transfer student since he was one. This week I’m happy to have Armando Fox from EECS and Bethany Goldblum from Nuclear Engineering, and thank you to both of them for being part of our podcast this summer. We’ll start with Armando. Thank you so much for being here today. Why don’t you introduce yourself?

Armando Fox:
Thanks for having me, Laura. My name is Armando Fox. I’m a professor on the computer science side of EECS at Berkeley. I have been affiliated with Berkeley as a researcher, faculty member since about 2006, and I actually got my PhD there, so go Bears. My areas of teaching and research are mostly around software engineering, cloud computing, and computer science education, so anything that’s the intersection of how technology and education can support each other is sort of near and dear to my heart. Outside of that in real life, I’m also music director for a number of nonprofit community theaters. I’ve been doing musicals since age seven or something when I grew up in New York. I think everybody should have a life outside of work and that’s mine.

Laura Vogt:
Well, thank you so much for being here today. Let’s start off with what tips do you have that could help students get the most out of their study time?

Armando Fox:
If I could do one thing differently, thinking back to when I was an undergrad, I would try as often as possible to have a study buddy or a small study group. That isn’t really so much a question about time management. It’s really about making the most of the time you do have. I think students really learn more from each other than they do from the instructors or even from their teaching assistants. Studying in a pair or studying in a group I think is a great way for the students in that group to sort of hold each other accountable. Everybody needs to contribute to the discussion, and it’s not enough to, well so-and-so got the answer, so I’ll just write that answer down. Really hold each other accountable to do you really understand how so-and-so got the answer? If not, ask.
Most students I’ve found, they’re happy to help each other. They want to help each other understand it’s not students competing against each other. It’s like all the students together trying to get a handle on very difficult material, which is what all of science and engineering is. It’s all very challenging. I would say if you can get a study buddy or a small study group together, and not too big, because in a large group it’s easy to wash out accountability. It’s easy to lose focus and all of a sudden you’re not really participating in the discussion as much., But if you’ve got two or three people and you’re all working together, I think that is a great way to make the most of your study time. That would be my top suggestion for managing your study time well.

Laura Vogt:
Do you have a suggestion for how students could create that study group or how you would start? Well, how would you meet people that you want to study with?

Armando Fox:
Absolutely. Certainly in EECS, we actually have a faculty member and some students who as part of a research project, have created software designed to help students get into informal groups. Ask your TA or your instructor, if their course is not using that software, why aren’t they? Because it’s free. It was developed in-house to solve exactly this problem. Even in courses that don’t have it, most courses do have online discussion groups like Piazza or Ed. You can post… sometimes the TAs will even create a special channel or a tag, like a hashtag for people who are looking to find study partners. That would be another way to do it. Most of our engineering classes have a format where there’s a small section in addition to the lecture. Small section is probably a good place to meet study partners as well because if you go to the same section each week and you start seeing the same people over and over, and maybe you’re even working with them during section on whatever the activity is.
There’s a few different ways, but as I said, do ask about the software that Professor [inaudible] and her students have been working on that is especially designed to do this, to put students together not only in a study group but in a study group that will have the mix of people that you like. Maybe you don’t want to be the only woman in your study group or maybe you’re nervous that you might be the only student of a certain ethnic background in your study group. The software can actually accommodate for things like that to put together groups that should work together well.

Laura Vogt:
Oh, that’s fantastic. I didn’t realize that that was available. How should students use the office hours that are available to them? Is there anything that they need to do to prepare?

