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Should chapter introduction and conclusion be included in the table of contents?
In my thesis, I have five chapters, each of which includes sections and subsections. Each of the five chapters has an introduction and conclusion.
Should chapter introductions and conclusions be included in the table of contents?
If yes, should they be formatted as a first heading, like that of the APA style?

The overriding response here has to be "consult your supervisor, or any documentation that you university says on how they want things to be formatted".
However, if neither of those gives useful information, I would simply include them if you are including other headings at the same level. So if each chapter has multiple sections of which the introduction and conclusions are examples, I would format them the same as other sections and include all of the sections in the ToC.

Yes, Introduction and Conclusions are core parts that need to be included in a ToC. Note that it is not necessary that the chapters have these titles although in the vast majority of cases they do.
The Introduction sets the perspective for the chapter and the Conclusions summarizes the important conclusions reached in the discussion. Hopefully the Conclusions tie in with the perspective(s) set in the Introduction since they constitute the head and tail of the chapter and the partial conclusions reached therein.
In cap off, if you have a heading within the main part of the thesis it should be in the ToC and this includes Introduction and Conclusions. In the case of a chapter, it may be worth providing a more meaty, descriptive title for the introduction that ties in with the theme of the chapter. This is in my opinion less so concerning conclusions.

I think there is misunderstanding. "In my thesis, I have five chapters ... Each of the five chapters has an introduction and conclusion." Moreover, I said, "Should chapter introductions and conclusions," that is the introduction of a chapter, not the chapter as an introduction.


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How to ask someone (outside the department) to be on the thesis committee
I have to request a faculty member outside of my department to be on my thesis committee and I was wondering how I should go about doing this. To be frank, I don't really see why someone would be willing to be on the thesis committee for someone outside their department and even field - apart from the altruism of wanting to help others in academia and all, but I assume professors are busy! Therefore, I imagine that it's hard to convince someone to do this?
In any case, I was wondering:

what information about myself should I aim to include in an email request to a potential thesis committee member outside my department?

In addition, while I need to find someone to file my candidacy papers, but I have only a vague idea of what my final thesis will look like (I know the field, but not the particular question it will address.)
Some things I have come up with include:

a rough description of the subject area
'expected' graduation date and number of years spent in graduate school so far
if they have been on the thesis committee for someone else with a similar thesis (by looking at the thesis committees of former students who worked with my advisor)

Your advisor may also help you identify people outside of the department that might be interested in your work.

"Hey, Professor Smith, are you busy next Tuesday? No? Good, cause I got this thing, see..."

From my experience, having cross-department committee members is very common, and can actually be very beneficial to the student, as you gain access to expertise and perspective you might otherwise miss. There's usually at least some connection between the research being done and the expertise of the faculty member. To use myself as an example, my research involved behavioral neuroscience, but I had both an electrical engineering faculty with signal processing experience and a psychology faculty on my committee, and they both gave very useful advice with my project. That being said, I had a committee member who was completely unrelated to my work (my focus shifted midway through my PhD career), and he requested to still stay on despite the lack of direct research connection; he was happy just to give advice and provide feedback.
You can find potential committee members by talking to other graduate students, and by looking at what theses professors have worked on (as you suggest above). I definitely recommend talking to other students; some professors are more difficult to work with than others, and you likely won't get that type of information from your advisor.
Regarding how to go about talking to the professor, I would just send a simple email asking for a meeting about this topic. If they're simply not interested, they'll say so, and you'll save yourself time. If they are, meet to discuss the following:

who you work for
what you're researching (both the ten-year research goal, if there is one, as well as your specific project)
why you think this faculty member can help you
why this person should be interested (this should be tacit; i.e., you shouldn't have to say it explicitly, he should understand it from the above items)

As eykanal mentioned, this is very common. Likely the same requirement exists in the other departments at your institution. Your request will not get rejected solely because you are from a different program. They may still decline if they feel that they know too little about your field.
If you want to maximize your chances of identifying a professor who will agree, then approach professors who have participated in the committees of other members of your group. Which professor(s) sat on the committees of recent graduates? Which professors have your fellow group members gone to? Perhaps your adviser has an unofficial reciprocal agreement with one or more faculty members in different departments. Mine did.
If there is already a connection between your group and a professor, then an email from you like the kind eykanal describes will not actually seem so random to that individual.

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Will you be expelled if you commit a crime as a student in the UK?
I initially thought this was off-topic but StrongBad told me this is not, so thank you.
A friend of mine has been a victim of fraud by someone at an university. This was investigated by the police and will almost certainly lead to a conviction and probably a prison sentence. My question is do universities (automatically?) expel people for committing criminal offenses whilst a student?
The specific University in question here is Cambridge.

I'm a bit confuzzled by the question, in my mind the concern for being expelled from a university is several orders of magnitude below of the concern for being imprisoned.

@Trylks in this case, perhaps not. Given this person is not actually British, he can just leave the UK. No criminal record. The prison sentence is probably not going to be more than a couple of month...

Even if the University does not expell him, his student visa can be revoked (if he is here with a student visa). He should check that.

I am aware of no University that automatically does anything. That said, most Universities, have policies in place to protect their reputation. At Cambridge, both Christ's College and Griton College have almost identical policies which makes me think there is an underlying university policy that I cannot easily find. To quote Griton's policy:

Additionally, the University has a number of sanctions for behaviour impinging on the image of the University, while the most serious breaches, including all criminal behaviour, will be referred to the local police.

Basically, Universities should be reporting any criminal activity to the local authorities. They also have the right to follow their own policies, of which expulsion is a possibility. Universities like to protect their images (e.g., the recent sex offence scandals in the US). So what the University will do may depend on if the victim of the crime was another student and how vocal the sides are.

I also searched and found nothing, being a student from Trinity myself. The victim is not a member of the University.

@Lost1 it is likely buried some place in here: http://www.cam.ac.uk/current-students/rules-and-legal-compliance

I looked at these things and found nothing. You have been most helpful.

For cambridge general university rules are here http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/univ/so/2013/chapter02-front.html although I think most things fall under the colleges. These rules generally are called college/university ordinaces.

Short answer they definitely can expel you. Although they will generally have a process to follow. I suspect for most offences resulting in a jail sentence expulsion is highly likely.
Here are the rules for Imperial College http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/secretariat/collegegovernance/provisions/ordinances/e2 (I suspect most institutions have similar rules written somewhere).
Important points are:

6e: Misconduct of a nature which is likely to affect the good name and standing of the College is an offence. This likely covers any criminal activity.
10c: Summary punishment is available for minor offences for serious offences there are various boards/committees to deal with punishment. College Discipline Committee covers offences under 6e.
16-24: There are various proceducures covering how the committee must hear evidence and operate.
30f: Expulsion or suspension from college is a permitted punishment.
33: The committee shall take note of any external prosecutions.

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Are you permitted to forward the reviews from a rejected manuscript when submitting to a new journal?
Suppose I have a paper rejected from a top tier journal. The anonymous reviews highlight a number of strengths of my paper, but ultimately judge that the paper does not merit publication in that lofty journal. When I resubmit to a lower-tier journal from a different publisher - presumably after addressing some or all of the reviewer's substantive concerns - can I include the entire original reviews as part of my submission? How about including excerpts from these reviews in a cover letter?
On one hand these reviews might be seen as the property of the journal that rejected my manuscript and as part of a closed correspondence. On the other, in my role as an editor I do think everyone would be better off if we were more open about where we'd submitted and what feedback we'd received. That is useful information for an editor trying to assess the merits of a paper and decide whether to desk reject or to proceed with a full review.
I'm interested both in formal policies (I don't see any for the journals I frequent) and in general thoughts about the ethics of doing so.
Addition: To clarify, I am more interested in whether it is allowable to forward these reviews than I am in whether it is advisable to do so. The latter question depends so much on the particular circumstances that I cannot imagine a single universal answer - though it is interesting to read the thoughts of the community on this issue as well.

Not a definite answer, but I wouldn't dare do that. In general, you don't wanna them know that the paper was rejected elsewhere.

Sometimes -- perhaps even often -- that may be the case. But let's suppose that I don't mind them knowing the paper was rejected elsewhere. Presumably the editors of PLOS One or Scientific Reports or Science Advances know perfectly well that the Nature-length papers that they receive were previously rejected elsewhere, for example.

Tangent to your question, but forwarding reviews has been suggested as a solution to the "tragegy of the reviewer commons" problem (e.g. http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/references/S0169-5347%2812%2900031-6 and http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2008.01276.x/full), and is also similar to how Peerage of Science is functioning.

