This section is a short guide to some of the terminology that you will, nodoubt, encounter here and will, no doubt, be confused by. Some of these termshave been
mentioned above and are repeated here for reference purposes (or soyou can take this section out and stick it in your wallet
as a ready referencecard).
AI: Short for Artificial Intelligence. This
is a big thing these daysin computer science and
cognitive psychology.
Andrew: a distributed computing environment
developed by CMU and IBM.All students have an
account on Andrew.
B-boards (pronounced "Beeboards"):
Electronic bulletin boards which canbe read from the
computer. You should subscribe to the department b-board"PSYCHOLOGY" for official department news
and to the psych grad student b-boardEGO for
announcements of interest to grad students (e.g. parties and other funhappenings) and for posts of interest to no one (e.g.
crazed babbling byupper-level students who should be
writing their theses instead posting tob-boards). You will miss many important messages if you do not read PSYCHOLOGYregularly. It is assumed
that everyone reads it and therefore things thatwould
normally be addressed in a departmental memo will be posted here. Youwill miss many fun events if
you do not read EGO regularly (e.g. once a day--wedon't
often plan very far in advance). You can subscribe to
them on Andrew.Their full names are "org.psy.psychology" and "org.psy.ego". There is also adepartment
b-board for computing tips, it's full name is "org.psy.comphints."You post your own helpful tips there as well as
asking for computer advice.
BH-xxx: Short for "Baker Hall room xxx". All
the buildings around herehave silly two or three
letter abbreviations. You'll pick them upeventually.
Brown Bag: 1. A presentation given at the end
of the year byfirst- and second-year students. Each first- and second-year has togive
one of these. They are called 'brown bags' because
they alwaysoccur at noon,
and thus people bring their lunches (in brown bags,even)
and eat during these presentations. (It is recommended
that younot eat during your own
presentation.) 2. An informallunch-time
meeting, usually with a speaker. Colloquium speakers willoften give a
brown-bag presentation the day after their colloquium presentation.
CDEC: Center for the Design of Educational
Computation.
CNBC: The Center for the Neural Bases of Cognition. A jointcenter between CMU &
Pitt created as a result of a very generous grant bythe
Mellon Foundation. The goal of the Center is to use interdisciplinaryresearch approaches aimed at discovering
"how the brain thinks". New facultyare being hired who will have joint appointments in
the Center and in a homedepartment (CMU Psychology
being one of them). Some graduate studentsin
the department are part of the CNBC Graduate Training Program, aninterdisciplinary program which involves training in
neuroscience aswell as psychology. (There
are also CS, math, neurobiology, and otherCNBC
students, who study those things instead of psychology.)
Coke: Short for "The essence of life and root of all pleasure." Thiswondrous liquid drug,
and a number of its friends, can be found near BH333 inmass
quantities. Its formal name is "Coca-Cola"
but Pittsburghers call it (andeverything else)
"pop." Brought to you by the Psycoke(TM) Foundation and itsmembers. Buying soda from the machine outside the lower door to TheLounge contributes to our
departmental party fund!
Core Course: This is a "COurse REquirement". There is one in
each ofcognitive, developmental and social psychology. You have to take these at somepoint. Also, CS offers core courses on (obviously) computer
related topics.
CS: (ALSO CSD, and SCS) Short for Computer Science (sometimes also with"Department":CSD, or
since it is now its own college, "The School of ComputerScience").
"Edgin" : (v)
To go to the Sharp Edge for the best pizza in town. SeeSharp
Edge
, below.
Ego: See org.psy.ego.
Entropy:
A store in the UniversityCenter which sells
soda/pop/coke, candy, chips, sandwiches,painkillers,
toothpaste, floss, butter, and caramelized Yak hair.(Well, okay, maybe not
caramelized.)
FishBowl: The receptionist's office currently occupied by
Rochelle Croom.
FlashCube: The pet name
for Warner Hall. This is the universityadministrative
building to be found across from the University Center on the Forbes entrance toCMU. The Registrar's office is
on the second floor, the Payroll office is onthe
third, and the Cashier's office is in the basement.
Faculty
Club: The only decent dining hall on campus.Currently, no one knows where it is, except maybe
faculty. Grads areadmitted
only when accompanied by an advisor (go every chance youget!). Some summers they have lowered themselves to admittingunescorted students.
