Information for Industry Partners and Faculty

Guidelines for Community Led Capstone Project for the CSS M.S.

Thank you for considering hosting a Computational Social Science Master’s students’ capstone project.  These projects provide valuable real-world experience for our students, and are designed to also meet small-scale computational modeling, machine learning, and/or big data analysis needs of industry, non-profit, and public sector hosts. Below are the project guidelines and schedule of deliverables. Please review these guidelines and fill out the CSS M.S. Capstone Project Proposal Form

Project timelines:

There's a detailed timeline in the UCSD CSS Capstone Guide (https://wstyler.ucsd.edu/docs/css_capstone_guide.pdf), but in brief:

• August 30th: Capstone proposals must be submitted by potential capstone hosts to CSS for consideration and student placement
• Early September: Students indicate capstone interests and are assigned to projects
• Late September: Students begin meetings with their Capstone Hosts and Faculty Advisors
• December: Students submit their 'Questions and Methods' document and identify a second Faculty Reader for their project
• March: Students submit a complete outline of their projects to their Faculty Advisor
• May: Students submit their final paper to their Faculty Advisor and Capstone Reader, and make any revisions required
• June: Students present their capstone projects for the CSS Community

Note that we are always available to get feedback about student performance, troubleshoot any issues that arise, or to hear great things about our students. Capstone hosts and faculty advisors should contact the CSS Director about capstone-related issues that may arise.

Project requirements

Project Scope

Each project should culminate in a working web-based or publication-quality deliverable that the project team can display in a digital portfolio. This could take the form of a final report, data dashboard, tool, notebook, or algorithm, etc.  The project should provide the opportunity for the master’s students to make meaningful strategic decisions about how to fulfill the project needs of the hosting organization. The project should be feasible to complete in a 30-week period with a team of four students who each contribute 400 total hours to the project (including presentation and meeting time).  The project host should discuss any changes in the scope of the project with the UCSD  faculty mentor as soon as the reasons for change arise.

Project specification

The proposed project specifications should clearly articulate

• The organizational objectives the project aims to achieve
• Prior constraints on the project, resources available, and which design/execution decisions have already been made.
• The anticipated challenges of executing the project: which design decisions students will need to make, and what problems students will need to surmount.  (Of course, not all difficulties can be anticipated, but all known in advance should be stated).

Project selection will depend on matching between students and groups, and thus implementation of a project cannot be guaranteed prior to the kickoff date.

Project execution

Best Effort Basis: Our students are motivated to succeed in this program and to contribute strong energy, ingenuity, and enthusiasm towards these projects.  However, the projects are a classroom activity, and the University obligation is for a "best effort" by the students, rather than a formal outsourcer contract.  

During the project students are expected to have weekly meetings with the project host, ideally with the faculty mentor joining once a month. If your student(s) 'disappear' or aren't communicative, please contact the CSS Director ASAP so that this can be addressed. 

Capstone Host and Faculty Mentor Responsibilities and Guidance

For detailed discussion about the role of Capstone Hosts and Faculty Mentors, please see the 'Specific Guidance' sections in the UCSD CSS Capstone Guide (https://wstyler.ucsd.edu/docs/css_capstone_guide.pdf), but in brief:

Intellectual property, and confidential information 

Intellectual Property: The University has determined that patentable ideas that are developed during the CSS 296 course by student teams working on community-sited projects will belong to the sponsoring company. Students who volunteer to work on industry projects will be required to sign the form towards the end of this document that assigns these rights to the company (students can choose to work on University research projects which do not require the signature of this form).   

Public Disclosure: Shareable reports are a requirement of the project and provide a valuable component  of a student's portfolio on their resume. Upon completion of the project, a 90 day period will be provided for the project hosts to review the final project writeups for inadvertent disclosure of confidential information; after which the data will be made public.  

Confidential information: It is preferred that the project has no confidential information. Whether this means proprietary data or source code, Classified data, HIPAA-protected data, FERPA-protected work, data with specific IRB handling requirements, sensitive data, or other personally identifiable information, it is generally easiest if the scope of your project excludes, to the largest extent possible, the use of confidential data, and the initial project descriptions must not include any confidential information. Where possible, students should be given anonymized, de-identified, and non-sensitive data and code to work with.

That said, we understand that some contact with confidential, proprietary or sensitive data may be necessary (or occur accidentally while accessing systems and data). As such, the following provisos apply in projects where any sensitive data are involved:

• Students must be given specific written guidance, along with their faculty mentors, about what cannot be shared
  • Remember that students may wish to discuss their work in graduate  school applications, job applications, and more, so needless restrictions will directly complicate their path forward
• Students must be able to create a publicly-accessible digital product for their portfolio
  • Although the source data may be sensitive, the students must be able to make public a meaningful analysis including statistics, plots, formulas, algorithms, and discussions of the questions under consideration
  • Capstone hosts will be given a period of time in Spring to 'clear' the final product for public release
  • Projects in which many aspects of the final product of the analysis would be considered proprietary or confidential should not be submitted, as they go against the students' need to have this work as a part of their portfolio
• Any confidential information students may need to access during the project work should be of sufficiently peripheral importance that the project deliverables are not compromised by redacting such information
  • Think of methods of redaction of data and structure which allow students to still accomplish their work, while avoiding releasing anything personally identifying
• If the sponsor requests that students sign a confidentiality and/or nondisclosure agreement, then...
  • The need for, scope of, and exact details of the confidentiality issues should be agreed upon with the director, with finalized copies of any non-disclosure agreement submitted, before the August 31st submission deadline. 
  • Note that the overwhelming majority of submitted projects don't require confidentiality agreements or NDAs, and these have been previously viewed by students as a 'red flag'. So, if you're planning to go this route, please be clear about what it would cover, why it's necessary, and how you can still meet the students' need to have this be a part of their portfolio for use with future employers.
• Time-based embargoes (e.g. 'You may not publicly release this data until May 30th') are very possible with good cause (e.g. a pending product release, or the end of a confidential audit), provided that these embargoes don't interfere with their capstone presentations in June
• In any case, students must be granted the ability to discuss any part of their work at any point with the CSS Director, their Faculty Advisor, and their Capstone Reader without restriction or legal interference
  • If we're not able to properly supervise the student, then the project isn't workable

For additional information regarding the course please contact

Sample Project Proposals: 

• Sample project proposal 1 (Industry Partners)
• Sample project proposal 2 (Non-Profit Partner)
• Sample project proposal 3 (Government Agency Partner)
• Sample project proposal 4 (Educational Institutional Partner) 
• Sample project proposal 5 (Government Agency Partner)