Telescope Allocation Committee Assignment

There will be two separate TACs; each TAC will discuss proposals written by the Primary Investigators (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
Francis*	Nathanael*
Hannah	Sashvat
Brian	Elizabeth
Katherine	Jake
Alex	Bob

Proposal Review

On Apr 9th, you will receive 5 proposals to review. Each person will be assigned as a primary reviewer on two of the proposals, and a secondary reviewer on a third. Your written assignment is as follows:

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 unless they are particularly problematic.
For all proposals, read them and 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 19th.
Please format your reviews as 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

CONFIDENTIALITY RULES:

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

Do not talk with others about the proposals you are reviewing.

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

TAC Meeting

On Wed Apr 24th, 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):

Discussion stage: Each of the 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 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 by considering feasibility and likelihood of success (as detailed by the exposure time calculators). 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 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 included in the original assignment: 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.

TAC Assignment Grading:

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.