Falk
(Library): Pitt's medical school library. It, like WPIC,has many books and journals which the
neuropsychologists in the department wishthat CMU would get. Since CMU
doesn't, however, we must go over to Pitt. Falkis located in Pitt's Scaife
Hall which is located where De Soto street bends togo
around Pitt's stadium. The one advantage of Falk over
WPIC is that studentsCAN get a card which allows us
to check out books at Falk. In order to signout books from Falk, you must first get a Falk
library-card. This is differentthan
the card which you can at Hillman. We're not
sure whether you need to geta Hillman card in order
to get a Falk card.
Food: That thing which we all like to eat occasionally. Youcan purchase food in the food
court in the new University Center. Or,you can find sandwichesduring
lunch from the sandwich cart on the 5th floor of Weanor
from the Co-op deli on Margaret Morrison Street. The
deli gives you morefor your money, and they have a
wider selection. There is a Chinese Foodconcession in the Naval Building (also known as the
Student Center) which serves decent food for $3.50.Unfortunately the concession
is now under contract to campus dining servicethey
are not open during school vacations. There are also
campus dining halls:Morewood Gardens (cafeteria) is
located in the Morewood Gardens Dorms. Thereis also a flat-rate, menu
changes daily, dining hall called The Highlander Cafein
the round part of the new dorm next to the stadium.
GSA: The graduate student assembly. Someone
is ourrepresentative. It
meets once a month and you are welcome to attend themeetings. They sponsor lots of fun events (like a casino night at a downtownclub and a comedy night at an Oakland Club.) They also give each departmentsome
money to spend as the grad students want.
H&SS: The college of Humanities and Social Sciences. Psychology isone subset of that
college in the university. H&SS occupies most of Bakerand Porter halls.
Hillman: Pitt's main library. You
can obtain a Pitt Library card atthe main desk by
showing your CMU ID.
Immigration
Course: During the two weeks of classes in
September eachmember of the Psychology Department
faculty and some other relevant facultyfrom other
departments will give a presentation of recent or current work.
IC
(Computer Science): This is a series of
lectures offered by computerscience during the first
five weeks of the Fall semester. Like our immigrationcourse, these introduce the CSD's
incoming students to that department. Theseare often very useful and interesting sessions. You can use them to obtain aquick
introduction to various Computer Science related topics.
Langely: Pitt's Psychology
Library. It is located in Langley Hall onLitton Ave. across from the Holiday Inn.
Lounge,
The: The room which contains the departmental mailboxes,refrigerator, and microwave. You
can also find many important documents in the lounge: vitae for all current
faculty, upcoming theses, papers by colloquium speakers, papers for classes
(these are in the long filing cabinet), and papers for research group meetings,
as well as other miscellaneous documents. It is also
sometimes referred to as the Blue Room.
LRDC: Pitt's Learning Research and Development Center. This is anationally known center
for developmental and educational psychology. Most ofPitt's cognitive psychologists are here as opposed to
being in their PsychologyDept.
MacMail: The application
which allows the user to read the mail andb-boards
using their Andrew account from a Mac. There is now a MacMail II.
Micom: A communications portal that connects terminals with
computersrather like a telephone switchboard, so that
any terminal can connect with anycomputer.
Mulberry:
Another application for email checking. Some swear by it, but I am not a fan.
NPC
(Neural Processes in Cognition): An old name
for the CNBCGraduate Training Program. The name 'NPC' is being phased out toavoid
confusion as to whether NPC people were part of the CNBC, orCNBC
people part of the NPC, or what.
org.psy.ego
("EGO"): the psych grad student b-board for announcementsof
interest to grad students.
PDP
(Parallel Distributed Processing--aka connectionism,
neutral nets):cognitive modelling
paradigm than uses massively parallel processing units,loosely
based on biological principles. Not a computer from DEC.
PHEAA: Pennsylvania Higher Education
Assistance Agency: The studentloan people.
Pitt: The University of Pittsburgh. They
have a decent bookstore.It is a good place to look if
our own excuse for a bookstore doesn't have it.They will also let you borrow books from their libraries
if you can't find whatyou need in our libraries (and
we guarantee that you often won't be able tofind what
you need at CMU).
Porter
Hall: The downhill end of Baker Hall. Look for the signshanging from
the ceiling as you walk along the first or second floor slopinghallways
of Baker.