Armando Fox:
Absolutely. That’s a great question. When students come to my office hours, and I tell them this at the beginning of each semester, when you come to me with you’re having trouble with a homework problem or a project, the first thing I’m going to ask you is explain what you’ve already tried, explain what you expected to happen when you tried that, but what actually happened instead, or if you’re having a conceptual difficulty where you’re not sure what to try, be prepared for me to ask you, all right, well let’s back up to the place… what’s the last thing you do understand on the way to doing that problem and where did you sort of hit your first wall? I can help you from there, but basically if you come into office hours and you give a structure, tell us where you are in the process and at what specific… if you just sort of come in and throw up your hands and say, help, it’s difficult for us to help you because we don’t know where to focus.
My advice is as much as possible, come in with a good explanation of where you are, specifically how far you were able to get, whether it’s on your own or with your study group or you bring your study partner to office hours with you and help us help you by being clear about where’s the first place where you stopped understanding something. If part of the reason that you stopped understanding something is maybe you missed a couple of lectures or you got behind on the homework, look, that happens. It happens to all of us, but at the same time, understand that the lectures and the homework are there for a reason. If the lectures are available as a recording, go back and take a look. Even if you didn’t turn in the homework and it’s going to be late, see how far you can get doing the homework. Don’t expect office hours to substitute for those things. They’re there to help go beyond those things.

Laura Vogt:
Office hours, they’re there for students to use, so make sure you use them.

Armando Fox:
Yeah, that’s the other thing. I am often surprised at right before an exam or right before homework, office hours are crowded. The rest of the time they’re sort of empty. We try to staff the office hours to anticipate that, but going back to the concept of time management, cramming just doesn’t work terribly well in engineering. The more that you can stay on schedule and hey, office hours early in the week are less crowded, that’s a great time to get more attention from the instructors and the TAs. That’s a really good point, Laura.

Laura Vogt:
Thank you. What have you found is the best way for students to approach faculty about research opportunities?

Armando Fox:
That’s another great question. I have actually spoken to groups of undergrads about this on a number of occasions. The advice I would give, and this is what I tell students when they come ask me about getting involved in research, the only difference between them and me is I’ve been doing this longer. I’m not any smarter than any of them. I’m just more experienced, which is a nice way of saying I’ve made more mistakes than they have. First of all, a certain amount of confidence. Understand the way you want to present yourself is I’m a capable person who is less experienced and I’m interested in becoming more experienced in these areas. Do you have any projects you’re working on that might be a good fit for my skills?
Then the second piece of advice is be persistent. Everybody at Berkeley is really busy. We all do a lot of things. If we don’t answer your email the first time, wait a couple of days and ping us again. Come to office hours. That’s a great reason to come to office hours. They’re not just for getting help on homework. You can get career advice and you can talk to a professor about getting involved in research. I know that professors can seem a little bit distant and maybe a little intimidating, but speaking for the vast majority of my colleagues, they’re really nice and they really like it when students express an interest in the work that they’re doing. Even if they don’t have something for you right away, they’ll remember you. They’ll keep you in mind, maybe after you’ve taken a couple of more classes to get some background knowledge that they need, but don’t be afraid to just put yourself out there.
Remember, the only difference between you and us is we have been in this game longer and we like it when students come to us and they’re interested in what we do and they want to get better at it. Then once you do that, be persistent. Persistence is actually a good signal for research because if you do get a position doing research, that’s another thing you’re going to need. Research is different from a class. In a class, we already know the answers. We’re teaching you material and testing you to see if you know the answers. In research, we don’t know the answers, so the persistence, keep working doggedly on a problem until you get somewhere, you’re going to need that when you do research so you might as well practice doing it when you approach faculty to ask about research.

Laura Vogt:
Do you think a transfer student needs to approach faculty about research differently than a freshman would?

Armando Fox:
No, not particularly. Again, a transfer student presumably has more coursework under their belts because they’re coming in as a transfer, but again, I think the same general rule applies. A transfer student is still less experienced than me, but they’re more experienced than a first year. That’s fine. I don’t think there’s any qualitative difference in how they would present themselves. What have you done? Why are you interested in this and what kinds of projects might you be interested in doing? Then we see if there’s a match. If not, you go onto someone else. There’s like 100 faculty in the department.

Laura Vogt:
Excellent. Let’s talk a little bit about as these students are coming in, if they get a bad test result, what kind of resilience do you want to see from the students when they do that and what do you think can help build up that resilience?