Some of the comments here are showing their age. This is already well-accepted practice in some fields/journals now. It is common for editors to pass along reviews from more prestigious journals to other "in-house" journals upon request.

It seems the question is on the copyrights of the review, rather than on resubmission&co. . Feel free to change the question to reflect this.
Anyohow, why would you do so?

I have done this a couple of times (but not always going down in the journal hierarchy). In my cover letter I indicated that "the paper was previously submitted to [blah], but was rejected because [...]. A copy of the report can be obtained by writing to [editor name]."
The motivation for not including the copy of the report is that it keeps me honest. I can't just select the bits I like.
I have never had any problems with this approach, and I believe it to be the right thing to do. It saves editors' and referees' work.

+1. I'd change the wording to "For a copy of the reports, please contact [editor name]." After all, that editor might decline sharing the reports. (And the fact that your approach allows the rejecting editor to decide whether or not to share the report is a very good point!)

Personally, this isn't something I would do. And honestly, the transparency argument is a little bit of a non-starter unless you're also going to quote the reasons for the rejection of the paper.
Instead, I would try to take the spirit of those reviews and work them into the cover letter, in your own words, to talk about the strength and importance of the paper.

You certainly can but what is important for the receiving journal is to have an account of how you have revised your manuscript after rejection to improve the aspects on which it was rejected. Hence providing the reviews in full may not be the best way.
As an editor, I am very happy when I receive a re-submission that clearly states why and where it was rejected followed with such an account of revisions and also why the author believes the manuscript is now publishable. What I am looking for is some tangible evidence that the reasons for rejection has been followed up. There are of course several reasons for rejection that are easily declared such as unsuitable for the journal, or rejection from a high impact journal that rejects even what would normally be major revisions (i.e. journal does not allow anything but minor revisions).
What is not appreciated are sob stories about mistreatment even though mistakes happen. No journal publishes articles because they are sorry for the author. A focus on the scientific improvements is therefore key and providing a thorough account of revisions is a solid basis for the receiving journal to consider the manuscript for review.

Wholehearted agreement about the sob story thing. The last thing I need to deal with as an editor is an author who already thinks he or she is being mistreated by the world.

In theory (in a better world) this might be a reasonable thing to do. In the world we live in, I think this is a bad idea. To start with, including rejection notices to a journal that you are hoping to get your paper accepted in just comes across as negative. Also, maybe the journal you are submitted to would be insulted that you got rejected from that other journal but are hoping to be accepted here. There are just too many downsides, and I don't see an obvious upside. Fix your paper based on the earlier reviews, and resubmit. Don't talk about those reviews.

This is helpful general advice, but it appears the question is asking about what is allowable, not what is advisable, so it doesn't seem to answer the question that was posed.

@D.W. Yes, so the poster said. If people think it is not useful, I could delete it.

I see no reason why it wouldn't be allowed to include previous review reports unless the original journal publisher explicitly states that all reviews are confidential and remain their property (and I have never seen this before when submitting papers). Similarly, as a reviewer, I have never ticked a box stating that the publisher retains copyright of my review reports.
For a single case example: I have submitted previous reviews when resubmitting to a different journal (my field is ecology). However, I didn't cherry-pick selected bits, but included the full report with all my responses.
The manuscript was accepted by the second journal. I'm not sure whether they even read the previous reviews or whether it influenced their decision, but I can assure you that it didn't do any harm in my case (the manuscript was accepted, after all).
However, the circumstances of this submission were very specific, so I'm not sure this advice applies to the majority of other scenarios.
In my instance, I received positive reviews from the anonymous reviewers at the first journal, but the manuscript was rejected by the handling editor because it was supposedly too complex for the broad readership of that specific journal (not because of any inherent flaws in the research itself). At first, my co-authors and I appealed this decision (after asking the Editor in Chief for permission to do so) and resubmitted a revised manuscript in which we (a) tried to make it more accessible for a general audience and (b) corrected all the minor issues raised by the reviewers. Included in this resubmission, was a detailed (>15 pages) response letter to the first round of review. Unfortunately, even though the manuscript was reassigned to a different handling editor, it was rejected again.
When I resubmitted to a different journal, I didn't have to change anything in the manuscript (the minor issues were already rectified). I also had a long, detailed response letter, which I just added as a 'additional file not for publication' in the online submission platform (as one would add related unpublished works for additional background).
Some extra notes:

In my field, ecology, there is a general understanding that most
papers have been rejected previously before they are eventually
accepted (examples: here, here and here). Perhaps being rejected previously has less of a stigma than
in other fields?
The second journal in my experience actually had a higher impact
factor than the first, which was older and, therefore,
considered more prestigious (hence my decision to submit there
first).
In my case, the reviewer at the first journal signed his review
report (and was positive about the submission). I knew that he was on
the editorial board at the second journal, hence my motivation to
disclose why the manuscript was rejected previously.
Lastly, and most importantly, I included the ENTIRE review report,
not just the few parts that were positive. I would not advise this
strategy if you receive negative reviews, obviously.

The reviews are certainly copyrighted works as copyright is automatic (you do not have to claim it) and is not lost by dissemination. Now, it is debatable and probably dependent on legislature whether forwarding a review is covered by fair use or similar exemptions to copyright or whether it is dissemination at all, but that’s independent of boxes ticked and warning statements.

Whether it is allowable to submit previous reviews depends, in my opinion, on whether the reviews were anonymous. With anonymous reviews I see no ethical problem: these reviews are supposed to be written by professionals impartially assessing your work. As such these are pure pieces of scientific knowledge and rather than sink into oblivion in your mailbox they could be used to inform other people as well.
If a review is signed, I would approach the referee if he or she does not have objections. If they do not respond, I think it is allowable to submit the review if only it can be fully impersonated just by removing the signature. For example, if the referee quotes many papers of their own (or solely those papers) and then sign his/her name, I would not submit such a review.
The reason for respecting privacy of the referee is that this referee may have views that run counter to his or her boss. So disclosing his or her attitude could harm the referee.
A special question is to whether to submit the editor's decision, which is always signed. Unlike the referee, the editor is a public figure who should bear responsibility both for papers that get published in their journal as well as for rejected ones. So I would think it is allowable to submit the editor's decision.
However, you should bear in mind that there are journals explicitly prohibiting publication of the reviews. One example is Proceedings of the Royal Society Series A: A Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. I had an argument once with the Editor-in-Chief who rejected our paper based on feedbacks of five referees three of whom were positive. I approached him with a request that I would like to post the reviews, as well as his own comments, on a blog and answer them openly. The Editor rejected firmly albeit without giving reasons. While I strongly disagree with this attitude, respecting the journal I never disclosed the reviews.
On the other hand, many journals including those of the European Geophysical Union, strive to keep the reviewing process as open as possible and some of the reviews are published while the paper is under consideration. In this case, apparently, there is no problem in submitting these reviews or linking to them in your next submissions.

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How to acknowledge contributions of anonymous referee in new paper?
I'm in mathematics, just in case that matters.
I submitted a manuscript to a journal, and got an extensive referee report from referee X. After sending the revision, the paper got rejected, so I sent it to a second journal where it got accepted.
Later, I got a note from the editor of the first journal saying that referee X found a way to improve my results, and the editor gave me a pdf file from referee X outlining his/her ideas. Unfortunately, since my manuscript had already been accepted for publication I could not change it at this point.
Nevertheless, the improvement that referee X suggested is significant enough to merit another paper. I asked the editor to pass on an invitation to referee X to work on a joint paper with me, but the editor refused, saying that he didn't want to violate referee anonymity.
I think the paper needs to be written, but I feel it would be strange for me to write a single-author paper when the most significant idea does not originate with me. (Referee X only gave me a vague sketch of the idea, there are things that still have to be worked out. I still have to do a lot of work, but the most important insight would be referee X's). I suppose I'm just going to write a few paragraphs in the introduction explaining the situation. I was wondering if there would be another way to handle the issue.

Did the editor not even consider asking the reviewer in question whether or not s/he would like to collaborate with you? (also related, if not possible duplicate: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8509/acknowledging-a-reviewer-from-a-journal-from-which-the-paper-was-rejected)

I was told that putting me on contact with the referee would violate referee anonyMity. To clarify, the peer review was not double blind

Also related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13765/how-to-offer-a-reviewer-to-be-co-author

@DarrenOng putting you in contact with a referee would indeed violate the referee's anonymity. However if the editor passes along your contact information to the referee, then the person in question can choose to stay anonymous or not, then it's up to the referee to decide.

