The Equipment Committee of the Computer Science Department started the planning process for upgrading and restructuring the department's network as well as upgrading the various servers. The planning process for the departmental facilities slowed down late last year and early this year, because most attention was given to an up-to-date version of COSC 2410. The corresponding lab as it is configured should have sufficient capacity to serve one or two more courses, e. g., Operating Systems . The new instructional lab has one NT server and one Power PC server, 166 MHz Pentium clients with 32 MByte memory and 3.2 Gbyte disc drives with 8x CD-ROM drives and 100 Mbit Ethernet network interfaces. The Equipment Committee should soon resume planning for the upgrade of the department's facilities and their use policy, as well as determining the need for upgrading other instructional labs. Students wit proposals for improving the departmental computing environment should contact Dr. Leiss, preferably in writing.
As Director of Graduate Studies, I enforce basic rules. I certainly do not presume telling each of our almost 300 students which graduate courses they should take. In essence, the rule is "After you have taken the prerequisite courses you are required to take, you may take any Computer Science courses, graduate as well as 4000-level the latter under rather specific rules, for which you have the prerequisites." This permits each student enormous latitude in taking courses, limited only by course availability and time constraints. (Keep in mind that there is some benefit in taking courses different from what you consider your interest -- interests change, and you may discover that there are areas you like even better than the one you started out with.) The enforcement of the basic rules must be done centrally, in order to ensure fairness (which in this case is the same as uniformity...).
The advising aspect is quite different from this. I suggest that you first take a few graduate courses that appear interesting to you and find out what the professors teaching them are doing. Then talk to one or more of them to get some ideas of what you might be able to do. My feeling is that there is not much to be gained if I unilaterally assign professors to students, but the students do not come and see the assigned advisor (as has happened in the past). Ultimately, I feel that it is the students' responsibility to take the initiative.
Professor Farokh Bastani is chairing, together with Dr. Amir Abouelnaga of TRW, the program committee of the 16th IEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems. This conference will take place Oct. 22-24, 1997, at Duke University.
All graduate students are reminded that everyone must have received initial course advising. More specifically, if you started in the department in the last two years, there must be a form in your file that states specifically that you received initial course advising and what are the prerequisite courses you are required to take. Students are also reminded that all prerequisite courses must be taken before any graduate courses may be taken. Furthermore, you must make a B- or better on each of them; if you earn a grade of C+ or worse in any prerequisite course, you are required to take this course again, in the semester immediately following. Any exceptions must be approved in writing.
All students are reminded of the 3.00 GPA requirement for graduation. This means that you will not graduate as long as your GPA is below 3.00. This is a university requirement and cannot be changed by the department.
The week of March 24 is Spring Break; there will be no classes and the university is closed on Friday, March 28. Ms. Vaughan will maintain her office hours Monday through Thursday during that week, but I will be out of the country. I wish everyone an enjoyable Spring Break!
Ernst L. Leiss
Ms. Amanda Vaughan Monday and Friday: 1-5pm Tuesday through Thursday: 9am-noon All other times by appointment only. Dr. Ernst L. Leiss Monday and Friday: 4-5pm Tuesday - Thursday: 9:30-10:30am Please confirm by calling 743-3350