Armando Fox:
That’s a great question. In fact, on two or three occasions now, I’ve given a presentation that I call Fail Your Way to Success. One of the sort of… I don’t know about a downside, a pitfall of being at a place like Berkeley where everybody here is super capable and has worked really hard and done great things, but what you don’t see are all the times that they have slipped and stumbled. A few years ago I ran into… I can’t remember. She was a professor of I want to say chemistry or physics at another university, but she had published on her website what she called her failure CV. It was basically a list of all the grants she didn’t get, all the prizes she wasn’t nominated for, all the papers that were not accepted at any conference, all the promotions that she was overlooked for. Basically her message was, you see smart people all around you and all you see is the things that they succeed at. Every one of those people has failed at a whole bunch of things.
I think the first step is don’t take it personally. It doesn’t mean that you’re less capable. The question is what went wrong this time? Was it that maybe by your own admission you feel like you didn’t study enough and you weren’t well prepared? If so, how could you do better next time? Is it that you thought you understood the material, but when push came to shove you didn’t? Maybe there are practice problems or previous exams and the next time you’re preparing for a test, you can try to do some of those. You can go talk to your professor or your TA and try to get them to help you understand what was it that didn’t go right for you on this exam? Remember, the exam doesn’t measure who you are as a human being. It’s a snapshot of what at an instant in time. Sometimes you just have a bad day. Sometimes you actually are on top of the material, but there’s other things going on in your life.
I think the other thing I would say is understand at the beginning of the semester what the policies are for things like are there exam retakes? If you have an exam conflict because of a personal situation, what do you do to schedule the exam at a time that’s reasonable? There’s actually a lot of accommodations that can be made to avoid setting you up for failure. If there are things that the teaching staff can work with you that will maximize your chances of success, as often as possible, they’re willing to do that if it’s from a workload perspective if it’s feasible for them. Understand what the parameters are.
If you do have a bad day on an exam, take it in stride and just think of it as like, all right, what could I be doing differently next time? Your TAs and your professor are usually happy to have that conversation with you because they want you to do well. I would love it if everybody just got A’s. If everybody was doing great work and loved their classes. It’s not like we’re looking for some people to do worse than others. We want everybody to do well.

Laura Vogt:
Yeah. You’re teaching the class because you enjoy the subject matter. You want others to enjoy it.

Armando Fox:
Yeah, ideally.

Laura Vogt:
Now, is there test banks available for students if they do want to go take a look at what tests have been like in the past?

Armando Fox:
Usually you would ask the instructors or the teaching staff of that course. Just about all of the computer science courses I’ve ever been involved with or know about have some way… they will give out practice exams during the semester. There isn’t a website where you can just go download them. Unfortunately a lot of that stuff ends up on internet sites like Chegg and Course Hero. The less I say about those sites, the better, but again, also don’t assume that the exam format will be the same as whatever you find on the internet. It’s your professor’s job and your TA’s job to set clear expectations on what the exam is going to be like and to give you advice on how you can practice for it. Maybe the exam is a lot like some of the homework questions, so reviewing the old homework might be a good way to prepare, or maybe the exam is going to have questions that come from the labs, so make sure you understood the lab assignments you did, but every course will have some way of giving you resources to help you prep for an exam.

Laura Vogt:
Excellent. If students are looking for advice for their career or going to grad school, is faculty someone that they could reach out for that as well?