You can state something like "I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer of an earlier paper (give ref) for providing insightful comments and providing directions for additional work which has resulted in this paper. Without the anonymous reviewers supportive work this paper would not have been possible." The exact wording is of course up to you and what you see fits reality best.
I think it is a pity the editor does not want to forward your invite (I assume the review system is not double blind?). Asking is not a breach. I can, however, see that an editor does not necessarily want to become a messenger.
With a clear statement in the acknowledgement you have done what you can and I am sure the reviewer will pick up on it sooner or later and maybe after your new paper get in touch. After all, there is really not much you can do about it.

From my understanding of the details of the situation, the editor is not acting well in refusing to pass along your invitation to the referee.  Doing so does not violate anonymity in any way (I am confident that the review process was not "double blind" -- i.e., the referee knows the author's identity -- in my experience, no mathematics papers are reviewed in this way.)  Maybe what the editor is thinking is that in order to accept your offer the referee would have to violate anonymity.
However, is this an ethical issue?  I have always held it to be the case that a referee can disclose her identity to an author at any time, and I have done this more than once as a referee.  I can vaguely see some ethical problems which might arise if this process of referee-self-disclosure were very widespread, but it seems like a bit of a stretch.  I would be very interested if someone can explain to me why this is a real concern.
Against the highly nebulous previous paragraph one must balance the ethical issue that academic ideas are not gifts that one person can freely bestow upon another.  I wrote the previous sentence in full awareness of the fact that mathematics in practice does have some degree of noblesse oblige: one often encounters very eminent and senior mathematicians giving ideas away to younger / less experienced / less eminent mathematicians without wanting anything in return: in mathematics we are inculcated to have a view that certain contributions are "below our level" and thus not worth taking credit for.  That is fine if "not taking credit" means not becoming an author on a paper.  But if it means not disclosing your contribution at all -- with the consequence that the begifted junior mathematician gets "too much credit" for work that had a significant component that was not his own -- well, that is hardly a victimless crime in our current highly competitive job-market.  In fact it seems to be a form of plagiarism.
[The situation brings to mind Karl Iagnemma's short story "Zilkowski's Theorem".  This was anthologized in the Best American Short Stories of 2002.  Remarkably, this was only one of two short stories in that anthology in which the main character was a practitioner of the mathematical sciences.  The other is Leonard Michaels's "Nachmann from Los Angeles".  Both were excellent!]
Perhaps you should write back to the editor to express these ethical concerns.  Getting the editor-in-chief of the journal involved (if this is not already the editor you are dealing with) is also a good idea at this point.
If you really don't know the identity of the author, then you need to indicate clearly the circumstances in whatever paper you write.  You may also want to make it known in your circles that you would very much like to know the identity of the mathematician who helped you write your next paper.  Depending upon how small / tightly knit your particular subcommunity is, you may have more or less luck with that, but it's certainly worth a try.

+1 for "spread the word in your subcommunity".  That seems fairly likely to succeed.  Especially if, for instance, you mention it when you give a talk on your work in a conference or seminar.

On the subject of referee self-disclosure, see http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9523/is-it-acceptable-as-referee-to-contact-an-author-on-a-paper-you-review and http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15739/is-it-appropriate-as-a-referee-to-contact-an-author-after-the-editor-rejected-th

@Nate: Thanks for the references.  I read through both of them and saw some convincing points against identifying yourself as a referee and/or directly communicating with the author during the processing of the submission.  The disclosure that the OP is asking about, and the kind that I am talking about, takes place after the submission has been accepted or rejected.  Everything I read on those other questions is supportive of this (except one line allowing that "some people don't approve of this").  Did you see anything more specifically against, or do you have any thoughts on it yourself?

I guess from your phrasing and mine, it may have looked like I was providing objections, but I just meant to point to some prior discussion on the matter.  I don't know of any specific objections nor have any of my own.  One could make the argument that if referees often unblind themselves, it could cause others to feel pressured to do the same, but that doesn't strike me as compelling.

Even if the review had been double blind: it is over as the original manuscript was rejected and the paper is now published somewhere else. So the only concern that could still be an issue is whether author or reviewer want to stay anonymous. But the editor knows that the author is willing to give up the anonymity. I don't see anything speaking against forwarding the invitation to the reviewer in this situation (who can decide whether or not to give up anonymity, as has been pointed out already).

@cbeleites: Good point.  That helps to make my answer more broadly applicable than just to mathematics.


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As a TA, how should I address the professor's difficult curriculum?
This is my first semester being a TA for this course. However, the professor has changed since I took the course. The content seems to have grown in difficulty since I originally took the course, and I feel that the professor has been giving inadequate or unnecessarily difficult problems to get across relatively simple concepts in lectures, which I then have to explain in tutorials.
I have compared to my previous notes and although the major concepts are the same, the examples used are overly complex, and I can see some students are falling behind as a result. Is there an appropriate, professional way to get this message across to the professor without sounding like I am not familiar enough with the material for the position as an assistant for this course?

The level is the professor's to determine, so it's probably better to back off there. However, the lecture (and prior courses) should enable students to cope -- if there is an imbalance, that you can bring up with the professor. Maybe they'll realize they have been overly optimistic, or they can fix something so students can reach the desired level. (Don't discount the idea that maybe your iteration of the course was of too low a level, and that some students fall behind because they are not competent enough.)

Begin with the assumption that there are good reasons for the change: professors rarely make a large change in a course without thinking about why (it's just too much work to bother).  Rather than beginning with your judgement (which might or might not be justified), open with an observation and a question, something like:

I was looking at my old notes, and I've noticed that the examples have changed a lot and gotten significantly more complex.  I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about how you've changed the course and why?

Maybe the professor actually wants the class to be harder; maybe they just wanted it to be more current and don't realize it became harder as well; maybe you are overlooking something... all of these are possible, and until you understand how the professor is thinking about it, you don't have enough information to figure out how to proceed.

And I would add, the best way of figuring out the reasons is talking with him. He will probably welcome the feedback, and the TA can understand the point better.

Contrary to your first sentence, it seems likely to me that the new professor doesn't have a specific reason for giving examples that are harder than the old professor did, but simply doesn't realize that his or her examples are harder.

You're assuming that the professor changed the course using the existing material as basis. With the few courses I retook, I had the impression that different professors created their own material with little regard to how other professors taught the course before them.

In my experience, the difficulty of a course can vary quite a bit depending on who is teaching it.  Part of this may be that some instructors are more inclined to be demanding than others.  Part of it may be, as @TrevorWilson points out, that the instructor does not realize that the material is more difficult than it used to be.  I have found this to be especially true with junior faculty; they are "all over the map" in terms of course difficulty.  Some are too demanding and others not demanding enough.  It takes them a while to figure out what a reasonable difficulty level is.

Is there an appropriate, professional way to get this message across to the Professor without sounding like I am not familiar enough with the material for the position as an assistant for this course?

Yes: just send a short and polite e-mail to the professor mentioning that a lot of the examples seem to be too difficult for many of the students.  There's no need to overthink it. If you make it clear that you are just passing along information rather than asking the professor to change the way he or she teaches the course, then I don't see how this could be objectionable.
I think your worry about "sounding like [you are] not familiar enough with the material for the position as an assistant for this course" is unfounded.  I always like getting e-mails from TAs about how the course is going, and my reaction to such e-mails has never once been to think "sounds like this guy doesn't know what he's doing."

+1: I think the key idea is to phrase it as relaying information from the trenches -- "these students seem to be having trouble with many of the examples from your lectures" -- rather than the more judgmental "Your examples are more complicated than the ones that Professor Y did when he taught me the course."  Maybe the professor means for the examples to be as complex as they are; but the issue is that if the students aren't getting them very well at all, he needs to know that and be given the chance to adjust accordingly.

Every teacher has his or her own approach to a problem at hand and sometimes the viewpoint can be quite different. I believe it is good manners for a teaching assistant to give feedback to the teacher about the progress of their students.
I assume you have access to the lecture notes and can check on what level explanations are given there. If you do not have access, that might be a good point to start, asking for them. Make sure when you tell the teacher, that you notice your students are falling behind. It might also be worthwhile talking to your colleagues about this situation, if they notice similar trends in their classes.
Another good way is to ask the teacher for more examples and or exercises (or literature thereof) on a more fundamental basis. These can then be seen as leading up to the more complex problems. Especially when teachers are giving a course for the first time, it can be a little rough around the edges, and some might the misjudge the principle level of their own exercises.
When I was a student, we had a similar problem with a new professor for mathematics. My teaching assistants talked to him, and successively to the other staff, about these observations. Unfortunately he was improvement resistant, even though it then came from other professors of the same field, and the whole problem had to be resolved by the faculty dean. But this is only the worst case scenario. When I was a TA myself I had vivid contact to the lecturers and they always appreciated the input.


