Supervision of taught students

Your supervisor

Every undergraduate and postgraduate student on a taught programme has a supervisor, who is a member of staff within their Department.

Together with your college, academic supervision is the front-line your for pastoral care. Departmental supervisors are also there to give you advice on academic matters.

The Department will assign a supervisor to you on your arrival. Ideally you should have the same supervisor throughout your time here, but if your supervisor is away for an extended period you will be allocated a different supervisor.

If you wish to change your supervisor, you should contact the Chair of the Board of Studies (BoS) by emailing cs-chairbos@york.ac.uk. If your supervisor is the Chair of BoS, you should contact the the Deputy Head of Department for Teaching (iain.bate@york.ac.uk).

Allocation of students to supervisors

Where possible, we aim to allocate supervisors to students according to the following principles:

Women students to women supervisors;
Students on specialist programmes (ACS, AI, Cyber, HCIT, SCSE) to supervisors working in the same academic area;
Students from the same college together.

Supervision Meetings

There is a formal requirement that you meet with your supervisor at every term. For undergraduates, you will also meet your supervisor in the first few days when you arrive. You'll see the details of these meetings on your e:Vision account. Extra supervision meetings can be requested on an ad hoc basis by you or your supervisor.

The following topics should be discussed at the meetings:

Timetabling
Accommodation
Health
Financial Matters
Academic Progress
Personal Development
Employability Plan

See the instructions on how to view your supervision meeting in e:Vision

Supervision arrangements for undergraduate students on placement

While on your year in industry, you do not need to formally meet with your UoY academic supervisor. This is because you'll receive the support you need from your placement provider, and from the Placements team here in Computer Science.

However, we do recommend that supervisors and students keep in touch at key points within the placement year. For further information, see: Undergraduate Supervision and Placement Year Guidance.

Undergraduate Computer Science / Mathematics students

If you are a CS/Maths student, you will have a supervisor in the Department of Mathematics and a Programme Advisor in Computer Science. Detlef Plump is the CS/Maths Programme Advisor, and he can answer questions about Computer Science academic matters during your studies. You can contact him by emailing detlef.plump@york.ac.uk.

Postgraduate Taught Students

From 2021/22 onwards, the supervision of PGT (taught MSc) students will be shared between the supervisor allocated to you at the start of the academic year and your Project Advisor. In cases where the Project Advisor is not an academic staff member, your original supervisor will continue to offer you support during your project work.

As well as the once-termly meetings, Postgraduate Taught students should also have three recorded project supervision meetings during the Summer vacation.

Distance learners and part-time students

If you are a distance learner or a part-time student, you can keep in touch with your supervisors by email, telephone and video conferencing. You can arrange face-to-face meetings when you are in York.