As part of your MS degree, you may take up to 6 credits of "research" -- typically independent projects supervised by one of the faculty or research staff. The hard part about doing this is getting someone to agree to supervise such a project with you, since it generally represents a significant time investment (see "how can I get involved in research?"). The mechanics of obtaining the credit for these projects is through the vehicle of the "projects courses", ELEN E4998 (Intermediate Projects In Electrical Engineering), ELEN E6001 and ELEN E6002 (Advanced Projects In Electrical Engineering).
Each of these is a "dummy course" in the sense that it does not correspond to any specific syllabus or content, but rather stands in for the time you spend working on the project, and will carry the grade you earn in that project, as decided by your supervisor. You can take these courses for different amounts of credit, though a typical project is done for 3 credits (i.e. equivalent to a standard course, or about one quarter of your school time).
These classes are special in that, unlike most classes, you can take them more than once and accumulate credit - for instance, if you take ELEN E4998 for 2 credits one semester, but have some tidying up work to finish off, you can by mutual agreement with your supervisor register for ELEN E4998 again the following semester -- for one credit, or whatever is appropriate. If the project is more advanced, you might take ELEN E6001 followed by ELEN E6002 (which would be more help in fulfilling your 15 point 6000-level requirement). But in any case, a maximum of 6 units of research credit can count towards your 30 credit MS requirement.
When you register for ELEN E4998/E6001/E6002, you register for a particular section number that indicates who your supervisor is. These section numbers are given at the bottom of each semester's course list.
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