Student Accounts and Course Projects

Purpose

ARSC encourages University of Alaska (UA) professors to teach vector and parallel programming, visualization, and other appropriate topics using ARSC resources.

ARSC, UA, and the State of Alaska all stand to benefit as students and graduates exhibit technical expertise in the use of cutting-edge computing resources. The students, of course, also benefit from first-hand exposure to HPC resources.

Definitions

Course Project

An ARSC project account with a professor or instructor as principal investigator (PI) and students as additional users. The course project provides access to ARSC's SGI visualization resources, access labs, including High Performance Computing (HPC) resources if the instructor desires. The course project exists for the duration of the course.

Student Account

Each student in the approved course will be granted an ARSC UserID. The UserID will only be valid during the semester in which the class meets unless the student joins a regular, permanent ARSC project account. SecurID cards will be distributed at the beginning of the semester and must be returned once the class is finished.

Setup Process

1. The professor requests a course project by filling out an Academic Class Account Application form .
   • All students who need an account should be listed on this form.

   A student of the class is eligible for an ARSC account only if he/she is registered with UA for the course. This may include degree seeking or non-degree seeking students. It may include students taking the course for credit or audit.

   • If a user account is also needed for the instructor, then the instructor needs to fill out the normal UserID Application form.

     Any PI or student needing access to the ARSC resources must provide proof of citizenship. Documents which ARSC accepts as proof of citizenship are outlined on the account application page.

   • The professor may apply for the course project when convenient. For example: following the drop/add period when the complete list of students should be known. Please note, however, that a lead-time of 3-4 business days is needed for the creation of the class and student accounts.
2. The application is reviewed by User Support.
3. If approved, a project is created for the course. Its name is based on the course department and number. For instance: CS310. For courses spanning multiple semesters, e.g., CS310 and CS410, or for courses providing either undergraduate or graduate credit, e.g., CS405/CS605, the lower course number will be used. For instance, CS310 or CS405. Existing course projects may be reused from semester to semester.
4. Account home directories have fairly small disk quotas, however additional storage is available. Please see our Storage Management page for more information about file storage options available at ARSC.
5. A Unix permission group equivalent to the course project name is created and all students in the project are put into the group.
6. An ARSC Users Support representative will visit a class session (chosen by the instructor) to discuss ARSC account policy with students, answer any questions and distribute SecurID cards, Account Agreement forms and Account Information letters. Contact the ARSC Help Desk (450-8602) to schedule this visit.
7. The professor will collect SecurID cards from all non-continuing students and either return them to ARSC or arrange for a User Consultant to pick them up.

Maintenance During the Semester

The professor may add students to his/her course project at any time by submitting an email message to User Support with the following:

• Full name of the student
• Is this person a United States citizen (yes/no)?
  If NOT a US citizen:
  • Country of citizenship
  • Type of Visa
  • Visa Number
  • Visa Expiration Date
• Phone number
• E-mail
• Does student have an existing ARSC account (yes/no)?
• The student will also need to provide document(s) showing proof of citizenship. A list of accepted documents is available on the Acquiring Accounts and Project Resources page.

The professor may remove students from his/her course project at any time on request to User Support.

To gain physical access to an ARSC Visualization Laboratory, each student must sign a Visualization Laboratory Access Agreement.

ARSC requests that students discuss basic user issues and other problems with their professor, first. He or she may already have the solution, or may pass the question on to User Support. We encourage professors to inform their entire class of solutions and issues, and to help facilitate communication between students and ARSC.

Inactivation and Account Deletion

All associated student accounts are placed in an inactive status upon the end of the semester and are deleted from all systems no later than two weeks following the last day of finals for the semester in which the course ends. At this time the course project is placed in an inactive status.

• Exceptions:
  • If the course spans both fall and spring semesters, the project and accounts remain active through the winter break. Account inactivation/deletion occurs following the spring semester finals.
  • If a student is a member of one or more permanent (non-course) projects in addition to the course project, his/her UserID remains active for the other projects only.

A professor may request at any time or for any reason, that a member (student) of his/her project be inactivated. Please direct these requests to User Support

Professors should notify User Support immediately when a student member of his/her course project drops the course so that User Support may remove the student from the project. If this is the student's only project, then the student's User ID will be deleted as well.

Students who wish to continue their research following the inactivation of their student account must obtain a regular ARSC user account prior to the end of the semester.

ARSC reserves the right to inactivate (e.g. prevent access to ARSC resources) any user, without notice, if it suspects that someone is attempting to circumvent ARSC security measures, compromise the system, gain access to other user accounts, or otherwise use ARSC resources inappropriately. All incidents will be investigated by one or more ARSC Information System Security Officers.

All non-continuing students must surrender their ARSC SecurID card upon the end of the course project.

Professor and Student Responsibilities

Every user of ARSC systems, including UA students and professors, must follow ARSC's Security Policy.

The professor must notify User Support when a student member of his/her course project drops the course.

In accordance with the ARSC Security Policy, professors and students must notify User Support immediately of any incident involving ARSC systems' security.

Users are requested to notify ARSC with plenty of advance notice about special hardware or software requirements.

 

Arctic Region Supercomputing Center
PO Box 756020, Fairbanks, AK 99775 | voice: 907-450-8600 | email:

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