Armando Fox:
Absolutely. I do undergraduate advising every semester and career and grad school advice is probably the most popular topic that we talk about. For one thing, I would say if undergrad advising is available to you, take advantage of it. If it’s not, go to office hours, but advising is good because then you also get other students, like in your little advising group, who may have similar questions, and again, you’ll learn from each other. The other thing is that it’s not ever too early to start thinking about that. If students who come to me, let’s say their first semester of senior year and they ask, should I apply to grad school? Usually I would ask questions like, well, as an undergrad, did you get involved in any research projects and how did that go for you? Did you enjoy that? Because if they’ve never been involved in research, that’s what grad school is.
Grad school is not just more undergrad classes. Grad school is fundamentally different in how you spend your time and the metrics of being a successful grad student are quite different from undergrad. In undergrad, you have a chance to try those out, but if you don’t do that, you might not know if grad school’s the right thing and it’s a big commitment to sign up for. The sooner you get involved in undergrad research, the sooner whether you want to go to grad school. If you’re interested in going into industry instead of grad school and students come and say, what kind of company should I apply to work at? Should I apply to a startup, a more established company? Again, I’m going to ask them, well, what work experiences have you had so far? Have there been internships that you particularly liked or disliked? Have you worked as a student technical assistant on some project in the university and hat did you like or dislike about that?
If you wait until senior year to get career advice, there’s not a lot we can do because by that point we would hope that you have tried some things and are getting a sense of what you enjoy and what you don’t enjoy so much within the field of CS. Then we can help you. If you come and tell me what you like and what you didn’t like during your Berkeley career, I can probably tell you lots of useful things to help you think about what your next steps are going to be, but you want to start thinking about that stuff early. Sophomore year is not too early. Freshman year is not too early.

Laura Vogt:
Thank you. Is there any other final thoughts that you wanted to leave us with?

Armando Fox:
Talk to your professors. Come to their office hours. Like I said, office hours are not only to get help on a specific homework assignment. They’re there for you to engage with people who are not smarter than you, just more experienced than you, and pretty much any topic you want to talk about. You’re doing a personal project and you want topic specific advice, you want to talk about grad school, you want to get involved in research, you want to just learn more about what that professor does because you looked at their website and it looked interesting.
We like having people come to office hours. Laura, as you said, outside of major exam reviews, office hours are often underutilized, so come and meet us. We are normal people. We have lives. We are not robots or something like that and we love talking to students. Honestly, in computer science, that’s why most of us are here. Obviously if you work in tech, there’s a lot of companies that would give you very, very sweet job offers. Those of us who stay in academia, if you ask us, the majority of us are going to say a big reason is we like working with students and we like mentoring and we like having the privilege and the opportunity to help the next generation get farther than we got ourselves. Come and take advantage of us. We want to see you.

Laura Vogt:
Well, thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate your time.

Armando Fox:
I’m delighted to have been here and I’m flattered that you chose to have me on the program. Thank you so much, Laura.

Laura Vogt:
Thank you. Well, thank you Bethany so much for being here today. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at UC Berkeley?

Bethany Goldblum:
My name is Bethany Goldblum and I am associate professor in the nuclear engineering department, and I just started in July. I was previously at Berkeley as a research engineer for many years and then moved up to Berkeley Lab as a staff scientist in the nuclear science division. I’m also the executive director of the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium. This is the large multi-institution initiative led by UC Berkeley. There’s 11 universities and five national labs, and we’re working together to train the next generation of nuclear security experts.

Laura Vogt:
Oh, that’s awesome. I didn’t realize that you hadn’t been a professor for long at Berkeley.

Bethany Goldblum:
I have not. I’ve been working with students in research and doing research on campus for more than a decade, but I’m just starting as a professor. I’ve taught courses as well in the nuclear engineering department, radiation biophysics.

Laura Vogt:
Well, I like the idea of talking to you as you’re starting on this new journey as our new students are also starting on the new journey then as you can develop that relationship together a little ways.

Bethany Goldblum:
Right. I was also a student at Berkeley. I did my graduate studies in the nuclear engineering department. I did a master’s and a PhD, so I feel like I had an opportunity to wrestle with a lot of the questions that you’re asking from a student perspective.

Laura Vogt:
Let’s start off with what you do you think is the most important thing for a new Berkeley engineering student to do in their first semester?