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Being overqualified as a barrier for getting a job
I have a PhD and whenever I apply for a librarian job I am told that I am overqualified for this position. How can I overcome this barrier?

I'm curious about why a librarian job, unless Library Science is your field. Is it just the general economic situation in your country? A bit of additional information might lead to more helpful answers.

It should be obvious to someone with a PhD that not mentioning you have a PhD solves this problem.

@Based I had the same problem several years ago (not quite as bad, though, because there are challenging "developer" positions out there). In my case (Germany), not mentioning my PhD would have either left me with a four-year-gap in my CV or the CV showing four years of work at the university without the expected outcome - neither was an option....

@Buffy Yes. I am from a library background.

We recently hired a couple of PhD's as science librarians at our university, so it certainly wouldn't happen everywhere.  Are you applying for university technical librarian positions?

I don't see how this is on-topic: it's not about academia but, rather, about trying to get a job with a particular set of qualifications. It might be on-topic at [workplace.se].

Note that, in many cases, "overqualified" constitutes indirect discrimination based on age, since older applicants are more likely to have more qualifications.

@Based "What did you do in this 4-year gap on your CV?"

I suppose you could point out that Jorge Luis Borges, J. Edgar Hoover, and Benjamiin Franklin were all librarians, so you are at least in good company.

A Ph.D. degree is just a part of your resume, and (except for a job that requires a Ph.D. degree), it shouldn't play a significant role. A good employer checks your skills and interests, with or without your Ph.D. degree.

@Based lying about a possibly 6-10 year gap on your resume probably introduces new problems, which someone in the situation would recognize.

When they say you are overqualified, it probably means:

They are afraid that someone with a Ph. D. will demand a higher salary than they can afford to pay;
They are afraid that you will get bored with the job and quit after a few months because the work won't be challenging / intellectually stimulating for someone with a Ph. D.

So, in your cover letter, you have to tell a good story that addresses the above two items (i.e., tell them why you know you will love this job and not get bored with it). If you search around on google, you can find many articles / blog posts giving more detail.

There's a third fear that may be in play here, a fear of upsetting them during rejection. other causes e.g.  A lack of work experience might be replaced with overqualified on a rejection letter. "Overqualified" sounds a lot nicer when you are writing a rejection letter than "not enough experience" even when the second answer would be more useful to be told directly.

The first point makes no sense. So what if they demand a higher salary? They can say no, and that's the end. Or they can make a counter-offer and the applicant can accept or reject. I don't understand why this would be a problem - salary negotiation is a standard part of any job application. In my experience, it's the second point that is almost invariably given as an explanation when you ask for reasoning.

@JBentley because there is a non-trivial cost in interviewing someone. In the best case, you have used an interviewers time, and interviewers tend to be highly placed in the organization. In the worst case, the company may pay travel expenses and use up a lot of time of several highly placed interviewers. Most companies are also reluctant to make more offers than they have positions, so a rejected offer slows the process and lengthens the time the position is open. You don't want to make those investments unless you think there is a reasonable chance you will actually hire the person.

@JBentley "salary negotiation is a standard part of any job application" - quite often not if you are applying for an entry-level position in a government run organization (which libraries usually are).  In that case, it will be advertised as a "a Grade 3a" position, and the salary will be fixed.  Even if the employer does say "no", you are still back to the other fear: that the OP will leave for a better paid job after six months.

@MartinBonnersupportsMonica Yes, but I wasn't disputing the second fear, only the first. If the salary is fixed, then demanding a higher one doesn't enter into the equation in the first place (in relation to the first fear).

Regarding point one, they may even be legally compelled to give you a higher salary under the pertinent collective labor agreement.

I would argue that saying someone is "overqualified" is like a meta-reason.  It's a way of alluding to the two reasons you gave while possibly masking a horde of other, less-savory reasons, e.g. fearing someone more intellectually competent than you, not wanting someone older, or simply recognizing this person has little in common with you and thus not liking them.

Some ideas are:
Apply to better libraries. I doubt that the Bodleian Library has a problem with PhDs.
Apply for other jobs that are a good match for your qualifications. Some libraries hire Researchers, and an advanced degree might be a help there. Such people help others find obscure resources. And, of course, academic jobs are made for you. Perhaps there are high level, busy, academics who would hire you as a researcher. This could be a pathway for an academic position of your own.
Finally, I was once in a similar situation (I assume) in which jobs were very scarce at my level and was advised by a professional employment advisor to prepare a CV that mentioned my MA degree, but not my PhD. Some employers would be more comfortable hiring someone with lesser qualifications than more. Sad, but true.
I hope this is only necessary as a fill in while you work out a career that does, in fact, match your qualifications. Good luck.

Can you really hide a PhD from prospective employers? It is going to be difficult to explain that 3-5-year gap... apart from being dangerous if they find out later.

Actually @wimi, I questioned it at the time. I don't recommend lying if asked, but just omitting it. You can always just say you were in school, I suppose. But answer honestly to a direct question. And there are situations in which a person is fairly desperate for a job. I had two kids in a very poor market at the time. We needed to eat.

It's quite dishonest to hide your PhD.

@JohnB it is not necessarily dishonest. The lady who tends to my feet, a podiatrist, actually has a doctorate in biology. She does not advertise that fact because she thinks that it would mislead her patients if she called herself Dr, when her doctorate has nothing whatever to do with her current profession.

@JeremyC I hope that we all are talking about a PhD in the area of the application. Otherwise the discussion has no sense! Sorry, it was not my opinion on the dishonesty, it is simply a fact.

@JohnB, If I'm asked for my highest degree I have to answer PhD. If I'm ask what qualifications I can bring to the proposed position, I can answer honestly without mentioning it. Precisely because they don't consider it a qualification, but possibly a disqualification. But if I have to assume that, then I can never apply to a lot of jobs for which I'm properly qualified.

I agree, except perhaps with the use of "CV" for this, if we're speaking American English. In the US, a "resume" is a short document listing your qualifications, accomplishments and skills most relevant to the position, so it would be a mistake to list an irrelevant degree. A "CV" to me would usually mean a document for academia listing all education, all publications, all conference participation, etc etc, but presumably this non-PhD-listing document was not one of those.

@KevinCarlson In UK English (and commonwealth?) the term 'CV' is used for both (but I didn't know that US English does use 'CV', with the more specific meaning you describe, rather than using only 'resume').

@JohnB, I have several resumes that highlight different aspects of my education and experience. The one applying as for Software Engineer positions does not mention my program management training. My Program Management resume does not include my website building skills or my Cisco CCNA certificate. Tuning one's resume for particular position and not including all experience and education (or certificates) is not dishonest. I get that this is an academic site but the question at hand does not seem to deal with that subject specifically.

There's a huge difference between tailoring a resume for a particular job and omitting something as big as a PhD.  I'm confident most employers would be interested in knowing that and would find it deceptive if it was left out, which indeed is the reason people are suggesting that it be left out.

I've seen this a few times where hiring panels have given the response of 'overqualified for the position' as a slightly dishonest cop-out answer to avoid giving more accurate feedback. In these cases, what is actually meant is 'we don't think your academic experience is valuable in this workplace environment, and may actually be detrimental'.
Note that I'm coming from an engineering/computer science perspective, and experiences may be different in other fields, but often there is a stark difference between academic and commercial practices in the same industry. Someone who has advanced to the point of achieving a PhD may be seen as being too ingrained in the academic world to adapt to the commercial environment. This could be the balance between doing their work perfectly and doing their work quickly, for example.
The other case is sometimes that a person is very qualified in an academic sense, but has very little workplace experience, even outside of the industry they're qualified in. Some academics have never worked outside of a university, and there is a good chance that someone who has never worked at any job will take quite some adjusting to a working environment. This is a risk employers can avoid by hiring someone less academically qualified (if the qualifications are unnecessary) but with more working experience.
It sounds like in your case, you're applying for a role where your PhD isn't valued, so you may need to explore what else is on your resume. Would your resume impress a prospective employer even if your PhD wasn't mentioned at all? Have you included things that will be valued - such as working experience, even if not in the industry you're applying for? This could be part-time work done while you were studying, particularly any internships or secondments.
Lastly, it could be helpful to demonstrate (either through an application letter or in an interview) that you understand what the daily duties are of the role you're applying for, and importantly how they are different from your experiences in academia.