Practice
Talk: When you get together with a few of your
friends andgive the talk that you will be presenting
to the department (or other largeaudience), and they
critique content and presentation style. Recommended bysome for first and second year brown bag talks, colloquia
presentations,conference
presentations, etc.
PsycokeTM:
The suppliers of all that is good (soda and partymoney--what more could you want?). This
is the organization that runs the Cokemachine in the
department. The proceeds from the sale of soda go to ourfavorite charity (us!) for fun events and the proceeds
from the recycling ofthe aluminum cans deposited in
the container near the machine go to our secondfavorite
charity (The Role Models Program), courtesy of Marilee and TomCoriell.
org.psy.psychology ("PSYCHOLOGY"): The departmental b-board whereimportant
memos and other announcements are posted. You should
read thisb-board every day or every other day. See "b-boards"
Rat labs: No, we do not currently have rat labs in the department, butthis name is still used for the wing on the fourth floor
above the blue room(BH 436) where the rat labs used to be.
Sharp Edge: THE place for pizza in Pittsburgh. It is a small Italianrestaurant/bar
tucked away on a little side street just off Penn Circle. We
gothere 2-4 times a month for dinner, usually on
Wednesdays (because it's importnight),
but we are careful to get home in time for Seinfeld...even though gradstudents don't watch TV.
Student
Center (was "Skibo"): See University Center, The.
SUPPORT:
The newer name for the team of people who
maintain and supportthe computers within the psychology department (some other
departments also usethe name "gripe" for their computer support
staffs--we also did until about 2years ago). They are the people to whom we
"gripe" when we have problems withour computers. Their address is
SUPPORT@psy.cmu.edu, orpsycomp+@andrew.cmu.edu. If you have a problem with your
computer (and areable to send e-mail) please send
e-mail to Support notifying them of theproblem. This
way they have a "written" request and a queue which enables themto deal with each request or problem in order. If you
can't send mail, thenyou should ask someone else to
send mail or you can call them. If the problemis a
dire emergency, you can call them, BUT if you call when it is not a direemergency, they will just put your request on their
queue of things to do.Calling them if it's not an
emergency only interrupts them, so please don't doit.
Be nice to these people; they work hard to keep your computer running.And if you piss them off, they also have the
ability to make your computer stopworking.
Syquest Cartridge and Drive:
The basic elements necessary to back upyour Macintosh
hard drive. The Syquest
cartridge is essentially a removablehard drive which
allows you to use multiple disks (cartridges) in the samedrive
mechanism. You should be issued a Syquest
cartridge sometime soon afteryou arrive. The cartridge can hold approximately 40 megabytes. The SyquestDrive is connected to
the machine named Data Tsar which resides in329-A. You need to get the BPAA-12 and BPCA-47 keys from Kathy Majors toaccess Data Tsar.
University
Center, The: (usually refered to as "The
UC"). The building across from Warner Hall (the
flashcube).The University Center contains a coffeehouse, a food court,
racquetball courts, aweight room, two pools, lots of
space to sit and eat or read or both,a sizable
theater, a fairly nice ballroom, the CMU bookstore, the artsupplies
store, and Entropy.
UNIX:
A popular operating system used by many
computers in thedepartment. It
is also the basis for the Andrew operating system.
VAX: A type of computer made by DEC. The
plural of Vax is "Vaxen." Adesk-side workstation Vax is called a uVax ("micro-vax").
VAXEN: DEC's official plural for VAX.
VMS: DEC's operating system for
the VAX.
Wean
(Hall): Home of the Computer Science
department among otherdepartments. When
you walk across the patio from the basement of Porter(Baker) to Wean you enter
on the 5th floor. The lower four floors extend downinto the ravine on the far side of the building. The Engineering and ScienceLibrary
(E&S) is on the fourth floor. Turn left
when you get offthe elevators.
WPIC
(Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic):
Has a library which isa wonderful source of neuropsychology
and health psychology journals and books.It is
located at the corner of O'Hara and De Soto streets, near Pitt's stadium.Students are not allowed to check out books, but we
can photocopy materials inthe library. They have vending machines for copy cards which allow you toobtain a copy card and put as much (or as little) money
on it as you want.Pitt's Falk Library (the med-school
library) does allow students to check outbooks. See Falk above.