Telescope Allocation Committee Assignment

• For each proposal you are primary 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 paragraph (substantial and single-spaced) summary of your evaluation. This should be be a scientific and technical review; do not comment on presentation/writing issues if they are particularly problematic.
• For all proposals, give a numerical rating that ranges from 5 (excellent) to 1 (poor). INTEGER VALUES ONLY, PLEASE.
• These written reviews and numerical ratings are due (via Canvas) on Apr 6th
  

On Thu Apr 14th, 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):

1. Triage stage: Based on the numerical scores, the proposal with the lowest average numerical scores will be immediately eliminated from discussion, unless a committee member wants to rescue it.
   
2. 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.
3. Final scoring: At the end of the Discussion stage, each person will turn in to me their final ratings for all proposals that their TAC reviewed. 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.
   

• 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 the cited source backs up the claims in the proposal.
  
  
• Make sure you explain what parts of the proposal you found convincing and well-argued, and which parts were unclear or needed more work. 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, the grade I give you for the TAC assignment will be based on 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 balance every good score with a bad score, but if (for example) you give a 4 to all the proposals you review, that is not particularly helpful to the process.
  
  
• Your reviews must be professional in tone.

Please submit your reviews via Canvas in the form of a single pdf file with the following pages:

• Page 1: your numerical scores for each of the five proposals your TAC is reviewing
• Page 2: primary review #1
  
• Page 3: primary review #2
  
• Page 4: secondary review
  

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