Anecdotally, I would argue that the engineering/computer science fields are unique in that anyone can be a "qualified professional" anymore given enough time and money. The hiring world for CS positions is much, much different than most other fields. The market is saturated and it's been proven time and time again that, unfortunately, a degree doesn't equate to skill (and vice versa).

You could simply leave the fact that you have a Ph.D. off of your résumé:

If your Ph.D. was 100% inside a university, you could mention it as work/internship (it that matches the contract you had).
If your Ph.D. was done in cooperation with a company, you can simply mention your experience at the company.
For someone applying for a librarian job a gap in the CV doesn't seem inadmissible either.

Leaving a PhD off of a CV is basically lying, a CV should contain all info about your academic background.

@eps Your CV should contain everything you want your employer to know. Nothing less, nothing else. Leaving a PhD off your CV isn't lying. It just doesn't matter for the position.

This is terrible advice, to say the least.

@eps It would be lying if the job application form specifically asks for "the highest degree you hold" or something similar. If the employer asks you to "describe your education", or you simply provide a CV, you're free to mention only the parts you deem relevant.

Well, the resume should be tailored to each individual job you apply for anyways, because you are trying to use it to show yourself in the best light with relevance to each individual position.
So the question is, is your PhD relevant to the librarian position?  If it is, I'd leave it on there and see how you could leverage the skills to stand out among other candidates for the librarian position.  But most likely it isn't, so you'd be better off leaving it off the resume, especially if you could easily replace it with something that is (much) more relevant to the librarian position that you are applying for.

Agree, but might be subtle, though. You have to do some research into the organization to guess. But you should do that research anyway.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
The IT department bottlenecks progress. How should I handle this?
I'm currently working as a PhD student.
I am not working on a tech-oriented PhD. However, my project requires a lot of programming. This involves both working on a computation cluster, servers, and working with a variety of software. These are provided and maintained by our faculty IT support.
Now on the reason why I post: the first problems started when working on our server, maintained by our IT staff. I required some software essential to do my work, but because I have no administrator rights, I cannot install what I need. I asked IT very politely (I'm the new one after all), and they let me know that they would handle it as soon as possible.
Two weeks later, I still did not have access to the software I desperately needed to do my work. I had to ask my promotor (luckily a huge help in this matter) to ask IT, and finally the software was installed.
The following cycle continued until now:

I notice that software is missing / outdated / not working properly
I ask IT to fix the issue, because no other options are available
IT ignores my requests, leading to me having difficulties to meet deadlines
Someone with better credentials has to pressure IT into fixing the issue

Like I mentioned earlier, I absolutely love programming and computers in general, so I can fix almost all issues myself. However, my hands are tied because I have no administrator rights, and IT goes to great lengths to avoid that a non-IT person does something / installs something on one of the computers...
Does some here have similar experiences, and do you know how to smoothen this out? I obviously don't want to cause a ruckus in our department, but I also believe it to be unfair that we are blocked from doing our job. I'm not the only employee who was bottlenecked by IT, so I guess all suggestions are welcome!

Is there any chance of you installing your required software in your home directory rather than as root?

Having been on the IT department side of this, and in case you're curious, the most likely reason for their behavior is that they have a lot of more urgent work that they are catching up on, and only once someone higher up the ladder makes your request urgent does it get ahead of all the other things. To the detriment of the work on other things. So for what it's worth, they are probably not ignoring you for any personal reason, they are just scrambling to keep the servers running.

In the meantime, you could try to have things working in your computer, with a smaller dataset. This way, you know exactly what you need to make your thing work and you can go to your professor to ask them to ask IT to install all you need at once, instead of doing the cycle you describe.

This situation is very common. Have you talked to other PhD students and other staff? How do they handle it? If no procedure is in place I suggest you get familiar with installing software manually (either from source or from binary packages) in your home directory. I’ve ended up doing this at all institutes I worked at. Depending on your cluster, you might also have permissions to spin up Docker instances.

@user4052054 Yes I do that most of the time, or I try to find ways to work with what is already available (even though that might not be the most straightforward solution sometimes).

@ToddWilcox I understand that, everyone tries to do what they have to do. It's just that the contact between the researchers and the IT department is not always as effective as we want it to be. This leads to miscommunication, or in the worst case: frustration. That was the aim of this question: to find a way out that allows for everyone to do their work as effective as possible, without causing a ruckus / disturbing other people's work

@KonradRudolph Most researchers I heard talking mention that they have to mail / pass by several times before action is taken. Supervisors help out more than once (by being in cc, or actually meeting with IT) to arrange help. The home folder and virtual environments have helped me out so far indeed. It's just that I would like to handle this situation without risking difficult social situations

A lot of IT departments are like that. It is likely that over time you'll make some connections with people there and they will become more helpful. At the same time, plan to do as much as possible without admin rights; for example, if we're talking about a single Linux machine, a lot of software you can compile and install manually, without using the package repositories.

Does anybody not have this experience? This is what IT departments do. It's the easiest way to meet their objective of "reducing expenditure."

If you do manage to find a solution to this, let me know. It plagues Academia, Industry, Government, and basically every institution with an IT department.

Sometimes you can request to become a administrator of your machine. Atleast its possible in most of the universities i have visited. Thing  is though, you need to know to ask for this. They dont usually go around telling  about  this option. However, thay do require you to be remotely competent at what  you do and it may have some consequences on the legal side. This is what  i have done, though i would prefer not to. Anyway once you can show you can handle yourself, thay can then expand you to a network admin on a subset.

The only thing you can do is to try to prepare a complete list and have it installed by escalating your request. Building personal contacts also helps in these matters. And of course trying to avoid the need for root. It’s also a good idea to remind IT that you are waiting.

to go along with the generally correct but unfortunate stereotypes being lobbed at IT depts, they also have their own policies and procedures to follow, especially regarding federal security and compliance statutes, and industry level compliances that must be maintained that require extensive documentation and understanding before they can just be installed as though it were your home computer. Also remember it's probably a team of less than 20 people serving your entire university. Maybe cut them a little slack or ask for a dedicated environment that is hosted off the primary network....

To follow up on NKCampbell's comment, IT and the end users have different requirements placed on them. I have been pure research (Ph.D. in a physical science), mixed environment (embedded IT support in a research environment), and now a pure IT position (IT in a government national laboratory). I have governance policies that I have to enforce even if they impede the science. I would like to give you whatever you ask for but I can't. I also have to consider the 500+ other users on the systems so when your request will break other applications you put me in a bind for the greater good.

I once asked my IT administrator for permission to use an extension cord, so I could plug my laptop, because all the existing sockets were used due to all of us there using dual monitors (we were doing medical imagine research and need to visualise complex datasets effectively). The reply was 'perhaps we should reconsider our dual-monitor policy'. I never asked IT for anything ever again.

The big issue of IT departments is that they think they are in charge and forget that they are a service to the other departments...

@Chris you have to brave out slow responses due to IT understaffing OR you can actually opt out, and be your own IT - you get more flexibility this way but the tradeoff is you get even less support. See my answers below for details on ways to install software yourself.

@SolarMike The big issue with certain users is that they forget IT is a service to all the other departments and not just to them or their group.

Related.

This is a partial solution I've used myself, and it assumes a few things:

You access your clusters remotely through a connection (like other answers pointed, cloud servers or remote), so where you work isn't exactly the bottleneck.
The software you use isn't OS dependent or has any special licenses
You do not have a ton of things hooked up from serial ports to measuring equipment and whatnot.

One thing I've done in this situation is, when you finally grab a ticket from IT, ask them to install a virtual machine like VirtualBox and have them enable virtualization in the BIOS. Most processors allow this nowadays. Make sure they install it properly or they will ghost again.
This basically allows you to install any Linux distribution you want (you need Licenses for Windows images), so it is an operating system where you have all admin rights. This completely removes the IT middleman if your case is just coding and clustering the data crunching since you don't need their permission to do things in the VM, and also shouldn't impact performance significantly.
If IT is worth half a dime, they will appreciate the solution, since:

It takes gargantuan effort to compromise the Host Machine through a VM if you are not malicious
Resulting lack of tickets from you needing something updated/installed.

Worst case scenario you can still alternate between both Operating Systems, and do small things in the VM with your admin rights.

Thank you for this information, also a valuable solution indeed! Both the cloud idea and this one might come in very handy!

I'm not sure about university IT departments, but in other areas, a user that does not have admin rights to a server cannot have a VM on that server with admin rights on the VM either. In other words, I've never worked in an IT department where this request would be granted. Something that would work in my experience is getting approval from your department or program for money for a virtual machine on a cloud service like AWS or Azure.

