ISYE 697: Independent Study

Syllabus
Credit Hours: 1-3
Instructor:
Prof. Christine Nguyen
Office:
Engineering Building 236

Phone:
E-mail:

815-753-6748
cnguyen@niu.edu

Course Description: Independent study and work to explore recent advances and innovative approaches
to industrial and systems engineering design, practice, and research. Written report required. May be
repeated to a maximum of 3 semester hours.
Prerequisites: Consent of department.
Instructional Goals: By the end of the semester, the student should have achieved the following objectives:
Identified an ISYE-related topic for further study.
Developed a plan for learning in the semester: this plan includes milestones and final deliverables
Summarized the findings in a final report (one of the final deliverables)
Expectations: The expectations of a graduate paper include the following:
The students will meet regularly with the instructor/advisor to identify the problem or application
area for the study.
Use information seeking tools to review relevant literature, textbooks and other appropriate resources.
Concisely summarize the findings in a report
Grading:: Based on the quality of the work, the student will be given an appropriate grade.
Academic Integrity: Academic dishonesty will be handled according to NIUs Academic Integrity regulations, available online at http://catalog.niu.edu/content.php?catoid=10&navoid=268. The following
statement is in the NIU Catalog:
Good academic work must be based on honesty. The attempt of any student to present as his or her own
work that which he or she has not produced is regarded by the faculty and administration as a serious offense.
Students are considered to have cheated if they copy the work of another during an examination or turn in
a paper or an assignment written, in whole or in part, by someone else. Students are guilty of plagiarism,
intentional or not, if they copy material from books, magazines, or other sources without identifying and
acknowledging those sources or if they paraphrase ideas from such sources without acknowledging them.
Students guilty of, or assisting others in, either cheating or plagiarism on an assignment, quiz, or examination
may receive a grade of F for the course involved and may be suspended or dismissed from the university.
http://catalog.niu.edu
Writing Guidelines: Listed below are the guidelines for you to follow in completing report for the Independent Study.
1. Type your document with 1 margin on all four sides of each page. Make sure there is no excess space
between the first line of text and the top edge of each page.
2. The paper should include at least the following: a cover page, an executive summary not exceeding
a page, introduction, objectives and scope, literature review with the literature review table, conclusions,
references, and other sections as necessary for the chosen problem.

3. Use Times New Roman 12 point font and at least one and a half line spacing for section text.
4. Use Times New Roman 14 point bold-face font for section title and 12 point bold-face for subsection
titles (2.1, 2.2, etc.). If you have subsubsections such as 2.2.1., then use 12 point without bold-face but
underlined for those. Write the sections continuously, that is, do not leave unnecessary space at the end of
a section and start the next section on the next page.
5. Leave one blank line between paragraphs but do not leave a blank line between section titles and the
first line of text under that title.
6. Write the report in third person (that is, do not use I, We, or you) neutral gender unless you have a
compelling reason not to do so. Otherwise, be consistent in the use of person. Avoid gender stereotyping,
such as referring to any engineer as he or any secretary as she. You can refer to a real person such as an
author of a literature source appropriately by gender.
7. Write in complete sentences and do not write entire sections in bullet format as though it is a PowerPoint presentation. You can have a list of bullets within a paragraph when necessary, but an entire section
should not be in bullets or be a table or a figure.
8. All figures and tables should be neatly drawn using the computer. Each figure with its figure number
and title should be placed at the bottom of the figure and centered under the figure. For example, the figure
number and title for a figure can be:
Figure 2. Concept map of facility layout redesign
Each table with its table number and title should be placed on top of the table and centered. For example, the table number and title for a table should be inserted on the top of the table as shown below:
Table 1. Job assignments and their durations
Spell out the words Figure and Table fully on the titles and do not abbreviate Figure or Table as Fig
or Tab and do not boldface or capitalize figure and table numbers and titles. Titles should be descriptive
and not generic. Include a period after the figure or table number as Figure 1. or Table 1. and make sure
there is a space between Figure and 1.. Each figure and table should be referred in text, and each figure
or table should appear on a page only after it has been cited in a section or on the immediately following page.
Text fonts used in figures and tables should preferably be consistent with the font used in the sections.
Figures and tables should not exceed the margins. Figures or tables oriented in the landscape format should
have the bottom of the figure or the table by the free edge of the page. If you are not sure what this means,
ask me. Flow charts should be treated as figures and they can extend to several pages with appropriate
continuation symbols or they can be reduced to fit on a page.
If a figure or table does not fit within the available space at the bottom of a page, the next paragraph
or section can be started on that blank space, and the figure or table can go on the immediately following
page. Do not leave blank spaces at the bottom of a page just because you cannot include a figure or table
there. Also, if a figure does not occupy a whole page, do not leave the rest of the page empty but fit the
figure tightly with the text. Do not include a figure or table that extends to several pages. In such cases
include them in the appendices.
9. Paragraphs may or may not be indented, but whichever style is chosen should be used consistently
throughout the report. Similarly, text can be left aligned or justified, but whichever style of alignment is
chosen should be used consistently.
10. If you have any equations, use the equation editor to type them, and number each equation sequen-

tially at the right most end of the line on which they appear. The equation itself should be centered on the
line.
11. If you used any reference or supporting material for your project, you must cite them in-text and
list their full bibliographic details in the references section. You are required to follow the APA, MLA, or
Chicago/Turabian citation style for in-text citations and references.
12. All direct quotes from external sources used in your work should be enclosed within double quotes and
cited appropriately. Information from external sources paraphrased in your work should include appropriate
citations. Figures, tables, charts, photographs and other works from external sources should also be cited
appropriately. Minor paraphrasing of key concepts or ideas copied from external sources without proper
citations will be treated as plagiarism.
13. The first time an abbreviation or an acronym is used in the text, it should be stated in its expanded
form, with the abbreviation or acronym shown within parentheses.
14. Proofread and spell-check your paper thoroughly before submitting it to the instructor.
If you are not sure of any of the writing requirements mentioned in these guidelines, check with the
instructor. It is critical that you follow the requirements closely. You are urged to show your draft to the
staff at the NIU Writing Center and get feedback.