Telescope Allocation Committee Assignment

Here is a (bookmarked!) PDF file containing all the proposals.

There will be two separate TACs; each TAC will discuss proposals written by the PIs in the other TAC -- you will not discuss proposals written by your fellow TAC members.

The TAC assignments are as follows (the asterisk denotes the TAC Chairperson):

TAC 1	TAC 2
Williams*	Masterson*
Kerby	Loach
Starkman	Carr
Parker	Easton
Bush	Whitesell
Llaneta	Li
Curro	Wilson

Each person will be assigned as a lead reviewer on two proposals, and a secondary reviewer on another five. Your written assignment is as follows:

For each proposal you are lead reviewer on, write a detailed, one page (single spaced) review of the proposal. 2/3 of this review should focus on the scientific and technical aspects, 1/3 should focus on writing and presentation.
For each proposal you are secondary reviewer on, write a one (substantial) paragraph summary of your evaluation. This should be largely a scientific and technical review; only comment on presentation issues if they are egregious.
For all proposals, give a numerical rating that ranges from 5 (excellent) to 1 (poor). INTEGER VALUES ONLY, PLEASE.
These written reviews are due VIA EMAIL TO ME BY 6AM on Dec 7th, and cannot be turned in late!

CONFIDENTIALITY RULES:

Do not reveal to others which proposals you are primary reviewer on.

You cannot talk about the proposals with the author while you are reviewing (this is redundant with the rule above, but is worth spelling out explicitly!)

Your review will be shared with the author after the TAC process is complete, but your name will be redacted from your review.

On Thu Dec 7th, we will have the TAC discussion in class. Be sure to bring your reviews to class for use in the TAC (hardcopy or electronic on your laptop is fine). The TAC process works like this (for each TAC seperately):

Triage stage: Based on the numerical scores, the three proposals with the lowest average numerical scores will be immediately eliminated from discussion.
Discussion stage: Each of the four remaining proposals gets a ten minute discussion led by the primary reviewers, but involving all members of the TAC. After this discussion, each TAC member will privately grade the proposal on a scale from 5 (excellent) to 1 (poor). You are allowed to change your score from your initial written review if you feel that is appropriate based on the discussion. Note that it is very important to keep to the timed schedule, and it's the TAC Chair's task to make sure that their TAC stays on schedule.
Final scoring: At the end of the Discussion stage, each person will turn in their final ratings to me, the Chair of the Super TAC. At that point, I will average all the ratings for each proposal, and that average will be the proposal's final score. If there are any ties at that point, I will break the tie with my own evaluation. The top three proposals will be awarded prizes.

General Guidelines for your reviews (particularly for the primary reviews):

Primary reviewers should double check observing times (or review previous studies, if cited to support chosen exposure times). You want to make sure the observations are possible!
Check a few of the cited sources if they are used to make crucial arguments.
Make sure you explain what worked and what didn't. Your written review should match your numerical rating: Don't rate a proposal a 4 and then point out nothing but problems, and don't rate a proposal a 1 and then feel bad for the proposer and simply say nice things.
Give suggestions for what might improve it -- these suggestions can range from strategic/conceptual ("I think your sample of galaxies could be better defined by...") to technical ("I would have found the proposal more compelling if you had included an estimate of exposure time") to presentation ("Figure 4 was really confusing; it would have been easier to understand if you had presented <something else> instead...").
Commenting about typos etc is fine if there are too many of them, but don't give a laundry-list of typo corrections. Just say "Proposal needs proofreading" and move on. If your review consists of nothing but lists of typos, you haven't done your job and it's not particularly useful to the proposer.
Think about the review criteria we talked about: technical feasibility, compelling science, proper academic presentation, etc.
Make the review substantive and carefully written -- a shallow or poorly written review is as bad as a poor proposal. Remember, I will be evaluating both the quality of your proposal and the quality of your reviews.
Make sure your ratings have discrimination power -- i.e., the numerical rankings should show a spread in quality. This doesn't mean that you have to give *someone* a 1 and somebody else a 5, but it does mean that you shouldn't simply rate all the reviews a 4, for example.
Your reviews must be professional in tone.

Grading:

For course grade purposes, your written reviews will be graded based on the quality of your review and how well you follow those guidelines. However, your evaluation of the other proposals will not impact what grade I give to those proposals themselves.