@Todd: In principle, anything a user in as an admin guest OS can also be done as a user host OS.  Depending on how the IT department models threats, this sort of request might be granted.  Where things get problematic is with VM-based security systems.  E.g., Windows 10 environment has a feature called Device/Credential Guard.  This security feature tends to prevent VM software from functioning.  Even if the IT department is willing to toggle the BIOS virtualization settings, they'll probably be far less willing to disable Device/Credential Guard.

If the only time you need admin rights is the installation then a singularity container should do the trick. One of these things; https://www.sylabs.io/docs/ afak they are cli only, but otherwise they are basically a virtual box with better pass through. You can set it up as admin on your own machine then move the image to the cluster and run it there as a normal user.

@Todd Wilcox: As of a couple years ago, you could get a free student account on AWS. Depending on what the OP's computation needs are, that might serve.

Considering that a great many "servers" these days are virtualized to begin with, it's not that simple to ask for a VM any more. Nested virtualization has a whole lot of challenges. Also I don't understand what tools people are running that require admin permissions. I've worked on tons of clusters where I simply installed all my programs for the my user.

@Voo The difficult part is usually installing the dependencies needed for compiling the software without using a package manager. It's possible to learn to do it properly without admin rights, but it tends to take longer than finishing a PhD.

With a hypervisor cluster like oVirt or Proxmox, it's easy to delegate some resources (storage, virtual CPUs, RAM) to unprivileged users and they can then run their VM(s) on the cluster. The cluster itself consists of identical nodes, perhaps hyperconverged virtualization and storage, and nobody manages the association between VMs and hypervisors manually: it's all automated (say by oVirt engine). Any user can be granted some resources, and how they partition those between the VMs under their control is up to them. Admin access on VMs is then irrelevant: they are isolated from everything else.

I think this is a fairly common occurrence in many companies. There is a big disconnect between the researchers trying to do their work and the IT staff who may be under-resourced, under-trained or limited by administrative policy. In my experience there is often lots of worry about researchers installing software without fully understanding the security implications. In short, I would not expect you to be able to change this policy and it may well be in place for sound reasons.
One solution that has been suggested to me is that academics can apply for time using different cloud compute solutions (e.g. Google compute https://cloud.google.com/edu/, Microsoft Azure https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/education/, any many more). If successful you will be given compute time in a virtual machine where you will have appropriate administrative rights to install any software you want.

Thank you for your reply. I understand your point, a lot of people just install random software without thinking through what it does to their computer (or the network the computer is connected to). The cloud is indeed a solution I did not immediately think of (I thought it was always a paying service, but I see that they also award grants for using the cloud in academic settings). I will definitely look into it!

This might come in very handy but be aware that there might be data security implications. Uploading research data to anywhere outside of my institution's network, especially to US-based servers, could very much be a punishable offense where I work. Of course this might depend on the project, type of data etc and it might well go unnoticed, but it's worth mentioning I think.

@speedymcs Absolutely. OP needs to get permission from the relevant people, in writing. One web app I maintain at my old university has to be restricted to one university building, and faculty who want to connect outside the building have to use the university's VPN. It's locked down even to me (VPN + 2-factor auth) as the developer. Universities take data exposure very seriously, so make sure you can actually use the data and protect it in the right way!

We had this issue with some Silicon Graphics machines - we removed them from the IT department's control, with the support of the supervisors whose budgets had paid for them, and then controlled everything ourselves.
It went much better; we had more uptime and fewer issues than any other group / team on campus.
We learnt a lot about compiling & installing etc.
Not sure if you can go that route.
Note, the software we were using was CFD and the IT dept had no experience of what was needed.

Thank you for your response. Well, the problem is indeed that it is not possible for us to separate ourselves from IT using budget. The infrastructure we are working on belongs to the university, and the maintenance is a job for department IT. We indeed try to do as much as possible when it comes to the software we use (and this indeed works quite well), but being completely free from IT is really difficult I think.

How long ago was this? Today, I'd expect the response to be that the IT support team can't afford for you to be the ones who learn a lot about what happens when you get hacked. Also, nothing in the question suggests that there's money available for duplicating facilities provided by the department. (The asker is using central resources, not resources that belong to the group but which are centrally managed.)

@DavidRicherby They were on an internal network - no external hacking possible.... Funding was by particular research projects not "central" .... Unless you can hack via the power cord...

@DavidRicherby It's extremely rare in the US to not have group computers self managed, where the only thing IT requires is current antimalware. They're going to have to adapt quick: had several cases recently where instead of using a university HPC cluster, we just went to Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure since there you install anything you want on your VM, get the right amount of RAM, cores, storage and GPU, and don't have to wait in line.

@user71659 OK but the computers in the question aren't group computers, and there's no indication whatsoever that the group can afford to buy their own computers to replace the central ones.

@SolarMike An air-gapped internal network also means no network-based software updates (and burning a CD to run an update is a pain), installing extra software and the prerequisites for the software is difficult, getting to a login prompt is usually hard. Email and network shares are out of the question. Unless you're running FISMA-high data, I would not recommend going in this route.

@DougO'Neal A cd is far better than trying to do a back-up from a tape drive...

@SolarMike I agree. But when you're under FISMA regulations, a GAO audit, and a government department pushing you out as a guinea pig for the GSS audit, one gets concerned about how often you can update your servers and how hard it is to do so regularly.

At many universities, you can actually go through a (rather secret) bureaucratic process that allows you to install your own software on the university computer, even though this is not the default option.
If this option exists, it will likely include signing forms that may limit (or even eliminate) future IT support for that computer. Basically, you are agreeing to be your own IT in exchange for flexibility. However, if you are constantly downloading software it is often worth it.
The University doesn't want to encourage this option, because it can be a perceived security risk, so you will have to directly ask administrators in your department and IT, if this option is available, as it likely won't be published online anywhere. And you may have to assertively push for it.
This process was available to me at two of the three universities I've been based at over the years (in the USA and Australia). The one that didn't allow it actually theoretically did, but the form also said that you would no longer be able to connect to the Universities wired internet network, which wasn't worth giving up for me. Read the forms very carefully before you go down this route to make sure you are comfortable with the tradeoff you are making.

Upvoted and agreed. I was at my current academic position for about 10 years before I accidentally discovered (arising from similar complaint to my chair) that we could request having my office computer be "unlocked" so I could install my own software. Meanwhile, my chair was surprised that this hadn't been done for me years earlier (CS department here).

Whilst others have focused on giving you some technical advice on alternatives to using your institution's infrastructure, I want to note that your problems are not uncommon. In my practice I opted to installing the software myself (a lot of software packets I used do not need root privileges for installation, make sure that admin access for yours is really a must) or asked supervisor for help.
If you are on good terms with your supervisor, you can always ask him for help, going from as little as cc-ing him in  software installation emails that you send to your IT department to directly asking him for help when those request emails are ignored. In many organizations it's not easy for junior members to be listened to and that's just something you have to get over with.

Thank your for answering. Yes, I execute several applications as 'non elevated' user because that will give me what I need in most programs. My supervisor is indeed a big help and, for now, asking the supervisor is the best workaround. Yes, I understand that this is not a rare problem, especially for new employees like myself. However, what annoys me is that the things I ask are really not that difficult. I'm usually merely asking to install a certain software update or library that could come in handy, which is not something that takes weeks to complete.

Upvoting for the second part here - always CC someone with more leverage whenever you report issues.  Just that frequently moves it up in priority a surprising amount.

Will chime in that as an admin (non-IT), receiving a cc with the PI is essentially "failing at your job". It is the form of accountability that staff relies on. So as much as we groan when we are at fault, it's absolutely the go-to for reminding other staff that we aren't doing this for our health--other, more important people care about this too. We have a million competing priorities, so unfortunately the squeaky wheel gets the oil... running from emergency to emergency...

Upvoting for the second part here.  On the one hand, it is your advisor's job to make sure you have the IT resources you need.  On the other hand, your advisor has actual leverage with the IT admins; you don't.  Always CC your advisor, and ask your advisor to follow up immediately with "I concur with / approve this request."

