Computer Science Graduate Student Newsletter

Number: 1995-11                           October 6, 1995

Non-Thesis Option A Possibility
Several issues that are of concerns to graduate students, 
including offering a non-thesis MS degree, were discussed 
in a recent faculty meeting.  Dr. J. C. Huang first stated 
that he has received complaints from students about 
cheating in many classes.  He asked the department 
Academic Honesty Committee to look into the problem.  

Due to the absence of Dr. Rusinkiewicz, the Chairman 
asked and received the support of the faculty to suspend 
the qualifying examination on Data management for the 
1995-96 academic year.  Ph.D. students who are planning 
their qualifying examinations should take that into 
consideration.  Students are encouraged to discuss this 
present problems to their study plan. 

Dr. J. C. Huang also asked the department Curriculum 
Committee (Professors Anderson, Cobb, and S. Huang) to 
draft a proposal on a non-thesis option for masters 
degree students.  This is the first time the department 
has studied the option even though it was discussed 
informally by faculty members for some time. 

It'll take a few years to design and implement such a 
degree program change or addition.  Current students most 
likely won't be able to switch to the non-thesis plan.  
There are also strong sentiments against such a proposal 
among some of the faculty.  Graduate students may voice 
their opinions on this proposal to the Curriculum Committee.
Revision of the Ph. D. Qualifying Examinations was also 
discussed briefly in the meeting.  However, no official 
actions were taken.  

According to the Chairman, the Department may have more 
funds to support graduate students (in the form of teaching 
or research assistantships) to attend summer school in 1996 
than before.  The faculty also reached a consensus that we 
should offer graduate courses during the summer sessions.  
Graduate students can expect to see 1 or 2 graduate courses 
in the summer of 1996.


Top 10 Ph. D. Programs in CS

The National Research Council conducted a study on the 
quality of Ph. D. degree programs recently.  There are 108 
universities offering degrees leading to a Computer 
Science Ph. D. in 1993.  The top 10 universities are:  
1) Stanford, 2) MIT, 3) UC-Berkeley, 4) Carnegie Mellon, 
5) Cornell, 6) Princeton, 7) UT-Austin, 8) U. Illinois at 
Urbana-Champaign, 9) U. Washington, 10) U. Wisconsin- 
Madison.  

UH ranked 75th on the list, the third highest ranking among 
all Texas public universities.  Other Texas universities on 
the list and their ranks are: Rice (19), Texas A&M (63), 
UT-Dallas (76), UT-Arlington (85), SMU (89), and North 
Texas (95).

UH outranked most of the universities in the nearby states.  
Here are some of their ranks: Southwestern Louisiana (72), 
Louisiana State (78), New Mexico State (80),  U. Kansas (86), 
U. Alabama-Huntsville (87), Mississippi State (99), U. 
Oklahoma (101), Tulane (102) and Oklahoma State (108).

A complete list can be found on the Web at "http://cra.org/cgi-bin/RankCS."



News on Our Web Pages

The Department home page on the World Wide Web (WWW) has 
been under constant revision.  It is now possible to check 
department seminars, student thesis defenses and the UH 
academic calendar from the home page.  

Dr. J. C. Huang is designing a new Department brochure.  A 
colorful electronic version of the brochure will soon be 
available from our home page.  

The system administrators are hosting a student personal Web 
page contest.  To have your personal home page linked from 
the department page, send your URL and full name to Dr. 
Stephen Huang.