Policy note. This handbook is a living document and does not replace official NMSU, College of Engineering, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Graduate School, funding-agency, immigration, employment, or university policies. When conflicts arise, official policies and written funding/appointment letters take precedence.
First Week
- Meet with the PI to discuss research goals, expectations, and near-term priorities.
- Confirm access to shared folders, code repositories, communication channels, and computing resources.
- Create or update your ORCID, GitHub, and academic profile links.
- Review the public website, research themes, recent publications, and this handbook (especially the Advising Philosophy and Expectations).
- Set up a short recurring check-in schedule.
- Pick one starter task that produces a visible artifact: a project README, a literature map, a reproduced figure, or a small data-processing script (see General Programming for code style and environment setup).
Accounts and Access
Keep a private record of which services you have access to and who granted that access. Do not store passwords in the repository.
Typical access needs may include:
- GitHub organization or project repositories
- Shared document storage
- Computing accounts or HPC allocations
- Data portals used by your project
- Lab communication channels
Project Orientation
For each project, complete the Project Charter with the PI or project lead. The charter identifies the research question, current datasets, repositories, key prior work, expected outputs, blockers, reproducibility requirements, and authorship or ownership notes.
First Month
By the end of the first month, each new member should have:
- A working development environment for the project.
- A completed Project Charter for the project.
- A first annotated reading list.
- A repository or shared folder structure agreed with the PI or project lead.
- A clear near-term milestone.