You should also be managing your requests.
I mean: track when you raised the request, ask for news after a reasonable period of time (two working days), repeat that max three times. In the first follow-up you can make it clear why this is important to you. For IT staff it might sound like 'I want this tool installed', but if you detail the deadline you have and why this ticket is  crucial for your work, they might understand. After the third time, get your supervisor involved. Ask him/her to escalate the request in a conversation with an IT service manager.
Don't be happy with simply solving the ticket, try to see if IT can communicate what time of service level agreement they aim to respect. Maybe installing something requires internal permissions (release management) which, for instance, makes it impossible to install stuff on a Friday, or an afternoon, or if you don't have a rollback (meaning you have to backup the entire server setup before touching anything), etc.
Managing the request also means making sure your requirements are superclear. If you think you might need a package ask them to install it. Run these installations yourself in a VM that is identical to the production setup and provide them with the commands to actually install the tools. All these things you can manage.
At all times, and I must stress that, be nice. Just be nice. Unless you have reasons to suspect someone is trolling you, you have to give them the full credit for having to tackle many such requests at the same time. Being nice will get you further on the long run. It will also show to your supervisor that you are capable of creatively handling difficult situations.

Tagging onto this answer: When following up, use multiple modes if possible.  For example, start with the ticketing system, but do the first follow up by phone.  Being nice and tech-savvy on the phone can work wonders with some IT departments.

As an experienced computer tech, I'd have to add that the IT dept. might already have an agreed upon Service Level Agreement (SLA) as to how soon tickets need to be addressed. Some can be as long as a week or to. The OP stating they need to get their software in only 2 days may require extra steps, signatures, or could just be flat out denied due to this prior SLA. I'd suggest the OP finds out what the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is before stating any time limits. And being nice is always a good way to stay off the bad side of the IT dept., cause that's a bad side to be on.

And you need to remember that the SLA is based on the worst-case workload that IT can reasonably expect. In my organization, we promise through an SLA that a reasonable VM will be created within two weeks. In practice, the timeframe is generally within two day and that's only because we have to depend on two other outside groups for part of the process.  Also, if installation of your software involves installing multiple cutting-edge packages that affect other users, understand that IT has to support everybody, not just your research needs.

Since you're not in a "tech-oriented PhD", I'm guessing the cluster is 10 machines or less? If so, consider setting up your own cluster on any of the big cloud providers. AWS and Azure come to mind, but Google and IBM are still trying to hang on in those markets.
Thoughts on pricing:

You don't have to have the cluster up all the time, so you don't have to pay for 24hrs/day for a full month. You would have to figure out how to save/load the data and install some programs quickly (docker?), if you opt for shutting down some or all servers.
If you have fellow students or professors who are in the same boat, consider sharing your cluster and its expenses.
Depending on your research, you might (eventually) be able to get special pricing from some vendors.
On AWS, reserved instances are cheaper than spot instances.

Look at how much your time is worth, and how much these delays are impacting your research. If IT delays cost you 1 week of delays every month, then it's probably worth setting up things yourself. (Remember to back things up, and test your backup strategy. Put your code and data in github)
And lastly, are you using their ticketing system for your requests, or just asking them verbally? If there's no ticket, it'll surely be forgotten 5 minutes after you spoke to them.

This answer may apply, but I don't see where you take the logical step from “not-tech-oriented” to “probably cluster <10 nodes”. In fact, to me, needing a cluster at all while not doing tech actually suggest more likely that lots of nodes are involved. Science or data science applications tend to be really computation intensive. Furthermore, many of these applications are quite latency-critical and only perform properly when run on an actual physical cluster with native MPI support and a suitable file system like Lustre.

Doesn't AWS EMR allow for there to be clustering on demand in this case?

Adding this since nobody's mentioned it yet: You could ask your supervisor about having a meeting between you, your supervisor and someone from IT.  Maybe even invite them to lunch if it's appropriate to your institution and situation.  In case they're overwhelmed by tickets and/or they feel like your tickets come in from a faceless ticket-generator, it could help to meet the real researcher behind them.  And you can meet the real person handling the tickets, and see if there's any way you can make your tickets more straightforward for them.

Talk to your supervisor ("promotor"?) about the issue, and suggest that you should get a server that you manage. Depending on circumstances, you can agree on a physical server, an upgrade to you workstation / laptop to make it usable as a server, or even a server instance which is completely external to your institution, like Amazon AWS.
If your supervisor insists that you must use the existing IT infrastructure, send your support requests to them the next day after contacting IT. Don't wait for two weeks. Either helping you with these requests is not much of a burden, or your supervisor will grow tired of this and do something about it.

Was this a phone call or an email?  I find things usually get done faster if you call rather than email.  If the communication is time-sensitive you should especially always call instead of email.  An email can easily be missed or ignored until after the deadline.
When it comes to technology most people expect instant gratification.  Technology is supposed to speed things up and make our lives easier, isn't it?  Perhaps it does for the end-user but from an IT perspective it's a much different story.  Life is much more complicated for the developer or IT professional who has to set it all up and maintain the systems.  It takes time.  Technology is never a 100% perfect solution and there's a lot of complicated and time-consuming stuff going on behind the scenes that most end-users aren't aware of.

+1 for synchronous communication. Unlike an e-mail, a phone call cannot be ignored until later (possibly forever). Even better, visit the IT team physically (if both you and them don't work remotely).

my.back had a good answer, and it sounds like this may be the way to go when working through a bureaucracy where some of the solutions which involve some variation of "use your own hardware" just aren't practical. To add to this, I've found the following technique useful when dealing with a department or person who is willing to help, but does things on their own time.

CC your supervisor on every request.  This gives your supervisor a chance to give you feedback if you request something that you might not have realized was not necessarily what you need, or should be asking, but also lacking a response from your supervisor, it let's the person doing the thing that needs to be done know that your supervisor is aware of the request. (make sure you follow the advice given by my.back when making this initial request as far as why you need it, and when you need it)
When you don't get a response within a reasonable amount of time, send the request again, but make sure you that you put in the request itself "Second Request", making sure to again cc your supervisor on the request.  This lets them know that you still do need this thing to be done, it tends to have an effect of increasing the urgency of the IT professional for your task.  Repeat as necessary, making sure to put your request number in the request each time.

In my experience a second request is generally all that is needed when using this technique unless the department is just completely swamped.  The tricky part is to figure out what time frame is reasonable to complete such a request, and since organizations differ, it's not one that can be answered here.  I would suggest getting to know the folks who are completing your task, so that you can get an idea of what they go through, and so they can see you aren't just asking for ridiculous things and just being demanding all the time, because sometimes it's hard to see the world through other people's eyes without some context.

As a 2022 answer, I suggest using a controlled environment for your software.
For example, you might be able to lock down all of the programs you need with Conda (which, does not require admin install rights on many machines).
Or, ask IT to install and setup a container program like Singularity or Docker.
Also, consider looking elsewhere.
You might be able to use Open Science Grid or similar program depending upon your country and university.
Lastly, look for advanced computing centers or similar programs at your university such as Wisconsin's Center for High Throughput Computing or the High Performance Computing Center at Texas Tech.

A simple solution, just always make the requests through your promotor. Maybe explain to them the pattern you have noticed if they ask why you are going through them consistently.
Alternatively maybe they are doing something different, ask them how they get the IT department to resolve the issues quickly.


text:
How to manage the web presence of a research group
Given the importance of web presence how does one manage the web presence of a research group? The simplest approach seems to be to use links to the personal webpages of the group members to supply content. Is it worth creating content specifically for the group and if so should it reflect the interests of the current group membership or the interests of the PI, which will need updating less frequently?

There are many things that could be useful for the web presence of a research group, namely:

A brief presentation of the aims of this research group
The members of this working group (past and currents) with a link to their homepage
a list of publications by this research group
if there are working groups organized by this research group (for instance a presentation every two weeks by one of the member of the work done)
Other results such as software ...
Maybe a link to the people funding this research group, a little advertisement never hurts.

To add to Gopi's answer,

A list of lab alumni and optionally where they currently are working, it can help lend credibility to the lab ("look at how awesome we are, former postdocs from our lab are now working at MIT")
In the publications section, I would add downloadable PDFs of your papers, as that's the most common reason people will be visiting your website

Regarding your mention of content for the lab specifically (i.e., an intranet), we had such a page in our lab, and we used it solely to distribute (and keep historical records of) papers discussed in lab meetings.

Re: In the publications section, I would add downloadable PDFs of your papers, as that's the most common reason people will be visiting your website - not sure you're entirely allowed to do so. Is it generally applicable, or does that comment only cover Open Access articles.

In addition to the components listed by eykanal and Gopi, my group webpage includes pages for

Software developed by the group
Open positions (Ph.D. studentships and post-docs) available within the group.