Bethany Goldblum:
I think that this one’s kind of hard because there’s a lot to learn when you get to Berkeley. I think learning what resources are available to you is really important. Part of that, it’s not just the course material and the references and all of the clubs and organizations, but also the people. For me personally, finding a group that I could study with and make up problems and test one another, and also experience your coursework together to know that you have someone there that’s also going through the same challenges and opportunities that you are was really helpful.
I think finding that group, and in many of the departments, there’s a certain place where the students hang out to do their homework. If there’s that type of location in your department, you can find where that is and just go in there during breaks. You may find other students in there who are working on the same problem. If not, you can organize one. I’ve found that other students are super receptive to that. You’ll get a big group very quickly if you just say, hey, do you want to meet up to go through these problems or this course material?

Laura Vogt:
I think building on that a little is our next question that has to do with making the most out of your study time because I think that studying in college is going to be very different than coming from high school or even community college.

Bethany Goldblum:
Yeah, I agree. I feel like making the most of your time, it’s a difficult question to answer because really above all, it’s about putting in the time. You do need to learn what works for you, create a plan and then stick to it. Some people, I think, work well with flashcards. Some people can reread the course material or the book and they get new information out of it each time they read it. Some people like to do practice problems, some people like to work in a group, like I was saying, and test one another. Others really like to do all of these things, but above all, I think it’s what works for you. Find that out and then put in the time. Don’t wait until the week of the test to start studying the material.

Laura Vogt:
How should students use office hours? Because I think a lot of times when you’re using the studying material and trying to understand it better, office hours is so important, so how do you actually go about using the office hours and is there anything they should do to prepare for it?

Bethany Goldblum:
It’s definitely important to be prepared for office hours. Work through the material that the professor’s given you, do the homework problems, identify any challenges or issues that you have, any questions, and go into office hours organized with what are the questions that you’re trying to answer. Depending upon the class, sometimes office hours can be packed, and so you may be spending that time listening to other students ask their questions. Being prepared allows you to get more out of it while the professor’s answering the other student questions, or if the professor does come to you that you’re immediately ready to ask the questions that are most pressing for you.
It can also be a good time to ask about research opportunities and career development. This depends. If you’re in a class where it’s super packed in office hours, that’s obviously not the best time, but in some classes you may be the only person that’s showing up for office hours and professors have already set aside this time to speak with you, so they’re going to be more receptive potentially to open-ended discussions about professional development. Again, you need to go in prepared with that. If you want to ask about research opportunities or academic opportunities for future career, make sure that you give your professor enough information about your background and what it is that you want to do, your interests and where your skillset lies so that they can give you good suggestions and advice.

Laura Vogt:
Is there anything that they need to do if they’ve got more questions about research? What’s the best way to, I guess, investigate the research opportunities that are out there?

Bethany Goldblum:
There is an amazing program at Berkeley called the Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program, or URAP. This is an excellent way for students who have never done research to get involved. Faculty from departments all across the campus post research opportunities, and you can take these opportunities for course credit or you can also just participate. It gives you an opportunity to gain research experience. Then if you want to apply for specific research opportunities, like for example, the National Science Foundation has a research experience for undergraduates or there’s research opportunities that are posted at the laboratories, then you go in with some research experience. I think that you can send emails to faculty and ask about this, but you already have a large offering of research opportunities through URAP, so that’s a great way to get started.

Laura Vogt:
Is there any other resources at Berkeley that you think students should make sure that they use?

Bethany Goldblum:
I was excited about this question because I think the library at Berkeley is amazing. I know that sounds super nerdy, but it is really such an amazing resource and a lot of people don’t know all of the things that our library offers. First, if you’re working from home or if you’re working off campus, get the library proxy. If you go to the library’s website, lib.berkeley.edu, then on the front page you can click on working away off campus at the library, and there’s a bookmark that you can set up where you can get access to so many different online journals, books, databases from home, and then if you’re on campus, go to the library. It’s not just useful. It’s actually really beautiful and it’s a great place to study.
I think lot of students know about the Doe Library, but in that building, so that’s right in front of Memorial Glade, but in that building, there’s also the Morrison Library, which may be not as many people know about, and it has this little loft space and leather chairs and couches and statues. It is like a library dream. I think maybe people also don’t know, you can actually check out framed prints from our library. There’s the graphic arts loan collection, so you can check out the framed prints for a semester, you can put them at home, you can put them in your dorm room. Another really cool thing about the library is that if you need any help at all, so if you look up at the catalog that says this reference is available, and then you go to try to access it online and you can’t or really anything, there’s a 24/7 chat and it’s staffed with people who are very helpful and extremely competent in getting you the resources that you need. Really, our library is amazing. Highly recommend.