These things could be maintained on my personal webpage (as PI), but I consider the group to be more than just "people who happen to be working with Prof. X".
In case it is helpful to have an example, here's mine: http://numerics.kaust.edu.sa/.  I could give other examples of group sites I think are better than mine, but I don't know if they would like me advertising them as such.


text:
Do I need to list any references for common knowledge?
When writing a book about a subject, if all your text is in your own words, and, contains only commonly known, fundamental, well established knowledge about the subject, which can all be seen in tons of resources, do you need to show any references or bibliography at all - even if you looked at other places while gathering that information, but took only the commonly established knowledge?
If you do not list any sources, can someone come to you and say "OK, you didn’t copy anything from me, but what if you looked at my book (which also has that common knowledge), since you do not list any sources"?
I am asking in terms of avoiding a legal issue. Not in terms of "citing is better for your text to be more reliable" in an academic field, etc.... This is an introductory to intermediate level book I am talking about. It is not something that claims to be at an academic level.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2192/68109

Are you talking about a scientific book?

Does this answer your question? On citing "common knowledge" statements

@Snijderfrey It is not a scientific book, but an introductory to intermediate level book about some engineering subjects. anyone can read it, it is written in plain english with minimal to no math. It also has good information for engineers at many places, although sometimes it will be too redundant for them. Nothing at academic level.

What kind of "legal issue" are you talking about? Citations don't protect against patent infringement or copyright violation. And you can't violate copyright if you're stating common knowledge in your own words, you have to actually copy something.

The worst thing you could be guilty of is academic misconduct, which is not a crime.

If your book contains only common knowledge - i.e. things every reader already knows - then what is the purpose of the book?

@kaya3 ‘common knowledge’ is usually domain specific. For example, it’s ‘’common knowledge’ among (well educated) chemists that you need to be really careful working with metallic lithium, but I would not expect, for example, a carpenter to know that. Also, everyone has to learn common knowledge somewhere, so a decent primer on a subject (which is what it sounds like the OP is trying to write) is still worth writing.

Generally, scholarly books have citations (footnotes or endnotes), non-scholarly books don't.

See related question Is there such a thing in the academic world as "common knowledge"?
If the knowledge you're looking of really is common knowledge (the example in the linked question is "the sky is blue"), then it's arguable that you don't have to cite it. But it's still only arguable - reasonable people can press the opposite argument that you still should cite that the sky is blue.
Ultimately, when in doubt, cite it.

Are you saying people should cite a source for "the sky is blue"? If so, I do not agree.

@toby544 you wouldn't be the only one to disagree. However, if you look at the answer to the linked question, there are people who think you should cite "the sky is blue". Some of the objections are not trivial, also - e.g. the sky might be blue, but the night sky is black.

The colour of the sky is culturally conditioned. Ref: Through the Language Glass, Guy Deutscher. It's not as common knowledge as you think it is.

@TRiG “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” - William Gibson, Neuromancer. ;)

@toby544 - But the sky isn't actually blue... that's an optical illusion. So, yeah, going to need a source

@TRiG Or, for the TLDR version : The surprising pattern behind color names around the world

Yes, obviously, "the sky is blue" is not actually a simple and straightforward statement of truth. I know that. I was just asking Allure whether he/she meant that people should cite a source for it. I guess the answer depends on the context.

Edit: I am asking in terms of avoiding legal issue.

Legally, you just have to not commit copyright infringement, which should be easy by writing in your own words.
But there are still good reasons to include citations. One is to give a pointer for further reading on the topic for readers who are interested.

Some statements that are "commonly known, fundamental," and "well-established" now were not so in the past.  For example, the statement "tobacco smoking causes lung cancer" should have a reference (say, this), in my opinion.  If I were to make the statement "one is not a prime number," then I would cite, say, this.

It would get rather tedious to write a book in this way, as you would have to either a) cite absolutely everything (eG. the earth rotates around the sun, humans die, etc.) or b) draw an arbitrary line regarding what needs to be cited an what not (eG. cite that 1 is not prime but not that the earth rotates around the sun).

While true, I'd wager that the corpus of "common knowledge" tends to grow and fairly rarely shrinks. Something that is common knowledge now is likely to be common knowledge 50 years from now. I don't really see the relevance of the fact that the knowledge wasn't common at some point in the past, since nobody will read the text in the past - the knowledge is common now, and very likely will be in the future. I expect it would be rare to omit a citation for common knowledge and then have someone in the future not know what you're talking about.

@NuclearHoagie Well, technically....common knowledge shrinks all the time--if you look at people working with vintage sources (for example, sewing patterns) a lot of instructions are simply not included because it's assumed that the reader knows them...because most people did know that stuff when the pattern was written. That said, going too deep with common citations is still silly. We can cite Aristarchus of Samos for "earth goes around sun" but who do you even cite for "sky is blue"?

Are we seriously discussing citing "1 is not a prime" in a mathematical paper? Knowledge that has been common for at least seventy years (if not more) should be fair game (and note that all the references after 1910 to 1 being a prime in the paper you linked are highly suspect or very marginal)

@DenisNardin, I agree that "1 is not a prime" is not needed to be cited in a mathematical paper.  One of my fields is mathematics education, and some students who may wonder why 1 is not a prime number may find my reference useful.

Literally, no. Common Knowledge is held in the commons. Generally speaking if you find it in an encyclopedia or in an undergraduate textbook it is likely to be common knowledge, though the specific expression can be covered by copyright.
But there is another reason for citing some things in textbooks. The reader/student may want to know more and go deeper into the things you write.
One alternative is the fairly typical "Further Reading" section at the ends of chapters. Some of these are more than just a bibliography, with a sentence about what the reader might find there to enhance their learning.
You need to avoid plagiarism also, so don't write in a way that the reader might assume that you originated the ideas. Sometimes you want to name some names of the originators of certain ideas.  You might also want to give dates of discovery if not complete citations. "Albert Einstein, in 1899, ...".

"Albert Einstein, in 1899, ..." --- Not that it really matters, but 1905 or 1915 would probably be a better year than 1899. (This caught my eye because I read most of this book yesterday while waiting roughly 4 hours for work on my car to get done at an auto shop, plus I've read many biographies of Einstein over the past 50 some years.)

Einstein's earliest article was published in 1901 (although it's no longer a well-known paper).

@DaveLRenfro, actually I was referring to the time period in which he developed the insights, not the publication dates of the papers. He pondered the questions that led to special relativity for about ten years.

Your book should be held to the same standard as a Stack Exchange answer in a similar field
I think that the level to which we hold Stack Exchange answers accountable for sourcing facts should be at least the minimum to which we would hold more traditional books. After all, the body of answers for a given site is often seen as encyclopedic in nature and utility for future readers1 and that's roughly what a book is.
Why do we encourage sourcing of fact assertions? For reasons cited in other answers here

it helps to build overall credibility of the post
it provides interested readers with resources to read further
it helps us spot answers that are just making stuff up by their failure to source

I think the first two can also apply to your book.
The book may be likely to be reviewed and recommended (or not) for use in libraries or in teaching, so if it's well-sourced this might contribute to a better review, which may mean more money in your pocket, wider readership and a better result for your publisher, which may contribute to future "book deals".
This is Academia SE and so view-based answers don't always cite sources
I've ironically fabricated one out of thin air below, but for your "introductory to intermediate level book" I recommend you find the SE site that best matches your topic and review the best received-answers and see how they support their assertions of "common knowledge" with sources, and consider this as your floor, your minimum.

1While SE answers collectively are encyclopedic in nature and utility, individually they also should answer the OP's specific question or attempt to "solve their problem". This is universally known as the "SE is both a floor wax and a desert topping" doctrine.

I think you should consider not just whether you need to cite sources, but also whether you should.
There are multiple purposes to cite sources. One is to properly credit ideas, to avoid appearing to take improper credit for those ideas (plagiarize). This is probably the purpose most associated with "need".
Another is to support your own arguments and statements, by either directing your readers to see the grounding of those statements in other places (which can't be recapitulated every time they were mentioned, otherwise every published item would be longer than the one before it and soon would be completely impossible to digest) or at least presenting the appearance that your ideas have other support[1].
Yet another is to connect your readers to additional reading according to their own interests. It may be common knowledge in a given field, but if a reader wants to know more, where should they go next? What if they want to understand why something is true, rather than merely that it is true? What if they want to understand how that piece of knowledge came about?
I think it may be difficult and overly pedantic to include these sorts of citations to every element of very base knowledge in an academic paper, but if your purpose is to introduce a field to your readers it may be worth giving them branches to more reading rather than just setting them out on their own with little more than Google to help. I would not recommend using the absolute bare minimum of citations according to "need", but rather balancing the level of citation with the level of content you present. Keep your audience in mind when writing, no matter what level you write for.