Laura Vogt:
I also like they do workshops and things if you need help learning to… they do stuff for graduate to help write the papers that you have to write.

Bethany Goldblum:
Oh, wow, I didn’t even know that. Yeah, there’s so many. Just on that chat thing, I’ve had issues where I’ve tried to access a resource and there’s been some problem with the online thing, they’ll send it to you. They’ll send you the paper and within minutes. It is really amazing.

Laura Vogt:
That’s awesome. I didn’t realize they had the chat. That is really cool. When you think back on your experience as an undergraduate, what do you think helped you be successful?

Bethany Goldblum:
Well, part of it I think is that I was really excited about… I studied math and chemistry as an undergrad, and I was really excited about learning new things and especially about doing the hands-on work in the lab. I wasn’t very good in the lab, but I was excited about learning about these new techniques. Having that hands-on experience for me also helped me to be able to approach problems as a graduate student and really as a faculty member, because I had already gone through the challenges of trying to do something that was difficult and then seeing that I could persevere, and overall perseverance and really putting in the work, ultimately, I think that this is required. There’s always going to be times where it’s going to be a challenge. There’s always going to be low points or things that don’t come as easily. Learning that if you put in the work that you can persevere through it I think is really important.

Laura Vogt:
Have you worked with students on trying to figure out career paths or if they want to go to grad school?

Bethany Goldblum:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that this is an important thing to talk to your professors about because they have that experience and they’ve also helped many different students go through to a variety of different careers. If you have questions about this, you can talk to your professors, you can talk to your GSIs and your GSRs. Why did they choose the path that they went in to go to graduate school?

Laura Vogt:
I like the idea that you have so much experience in doing the research aspect of things at Berkeley. Do you work with a lot of undergraduate students in the research that you’ve done or in the labs that you’re in?

Bethany Goldblum:
I do. All of my research projects include undergrads, and we’ve hired undergrads that have been first author on peer-reviewed publications, so we have a really flat structure where everybody has the opportunity to contribute. This I think is great for bringing undergrads in because sometimes they may not have had all the training or the coursework that the graduate students have, but they come at the problem with fresh ideas. There’s a lot of opportunities both within the nuclear engineering department, within the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium, and then across the broader campus for research opportunities for undergrads.

Laura Vogt:
It’s not something that undergrads should be scared to try to get into research. It’s all about trial and error at this point, right?

Bethany Goldblum:
I think it’s something that they should consider. Maybe going back to your question earlier of what is the thing that’s important for students to do during their first semester. I don’t know if it’s necessarily during your first semester, but during your time as an undergrad, I think doing research or some kind of internship, job internship opportunity is critically important. This is where you learn really what you want to do I think, because the nature of the day-to-day of doing research or of working in that field is different than your coursework experience.
Having that under your belt, you’re in a better position to decide, okay, where do I want to go from here? We have students too, in terms of being scared about it… in the URAP program, the faculty will list different requirements for participation in the URAP, but we’ve had students that have come in and they’ve said, okay, well, I haven’t had these upper division courses or I haven’t had this coding experience, but I’m really interested and they want to put in the work to try to learn the skills that they need to do the research and they’ve been some of the most successful. I would say if you don’t have all the skills that are listed, go ahead and apply anyway. You can learn on the job. This is part of what these apprenticeships offer.

Laura Vogt:
Oh, that’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for spending your time with us today.

Bethany Goldblum:
Okay. Thank you. Nice to meet you.

Laura Vogt:
Thank you everyone for tuning into this week’s Not so Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer and we’ll be back next week with our final episode al about the add/drop deadline.